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• One thing of note is that the wizard gets +2 to the forced movement of his powers. WotC_Chuck discussed this in his blog on the WotC community site.

• Well, one knock against them being optimized: the Halfling Rogue bought 16DEX/16CHA despite the fact that Essentials rogue gets basically no benefit at all from secondary stats (outside or one or two marginal utility powers).

  Still, though, I must say that these are some of the nicest-LOOKING pre-gens I've seen. They picked really great art for the most part.

• Also they forgot Dwarven Resilience on the Slayer Fighter. Otherwise well done characters.

• Thanks for this information! You always explain everything much more clearly than the crappy official WotC website ever does. It's like they're trying to hide this basic information from everyone.

• @Jason
  Thanks for the amendment. I'm sure as we get a chance to use these pre-gens we’ll discover a few other tidbits that were missed or "not present on character sheet for brevity."

  @Captain Spud
  Well, you've got to put the racial bonus someplace, and at least Charisma is tied to a lot of skills so there's that up-side as well.

  I agree that the character images are pretty cool. It's too bad that they got lazy with the Rogue and Cleric and took images we've already seen in the PHB.

  @nightwalker450
  Now I don't have the Red Box but do Dwarves get both Dwarven Resilience AND Disciple of Stone or do they pick one or the other?

  @Chris
  Glad you found this useful. If I hadn't attended the D&D Encounters Seminar at GenCon I wouldn't have realized that the character had to be created using the Essentials rules. I suspect lots of folks will show up at their FLGS tonight and just have regular level 1 PCs ready to go, built using Character Builder because they didn't know any better.

• Hate to admit I am already breaking rules, as a few are going to make their first level characters with the original 4th edition rules for two reasons.

  First, I thought the race/class restrictions were too constricting, so I opened them up to includes Heroes of the Forgotten Lands as well. The book isn't available yet, but Heroes of the Fallen Lands has a section on the class/race combinations included in the next book. I know Wizards hasn't updated the character builder (I checked this morning, so maybe it is out by now) but I did receive my Fallen Lands book at Game Day, so we are not limited to just Red Box.

  I love the role playing potential in Keep on the Borderlands, and I am excited to begin running it. Due to the role-playing, I want everyone to start building their character now. Wizards said they can start using Forgotten Lands at the start of the third chapter, but nobody wants to reroll their character. I do think once Forgotten Lands comes out, we will rebuild the classes using Essentials, but by then they can have an established character and personality.

  This may not be popular with many DM's, but I am going to give it a shot.

  With all that said, the pre-gens do look great, and two of my players will be using them. I would like to see how they stack up to home-built standard, but I think they will do just fine. By the time the pre-gens level, I am sure the character builder will have updated to Essentials, so they can level their own characters.

  @Captain Spud - They are nice looking pre-gens, but I also want to say I liked the look of the Game Day pre-gens as well, I just hadn't had a chance to say that before.

  @Jason - Thanks for the errata on the wizard, it will be one of the pre-gens used tonight, mostly for the forced movement.

  Lastly, I love but am concerned with what they did to the fighters mark, making it an aura makes it so much easier to keep track of, I only worry is if this will make the defender too sticky. The other pre-gen that will be used is Quinn, so we should find out tonight.

  I can't wait to play.

• @ nightwalker450 & Ameron
  Having just recieved my Heroes of the Fallen Lands this morning I can confirm that Disciple of Stone is a new feat, not a new character option for Dwarves. It seems they left Dwarven Resilience off the character sheet.

• I'm getting so tired of Wizards using this event to push their products on us. I'm not going to buy a Red Box, and neither is anyone I know. It's taking a step backwards. Why would those of us who have already spent hundreds of dollars on the Core set and the wealth of supplement books spend more money on a -starter set-?! It's no coincidence that the 'Essentials' crap isn't up on the Character Builder, they want us to be faced with the option of either playing with their error-ridden, apocryphal pre-gens, or spend money on something experienced players don't need and won't use for anything else.

  My location still doesn't have their package yet, hopefully it will come by tonight, but I fully intend to let my people bring whatever 1st level characters they can build on Character Builder as-is. I can't imagine a good reason for restricting class and race except 'only these classes and races are in the MANDATORY Essentials guide', or perhaps 'there's new feats and character options in here you HAVE to make use of!'. If that is the rationale, then Wizards can take a flying eff at a rolling doughnut.

  With Dark Sun at least we didn't have access to the rules of a very distinctive setting, but this adventure seems like pretty generic fantasy. I might feel differently after I read it, but I don't think I will. In retrospect, we could have played Fury of the Wastewalker with regular CB characters and been just fine.

• I am fan of the idea of the essentials line. I also do not complain about it being 4.5x as it is not. However, it took all the strength I had to just read through these builds. Optimized, sure. Fun to play? I cannot imagine! The rogue and fighter builds are so vanilla it hurts to think about. The clerics each look like they have a neat trick up their sleeve, but a cleric with a charging power (Storm Warpriest's Storm Hammer at-will)? Wow...why not just call him a fighter as well. Also, are each of the cleric's using Wisdom as their primary attack rolls for melee attacks? It just seems out of place for a class that already has a "str" warpriest from the PHB1

  Out of all the classes, the wizard actually looks like a new and improved build imo. Getting magic missile as a class feature is cool but the rest of the powers are at least new enough that it looks like a new build. I've played a wizard since the change of MM occured and I find it incredibly boring to just announce X dmg each turn. To me, the rogue and the fighter look like what you would get if you gave every class a "new" magic missle attack. Plain and boring with no flare. Part of the fun of DnD is to announce the power you're using as it can ellicit cool thoughts and emotions from everybody at the table. Now, people are going to announce...MBA and move on.

  Thanks for listening. I can appreciate the concept of the essentials line, however I'm not impressed with the class changes as proposed so far. Perhaps they will add more variety in "at-wills" at higher lvls. I'll never know until I get the books.

  Happy Hunting!

• While I harbor no ill will toward the Red Box, and think it is a good way to get new Players into the game, I am concerned that this season of D&D Encounters is going to be a non-starter. It is going to be hard for Traditional 4E Players to enjoy the simplified versions of the Fighter (Slayer) and Rogue (Thief), with their limited sets of powers, compared to the regular 4E builds. Hopefully, they can snag one of the more complex Characters like the Clerics or Wizards, and let a 4E newbie try his hand at the simpler builds.