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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 6935871" data-attributes="member: 48965">I have a hard time grasping how 4e was the easiest edition to learn to play (unless of course everyone is playing the PHB 1 ranger).  Everyone has individual class abilities as well as a number of powers, that are small exception based rules, that they have to understand the general rules of the game and how they interact with them in order to play. When I played at encounters new players had to continuously reference their power cards (which IMO is no different than having to open the book), had to have the jargon explained to them (what's the difference between a close burst and close blast?),  pick from numerous fiddly feats the players had to keep track of and understand, recognize the difference between 7 types of actions in the game... and there were a ton of keywords for their powers that they needed to understand (what are the rules for stances... how about the reliable keyword... or the rules for a conjuration?).IME on the DM side there was alot of overhead, fiddly tracking in conditions and monster abilities (that I as a DM often forgot to use or overlooked especially when running a variety of monsters in a combat).Now I do think Essentials cuts down on the complexity of 4e and I could see an argument for it being one of the simpler editions of D&D but even then not sure I would claim it's the easiest D&D to learn or play... for me though 5e, without the optional stuff like feats... multiclassing... etc. would rank at or slightly simpler then essentials to learn.  But then I think that's the point of the basic pdf, to give new players a concise and easily graspable set of rules to learn the game which they casn then decide to stick with or move onto the PHB.</blockquote>

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