Dark Sun Creature Catalog Book

Oh man, a review of a 4e Essentials product - the "alternate" players handbook no less (one of two anyway). It's been enough years now that the old controversy that this book (and its companion, Heroes of Forgotten Kingdoms) generated in the D&D community, while not forgotten, is no longer really relevant. After all, pretty much the whole world has moved on to 5e and couldn't care less about 4e. But it's because of that lack of emotion over it that it can now be reviewed in a more objective manner.

Overall, I'm not entirely sure who the target audience of this "reboot" really was. Officially, it was for new and returning players to the 4th edition of the D&D game. But Essentials came out at the end of 4e's lifespan so it couldn't really achieve this goal. Further, new players would likely be confused as to what books to buy and would likely just go for the traditional Player's Handbook. As for returning players, WotC was probably talking about Pathfinder players and that ship had already sailed. In the end, Heroes of the Fallen Lands completely failed in its goals. But does that actually mean it's a bad book?

Well, once you take away its marketing failures, what you're left with for 4e players and DMs is 5 new classes based on a very different structure than had been utilized at that point, lots of new (and better organized) feats, and a few magic items.

The core of the entire thing is really the five new classes: Two versions of the fighter (knight and slayer), Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue. None of these follow the AEDU structure of the previous PHBs - they resemble more of their historical roots. It's also clear that a lot of 5e class design came from the Essentials classes. Despite the fact that they are so different structurally, these are good classes. Easier to pick up and play without any level of system mastery, the essentials classes don't rise to the peaks of power of their PHB counterparts, but they are consistently good with few lows. Most of them probably are not quite as fun to play for 4e veterans, but still interesting enough. The lack of paragon path selection is unfortunate for these classes though and there is only one epic destiny included in the book.

Outside of the classes, the feats in this book are excellent - many of them are almost required for characters (PHB or Essentials) as they are quite powerful. There are not very many of them though meaning that if you are playing a character beyond the heroic tier, you're going to need at least the PHB to continue.

Overall, despite its failure at all of its marketing goals, D&D Essentials is actually still pretty cool. Humorously, if 4e would have began with the structure as set forth in Essentials, it probably would have been more successful, if not quite as interesting. As a single book, Heroes of the Fallen Lands has lots of cool stuff, but is frustratingly light in places preventing it from reaching greatness.