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I agree, but I think what a lot of people are talking about is not specifically combat so much as the "tactical elements" of the game. Basically the game part of the RPG. And you should still be able to mix up the roleplay and the tactical elements, but it's hard for me, and it seem like a...

I don't have much personal interest in this book at this point, but given my experience and impressions of the desire from some players for any kind of "darker" stuff, this might sell. It may end up hinging on exactly what the SciFi BoVD project is like. The DM stuff could be interesting, but I...

I'm with you right up until "take a step back in time". Fewer combats, with more story significance is a possible solution that appeals to me. Too often filling in the "alloted number of fights" leads me to far more of a feeling of "random encounters" than a well-made wandering monster table...

Tazer. You'd want them anyway, as they don't breach hulls.

This. I also think that knowing what you need to know to progress the story and trying to work out how your characters could reasonably have or obtain that information is more fun than not knowing because you rolled poorly. (Not that rolling poorly and still being able to progress the story...

If this was conditions cards or whatever, I'd be all over it. Organizational aides for 4e that work (ie: not the GF9 token sets) are awesome. But a "despair deck" or "fortune cards" I just have no use for. They aren't really needed to start with, and they aren't mechanically good enough to...

I believe so. Basic attack is a weapon power, and I think that as you push the target as part of the resolution of the attack (and not as a separate free action, as some bonuses do) that it counts... I'm sure someone will be along soon with a more definitive answer (if I'm not already ninja'd).

Was working on the idea of having a bit more structure to "the next campaign I run", and thought it would be neat to share what I've got. Something like an adventure path in structure, although it's pretty sketchy and I've got three specific entry points to work from: A caravan approaching...

I may not be the best person to ask, as I think there's probably a lot of players who can get a lot of fun out of these classes without this drastic an overhaul, but for me: Artificer: Would probably require an overhaul of the way that magic items work in 4e. If not that then an overhaul of the...

And that's the slayer. From what I've sen written of the thief (and ignoring silly things like actual play experience), if essentials is the flu and AD&D ebola, then the thief is a freakin' suborbital nuklear strike, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, one, one, one...

Sure. OK, first of all, I'm only accounting for a certain "n" value of balance, such that I would notice it in actual play. I don't do dpr comparisons or anything of that sort at the table, and I'm only significantly concerned with the issue when it comes up in play. Frex: my scout, one of the...

re: nostalgia... I have fond remembrances of playing in a campaign, as a member of a party of adventurers, in the person of my character(s); specifically in that order. I admit that I have always been a DM more often than a player, but I remember being genuinely interested in what was...

Well, I disagree with you. Admittedly, I mostly DM, the only essentials sub-class I've actually played is the scout, and the last "retro-gaming" I've done is Labyrinth Lord (I last played AD&D some time in the late 80s). But my experience of playing essentials has been that it's still 4e, and as...

I enjoy essentials. It provides me a play experience that I like. I also enjoy AD&D, and it provides me a play experience that I also like. However I like essentials for far different reasons than I like AD&D because it, like all 4e, is a far, far different game. I don't find the Slaver or the...

Let me start by saying that, as a DM, I do not like killing off PCs. I consider it one of my responsibilities to run a game where PCs can die, and to actually make it happen when circumstance, player action or inaction, and/or the dice dictate, but I do avoid it whenever I think that I can do so...

That seems like a really awesome encounter, but I'm seeing on-budget fights last an hour and a half to two hours or more, and we're having to work to get two encounters into a session. Well, unfortunately, with the issues mentioned above I'm finding that I and (as far as I can tell) the players...

Yeah, hammering iron doesn't really do much spectacular in conjunction with halo of warding, although HOW itself is pretty damn good, IMO. Generally if you want your tricks to be really awesome (especially feat-based ones, since feats are generally among the more minor power bumps) you need to...

So, my experience has been that this sort of thing has been far from perfect, but reading what you've written above leads me to believe that I may just be doing it wrong. So, equal-level (standard) Gnolls become L+4 minions? The XP matches up, but I would have thought that you'd want more Gnolls...

See, where's the fun in that? Make them run around looking for the special thingy that will let them unpetrify the finger (I'm just going to assume that it's a finger at this point) in a raise-able form, and then when they get the raise it fails because the character has already been brought...

I agree completely, and that's been my (limited) experience with epic D&D. It seems (to me) to come from things like the "extra life" powers that most EDs have, as well as some of the design slant of 4e. It's also influenced by the way that 4e scales... Specifically, the reward mechanic in 4e...