D&D Essentials, a review
A couple of days back I picked up The Red Box, Heroes of The Fallen Lands, and the Rules Compendium for the new D&D line, D&D Essentials.
So, I'm going to review it and answer some questions.
o How is Essentials different from 4th Edition? Is it 4e, or 4.5, or 5th edition?
o What is it? Is it pathfinder for 4e, or a starter set, or what?
o Why should I purchase or avoid purchasing it?
OK, lets start with the big one first. A lot of people hated 4e because it didn't feel to them like D&D. Essentials addresses that quite well, while simultaneously still retaining the 4th edition mechanics. I'll get into that in detail towards to end.
First...
The Red Box
... < 1980s 2010s > ...
The Red Box is a starter set. It contains...
o Dungeon Masters Book. This diet-DMG (most of the rules, half the calories), has all the basic rules for 4th edition, an adventure with a half-dozen encounters, a cut-down monster manual, tips for running a game, and how to craft a game (encounters, rewards, story, etc).
o Player's Book. The player's book is interesting, as it is a choose-your-own-adventure style thing which walks you through character creation and the basic rules as you play though it ... and sets up a new group's first adventure - the choose-your-own-adventure ends with you heading into town to get help from other adventurers so you can fight a band of goblins. By the end of flipping through the player's book you will have created a wizard, rogue, or fighter.
o Useful Sundries. Cardboard counters for PCs and monsters, a double-sided play mat, and power cards. All you'd need to get started playing D&D is inside. Most importantly are a full set of dice and a set of blank character sheets.
If you've never played D&D before this box is ideal - you will have created and started solo-playing your character before 5 minutes are up and will be roping friends into setting up a group so you can kill those damn goblins.
The artwork on the box deliberately mimicks the boxed set of 30 years ago, right down to the old D&D logotype. To new players this will mean nothing, but to grognards like me it is a big jolt of pure nostalgia. I think the idea is that the new Red Box is packaged to as closely resemble the 1983 Red Box and so attract gamers looking for pure D&D. It dosn't come much purer than this. Goblins, a dragon, a dungeon, and high adventure. It feels like early d&d, but uses the 4e rules; I think that is the point, to not only be a stepping on point for new players but for old players who have never tried 4e.
Of course some of us will buy it just because...
Next up is...
The Rules Compendium
Just as the cover says "A quick and handy reference". Actually my copy says "a game reference for all players" and credits Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt as well as Crawford. Quick and handy indeed it is. The rules from DMG1 and DMG2 are boiled down into a single document, together with a smattering of stuff from PHBs 1,2&3, all fully errata'd. Everything from basic combat rules to aquatic, mounted, and airborn combat. A quick read-through has revealed only one big change from 4th edition... Natural 20s. Previously a 20 was a crit if it hit. So if 20 plus your modifier was enough to hit a beastie you did max damage and probably some spanky stuff from your magic sword/wand/violin to boot. Now auto-crit on a 20 is back. There were good mathematical reasons for the change from auto-crit in 2nd ed to roll-to-confirm in 3rd ed to crit-if-hit in 4th ed. However, the auto-crit of AD&D was just plain fun and I'm glad it is back. On that note 1s are now an automatic miss, but not a 'fumble'.
There are a load of small changes. Tiny things. Treasure packets and magic items have minor changes for example. Now a magic item has a rarity value. A +1 magic sword is common and so sells for a fraction of the price you bought it for - but a rare +1 sword (warning - NSFW) sells for it's cost to purchase.
Now on to the really interesting one...
Heroes of The Fallen Lands
As the book says it allows you to create and play Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards (provided you like Dwarves, Elves, Humans, etc).
... and this is the book that depending on your point of view ...
a) Is Going to Save D&D
b) Has Ruined D&D
c) Is a Nice Addition to D&D
If you love 3.5 but hate 4.0 (but never played AD&D) then this is Going to Save D&D by making it more like 3.5.
