You know, I've mostly stayed out of this thread after my original comments, not even to defend my assertions that I made earlier, because I mostly don't care to argue with people on the Internet. But having checked in on this thread, finding it still going, I've seen a couple of responses that are, first, a ridiculous strawman:
So is that the hangup? That you open the PHB1 and under Fighter you see a set of rules and guidelines to create either a Guardian or a Greatweapon Fighter, and then you open HotFL and under Fighter you see a set of rules and guidelines to create either a Knight or a Slayer Fighter, and because the Knight/Slayer isn't exactly like the Guardian/Greatweapon, the sky has fallen and evil men have come and taken your cookies?
And second, a baldly arrogant assertion of opinion as fact:
And yet, here you are, in effect and in intention, talking about mechanical differences between different classes.
The problem is that these two sentances are in practice and in game design contradictory. The former cannot be true while the second is true. It is simply not possible.
... that I find it difficult to believe that either of you are discussing the issue with anything resembling good intentions. However, for the sake of politeness I'll assume you're not just arguing cynically and make the point simply, so that you all can understand it, why some (many?) people have such a problem with Essentials.
I don't presume to speak for others, but I'll try to echo the points as best I can.
Essentials uses an entirely different design philosophy from O4E. This point should not be under debate, and in and of itself is by no means a bad thing. The designers stated it, and it's patently obvious from looking at how the classes are built. All the O4E classes are built one way, all of Essentials another. This isn't the same as the difference between 2E Rangers having spells while Fighters don't. For those of you who are unable to or refuse to understand this... well, I guess I don't really have anything to talk about with you.
The problems problems people have with this are...
1) The difference is great enough to cause a cognitive dissonance that bug some people while playing. Some people can get past it, others can't, especially if they really liked O4E.
2) The design choices for Essentials are either not superior, or even inferior, according to some, and all of the design effort put into the new class features, new, interesting classes, or updates to them such as Vampire, Binder, Hexblade, Assassin, and other things would have been better put into O4E classes.
3) Some find Essentials boring. For me, this is my biggest hangup. Conceptually, I love the martial classes. In practice, most anything but the Wizard or classes in some way "power heavy" have been boring to play in all editions of D&D. Sure, you can work outside the rules and find ways to have fun in non-supported ways, but the core combat mechanic doesn't even need human intervention. For example, as a Fighter, especially in early levels, I can simply place a sign on my chair stating, "I attack the closest enemy," and go watch a movie and the tactical ability of the party won't be significantly diminished. There are very few actual choices to be made in combat. 3E is slightly better, but not by much.
04E changed that. Now Fighters were interesting to play. All of them were. Leaders, a concept it introduced, were no longer just healbots (or in 3.5E, better fighters than the Fighter instead). Essentials went a long way towards changing it back to the bad old days.
4) Wizards has been trying to blur the lines and marginalize O4E, making it hard to just "not play with Essentials". I'm stuck with their character builder if I want any new content at all. Where's the Wizard or Cleric? Oh, they don't even get to keep their names, they're the Arcanist and Templar, just a single weird option out of many for Wizard and Cleric. And if you didn't know about the name change you have to look at all of them to find that out. My first reaction was, "WTF did the Wizard go?" Also, all of the different builds of the O4E classes are shuffled underneath them, while the Essentials classes (which were originally supposed to be just alternative builds) are each given their own listing. Fantastic.
Is this feat or power buffed/nerfed to make the Essentials classes look better, disturbing the balance of the old classes? I don't know. I have to pull up the Compendium to even know the source, and either follow the forums or analyze every change myself. Unless I want to go completely offline, or potentially use illegal methods to acquire the old character builder, it's hard to just "not use it".
5) If you buy into Essentials as a new edition (which honestly, I think you're fooling yourself if you don't, especially given the new Class Compendium matierial), then O4E had an incredibly short period of time that it was active, breaking the implied promise of how long the material you purchase will be "current" and easily usable with new people you meet.
6) The release of Essentials was mishandled, with contradictory information being given out by even the same individuals (particularly Slavicsek) about what it meant for the future of D&D, either through incompetence or a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion in such a way as to have their cake and eat it too. It's not 100% logical, but some people don't want any part of it because of this.
I think that about does it. Now can we please stop pretending that disliking Essentials either violates some clear, fundamental aspect of logic, that people who dislike it are literally too stupid to figure out how to play with their old books, or that people who dislike Essentials are literally too stupid and hidebound to accept anything at all that's new?
Thanks.
