Dungeons & Dragons Essentials

Dungeons and Dragons Essentials was a marketing scheme during the last few years of 4e's life, the basic idea was to abandon the AEDU System of core 4e and replace it with a new, simplified class design, which is what Essentials essentially is, a design philosophy where a class will largely gain new options via the "gain X at level N" paradigm used in 3rd and later 5th edition, instead of the gradually increasing pool of powers 4e classes had used so far.

Essentials flopped, Grognards weren't any more likely to pick 4e up due to the fact that Grognards couldn't bother to suspend their disbelief for more than 20 pages, while people who liked 4e hated how restricted and terrible these classes became.

Once it was pretty obvious everyone didn't like it, Wizards of the Coast did the correct thing and never released another book, at least that's how it should have went down, NOPE, Wizards then starts cancelling more and more core 4e material, like the Nentir Vale gazetteer. Dragon Magazine focused purely on Essentials content and organized play would only allow Essentials classes, and so Essentials signed the death certificate of 4th edition, killing 4e's surprisingly good sales and allowing Pathfinder to surpass it. Essentials came out first with the Player's Handbook equivalent; "Heroes of the Fallen Lands" and "Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdom", Later books included "Heroes of The Elemental Chaos/Feywild/Shadow", there is an ever tiny difference between HotFL/FK classes and later classes.

Each Essentials class bent the rules of the AEDU system, generally martial characters focused on At Wills, Stances and Encounter powers, while casters would gain new spells every so often

Heroes of the Forgottan Kingdom\Fallen Lands

These two books introduced the Mage, Warpriest, Knight, Thief, Slayer, Sentinel, Cavalier, Hunter, Scout and Hexblade;

Mage:

• At 1st level they gained Cantrips, spells and their 1st subclass feature, as they level up, they gain more utility, Encounter and Daily powers to put in their spell book, speaking about that, a Mage's spell book was a rather peculiar thing, after an Extended Rest, a mage could whip through their spell book and swap Encounters, Dailies and Utilities just like a core Wizard, their exclusive Paragon Path, the Enigmatic Mage, lets them swap Daily Utility powers

Warpriest:

• Variant Cleric. Gains channel Divinity, then for the rest of the Warpriest's career, you only get Daily powers that mimic classic Cleric shenanigans, with your At Will powers gained via your Domain choice

Knight:

• Variant Fighter that focuses more on protecting allies and has an Encounter power called Power Attack.

Thief:

• Variant Rogue

Slayer:

• Variant Fighter that shits out damage, focuses on a Encounter power called Power Attack, can trade uses of Power Attack for Fighter powers

Cavalier:

• Variant Paladin that focuses on interrupting enemies and an Encounter power called Holy Smite.

Sentinel:

• Variant Druid that losses Wild Shape and lets you gain an Animal Companion, gaining spells and additional uses of a Encounter power "Combined Attack"

Hunter:

• The Hunter is a archery focused Ranger

Scout:

• A Two weapon fighting Ranger, they gain class features that give them a "Pathfinder/Guider" vibe.

Hexblade:

• The Hexblade gives you two At Wills, one base power (Eldritch Bolt, basically Eldritch Blast but lacks the feat support of EB) and one subclass focused, as well as a pact Encounter power, you slowly gain more powers of the Encounter and Daily variety, noted for being not quite as shitty as most other Essentials classes.

Essentials Splat Material

These books introduced the Elementalist, Protector, Skald, Witch, Berserker, Sha'ir, Assassin, Binder, Blackguard and Bladesinger.

Elementalist:

• Variant Sorcerer that gains access to a bunch of At Will powers, they also get the strongest RBA in the game, Elemental Bolt, that they jack up with their Elemental Escalation ability, which they gain more uses of as they go up in levels, they have the rather interesting ability to select adjacent targets to hit with their bolts, letting them set up odd carpets of damage

Protector:

• Variant Druid who focuses on spells and a Daily power "Summon Nature's Ally", they later gained a feat that gave them Druid Dailies instead of more uses of SNA

Skald:

• Variant Bard that focuses more on melee. Instead of Majestic Word, they have the Skald's Aura power, which allows any allies within to use a Healing Surge as a minor action and heal themselves or those next to them.

Witch:

• Variant Wizard. They lose an At-Will power, but gain a free Familiar and allows them to spend retrain a Daily or Utility power for one of the same level (or lower) each extended rest. All Witches gain the Augury Utility power, but their first Encounter power is determined via selecting a Witch Coven.

Berserker:

• Variant Barbarian. They have two modes to them, the first being to utilize the Defender's Aura power to penalize anyone not attacking them in a way similar to but not the same as marking and then striking down anyone who dares attack anyway. The moment they use a Barbarian Primal power, they enter a berserker fury, losing access to Defender's Aura but dealing extra damage to their MBAs and adding certain other perks to their Martial At-Wills.

Sha'ir:

• Variant Wizard. They gain a free familiar that allows them to retrain a Daily or Utility power for another of the same level (but not lower) each extended rest and grants allies resistance to a single type of elemental damage when it is in active mode.

Executioner:

• Variant Assassin. Trades out Encounter powers for multiple uses of "Assassin's Strike", with At-Will powers being determined by your choice of Assassin's Guild. Daily powers are practically nonexistent, but instead replaced by having the ability to craft special poisons with the dosage increasing as they level up.

Binder:

• Variant Warlock. Encounter and At-Will powers (well, one of them. The other is Shadow Claws, which...isn't Eldritch Blast at all) are now entirely determined by the Warlock Pact.

Blackguard:

• Variant Paladin. Encounter powers are traded away for Dread Smite, which gains multiple uses as they level up. At-Will powers are fixed (one is always Vengeance Strike, the other is determined by Spirit of Vice).

Bladesinger:

• Variant Wizard that can cast spells through a one-handed melee weapon of the Light or Heavy Blade type. They can use Intelligence to make MBAs and special At-Will powers called Bladespells ride off of these attacks.

Reasons Essentials Sucks

• Essentials are what amounts to sub classes, and due to them keeping the power format of base classes, the base classes can take these powers for themselves as long as they have a level, it is worth noting that classes with Riders on their Powers, like the Binders pact Encounter powers, cannot actually use them, but it still means that often some of the more useful things gained by an Essentials class can very possibly get it nabbed by a base class, meaning you REALLY have to like something an Essentials class gets to fully commit to it over a base class.