If you hate 3.5 but love 4.0 (but never played AD&D) then this is Has Ruined D&D by making it more like 3.5.
If you played both 3.5 and 4.0 and have fond memories of AD&D then this is a Nice Addition because it makes 4e more like AD&D.
"Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up. ..."
The book presents 8 new builds and some new feats. That's it.
Cleric: Warpriest (Storm Domain)
Cleric: Warpriest (Sun Domain)
Fighter: Knight
Fighter: Slayer
Rogue: Theif
Wizard: Mage: Enchantment Shcool
Wizard: Mage: Evocation School
Wizard: Mage: Illusion School
The devil, as they say, is in the details.
For a start the character creation is nicely streamlined.
The book presents three stat blocks:
18/14/12/11/11/8 (The Specialist aka The Min-Maxer)
16/16/12/11/11/8 (The Dual Specialist aka The Fence Sitter)
16/14/14/11/10/10 (Balanced aka The Smug All-Rounder)
Of course there are the point-buy method and the random rolling method in the book for completeness sake, but I've never seen anyone in a 4e game that didn't have one of the above three stat lines. WotC seems to have noticed this and put those three most-common stat lines up front to save you 5 minutes of figuring them out from first principles.
Then the characters themselves...
At first I thought I was looking at 3.5 characters. The presentation of class progression is the same, and these builds have the limited choices of a 3.5 character. At 1st level you get this feature, at 2nd you get this, at 3rd you get this. Very dictatorial. Yet somehow it works. Each one reads like a class from Pathfinder yet keeps some of the innate flexibility of 4e. It really looks like 3.5, I can't stress this enough. Right down to spell progression tables and stuff.
If you hated the fact that a 4e fighter felt like a 4e wizard (or were all "World of Warcraft") then definitely pick up this book. Gone are daily powers for fighters, now replaced by boosts to basic attacks and the occasional flashy move. Wizards for their part get a couple of nice new bits and pieces. Hypnosis and Suggestion spells, and magic missile as a class feature rather than a power you must pick. Yep, every D&D Essentials wizard gets to cast old-school auto-hit magic missiles at the darkness.
Now character classes feel different. However, though the presentation is 3.5 the feel is old-school AD&D. The wizard stands at the back of the party, the fighter and cleric tank, and the thief back-stabs. Brilliant.
The feats are also a joy. Grouped into types of feats and then presented alphabetically it is now easy to see what feats you should be looking at for your heavy-armor fighter or your back-stab rogue. The feats themselves are simple, with no 'paragon' or 'epic' feats instead feats are either useful all the way through or auto-scale at higher levels. Some feats have been expanded to encompass more, some are old feats from the PHBs, and some look new. I especially liked the 'Disciple Of...' feats. These allow a character to follow a god (or multiple gods) without being a cleric and gain some goodies relating to that god. Kind of like multi-classing into cleric without the multi-classing or gaining the healing powers of the cleric. Definitely picking up the Staff feat from essentials for my Sorcerer.
A lot of stuff is missing. No rituals, though the Wizard build has access to Suggestion as a class feature and a lot of other Wizard and Cleric abilities fulfill the missing ritual role. The Hobson's Choice of Wizard Powers remains, but Tome-loss has finally been addressed. Fiddly things like marking are mostly gone too. This is D&D without the more complex bells and whistles. The Slayer is actually feels like an AD&D barbarian, which 4e Barbarians never did. The Knight is a better Fighter in terms of flavor too. All in all complexity has been jettisoned in favor of attaining old-school flavor. It is a simpler more streamlined set of character builds, concentrating on recapturing the old style of D&D play without throwing the baby of 4e mechanics out with the bath water of over-complex character builds.
The thing that impressed me the most was the back of the book. Not only is there a new clearer character sheet but a glossary. I can't tell you how much time and heartache that glossary will save. It has everything from the full definition of Adjacent Square to Willing Movement. Can't remember what Superior Cover is or how it works? Flip to the glossary. The full index at the back also makes the book a whole lot more usable than the PHBs.
