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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7162443" data-attributes="member: 996">"Core" or, ideally, Core - psionics + HotFw & HotEC, but not the other Hot(mess) books, and the 'Dungeoneers' book, with Kobolds & Goblins as playable races. <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=";)" />  Balance, clarity, consistency, playability.  Essentials shook things up with minimal playtesting and decreased errata, it introduced issues and didn't fix them.  In particular, it built up the wizard outrageously, and created gimped martial classes (OK, not to anything like the degree before or since, but still, disappointing after 4e) in HotFL/K and introduced questionable class content in HoS.  It was also really focused on the Heroic Tier, so adventures were thematically screwed up (dimension hopping at 3rd level, fighting an avatar of a deity as an introductory combat at 1st level), and Essentials material badly petered out at the higher levels. Encounter Balance.  Skill Challenges. Feats.  Fewer and better thought-out feats.  While classes and encounter guidelines in 4e were fairly robustly balanced,  Skill Challenges got fixed up to be pretty functional, and even magic items weren't so bad (just a bit less dramatic than in the olden days or 5e), feats were a continuous embarrassment.  There were legions of worthless/pointless 'chaff' feats, and enough 'feat taxes' that you might spend the first half of each tier collecting them before getting to make any actual choices.  It was one area where 4e might as well have been still 3.5/PF for all the difference there was.Multi-classing could also have been better.  I'm a fan of 3.x/PF/5e MCing, even though I have to admit it's never quite worked as well as it seems it should be able to (mainly, I suppose because the class designs have never been as good in execution as the MC system is in concept).  4e's MCing was a jeckle/hyde juxtaposition of underpowered low-impact, ultra-conservative MC feats paying for power swaps (because 4e classes were so well-balanced, power swaps weren't usually going to be wildly empowering, so paying a feat for the privilege arguably left you at a net loss) and 1e-like 'Hybrids' that sliced classes down the middle and grafted them together, usually with awkward to worthless results, but quite susceptible to applied system mastery.IMHO, a less over-cautious/over-priced form of power-swapping, (maybe enabled by a Theme rather than a feat?) could have worked more simply and still been balanced. Good luck.</blockquote>

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