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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Ernie" data-source="post: 5377824" data-attributes="member: 58517">Not to drag out this debate again, but besides some general rules revisions, most of Essentials didn't change the existing classes, powers, feats, or any game-central systems nearly as much as the 3.0->3.5 transition. The only real exception I can see is the change to the Rogue's sneak attack, some changes to existing defense-boosting feats so they don't suck in comparison to the Essentials ones, and updates to a bunch of existing Wizard powers. If I'm missing any, feel free to point them out.The reasons behind these changes are sometimes obvious, sometimes not. I reckon Sneak Attack got changed to eliminate the need for having to remember whether your rogue/thief dealt sneak attack damage yet that round. The reason Warlocks and Rangers don't follow suit, is that the Essentials versions use different striker mechanics, so they're not updated. This may or may not change when they re-release the other classes in Essentials format early next year. I already mentioned why the defense feats were changed. As to the changes to Wizard powers: I have no real clue, yet. Maybe miss effects will become a controller shtick? We'll see.However, none of the classes suddenly had a different number of skills or HP allotment (among others, ranger + bard in 3.5), there were no changes to the vulnerability mechanics any more than they already changed with the rest of the updates (compared to DR changes in 3.5), etc. The difference may be subtle to some, but I believe it's there. And seriously, it can be argued that with the constant stream of updates/errata, 4.5 has come and gone, along with 4.1, 4.2,... since every rules update ever has changed some aspect of the game. Comparing the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 to Essentials makes no sense, either way: either the updates don't count as enough of a revision to warrant this comparison, but then Essentials doesn't either, since it changes no more core mechanics than the updates did; or the updates already did enough to warrant this comparison, in which case the question is: why all the noise over the changes in Essentials?</blockquote>

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