So on to the questions...
o How is Essentials different from 4th Edition? Is it 4e, or 4.5, or 5th edition?
It's 4e with minor tweaks (totally new Human racial ability for example), but the builds in HotFL feel like old-school AD&D with a bit of 3.5 and 4e.
o What is it? Is it pathfinder for 4e, or a starter set, or what?
Bit of both. Think of it as a parallel sideways-compatible 4e. You could take your Essentials character into a 4e game or vise-versa with no worries. An Essentials-only game will feel much more old-school though.
o Why should I purchase or avoid purchasing it?
If you like older editions of D&D but hated 4e then Essentials will help recapture that old-school D&D feel, though with the 4e mechanic. Yes, you will still have to use a 1" grid and models or counters for tactical combat. If you don't like that then perhaps the free-spirited narritive combat of Earthdawn or 7thSea would be more your cup of tea. Personally I was dead against models for combat until I actually tried it, but that is a discussion for another time perhaps. The expansions of skill descriptions and the new "improvising with..." sections may help grognards who complain that the umpteen cheese-making skills of 3.5 were a good idea. The new expanded skill section gives ideas and examples of out-of-the-box thinking on the use of skills, and I for one am looking forward to forging letters and creating camouflaged traps. In fact it addresses all of the 4e hater's complaints apart from model-based combat.
If you like 4e for the flexibility of character creation and advancement then HotFL certainly will disappoint as a stand-alone rule book but will also serve as a useful reference and source of awesome new feats and build ideas to add to your 4e shelf. Personally I like my Warforged Monks and Tieflings SwordMages and so forth too much to just go for Essentials, so the options presented in HotFL will act as a compliment to the PHBs and Arcane Vaults. Next time I create a character I'm so going to make something that abuses staff expertise and the new Magic Missile.
If you've never played D&D before the above 3 products are the best put together starting point I've seen so far.
If you liked this review, great. If you want a better one... here
So, I'm going to review it and answer some questions.
o How is Essentials different from 4th Edition? Is it 4e, or 4.5, or 5th edition?
o What is it? Is it pathfinder for 4e, or a starter set, or what?
o Why should I purchase or avoid purchasing it?
OK, lets start with the big one first. A lot of people hated 4e because it didn't feel to them like D&D. Essentials addresses that quite well, while simultaneously still retaining the 4th edition mechanics. I'll get into that in detail towards to end.
First...
The Red Box
... < 1980s 2010s > ...
The Red Box is a starter set. It contains...
o Dungeon Masters Book. This diet-DMG (most of the rules, half the calories), has all the basic rules for 4th edition, an adventure with a half-dozen encounters, a cut-down monster manual, tips for running a game, and how to craft a game (encounters, rewards, story, etc).
o Player's Book. The player's book is interesting, as it is a choose-your-own-adventure style thing which walks you through character creation and the basic rules as you play though it ... and sets up a new group's first adventure - the choose-your-own-adventure ends with you heading into town to get help from other adventurers so you can fight a band of goblins. By the end of flipping through the player's book you will have created a wizard, rogue, or fighter.
o Useful Sundries. Cardboard counters for PCs and monsters, a double-sided play mat, and power cards. All you'd need to get started playing D&D is inside. Most importantly are a full set of dice and a set of blank character sheets.
If you've never played D&D before this box is ideal - you will have created and started solo-playing your character before 5 minutes are up and will be roping friends into setting up a group so you can kill those damn goblins.
The artwork on the box deliberately mimicks the boxed set of 30 years ago, right down to the old D&D logotype. To new players this will mean nothing, but to grognards like me it is a big jolt of pure nostalgia. I think the idea is that the new Red Box is packaged to as closely resemble the 1983 Red Box and so attract gamers looking for pure D&D. It dosn't come much purer than this. Goblins, a dragon, a dungeon, and high adventure. It feels like early d&d, but uses the 4e rules; I think that is the point, to not only be a stepping on point for new players but for old players who have never tried 4e.
