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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5419563" data-attributes="member: 2011">This is a tough call.On the one hand, the DM wants to go out of his way to make the gaming experience unique and fun for the player.On the other hand, the DM does not have the material and will only be able to acquire a subset of the material without spending more money, and even the best of players are notorious for missing something in the rules and playing a rule incorrectly unless the DM and other players have access to the same rules where they can spot any mistakes or omissions.One of the problems I have with Essentials is the amount of additional power creep within it (sometimes minor, sometimes not so minor). I'm not just talking about the Expertise feats (which are a minor power creep and I think all PCs should get Expertise for free, so I don't mind them), but the combination of class features and powers that go above and beyond.In the case of an Enchanter Mage, there are At Will powers like Beguiling Strands. Int damage + 3 square push. It doesn't sound bad. Except it is enemy only, close blast 5, and for an Enchanter Mage, it pushes the foes 5 squares instead of 3. What this allows the Mage to do is to push a group of foes into a small concentrated area away from other PCs so that he can then use an Action Point to attack them with a more potent or controlling Encounter or Daily area power. Another PC can often then throw another area power on top of the foes if that PC's initiative is shortly after the Mages.And if there is a pit (or other fall), the Wizard can have multiple foes either knocked into the pit, or prone in a bunch. The previous "enemy only" At Will power winner was Winged Horde and it did less damage and the foes couldn't do OAs (nice, but not as potent as a multitarget enemy only push that sets up PC area effect powers). Chilling Cloud was the same damage and a -2 penalty to hit.Beguiling Strands effectively gives "enemy only" to the Mage's (and other PC's) other area spells on occasion. On the surface, Beguiling Strands doesn't sound bad at all, but in practice, the Mage is going to be a lot more potent than a normal 4E mage with control and damage because he and other PCs can target more foes per round.It's not so much what the powers and class features directly do for Essential PCs (although that is sometimes the case like for Thiefs and Slayers), but the increased synergies of what they do that seriously increase the effectiveness of the group as a whole.Just as a test, someone should run a 5 PC Essentials only group and a 5 PC 4E only group with the same basic classes through a gauntlet of the same encounters (10 or so) and see which group gets further before dying or running out of surges. My money is on the Essentials PCs to get at least 2 encounters further because they wipe out their foes so much faster than normal 4E PCs.</blockquote>

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