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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7044212" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm bubbling this to the top, because it's exactly what I see Essentials as having done, and I'm talking about ways it could have avoided doing so.  Essentials-only punishes a player for wanting to play a fighter or rogue. Essentials-only punishes a player for wanting a smaller or simpler set of choices at chargen/level-up, and in play.In part, it does so because it conflates the two. Think about the rogue concept, for a moment - a cunning opportunist, an expert in multiple skills, who tricks and outmaneuvers enemies to get it lethal surprise attacks.  Is that a /simple/ concept?  I mean, compared to "I can bast stuff with fire," for instance.  No.  But D&D had this pervasive stereotype that interesting options came only with magic, and when it defied that stereotype, and reined in magic while building up martial options, expectations weren't met.    The rogue isn't.  The Psion and Ardent aren't, but a Telekinetic or Pyrokinetic (shades of the elementalist, there) could be.  Cleric isn't a simple concept, it's not even an intuitive genre concept, but a weird D&Dism.  But a healer could be (though, like the Pacifist cleric, could be hard to make workable and worthwhile).  0 Hadn't thought of that.  Hm. That seems to contradict the whole point you made before about pre-attack decisions being the critical issue, speaking of which... It doesn't add decision points ahead of making an attack, and the overhead is ticking off one to three uses of a daily that you can decide to use on a miss.  You don't even have to choose between it and the encounter power attack that's available on a hit.  That seems to fit the desired sort of simplicity you laid out, minimizing multiple-option decision points and eliminating analysis paralysis.  And the game is back to being consistent, so practical to balance over a wider range and easier for new players to learn - and combined with similar simplified pre-builds in each source, the desire for a simpler decision tree at chargen no longer makes you a second-class citizen.Another thing I think might have worked better in Essentials would have been to map utilities to skill choices.  So, you choose a skill, and your utilities (skill powers, hopefully with some out-of-combat utility) just map to that.  Stances, I suppose, would be another option or pre-built utility choices, or at-will utilities like pass-forward, lest uses need to be ticked off again, maybe?</blockquote>

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