Like many of you, adventure fans, I’ve followed with interest the buzz, speculation, and previews relating to the Dungeons & Dragons Essentials line coming this fall from Wizards of the Coast. Like many of you, I’ve heard (on podcasts) or read (on blogs) everything from cogent commentary to the wildest speculations. I thought I’d chime in with my own opinion, which I can sum up in one phrase. Essentials isn’t 4.5, it’s 3.95.

For more details, please follow the “more to say” link below. I apologize to anyone who finds this “splitting” of the post annoying, but the whole thing became quite lengthy, and I didn’t want it to dominate the front page.

What Are These “Essentials”?

First, in case you’ve been hibernating, let’s briefly cover the essentials of Essentials. If you already know this part, feel free to skip down to the next subheading. Wizards of the Coast intends for the Essentials line to become the default entry point for new D&D players. The line consists of the following ten products:

• Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game (September 7, 2010) — the new “red box” starter kit
• Heroes of the Fallen Lands (September 21, 2010) — a book of races (dwarf, eladrin, elf, halfling, human) and classes (cleric, fighter, ranger, rogue, wizard)
• Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms (November 16, 2010) — a book of races (dragonborn, drow, half-elf, half-orc, tiefling) and classes (cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, warlock)
• Rules Compendium (September 21, 2010) — a 320-page one-stop quick-reference rules book for D&D 4th edition
• Dungeon Master’s Kit (October 19, 2010) — a boxed set including a rules/advice book, a monster booklet, two adventures, tokens, maps, and a DM screen
• Monster Vault (November 16, 2010) — a boxed set including a 160-page monster book, one adventure, and tokens
• Three Master Sets of Dungeon Tiles: The Dungeon (September 21, 2010), The City (November 16, 2010), and The Wilderness (December 21, 2010)
• A new DM screen

Quite a few voices have been raised of late decrying the Essentials products and labeling them as D&D 4.5, despite WotC’s protestations to the contrary in op-eds and podcasts. Some of the wilder speculations have already turned out false, such as rumors that all Essentials classes would use psionic-style power points. Criticisms on other grounds persist. In general, I find it simultaneously amusing and disheartening to hear 4e players complaining about Essentials in terms eerily reminiscent of the complaints 3.5e players leveled against 4e when the only actual data about 4e came from the two Wizards Presents books.

Essentials Class Builds

We actually have very little solid data on which to base any advance judgments about the Essentials line, since our actual data bank at this moment really consists only of the fighter, wizard, and cleric previews posted recently on the D&D web site. In my judgment, the game mechanics presented in those previews are fully consonant with 4e D&D, although they take class design in different directions than we’ve previously seen. In this section of the post, I’ll examine the knight (fighter), warpriest (cleric), and mage (wizard) from the Essentials line in some detail. If you don’t want to wade through this crunchy stuff, feel free to skip to the next subheading.

Let’s start with the heroic tier fighter. The recent fighter preview gives us a very limited taste of the knight build. Let’s compare a knight fighter from the Essentials line—what we know about that build, anyway—to a guardian from Player’s Handbook 1. The guardian’s and the knight’s starting hp (15 + Constitution score), hp per level above 1st (+6), defense bonus (+2 to Fortitude), healing surges per day (9 + Constitution modifier), and weapon proficiencies are all exactly the same. The knight gets plate proficiency while the guardian fighter doesn’t (amounting basically to a bonus feat), and the knight has Diplomacy as a class skill where the guardian fighter has Streetwise (a simple swap absolutely in keeping with the flavor of the knight). Both choose three trained skills at first level. Both choose one feat at first level and one feat at each even-numbered level. Except for the plate armor proficiency and Diplomacy vs. Streetwise, so far the knight and the guardian are exactly the same mechanically.