Of course some of us will buy it just because...
Next up is...
The Rules Compendium
Just as the cover says "A quick and handy reference". Actually my copy says "a game reference for all players" and credits Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt as well as Crawford. Quick and handy indeed it is. The rules from DMG1 and DMG2 are boiled down into a single document, together with a smattering of stuff from PHBs 1,2&3, all fully errata'd. Everything from basic combat rules to aquatic, mounted, and airborn combat. A quick read-through has revealed only one big change from 4th edition... Natural 20s. Previously a 20 was a crit if it hit. So if 20 plus your modifier was enough to hit a beastie you did max damage and probably some spanky stuff from your magic sword/wand/violin to boot. Now auto-crit on a 20 is back. There were good mathematical reasons for the change from auto-crit in 2nd ed to roll-to-confirm in 3rd ed to crit-if-hit in 4th ed. However, the auto-crit of AD&D was just plain fun and I'm glad it is back. On that note 1s are now an automatic miss, but not a 'fumble'.
There are a load of small changes. Tiny things. Treasure packets and magic items have minor changes for example. Now a magic item has a rarity value. A +1 magic sword is common and so sells for a fraction of the price you bought it for - but a rare +1 sword (warning - NSFW) sells for it's cost to purchase.
Now on to the really interesting one...
Heroes of The Fallen Lands
As the book says it allows you to create and play Clerics, Fighters, Rogues, and Wizards (provided you like Dwarves, Elves, Humans, etc).
... and this is the book that depending on your point of view ...
a) Is Going to Save D&D
b) Has Ruined D&D
c) Is a Nice Addition to D&D
If you love 3.5 but hate 4.0 (but never played AD&D) then this is Going to Save D&D by making it more like 3.5.
If you hate 3.5 but love 4.0 (but never played AD&D) then this is Has Ruined D&D by making it more like 3.5.
If you played both 3.5 and 4.0 and have fond memories of AD&D then this is a Nice Addition because it makes 4e more like AD&D.
"Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up. ..."
The book presents 8 new builds and some new feats. That's it.
Cleric: Warpriest (Storm Domain)
Cleric: Warpriest (Sun Domain)
Fighter: Knight
Fighter: Slayer
Rogue: Theif
Wizard: Mage: Enchantment Shcool
Wizard: Mage: Evocation School
Wizard: Mage: Illusion School
The devil, as they say, is in the details.
For a start the character creation is nicely streamlined.
The book presents three stat blocks:
18/14/12/11/11/8 (The Specialist aka The Min-Maxer)
16/16/12/11/11/8 (The Dual Specialist aka The Fence Sitter)
16/14/14/11/10/10 (Balanced aka The Smug All-Rounder)
Of course there are the point-buy method and the random rolling method in the book for completeness sake, but I've never seen anyone in a 4e game that didn't have one of the above three stat lines. WotC seems to have noticed this and put those three most-common stat lines up front to save you 5 minutes of figuring them out from first principles.
Then the characters themselves...
At first I thought I was looking at 3.5 characters. The presentation of class progression is the same, and these builds have the limited choices of a 3.5 character. At 1st level you get this feature, at 2nd you get this, at 3rd you get this. Very dictatorial. Yet somehow it works. Each one reads like a class from Pathfinder yet keeps some of the innate flexibility of 4e. It really looks like 3.5, I can't stress this enough. Right down to spell progression tables and stuff.
If you hated the fact that a 4e fighter felt like a 4e wizard (or were all "World of Warcraft") then definitely pick up this book. Gone are daily powers for fighters, now replaced by boosts to basic attacks and the occasional flashy move. Wizards for their part get a couple of nice new bits and pieces. Hypnosis and Suggestion spells, and magic missile as a class feature rather than a power you must pick. Yep, every D&D Essentials wizard gets to cast old-school auto-hit magic missiles at the darkness.
