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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5375298" data-attributes="member: 82106">I agree that the whole situation where fighters got the short end of the stick on skills makes little sense. Honestly if it had been up to me all classes would get something like 3 skill choices plus one automatic free skill. The rogue would be cramped somewhat by this (they really need Thievery, Stealth, and Acrobatics, which doesn't leave much in the way of options). 4e certainly didn't get everything EXACTLY right. Oddly Essentials entirely failed to address that particular issue, which I find perplexing. I know what you mean about "D&D chess". I'm not sure Essentials really does much to address that. Doing away with ENCOUNTER powers in favor of the Power Attack mechanism helped a bit though. Still, if you are going to be maximally effective you still need the same level of teamwork, flanking, etc. On top of that you now need to think about what stances you're going to be toggling in and out of. I seriously doubt playing at a reasonably high level of tactical competency is any easier for a Knight than it is for an FWT fighter.  I think there are 2 considerations that make these kinds of mechanics less desirable. First of all it is just plain even more complex. Secondly an essentially unreliable ability is just not a desirable feature. If you can't count on being able to do your big move when the time comes then you can't rely on it at all. It basically destroys the justification for having them in the first place, which was to give the player some control of pacing and more significant input to the course of the combat narrative. I guess the third reason would be symmetry. It is just harder to make disparate class mechanics have equivalent utility. Essentials shows that last point isn't an insurmountable objection, though we still have to really see the ultimate effects.Basically I just don't think a fully 4e compatible tweak to the system is ever going to be enough to really address the most serious complaints. 4e combat is ALWAYS going to be highly tactical. There are always going to be a lot of fiddly things to track and pay attention to. The basic design concepts of the game are quite solid, but really making significant improvements isn't going to happen without making fundamentally incompatible changes. So it seems to me Essentials is basically tilting at windmills.</blockquote>

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