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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5258816" data-attributes="member: 996">Yep. That's how 4e cracked the problem of class imbalance that had plagued D&D from it's inception.  No longer did one class only get to shine when others sucked, everyone gets to have fun.  No longer does the DM have to finagle his story around to challenge and provide spotlight time to the wildly different talents of the unlimitted-use-abilities of the damage-grinding fighter or skill-heavy rogue vs the one-shot uberpower of spells and whacky brokenness of psionics.Of course, while all classes face nearly-identical resource-management isuses (and are thus much, much easier to balance against eachother), they still do differ greatly in 'fluff,' and each role is quite distinct.  A fighter plays nothing like a rogue, even though they're both martial and both have the same number and useability of powers.  A fighter played like a rogue will be ineffective, a rogue played like a fighter will be ineffective, briedly, before he dies.  Wizards and Invokers play pretty similary, but Warlords and Clerics really don't.  If you can get past the universality of general mechanics like power progression and keywords, the classes become quite distinct in feel.  If you can't, then, yeah, Thunderwave and Tide of Iron will seem frustratingly similar to you.When people used to whine endlessly about class balance if 'Fighter SUX' threads and CoDzilla rants, I'd point out that it could all be fixed - it just wouldn't really be D&D anymore.  I believe 4e proved my point.  4e has achieved class balance, and made the DM's task much easier.  It's done so with a bit of elegance and a bit of kludginess, but it hasn't been able to hold onto quite all of the D&D feel.  Far more than I expected, but not enough for everyone.I'm afraid Essentials may be trying to get some of that back, by again giving us classes that feel different on a mechanical level - and, as a consequence, cannot be balanced with eachother save through heroic effort on the part of the DM.</blockquote>

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