Now character classes feel different. However, though the presentation is 3.5 the feel is old-school AD&D. The wizard stands at the back of the party, the fighter and cleric tank, and the thief back-stabs. Brilliant.
The feats are also a joy. Grouped into types of feats and then presented alphabetically it is now easy to see what feats you should be looking at for your heavy-armor fighter or your back-stab rogue. The feats themselves are simple, with no 'paragon' or 'epic' feats instead feats are either useful all the way through or auto-scale at higher levels. Some feats have been expanded to encompass more, some are old feats from the PHBs, and some look new. I especially liked the 'Disciple Of...' feats. These allow a character to follow a god (or multiple gods) without being a cleric and gain some goodies relating to that god. Kind of like multi-classing into cleric without the multi-classing or gaining the healing powers of the cleric. Definitely picking up the Staff feat from essentials for my Sorcerer.
A lot of stuff is missing. No rituals, though the Wizard build has access to Suggestion as a class feature and a lot of other Wizard and Cleric abilities fulfill the missing ritual role. The Hobson's Choice of Wizard Powers remains, but Tome-loss has finally been addressed. Fiddly things like marking are mostly gone too. This is D&D without the more complex bells and whistles. The Slayer is actually feels like an AD&D barbarian, which 4e Barbarians never did. The Knight is a better Fighter in terms of flavor too. All in all complexity has been jettisoned in favor of attaining old-school flavor. It is a simpler more streamlined set of character builds, concentrating on recapturing the old style of D&D play without throwing the baby of 4e mechanics out with the bath water of over-complex character builds.
The thing that impressed me the most was the back of the book. Not only is there a new clearer character sheet but a glossary. I can't tell you how much time and heartache that glossary will save. It has everything from the full definition of Adjacent Square to Willing Movement. Can't remember what Superior Cover is or how it works? Flip to the glossary. The full index at the back also makes the book a whole lot more usable than the PHBs.
So on to the questions...
o How is Essentials different from 4th Edition? Is it 4e, or 4.5, or 5th edition?
It's 4e with minor tweaks (totally new Human racial ability for example), but the builds in HotFL feel like old-school AD&D with a bit of 3.5 and 4e.
o What is it? Is it pathfinder for 4e, or a starter set, or what?
Bit of both. Think of it as a parallel sideways-compatible 4e. You could take your Essentials character into a 4e game or vise-versa with no worries. An Essentials-only game will feel much more old-school though.
o Why should I purchase or avoid purchasing it?
If you like older editions of D&D but hated 4e then Essentials will help recapture that old-school D&D feel, though with the 4e mechanic. Yes, you will still have to use a 1" grid and models or counters for tactical combat. If you don't like that then perhaps the free-spirited narritive combat of Earthdawn or 7thSea would be more your cup of tea. Personally I was dead against models for combat until I actually tried it, but that is a discussion for another time perhaps. The expansions of skill descriptions and the new "improvising with..." sections may help grognards who complain that the umpteen cheese-making skills of 3.5 were a good idea. The new expanded skill section gives ideas and examples of out-of-the-box thinking on the use of skills, and I for one am looking forward to forging letters and creating camouflaged traps. In fact it addresses all of the 4e hater's complaints apart from model-based combat.
If you like 4e for the flexibility of character creation and advancement then HotFL certainly will disappoint as a stand-alone rule book but will also serve as a useful reference and source of awesome new feats and build ideas to add to your 4e shelf. Personally I like my Warforged Monks and Tieflings SwordMages and so forth too much to just go for Essentials, so the options presented in HotFL will act as a compliment to the PHBs and Arcane Vaults. Next time I create a character I'm so going to make something that abuses staff expertise and the new Magic Missile.
If you've never played D&D before the above 3 products are the best put together starting point I've seen so far.
If you liked this review, great. If you want a better one... here