Essentials Compatibility

[Credinus]

Hey all, I'm a newcomer here interested in picking up FGII for my gaming group, but I wanted to check on something about it. This is really going to be more of a ruleset question than a program question, I suppose, so I'm throwing it in here.

I've been a long-time 3.5E and World of Darkness player and DM/ST, and I only dabbled in 4E once; I didn't like the way the classes were handled when I tried it at all. Mind you, this was when 4E first hit the shelves, and I'm sure much has changed by now. Since then, I've more or less avoided 4E, that is until the recent Essentials books came out. After hearing about how much the classes were like their oldschool counterparts in those books, I decided to pick them up and liked them quite a bit. As a result, I've started running an Essentials campaign with my local group but I'm really interested in getting a campaign running with some of my long distance friends and FGII is the only virtual tabletop I've really been overly impressed with from the demo and videos, and I know that it is 4E-capable from the start.

Now, as I mentioned, I've avoided 4E and still do outside of my Essentials books (although I've been hearing that WotC is canceling the Essentials line for the most part now, so I suppose I may have to start improvising). With that in mind, I know hardly anything about core 4E mechanics; I'm sure Essentials is pretty much the exact same since it's still founded around 4E rules, but I know there's got to be some differences here and there, and I'm not sure what those differences are (if there truly are any outside of the class builds). Are those differences minor enough that I can find ways around them with the included 4E ruleset in FGII, or even modify the 4E ruleset included to be fully compatible?

Either way, I plan on picking up FGII for some long distance WoD and 3.5E campaigns, I'm just really hoping I can run some Essentials campaigns with those guys too.

[Moon Wizard]

I'm not sure, as I just picked up the Essentials books myself. My group has been using original rules, since our game only runs once every 2-4 weeks, and they are L25 now.

Hopefully, someone on the forum who is using the Essentials in their campaign can add more detail.

My guess is that almost all of the rules are going to be similar if not the same, just the way classes are put together and power options will vary. I wrote the 4E ruleset to support 95% of the rules that come up in the core rulebooks, and I've only heard of a handful of things that are not explicitly supported (psionic points, etc.).

Of course, you can always track these in the notes on the character sheet just like in a F2F game.

Regards,
JPG

[Credinus]

I'm inclined to agree; searching various forums, I still haven't found any conclusive difference in the rules; the only exception being the stances the Slayers get in Essentials. Luckily, I found where someone already offered a way to make those work in FGII.

Thanks for the quick response. I'm hoping to pick up the licenses next week and begin testing, so if I come across anything iffy, I'll post it here.

[mattcolville]

I'm running D&D4 several times a week and my players all just lump Essentials in with everything else. I've got a Sentinel Druid and a Hexblade in my games. I think maybe the Sentinel player is running a Sentinel because he prefers the simplified mechanics of Essentials, but as far as I can tell "simplified" just means "no daily powers."

As far as FG2 goes, the only thing I've noticed is that these classes have more class abilities, Druids have "knack" or something. And the Parser doesn't seem to recognize these. But it's no big deal. Each to just type in the stuff. Everything else works fine.

A player ran a Slayer in a tabletop game I was in and it was perfect for him. In spite of being a smart dude, for whatever reason every time he sat down with a new character and it came time to attack someone, he always defaulted to his Basic Attack and we'd have to *remind* him that he should be using his At Wills, as that's what they're for. "Oh right, right," he'd say. Didn't matter if that dude died that session and he had to make a new dude only a week later, he'd be back to using Basic Attacks.

To him, that's just how D&D *worked*. "Powers" by their very name, were somehow "special." Not the thing to do normally. Something you save up.

So the Slayer, who sorta doesn't have At Wills, he just has "stances" that you turn on once and they grant flat bonuses to your Basic Attacks for the whole encounter were perfect for him. He loved it.

Anyway, apart from some minor things like extra class abilities, you'll have no problems.

[Ablefish]

Been playing since 4E came out and the Essentials books are great. Don't sweat 'compatibility' for one minute - the two "Heroes of..." merely present different builds of existing classes. Yes, the essentials classes depart from the established " X at-wills, X encounter, X daily powers", but PHB3 had some pretty big departures from that formula as well. We've been playing mixed essentials/non-essentials classes since last fall and there is no problem.

No one should have to apologize for playing Essentials characters - calling them 'simple' is deceiving - I would suggest that they are 'cleaner' and much easier to play. There are fewer decisions to make while building your character, but in-game play is improved in my opinion. In addition to the classes being more defined (and yes, less complex), the effects of powers are by-and-large easier to keep track of. (ie, fewer effects that last until the end of the next, more till end of encounter) Of course, this is more an issue of RL play, because keeping track of these sorts of effects is one area that FG really shines.

While we haven't been playing that entire time in Fantasy Grounds, so far the only hiccup we've seen is the At-Will stances (Slayer, Hunter, etc)... and only because the ruleset doesn't really support characters turning off effects on themselves, but it's a trivial thing for the DM to remove the stance effect so the player can apply another. I was impressed that the effects of the stances were handled at all.

[Griogre]

Ruleset wise, as others have mentioned, the essentials builds run like any other 4E build. Mechanically when you parse the Essentials PHs you will find because WoTC called both the Knight and Slayer "Fighter" all their powers are mixed together. Its not a big deal as long as your realize they can't use each others powers. As others a have mentioned because the essentials builds get class features at various levels like the AD&D classes that are not in DDI you just need to update the character sheet when they get something like that.

The only other quirk is that level-less attacks and utilities were called class abilities/features in the earlier PHs.

[vodokar]

The main concept behind essentials is to give an option for players with an "old-school" mentality to play alongside players with a more "new-school" mentality in the same game.

This corresponded with WOTC's push in the direction of Nostalgia, reachin' out to the older players who remember the red box and 1st edition days when D&D played more like Savage Worlds (Fast, Fun and Furious) than 3rd/pathfinder or 4th edition.

Is it simpler to play an Essentials build? Certainly. Does that somehow mean the game is dumbed down by comparison? I guess that all depends on what your expecting from a character and what your focus in the game is on. Savage Worlds is a much simpler game mechanically compared to 3E/pathfinder or 4E, but judging by the popularity of it, a great many people think thats a good thing.

The beauty of what they did with Essentials is that it totally integrates with core 4e rules, so you don't have to choose to play one or the other as a group - each player can decide that for himself.

For me, I don't mind simpler and speedier game mechanics, because sometimes game mechanics get so cumbersome that they just get in the way of the story your trying to tell. But then, I'm one of those "old-school" players.