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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6151526" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right. In general fears of problems with Essentials vs 'classic' classes are not overly warranted. Certainly if someone is willing to be a complete min/maxer and heavily exploit interactions between a warlord and say a slayer (for instance) you can see a very nice synergy there which will add significantly to the combat prowess of the party. OTOH it won't break the game. There have been since the first release of 4e equally potent character builds and combinations. Factually there are at this time more optimized builds with more synergy even than warlord/e-martial combos. Charge optimization, some wizard builds, the PHB1 Ranger IN GENERAL, not to mention group tactics such as 'Radiant Mafia' or 'Frost Cheese' setups are extremely effective and hard to counter. Even so, the DM will find ways to challenge such groups, whether it is in areas outside of straight up combat or by use of clever synergies and careful goal design.At worst there is some variance between e-martial classes and classic classes in terms of adventure pacing. E-martial classes in particular are great with long hard work days where they can repeat their entire limited repertoire of moves every encounter. OTOH classic classes certainly can be more potent when they are able to nova and cut the day short, effectively getting more frequent uses of daily powers. The two are however pretty well balanced between 3 and 6 encounters in a given day IME, which is the situation in the vast majority of cases. The only other thing to note is that e-classes DO tend to run low on really effective optimizations at high level. A slayer is great, but at level 25 he has a LOT less options than a weaponmaster fighter. Because he lacks a lot of powers which do various things it becomes hard to keep these characters entirely relevant. They're very good at doing their shtick, but it isn't so easy to adapt them to different situations and they can seem a bit flat when they're still chasing around with Power Strike at level 25. You can make it work, and at lower levels its not an issue, but this is probably the most fundamental downside of the Essentials classes if you ask me.</blockquote>

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