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Feb 14, 2011 -- 4:08PM, Baksi wrote:

So for all intents and purposes, the classes in the Essentials books are fully separate classes from the ones in the PHBs, with just an odd coincidence that they are named the same (and thus can use the same feats). Got it.

It was not coincidence, it was by design. They wanted the Essentials subclasses to be able to access some of the Feats, all of the Utility powers and some of the Paragon Paths of their "parent" class. Since they can use some of the same Feats, Powers and Paragon Paths, then they would be "mostly seperate," but otherwise, you are correct.

God, it would have been so much easier if they just called them different things, since they didn't want interaction between the books. 

Thanks for the quick answer. 

A book was planned that would bridge Essentials and previous released material, Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell. This book was to give guidelines for how to swap powers and class features between an Essentials style class and its pre-Essentials parent. Sadly, this book, which should have been mostly complete, as it was originally scheduled for February, was cancelled near the end of December and removed from the schedule. We have been told that we would be receiving a lot of the cancelled material in another format, either added to a different book or released on-line.

This has been a major sticking point in the pre- vs. post-Essentials flamerwars here on the forums. I am of the opinion that they should have released this "bridge material" on-line alongside the release of Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, with the understanding that the material would be republished, and possibly updated, later in a book. This would have poured water on the flames that have continued to burn on the boards. 

Feb 14, 2011 -- 8:31PM, OckyFlam wrote:

Is it bad that I don't understand the uproar about essentials? I started D&D a month ago. Me and my players just use the online character builder, picked a class/race they liked, and started playing...

I later learned that some were from essentials, and some were from before.

Not at all.

What I think a lot of greybeards (no offense intended, I'm a greybeard, too) here lose sight of is that not everyone has been playing D&D since day one, let alone 4E since its introduction.

Fresh eyes like yours can teach us greybeards that it is all still D&D, if we open our minds enough to listen.

Despite not having a beard, I'll accept the monicker "greybeard", and I think Essentials is, in general, an exciting development of D&D.  It has, though, been rather poorly handled as an introduction - not necessarily intentionally - in that the explanation of how it meshes with the older material fully has been delayed indefinitely.  The reasons why are reasonable (to fully test them so extensive errata are not required), but the timing remains unfortunate.

Feb 15, 2011 -- 6:13PM, warrl wrote:

Feb 15, 2011 -- 4:24AM, Balesir wrote:

Despite not having a beard, I'll accept the monicker "greybeard", and I think Essentials is, in general, an exciting development of D&D.  It has, though, been rather poorly handled as an introduction - not necessarily intentionally - in that the explanation of how it meshes with the older material fully has been delayed indefinitely.

Not just that. The original announcement of Essentials was worded in a way that could reasonably be interpreted as slamming the door on everything pre-Essentials, and some people interpreted it that way. Then the folks at WotC went into a mode where one day someone would say something to the effect that the pre-Essentials stuff would continue to be supported, and the next day someone else would imply that time would begin with the publication of Essentials.  And then we started seeing details... and names... there are two Ranger builds called Hunter, which have almost nothing in common. And there are other similarly bad examples. Some took this as a complete lack of respect, interest, concern, or possibly even knowledge of the existing body of 4E material.  Eventually WotC promised that the Essentials stuff would be compatible with 4E... and then started changing 4E to be compatible with the yet-unpublished Essentials, in the process creating a few interesting new snafus in areas where there hadn't been problems before. Basically, the whole mess should show up in business-school textbooks as a case study of how NOT to handle this sort of product introduction.  What we actually got, really, isn't all that bad. I wouldn't say it's noticeably better than the pre-Essentials stuff, but it isn't noticeably worse either. It's different, in interesting ways that might be useful for certain character concepts and certain potential players.  Unfortunately, by the time we got it, for a good many existing D&D players the mental space it would occupy was already thoroughly fouled.

The bolded part was what ruined it for me. Essential doesn't suit my style of play--I like tactical options and character diversity too much to sacrifice them for simplicity's sake--but I could, in a vacuum, accept that the E-builds are well balanced and well designed for other people. However, the various changes to the core rules for Essentials compatibility, such as Item Rarity and the Melee Training feat, made me hate the new books before they came out. I've yet to overcome this visceral reaction.

so much for the essentials being a limited 10 book release  lol