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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5356404" data-attributes="member: 59082">First of all, I have to laugh at the idea that when they hear that paladins have alignment restrictions again, the "25 million" lapsed players will come roaring back to D&D after 20+ years. I'm not saying that you're saying that, Jack, but it is an amusing thought. As I see it, the mechanics of Essentials is less of a marketing tool than is its physical presentation--especially the Red Box, but also the other box sets--and its placement in Target and Walmart. The mechanics of the new classes may be meant to appeal to recently lapsed players, meaning those that never converted to 4E, but the many millions that haven't played in 15, 20, even 25 years (which I doubt number as many as 25MM, but I could be wrong) don't give two copper pieces about paladin alignment restrictions.All that said, what I think we have in Essentials is two things folded into one. WotC wants to acquire new (and lapsed) players and to revise the rules a bit. It is a two birds with one stone thing and, unlike 3.5, the former softens the latter. In other words, because it is mainly being expressed as an attempt at getting newbies to join, the rules revision aspect is less galling to 4E diehards (and of course the backwards compatibility issue).Yes, very true. Although like Imaro I think this also applies to serious players that don't want to deal with tons of options. I love 4E for its relative ease for DMs, but for players it is rather difficult because of all of the bloat. I say this as someone who has only DMed 4E and is trying to create an 11th-level NPC in detailed, Character Builder format. What a nightmare! There are simply too many options, too many powers with only slight differences, and waaaaay too many feats. I like lots of options, but not when the differences are so small. Many of the martial powers, in my opinion, could be streamlined into just a few, with more liberal use of modifiers depending upon what effect the player wishes to accomplish. In other words, if a player wants to shift their opponent one square in addition to doing weapon damage, why not just add a penalty to attack? Why do we need an entirely new power for such a small difference?I'm not really sure how this problem can be fixed. I like the idea of themes negating the need for many feats, but what could WotC possibly do to decrease feat bloat in Character Builder? I don't see them actually deleting them from the database. This is one of the reasons that new editions are necessary; but evidently WotC doesn't learn from their mistakes and where in 3.5 we had too many feats, the same is true in 4E. Maybe they thought Character Builder would make it a bit easier but I don't think that is the case.Sorry if I went too far off topic!</blockquote>

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