D&D 4E 4e Essentials as a new edition and 4e's longevity

Neonchameleon said:

You are treating the two most important words in that post as an aside when they aren't. Those words are "for me".

Not everyone is you any more than they are me. And I like you in general prefer pre-essentials classes (and the post-Essentials ones I like, like the Berserker, are normally little different). But different people have different tastes and really appreciate the different decision chunking of the Essentials classes.

If you don't feel it can't you at least accept that others do? And will want to stick to a default stance?

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Yes I can't speak for you, nor vice versa. What am I not accepting???

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yes I can't speak for you, nor vice versa. What am I not accepting???

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It doesn't matter a sparrow's fart that you @AbdulAlhazred do not personally find the breaking up of the decision points for a stance based class to be no simpler than classic AEDU because the total options are unchanged. All that matters is that it works for some people when AEDU doesn't so the potential playerbase expands. Which it did; I had someone at my table that had struggled for two years with 4e but a scout just clicked (and someone else who had spent decades alternating wizards and martials before finally getting what he really wanted, which was a fire elementalist, able to burninate with minimal faff).

Neonchameleon said:

It doesn't matter a sparrow's fart that you @AbdulAlhazred do not personally find the breaking up of the decision points for a stance based class to be no simpler than classic AEDU because the total options are unchanged. All that matters is that it works for some people when AEDU doesn't so the potential playerbase expands. Which it did; I had someone at my table that had struggled for two years with 4e but a scout just clicked (and someone else who had spent decades alternating wizards and martials before finally getting what he really wanted, which was a fire elementalist, able to burninate with minimal faff).

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Yeah, that's fine, you can state your preferences and I have not denigrated them in the least, I just stated mine. You gave reasons, and I gave reasons. I'm mystified as to what has got under your skin.

Neonchameleon said:

Except that 3.5 replaced the prior material. There's a reason people talk about playing 3.5 rather than 3e and don't refer back to the 3.0 PHB.

It sounds like what a .5 edition should have been if it had been other than a shameless cash grab.

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3.5 WAS a shameless cash grab though. It was specifically released early, by a couple years, because Hasbro saw sales had slipped on 3e and rushed 3.5 to market.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I don't hate Essentials, but I thought it was rather an expenditure of resources that could have gone to more interesting projects.

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I've always thought that Essentials was an unnecessary regression to 3.5. It did bring along a few changes that benefited 4e in general, like some clarifications on certain rules, and giving the fixed +2/flexible +2 mechanic to all races.

But, overall the Essentials-only stuff was just like... There, floating in the air. And without any support, it feels inferior to the 4e vanilla stuff.

Knowing what we know now about how 4e was made, and remembering that Mearls once said Essentials was like 4e look during the beta testing (but we know 4e had many beta testing phases), I wonder if Essentials was just Mearls trying to imposing on us his version of 4e. He did imposed a lot of his vision of D&D these days (like the stupid division of Common/Uncommon races that I think is one of the things Essentials should have never brought on...)

Zeromaru X said:

I've always thought that Essentials was an unnecessary regression to 3.5. It did bring along a few changes that benefited 4e in general, like some clarifications on certain rules, and giving the fixed +2/flexible +2 mechanic to all races.

But, overall the Essentials-only stuff was just like... There, floating in the air. And without any support, it feels inferior to the 4e vanilla stuff.

Knowing what we know now about how 4e was made, and remembering that Mearls once said Essentials was like 4e look during the beta testing (but we know 4e had many beta testing phases), I wonder if Essentials was just Mearls trying to imposing on us his version of 4e. He did imposed a lot of his vision of D&D these days (like the stupid division of Common/Uncommon races that I think is one of the things Essentials should have never brought on...)

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Yeah, he and I DO NOT share the same tastes, hence I've not really been a fan of most of his work. 5e is utterly uninteresting to me. I mean, its playable, but just uninteresting, and Essentials likewise, not badly done, but lacking any point of interest. If I wanted to play 2e, I would play 2e, and I'm perfectly happy NOT having my game turned into 2e. Same with Mike's adventures, not interesting at all.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yeah, he and I DO NOT share the same tastes, hence I've not really been a fan of most of his work. 5e is utterly uninteresting to me. I mean, its playable, but just uninteresting, and Essentials likewise, not badly done, but lacking any point of interest. If I wanted to play 2e, I would play 2e, and I'm perfectly happy NOT having my game turned into 2e. Same with Mike's adventures, not interesting at all.

