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This sounds much more to do with the amount of time/effort you've spent on the particular editions than in any difference of complexity between them. Folks who've played lots of 4e from day one can build characters from memory too. They might not know every option from every level--same as even...

The Essentials feat Aggressive Advantage might work: CA against all enemies during your first turn in the encounter. It beats First Strike in most situations--First Strike only outshines it in surprise rounds.

As somebody who's not particularly bothered by a late update, I think this would be fantastic! Imagine the performance improvements and the bugs (e.g. Master's Wand of XX) they could straighten out by rewriting some of the core data structure...

I'm one of those who's taken the "fix the monster math behind the DM's screen" approach, with the additional tweak of giving a tiered houserule bonus to each character's weakest NAD, so the Essentials changes definitely put me in a tricky spot. My plan for the moment is to continue disallowing...

Huh, put me down as a dissenting voice to the above. At my table, "I missed? Okay, I kick in Backstab. Will it hit with +3 more?" would be totally legit.

Oh, I just grokked the rest of your confusion. Each such keyworded power represents a Discipline. You can only use one Discipline per round. (Except on an action point, in which case you can kick off another Discipline.) Disciplines can have multiple Techniques inside them. You can use any...

That baffled me too. I think the intention is that when you use an encounter Full Discipline, you can use both the movement and the attack, and the power gets expended at the end of that round. "You can use one of the techniques and not the other" -- that is, you can choose to use one and not...

I don't think that's anything new. "Choose Action to Ready: Choose the specific action you are readying (what attack you plan to use, for example) as well as your intended target." I don't have my PHB at hand, but I think it's been like that from the first printing.

We've already got some stuff that, in retrospect, could make sense under this scheme. Dark Pact Warlock could totally be Arcane/Shadow (I've always thought a Shadowfell connection would make more sense than the Underdark one they've got going), Beastmaster Ranger could be Martial/Primal...

Do you by any chance have the actual spreadsheet available? I love this all-in-one-place resource, but I'd like to tweak a few numbers based on some houserules of mine.

I believe it's "all of them" almost by definition. (Well, once you include the Heroes Of books along with the RC.) This update is the changes made to prior material to reflect the iteration of the rules printed in those books.

Can't speak to the Sneak Attack, but they don't get rapier proficiency. They don't have a blanket military weapon proficiency, just specific weapons (dagger, hand crossbow, short sword, shuriken, sling). That was my mistake, too, which I rubbed out above :P

EDIT: Durr, never mind me. Note to self: no more posting before double-checking Compendium.

Handwaved encounters usually do the trick on this, for my group. At the end of the heroic tier, they marched back through the undead-infested lands where they'd begun the game, and I mentioned that these low-level zombies and skeletons were no match for 10th-level badasses. So I gave the players...

This is fantastic. With this kind of rationale and analysis behind the numbers, I think I can stop houseruling skill DCs entirely. The Obsidian skill challenge system may still see some use at my table due to its streamlined three-round setup, but for most skill work, this looks spot on.

Nothing to say to the rest of your personal-preference issues, but this is incorrect. Look upthread a bit for several mentions of Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies in this Heroes book.

Probably not just you, but I think these issues can be puzzled out. "Something to do with multiple attacks" is explaining how an "attack power" can actually produce more than one "attack" by the main definition given in the glossary entry (an attack roll and its effects). Healing word isn't an...

MM3 tokens? Ooh, when?

Ah, hmm, the order of operations for which item functions does change my sentiment somewhat. I still don't feel it's as ridiculous as other posters do (kick a player out for it? Sheesh!), but that does seem to torpedo the technique by the rules.

I'd allow it in my game. That's four actions you're chewing up to pull off this odd little maneuver. And this might extend the life of magic items that might otherwise be immediately tossed since you got some other neck slot item with a bigger plus.