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Message: <blockquote data-quote="marelion" data-source="post: 5685813" data-attributes="member: 6679828">One thing I`d like to add from my personal 4E-experience is that they have changed the mechanics behind the races as well. Each race except for humans gets 2 ability score-bonuses and 4E does not do racial penalties. Dwarfes get Wis and Con+2, for example, but there is no penalty to Charisma, despite the fluff in thew PHB still suggesting their view of the world is a little out of synch with the standards of the rest of the world.Many races now also bring a special so-called 'racial power' to the gaming-table and some of them can be enhanced with the use of feats. In fact, every race now has racial feats which are only accessible for members of the given race. These racial powers along with the ability score-bonuses are now the schtick about every race and 4E assumes your players take that into consideration when building their characters. IMHO the right combination of race and class is even more important than in 3.x. And just another note: 4E does not really do subraces, neither does it do Level Adjustment.Sadly, while it certainly did help balance things out it ultimately forced them to remove quite a lot of unique, more exotic races like arctic dwarves, so there may be some dissapointment when you tell your players to choose their characters` races(at least, if your players enjoy the flavor of the niche races as much as my players do).All in all, I agree with (Psi)SeveredHead that 4E is a lot better at balancing. To make things easier for the very start I`d suggest you reduce your players`ressources to the PHB 1-3 and maybe the power books(Arcane Power, Martial Power, Primal Power, Divine Power) and forgo the use of Psionics and Hybrid Characters. The material from the Dragon Magazine is often crazy powerful in comparison to the printed options and allowing this into your game could escalate into an arm`s race between your players.I can`t really give you any advice on the matter of Essentials vs Old-4E, fot our group onlly uses 'classic' 4E-material but I`m rather confident other members of enworld or your search-fu can help you out with that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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