Nothing's really changed, there, for the Warpriest or Mage. For the Knight, Slayer and Rogue, there are virtually no powers to /be/ different - they do the same things their whole carreers.
Again, true only of the Martial classes.
Exactly, and True, and I have been using mostly martial characters for the players, but not all.
I agree that characters generally advance and use the same powers their entire lives - which maybe is my point. While 4e might generally offer 2(w) + condition damage across the board for many Lvl 3 Encounter powers, I felt Essentials' leveling powers stayed more clearly within the theme of that character. For example, if I'm a Knight, my 3rd Lvl just means I'm still defending and trying to get in the middle of everyone - only I do it with a little more skill; I haven't learned a newer, deadlier attack, I'm just a little better at what I was already doing. While this provides less choices of powers per leveling, I felt that it provided more immersion in how a particular character might improve as a knight - and thus to me was more player-focused and not power-focused. To me it played more like APG, which I liked and was a little surprised to experience.
And I'm not knocking 4e - picking up D&D and playing 4e after a 25 year absence was one of the best decisions I've made in the last decade.
No Tony, that's rather the entire point with regard to martial characters. To be honest the thing that confused me was this:
Combat in 4E is already very dangerous at low levels with the adjusted maths of MM3 and power design of heroic monsters being better. A level 8 elite owlbear can dismantle nearly any non-defender in one round. In fact I find my biggest problem with 4E is not enough surges anymore, because monster damage has eclipsed the amount of surges PCs have (especially squishier characters like strikers and controllers).
I really don't see the point of this and if I gave my PCs only a single surge after a rest, I'd TPK them trivially.
Two points: 1) we obviously run different games, which is pie, probably pecan. 2) I rarely have an encounter that ends with someone close to zero HP. My encounters are also deadly. But while you might use the full surges to start fresh, I don't, meaning that our next encounters might be different strength but both end up with our players fearing death and at around the same HP level. Both work. Since we have less encounters per day than suggested, I just found that encounter survival was the only key - no longer term planning. Limiting surges added more longer term planning a I felt a little dark realism - b/c we all know that D&D is about realism.
The reason I use my system is 1) healing surges feel a little too magical to me, and I like to provide a more lasting effect to damage. I want players leaving their village to feel strong and invincible, but players waking up for the third consecutive night in a dungeon to feel like they're exhausted and afraid and second guessing themselves. 2) b/c I want players to have a little more sense of debate - "should we rest, where can we rest safely?", "should we attack here or find another way around?". There were increased battle tactics of keeping weaker players a little more protected and flanked which provided changes b/t encounters.
I try to make my system gritty and dark. It might not be accurate, but that is the theme I'm trying to get players to feel.
