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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ajar" data-source="post: 5598442" data-attributes="member: 85901">I did so about four pages ago and the point was conceded. The subclasses  are plainly not as interoperable as builds generally are, with certain  exceptions (e.g. beastmaster). Multiclass/hybrid options are only now  available as a playtest, and a number of Essentials subclasses are  entirely excluded.If you're asking about incompatibility at the table from the DM's  perspective, then no. And I don't think anyone has actually asserted  that this is a clear and substantial problem for the game. I've stated repeatedly that as a DM I'd have no problem mixing 4E and 4E.E, or running a game for all 4E.E characters, if that's what my players wanted. Given that, it's pretty rude to repeatedly wave the legitimate concerns expressed in this thread off as "we're being trolled."Jhaelen's post is a melodramatic, but he's on point about language and  changing definitions. This kind of stuff isn't just semantic quibbles, it informs how people think about things and it provides a little bit of insight into WotC's thought process. Mixing subclasses and classes in the Character  Builder class selection list is confusing, and it also obscures the fact  that the Weaponmaster has an order of magnitude more options and a very  different design structure than the Knight and Slayer that are listed  on equal footing. No, I would have preferred not to have subclasses, and instead have the Essentials classes treated as builds, maintaining the same overall class list that we had before. This would require some CB and Compendium interface tweaks, but since I find the solution they decided to implement fairly crufty (how many flavours of Warlock are there now? 15?) anyway, I don't see that as a problem. Today, there's nothing in the CB that tells you what specifically differentiates a Weaponmaster from a Slayer or Knight until you try to build one and discover the huge number of options. My way, when you open the CB, you'd have one option for Essentials-only called "Simple Character" or something similar -- it would NOT be the default "New Character" option that it is today. When clicking this option, you'd get the Essentials class list: Fighter, Ranger, Warlock, etc. When you pick Fighter, you then get to choose between Knight and Slayer, and so on. Then there would be a "New Character" button that would take you to the full class list, with both 4E and 4E.E options available once you chose a class. I don't think this method would have required the Essentials books to be very different from what they actually are, and it would have had two side benefits: clearer understanding of what actually constitutes a class when choosing one in the CB, and not implicitly marginalizing non-Essentials classes. Where's the support for the PHB3 classes in the Essentials books? There isn't any. WotC's design efforts have been focused on Essentials and on Essentials elements that can also support PHB1 (not 2 or 3) classes. That's one of the problems with Essentials: it provides additional support for the most-supported classes in the game. I'm not saying that those classes shouldn't get any more support, but aside from Psionic Power, PHB3 has more or less withered on the vine. Again, a lot of my apprehensions about Essentials pre-release have been allayed, but it isn't fair to assert that there are no grounds for concern or discomfort, and that any statements to that effect are trolling.</blockquote>

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