Powers seem to present the biggest differences, though some of the distance between the builds narrows on closer inspection. A PH1 guardian fighter chooses two at-will attack powers, one encounter attack power, and one daily attack power at 1st level. The knight, on the other hand, gets the defender aura at-will utility power, something called battle guardian (nature and effect unrevealed), the Weapon Talent class feature (just like the guardian’s class feature of the same name, presumably), the Shield Finesse class feature (new and unrevealed, as far as I can tell), two utility powers designated as fighter stances, and the power strike encounter power. The two fighter stances revealed in the article show them to be utility powers that ride on basic attacks to modify the basic attacks’ effects slightly. Presumably, Heroes of the Fallen Lands will contain more than just the two stances previewed here. But take a closer look at these stances. Both the knight and the guardian fighter are sword-and-board types. Imagine, then, these two scenarios:

Uther, a guardian fighter, makes a cleave attack against an enemy. Uther rolls d20 + Strength modifier + proficiency bonus vs. the enemy’s AC. If Uther hits, he deals 1[W] + Strength modifier damage to the target, and he also deals his Strength modifier in damage to a different target adjacent to him.

Arthur, a knight, takes up the cleaving assault stance, and then makes a basic melee attack against an enemy. Arthur rolls d20 + Strength modifier + proficiency bonus vs. the enemy’s AC. If Arthur hits, he deals 1[W] + Strength modifier damage to the target, and he also deals his Constitution modifier in damage to a different target adjacent to him.

In effect, a knight’s stances—two at-will powers at first level—turn his or her basic attacks into encounter powers very similar to a guardian fighter’s powers. The same holds true for power strike, an encounter power that triggers when the knight hits with a basic attack using a weapon. The guardian fighter’s 1st-level encounter attack power covering attack deals 2[W] + Strength modifier damage and allows an ally adjacent to the target to shift 2 squares. The knight’s power strike power allows him or her to add 1[W] damage to a successful melee basic attack—usually 1[W] + Strength modifier damage by itself, though stances can affect this. The timing is a little different, and the knight pays for the timing by giving up the kicker effect, but the outcome of the powers ends up being quite comparable.

Let’s talk clerics, then. Again, we’ve seen only a slice of one build, the warpriest, whom I’ll compare here with the battle cleric from PH1. Again, everything related to hit points and healing surges is the same for warpriests and battle clerics. Armor and weapon proficiencies are the same, except that warpriests get proficiency with light and heavy shields. Up to now, all clerics have gotten +2 to Will defense; the warpriest gets +1 Fortitude and +1 Will instead. The warpriest’s class skill list matches all other clerics’ to date.

What about powers? The warpriest’s healing word is identical to the battle cleric’s. A 1st-level battle cleric will also get two channel divinity powers, specifically, divine fortune and turn undead. A warpriest will get the channel divinity power smite undead (which is sort of like the pushy counterpart to the avenger’s abjure undead) and a channel divinity power associated with the domain chosen by that warpriest. The two domains mentioned in the preview are sun and storm, though time will tell whether the channel divinity powers presented in the red box and/or Heroes of the Fallen Lands reprint storm sacrifice and solar enemy from Divine Power. At any rate, the battle cleric and the warpriest each begin play with two channel divinity encounter powers (feats taken at 1st level could increase this number, of course). At 1st level, the battle cleric will choose two at-will attack powers, one encounter attack power, and one daily attack power. At 1st level, the warpriest will choose a domain, which will provide two at-will attack powers, one utility power, and one encounter attack power—but as Mike Mearls recently clarified on the D&D Podcast, the warpriest can swap powers out with the larger cleric offerings, and isn’t constrained to keep the default options for his or her domain choice; the warpriest can get a standard Whopper, or one with mustard instead of mayonnaise. But still the warpriest comes out with two at-wills, one encounter, and one daily, plus this utility power (details as yet unrevealed) and other features from the domain. By the way, the warpriest preview belies the silly rumor floating around that the Essentials line does away with daily powers—it might do so in whole or part for some classes, just as the ardent, psion, and battlemind forego encounter powers as such in Player’s Handbook 3, but a 10th-level warpriest will have 1st-level, 5th-level, and 9th-level daily powers, just like a PH1 battle cleric. The warpriest isn’t exactly like the battle cleric, but it’s still unmistakably a 4th edition cleric build.

Let’s move on to the wizard. Thus far, we’ve seen a little bit of the mage build for wizards; I’m not clear on whether the preview comes from the new red box or from Heroes of the Fallen Lands. At any rate, the mage looks exactly like any PH1 wizard with respect to starting hit points, hit points gained per level, defense bonus, healing surges per day, armor proficiency, weapon proficiencies, implement proficiencies, and class skills.

