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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Terramotus" data-source="post: 5575587" data-attributes="member: 7220">For the record, I'm almost always DM.  In brief, the stuff you like about Essentials I also like.  If WotC hadn't been desperate to sell all of the experienced players the whole line of Essentials books, then those things should have, by all rights, been released in some sort of Player's Option book for all the classes.  And we all would have loved it.As far as game flow, the combat part of D&D is better than it ever has been.  The At-Will, Encounter, Daily mechanic hits all the good spots, and 4E took me from loving the concept of martial characters but being bored to tears playing them to loving to play martial characters.  Other than that, in pre-3E I could have just left a sign in my chair that said, "I attack," and gone out for pizza.  Anything more in-depth than that was resorting to extra-game mechanics to try to have some fun with it.  In 3E that was sometimes replaced with, "I do my shtick," where the shtick was the one thing you were good at through a combination of feat choices and PrCs.  4E changed that.Removing the At-Will, Encounter, Daily dynamic, which I consider fundamental to 4E just feels like a weird mutant half-breed.  And for what?  Because they're too hard?  Don't insult my intelligence.  That's fine if Essentials were just an intro game, which I guess is clear by now that it's not.  It's not fine to force it into O4E and then jack with the balance to favor the new weird mechanics.  Nobody would have cried, "ZOMG, OP!" if core druids could speak with animals too.  It didn't need to be reserved for Essentials.Ultimately, Essentials is some cool errata and additions lumped in with some IMHO crazy decisions that run counter to 4E's strengths, and I'm finding it hard to tell which is which without becoming an expert on a system I have no intent in allowing into my game.EDIT: Apologies for threadjacking.  Essentials gets me so worked up I find it hard to stay on topic.</blockquote>

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