Quote Originally Posted by Yukito01 View Post
So, martial classes were originally designed to be without dailies? How were they balanced then?
At the start of 4E, all classes had dailies. When Wizards introduced the "Heroes of The Forgotten Kingdoms," "Heroes of the Fallen Lands," and "Heroes of Shadow" books, they created the 4E Essentials line, which introduced subclasses with different power progressions. Broadly and conceptually speaking, the intent is that the Essentials classes have more reliable damage/effect mechanics, but have fewer options so it is a "higher floor, lower ceiling" situation. In execution... Thaaat's a can of worms.

Looks like Season 3 was where they started using Essentials-line subclasses. The "D&D Encounters" program was intended to get people buying books (or paying subscriptions, details), so they encouraged people to get the newest books as they came out if they wanted to keep playing other games with their characters. There wasn't really to strong of an authority to enforce that idea, but that's why you see only Essentials classes after that point, and why some of them don't have dailies starting then. I can confirm that this is what the official pre-generated character sheets looked like.

At the time, Wizards kind of wanted to have their caek whilst also having eaten it, so they insisted that Essentials classes (and, well, the entirety of Essentials) should merge well into existing design and would not replace the original classes, they all should play fine together. It's a matter of taste and what individual peoples preferences are if that insistence turns out true, but at level 1? You're probably safe if you want to mix old and new classes.