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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5517127" data-attributes="member: 996">Well, that's going in the other direction, but at least consistent. According to this logic, though, there was no need for Essentials, as those who disliked the partity among sources, uniform complexity of classes, fighters 'casting spells' (having daily mechanics), and so forth, could, indeed, have continued playing the old game. It's certainly the central and most significant innovation.  Healing surges are a close second.  Skill Challenges trail by a large margin because, while they're a great idea, they really didn't quite deliver.  I'm not.  What I'm saying is that, /if/ you believe that those who don't like Essentials should just shut up and play a static version of 4e (cutting off sometime before Essentials); then, you must also believe that those who disliked 4e had no need to call for the retro changes that Essentials made.  I'm actually arguing the contrary: that the existance of past versions of the game does not immunize changes from criticism.  Mostly what I'm doing is defending my right to be critical of the game as it stands, and offer my own ideas and opinions about why it's good or bad and how it could be better.  Most discussions like these do deginerate into one side denying the other's right to have or express a position different from their own.  They become circular pedantic arguments or mere shouting contests.  It's the level of discourse you become accustomed to on-line.  I'd ignore the BS, but when you do that, they start shouting at you that you haven't 'addressed' their point. :sigh:anyway, on to an actual point:One thing you have to keep in mind is that Power Source is an important distinction, as well as AEDU vs abberant class structures.  Essentials did introduce some power inflation. That's not unusual, most new books do - it one way to make them 'interesting.'  The prior Martial classes did not participate in that inflation, because the Essentials martial classes used a different, mostly incompatible, structure.  The Divine and Arcane classes 'related' to those in HotF, for instance, /did/.  So, a disparity has been introduced between 'old' classes.  In addition, there's a disparity between 'old' martial classes and new ones - it's not a simple one, though.  The new sub-classes enjoy an inflated base-line, but, in all likelihood, fall behind any ADEU class at higher levels (haven't /seen/ that yet, as I've yet to see an E class in higher level, or even mid-heroic play - in low-heroic, however boring they may be, they're quite effective).  So, to summarize:  The Knight, Slayer & Rogue are 'overpowered' relative to their parent classes, in some fundamental ways (Slayer damage, Knight mark-punishment, Theives getting CA so easily, etc), that are quite aparent at low levels.  However, they are /not/ overpowered relative to the AEDU classes in Essentials.  So, yes, they are both over- and under- powered. (?!?!?) <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=";)" /> Over powered enough from power inflation to eclipse the older martial classes at low levels, under-powered (under-optioned, really) relative to non-Martial Essentials classes, as a campaign continues.  Combined with the emphasis on Essentials-only in the on-line CB and D&D Encounter, the new Essentials direction tends towards marginalizing the Martial source.Which is not bad just because "I like martial" - I do, but I'm also quite fond of Arcane - but because it's returning to a paradigm that trivializes the most enduring archetypes of the heroic fantasy genre.  The premier Fantasy  Role Playing Game should do better than that.</blockquote>

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