Which now brings us properly to the Elephant in the room.  Essentials.  What is it, and why should we care?

Gaming companies are a lot like paleontologists.  Publish or die is the maxim.  Yes, that’s the reason why we get all-new dinosaurs every few months, each cooler than the last.  Now, I take WotC (and the Evil Corporate Overlords of Hasbro) to task for 3.5 and 4.0, but the truth is, a lot of work goes into making a book.

And once you stray from ‘core’ products, you need to work to sell fringe books.  Oh sure, the diehard gamers will want every book, but unfortunately, as someone who has picked up several books of my own over the past few weeks, WotC has kind of shot themselves in the foot.

You see, Wizards figured out that having a strong online community is the way to go for their product.  And they realized that a gaming group really only needs one copy of a given book to function.  Oh sure, maybe each player will get their own PHB, or whatever books their character uses, but ultimately, only one out of every 5-6 gamers is going to buy a DMG, or example.  So they created DnD Insider.  At first, people weren’t happy about paying for errata and articles, but Wizards brought the goods.  For a low monthly fee, you get all the rules updates, all the new stuff, and most everything you could ever want for your game, without needing to buy the books!

Which is good, really, since they publish errata FAST!  The character builder, in general, is pretty much the heart and soul of every game; people tend to stick to the core rules and not houserule much, because the character builder does it for you automatically!  And I won’t lie, it’s a fun toy to play with.

Unfortunately, that puts them in a bind.  They can’t justify upping their fees without producing a LOT more content (news flash: servers are not as expensive to maintain as people think they are.  So just think about that the next time you pony up 30 bucks for some more WoW time).  Sure they can crank out new books every few months, but over time, they’ve filled up a lot of design space.

Sure you can crank out more classes, but unless you fundamentally change how classes work, you have another problem.  Sameness.  When I first saw the PHB two years ago, I was struck by how similar all the classes seemed to one another.

There’s a reason that the Psionic classes brought the Augment mechanic to the table, otherwise, the Psion might look a lot like his buddy, The Wizard!

So we have the solution.  A new paradigm!

Essentials is the new direction of the game.  I’m not saying the books you have now will turn into vaporware overnight, or that we won’t continue to see support for the existing classes.  But Essentials is going to take the Lion’s share of WotC’s creative output from here on out.

By re-examining each class and role, and redesigining them, they can justify many new books, and, they hope, allow them to repeat the past two years without seeing a sales dip.  Good for them!

But is it good for you?  Well, that’s a difficult question to answer at this point.  On the one hand, the Essentials classes will likely work with the games you’re playing now.  They’ll continue to use old Feats, and there may be a few bones here and there for the old classes.

But races are changing to match Essentials, and some of the Essentials design decisions (pre-set Paragon Paths, melee basic attacks for martial classes, loot**) are going to take time to get used to.  Assuming you WANT to get used to them, naturally.

Wait, you ask, why should we care?  We can ignore this new stuff if we want to, right?

Ah ha, but that’s where they have you.  Now, we might luck out, and the character builder might get some nice new filters, but all they really have to do is update the thing with all the Essentials rules, and unless you want building characters to get a lot harder, you’re going to have Essentials concepts in your game.

I don’t doubt there’s good that will come out of this, but there’s also going to be problems.  Your characters will change, and not just in a “broken build gets nerfed, haha!” way.  I’m talking about things like your Dwarven Warden suddenly finding that his Second Wind is only a minor action THE FIRST TIME IT IS USED!  That’s right, even if he gets granted a “Third Wind”, he has to take a Standard Action for it.

Some might say that’s fair, since it’s not quite right that Dwarves are such awesome Wardens compared to other races, but I think most people who play Dwarves are going to find it a little invasive.

And then there’s the loot.  Some items have become so necessary that everyone has to have them.  There are options to fix this, like Inherent Bonuses, which eliminate the need to go out and get a new weapon/armor/neck at each tier, but that doesn’t solve all the problems.

Ask any melee guy;  You want Iron Armbands of Power.  You just do.  And worse, there are items that are actually required to make some builds work!

Up until now, WotC treated the acquisition of treasure as just another way to mod out your character.  You need a level 15 weapon to turn all your damage into Radiant for your Paragon Path to work?  No problem, your DM should make it happen!

The idea that Santa Claus delivers loot to happy adventurers like in the Narnia books bugs some people, of course, and a lot of DM’s bristle at the idea that they have to let their players shop at Mage Mart.  But that’s the easiest way to play the game.

But wait!  What if some items were deliberately RARE?  That is to say, the stuff you need you can get the same as always, but that crazy niche stuff, like Githyanki Silver Swords, only shows up if the DM wants you to find it?

Brilliant!  Epic!  We are geniuses!

But some people are happy with letting items be just another level of customization, and they won’t be happy with this change.  Especially if the char builder goes live treating your favorite items as Rare..

Did you miss Part 1 and Part 2?

Go to Part 1

Go to Part 2