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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5280320" data-attributes="member: 32164">I agree. 4e IS very simple and mechanically consistent. But it's still a beast of a game where the simplest character still has to worry about things like flanking, positioning, pushing, pulling, sliding, OAs, flanking...The list goes on and on.For some people, adding "what do I do next" to that level of tactical battlefield gaming is just too much. Your players may just all be people for whom that's not a problem. I've played with people for whom it IS. I've had discussions with people who want to play D&D, but think it's too complicated. I think they can get it, but if I could hand them a nice easy class to play while they're learning the game rules, it would facilitate things.You say you're not well-qualified to evaluate analytical versus creative players. Fine. I'll ask this. What do your people DO for a living? How about for fun other than D&D? What did they study?The ones I qualify as "creative" are artists, or literature and drama majors. For fun, they read and play act. The ones I qualify as analytical also enjoy acting and music, but tend to be highly technical as well - computer programmers, engineers, software designers, and the like.The latter group grasps gamist concepts intuitively. The former doesn't. They're good at D&D, but for them it's the roleplaying that comes easy, not the combat game. And making the combat more fiddly for them (which is what more powers does) doesn't help.This approach doesn't really solve the problem of complexity in play. Sure, it's easier when you level, but the player still faces as many choices in play as before. Sure, it's less of an issue at 1st-level, but we're talking about ~10 powers (not counting utilities) by mid-levels. That's a LOT. It can very quickly get overwhelming.You make a lot of assertions about how changing resource management alters class balance. I acknowledge that it could, but I'm less convinced than you are that it DOES.I freely admit that the easiest way to balance classes is to give everyone an equal number of powers that they can use the exact same number of times. And then those powers have to do the exact same thing, and the classes have to have the exact same role in the game.The minute you start fiddling, absolute class balance is out the window. So is absolute power balance. At that point, it's a matter of balancing within degrees. Within those broader definitions, does Essentials break that balance? I don't see it.Sorry, using "different level progressions" to claim increased complexity is a fallacy. That's because the complexity of levelling up happens out of game. What these classes are about is addressing complexity in play. That's two totally different things. Nobody I know has ever been horribly confused when leveling up in 4e.I freely admit that simplifying the martial classes is catering specifically to the nostalgia crowd. I guess I just see that as a judgement call. Assuming you want classes of varying complexity (and I realize you don't agree, but bear with me), you have to pick which ones to simplify based on some criteria. You know that some people in your existing customer base (and among lapsed players) have expressed conceptual problems with martial powers. You have not heard anything similar with regards to the spellcasters. You also know that your nostalgia customers will be expecting fighters and rogues to be simpler classes to play than clerics and wizards. If you fight these expectations too much, the game will not feel like D&D to those people.By contrast, any new players you recruit don't care about the game's history, or that some current 4e fighter players are feeling like they've finally gotten fair treatment. Some of them just want to play simpler classes than others do. They don't care which ones. You also know that, back in the days of the original Red Box, people who wanted more complex classes embraced spellcasters. Did they pick spellcasters because they were more complex? Or did Gary et. al. design spellcasters that way because the concept seemed to embrace the complexity? No way to know which came first. But there's nothing here that explicitly contradicts what your nostalgia players want, so you go with that.Now, I've heard you and others claim that there's no need for varying levels of complexity. Maybe you're right. I've seen evidence that a demand exists, and I think WotC wouldn't be doing this unless they possessed that evidence in spades, but maybe we're wrong.I think part of this is some current 4e customers feeling proprietary about THEIR edition of D&D. They love 4e, and they were loyal damnit! So WotC should cater to them, and only them. By their thinking, the grognards and old-timers can just like it or lump it. After all, for those who want old school gaming, there's Pathfinder.And I suppose that's a fine attitude for someone to take. But as a business, WotC HAS to be interested in ways that it could, just maybe, win back some old customers without totally alienating current ones. And when I say "old," I don't necessarily mean just people who last played 3.5 or 3e, but maybe people whose last D&D purchase was BECMI, or had an "A" before "D&D."There's a LOT of those players out there. And many of them now have kids, nieces, nephews. Some even have grandkids! Appealing to their nostalgia is a good way to recapture old players (them) and gain new ones (their spawn).I think they've found that some of the same things that will appeal to the nostalgia crowd will go over as well with certain kinds of newbies. In keeping with the Red Box, Essentials is D&D for those who might be put off or intimidated by the core rules. By my earlier definition, those people tend to be less "analytical" - the kind where lots of tables and charts make their eyes glaze over. You have to hook them with the narrative, rather than a bunch of rules. It also means as much effort to cater to inexperienced players as possible. Which means if there's any kind of significant demand for simpler classes, there'd better be some in there.And now we get back to it. Does that demand exist? WotC says yes. I'm inclined to take them at their word. After all, it's their business, not mine.</blockquote>

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