With regard to powers, the mage preview presents the case just a tad differently from the explanation in PH1, but it still boils down to this: a 1st-level mage will go out adventuring after breakfast with magic missile plus two other at-will powers, one encounter power, and one daily power at the ready. By contrast, a non-human war wizard from PH1 will begin the adventuring day with two at-will powers, one encounter power, and one daily power at the ready. Oh, wait—that’s not much of a contrast, is it? The preview doesn’t tell us everything we want to know about the mage’s spellbook and cantrips, or as much as we want to know about the Apprentice Mage class feature, by which a mage specifies a school of magic (enchantment, evocation, or illusion) in which to specialize. What we do know, however, makes a mage look almost as much like a war wizard as a control wizard looks like a war wizard. You might build a mage by picking bundles of spells (schools) instead of individual spells, but you come out with a very similar spread of ability types, spells per day, and so on.

Not 4.5, but 3.95

The information before us matches what folk like Mike Mearls and Bill Slavicsek have been saying: the Essentials line presents new builds for existing 4e classes (we can’t really talk about much other than classes, at least not using actual data), in a user-friendly format for first-time players. This brings me, however, to my final and fundamental point. The packaging of the Essentials line is certainly user-friendly for first-time players: “Buy this box with the red dragon on the cover. Create a character and play the solo adventure. If you like it, find some friends and DM for them, or get one of them to DM for you. If you’re having fun, go buy Heroes of the Fallen Lands and the DM Kit …” The Essentials line provides a nice, streamlined, easy-to-explain entry point into D&D. To that extent, the whole “new player” focus rings true.

However, some of the specific design choices made with regard to the warpriest (cleric), knight (fighter), and mage (wizard) make me think that the Essentials line is as much about courting the disaffected 3.5e players who haven’t joined the 4e party, whether that means they’ve continued to play 3.5e or they’ve turned to Pathfinder. The criticisms that 3.5e players leveled against 4e back in 2008 included (but were not limited to) the following:

• “All the classes look exactly alike. There’s no difference between a fighter and a wizard any more.”
• “They took away cleric domains!”
• “They took away wizard school specializations!”
• “They took away Vancian magic from the wizard!” (Which wasn’t exactly true, because wizards still had daily spells, and still knew more spells than they could prepare.)
• “They gave the fighter Vancian maneuvers!” Okay, this was really usually stated more like, “It doesn’t make sense for a fighter to know a maneuver but to forget it after using it until he sleeps for the night!”

Now look at the knight, warpriest, and mage again. Every single one of the things that 4e players are grousing about in the new builds addresses a criticism slung at 4e by 3.5e partisans. WotC has been big on legacy of late: reviving Dark Sun, reviving the Tomb of Horrors, reviving a lot of classic 1e monsters in Monster Manual 3 … and the Essentials line reaches out to 3.5e partisans as much as it reaches out to new players.

• You object to fighters having daily attack powers? Try the new knight build!
• You want your cleric to have a domain without burning a feat? Try the new warpriest build!
• You want your wizard to have a school specialization? Try the new mage build!
• You think all classes are cookie-cutter? No way! Look at the psionic classes—most don’t have encounter powers! Look at the knight—instead of having attack powers, he uses utility powers to modify basic attacks instead of learning a bunch of different attack powers!

Even the retrofitting of magic missile to unerring accuracy speaks to this appeal to experienced players. Players who are completely new to D&D don’t care whether magic missile auto-hits … but for players of 3.5e or Pathfinder, or AD&D (either edition) or an “old-school clone,” an auto-hitting magic missile “feels right.” The Essentials line says to experienced D&D players who haven’t jumped on the 4e bandwagon, “Step up to 4e, and we’ll give you the best of both worlds. You can have your cake and eat it too. We can accommodate the things you say you’d miss about 3.5e within the 4e ruleset. And you’d be supported by a continuing outflow of new D&D product.”

Essentials isn’t D&D 4.5e. If you must think of it as something other than straight-up D&D, think of it as D&D 3.95—4e rules supporting 3.5e sensibilities.