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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Colmarr" data-source="post: 5291078" data-attributes="member: 59182">The most obvious change is that where there was previously only one "deviant" class system (the psionic power source), there are now two of them (psionics and the new martial builds).  Quite possibly. I guess for me the line gets drawn when you go back and mess with the fundamentals of an existing power source (in this case, martial). Prior to Essentials, I was happy to accept that 4e was just "evolving" as a living game tends to do.  But the argument that 4e will always just be 4e because they never put a .X after the title is ridiculous. There comes a point where it isn't the same game; it's a different iteration of it. Like I said in my blog post, I'm personally ready to say "yep, we have a new iteration".  All races (other than humans) will have floating attribute bonuses. Humans gets the choice between a bonus at-will or a racial encounter power instead. Tieflings will have a new infernal wrath. Magic missile is completely revamped. (Yes the last two are here now but do you really believe they weren't born of Essentials?) Wizard encounter powers now all suddenly have miss effects. Implements now work across multi-class characters. Martial classes no longer follow a common A/E/D build. Treasure comes in different types - common, uncommon and rare. The introduction of Basic Attack-based classes alters items and builds based on granting or affecting Basic Attacks That's a pretty significant list...  One class with one higher level feature hardly breaks the mould, particularly if the original draft of the class granted the ability at level 1 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Unwarranted sarcasm aside, you missed the point. My point was that if I had been pressed on the issue earlier, I might have said 4.5 had arrived then. But I wasn't, so I didn't. Essentials has put the issue in the spotlight, and it's obfuscation to respond to "Essentials is 4.5" with "it can't be because there have been previous changes and you didn't call them 4.5". If WotC make such a big deal of how different Essentials is, then guess what - it probably is. And if it is significantly different, then it's a natural next step to question whether it "counts" as 4e. Let me be clear. One of the guiding principles of 4e (as set out in Races and Classes) was common design. 4e wanted to move away from the Fighter/Wizard paradigm of previous editions. I don't (and never would have) hold WotC to that goal for psionics, because psionics has always been different. But when they move away from that goal for other power sources, something has changed. Lest there be some confusion about my motives, I like most of the options being introduced in Essentials. I don't have a chip on my shoulder from 3.0-3.5. I only returned to D&D with 3.5, so I missed all the angst of that changeover. But, to me at least, D&D post-essentials will not be the same game as before. I call that 4.5. YMMV, but if you insist on saying it's still 4.0, then I respectfully consider you wrong.</blockquote>

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