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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pickles JG" data-source="post: 5952100" data-attributes="member: 61501">I did not get this at all. I liked the reworking of the Cleric & Wizard to give them a stronger flavour but the one dimeinsional martial classes left me cold. I share pemerton's experience of 4e as a player. Different characters feel very different in play. Even 3-4 different rogues played together can feel different (DPS movement tricks status efffects). Some classes fail at this -a bow ranger is pretty much a bow ranger but he feels different from everyone else. OTOH from a DM perspective the game felt scripted to me sometimes. I ran a group from the preview to 16th level over 3 years at one session every month or two. By the end of it  I could predict exactly what each character was going to do in each fight, even though several of the players would spend a while pondering what their actions were going to be. (3/5 PCs were the pregens!) I like 4e a lot but I do not feel encounter powers give options other than superficially. Each encounter power is significantly more potent than an at will so you are going to use it sometime in each fight, the question is when. For very straightforward classes when all the encounter powers just deal more damage in differing amounts it's merely a matter of lining them up. For the more ticksy powers or ones that have areas of effect there is the tactical game of trying to set them up for best effect.I think this is even worse for psionic classes where they seem to have a huge range of options for spending their powerpoints but in practice they have a best option that they spam most of the time.  This applies less to some characters who have more situational powers like rogues who get a lot of damage from sneak attack & they can use encounter powers to do things they ony need occasionally like sliding enemies around. Dailies in different classes work the similalrly. Some classes have one per fight dailies, the best example being Barbarians. They plan to spend one daily rage in every fight regardless of how tough it is. Other classes have Oh ****! dailies that they pull out when the fight is going badly or looks likely to such as massive healing powers. There are also situational daily powers that cover a specific problem you might have but will not be useful in every difficult fight. Many controller powers sit here such as one my rogue had to knock an enemy prone for a while which was for shooting down awkward fliers.Massive damage powers such as Rangers get probably fit in between the first two categories. If things are looking tough then quickly killing a bad guy or two can certainly help & across a party using one or two in each fight can save other resources.  Anyway that's drifting off topic but explains why 4e classes feel different to me.  Back on topic I can live without encounter powers but would certainly not object to having them.  I think I would be happiest if there were some situational abilities you might use every couple of fights when they gave good value ie not just high damage attacks. Ie these would be tricks that work pretty much automatically.</blockquote>

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