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It's generally agreed that just about all the worst 4e books, from Keep on the Shadowfell to the MM1 to Heroes of Shadow have Mearls' name on the cover.

And I consider 5e does have strengths (and if I wanted to play 2e I'd play 5e). By D&D standards there is a lot of class diversity while lacking bloated shovelware and it's easier to get beginners up to speed; it's far the most accessible D&D since (and possibly including) B/X. And things became more interesting with Tasha's and the surrounding materials than they were in the Xanathar's era as they started to get interesting and weird subclasses (other than for the warlock which admittedly started with them) - but I found 2014 5e to be tedious and have accessibility as its only real strength.

I've always felt that if 4e had started with essentials that it'd have lasted longer. I much prefer essentials to original 4e.

Neonchameleon said:

It's generally agreed that just about all the worst 4e books, from Keep on the Shadowfell to the MM1 to Heroes of Shadow have Mearls' name on the cover.

And I consider 5e does have strengths (and if I wanted to play 2e I'd play 5e). By D&D standards there is a lot of class diversity while lacking bloated shovelware and it's easier to get beginners up to speed; it's far the most accessible D&D since (and possibly including) B/X. And things became more interesting with Tasha's and the surrounding materials than they were in the Xanathar's era as they started to get interesting and weird subclasses (other than for the warlock which admittedly started with them) - but I found 2014 5e to be tedious and have accessibility as its only real strength.

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I agree, 5e is not some horrible game, character building works pretty well for example, though it lacks some of the interesting parts that 4e might offer at times. OTOH it doesn't force you to keep figuring out so much stuff either. It is just basically a better 2e, and 2e didn't do it for me. So, clearly it DID do it for Mike! We thus differ in our tastes. As for KotS, I think that was, well, an unfortunate learning experience for Mike. 4e doesn't suite him, but he thought he could make it do what he wanted, and the result was, a turkey. HoS I actually like pretty well, personally. The subject matter is cool, the fluff is good. I don't think most of the crunch is bad either, though 'most' is the operative word. The Shade is a sucky race that could just be a feat. The Binder is a weaker warlock build that, basically has nothing much going for it, though the idea is solid.

Overall my feeling is HoS follows on from Essentials in kind of trying to pull back on the power levels of higher level characters, overall. It just feels like the options given don't generally do that much for you, mechanically. I feel like that's almost a 2e-ism as well. I mean, most 2e supplements are filled with mechanically useless options (and a couple that are bonkers). HoS is like that too, with the Vampire being just stupid powerful, though very few people seem to have grokked its true potential.

cbwjm said:

I've always felt that if 4e had started with essentials that it'd have lasted longer. I much prefer essentials to original 4e.

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Well maybe, but it would be less special. 4E stands out and is used even nowadays as inspiration for a lot of games because it did things different and not everyone liked that.


Essentials overall is not bad 4E material, it had some good designs, but the first book was just a punch into the face of people who liked 4E. It went all back to "Simple martials, complex casters", which reflects Mearls taste.


I agree that 4E would have been more successfull if it would have started including some simple classes. And for that part Essentials was also good, to add some simpler classes to the mix, so adding Essentials does improve 4E.


Essentials as itself without the non Essential 4E parts though would just be a worse game lacking lots of the parts making 4E special like the Warlord.


I think the best 4E could have done was to release with the Ranger as the Essential Ranger (Hunter (and maybe also Scout)) to have a 2nd controller as well as the Essential Elementalist Sorcerer. (Instead of the original ranger, and the warlock (which could be later introduced))


This way there would have been 2 simple to play classes, which are quite elegant and work well, without having this stupid limited mindset of "simple martial, complex caster", which some people cant get rid off.


Also the Ranger was just one of, if not the least interesting original class anyway not really using the AEDU structure well, and just doing as many attacks as possible. The essential version is here at least elegant.