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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5582197" data-attributes="member: 60075">I've been perusing the Heroes of books in the past week, and was wondering if the Enworld community could help me to substantiate or devalidate a sneaking suspicion that I had upon browsing that material. Immediate Disclaimer: I haven't used Essentials in play, nor has any other person in my 4E campaigns, and that's my primary reason for asking this question in the open - to get feedback from people who have.I think we're all fairly familiar with the observation that Essentials has reduced the complexities of character generation and progression. Many choices are made on the player's behalf, which rules out making mistakes along the way.But I'm more specifically wondering about the effects of the Essentials class builds' class features and powers during play. For instance, from my experience of playing a 4.0 rogue, it's a major issue of the class to a) get you into situations which secure you Combat Advantage over monster while b) avoiding getting hit too much from e.g. opportunity attacks. Both things relate to clever play and making the most of your rogue's mobility on the battle field.Looking at the Essentials rogue, however, it seems that the way his class features/powers work make these things a no-brainer. He gets an at will mobility action that basically excludes that he can get hit by opportunity attacks along the way (whereas previously you'd get a bonus to your AC to such attacks, depending on your build choices). Another feature (I think it's also an at will) secures that he gets combat advantage until the end of his next turn. And that's just level 1 features.Not having looked at the other classes too much, I wonder whether people have discerned similar changes (from 4.0 classes) in such respects. And, I wonder what your experience has been in playing these (Essentials) builds.To my mind, I appreciate that a lot of the tactical effort usually required to attain certain advantages on the battle field has been pre-empted. But I also wonder whether that's not helping players too much. Whether, in other words, Essentials is playing 4E at reduced difficulty rate. Let me know - I'm curious!Edit. I'll add a tangentially related <a href="http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/4thEdition/thoughtsOnHeroesOfShadow&page=1#26" target="_blank">post</a> by Jeremy Mac Donald from the Paizo boards where he points out how (in his play experience) several Essentials builds invite making up "one trick ponies". Again, seems to point to reduced tactical complexity compared to pre-Essentials material:</blockquote>

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