I apologize for my word choice.
My point was that 4e was a very focused system. It did heroic high magic fantasy very well and was excellent for dungeon crawls and many of the classic tropes of the game. But the system grew clunkier when other types of game were attempted. It was not a system for intrigue or stealth alternate solutions other than violence.
Are we talking about D&D or 4e here. Because 4e is literally the only edition of D&D on my shelves (I can't talk about BECMI or oD&D) that provides me with significant support for solutions other than either violence or magic. It does this in several ways.
1: 4e has a genuine non-combat scene and plan resolution mechanic in the core rules (Skill Challenges). So it supports non-combat play in a way no other edition does. OK, so they had to errata the thing because some idiot couldn't do probability in the original version.
2: 4e characters are generally broadly competent. This is a specific flaw of 3.X however - and AD&D (particularly 1e) characters are also broadly competent as they don't have things they can't do defined by a skill system.
3: We don't have magic as The Solution to most problems - or emergent gamechanging strategies like scry-and-fry. We don't have much in the way of intrigue-wrecking abilities like Detect Thoughts in 4e. And the out of combat gamechanging magic has an actual cost rather than merely uses up a spell slot which a mid level caster has plenty of and everyone refreshes.
While by no means impossible, it didn't encourage other types of game play.
Except where it did. Like skill challenges. It provided actual mechanical support in the form of scene and plan framing and resolving mechanics, and abilities that were useful without being "I win" buttons. The 3.X rogue would give his right arm to be as competent outside combat as the 4e rogue - not only are they more skilled in general, they also have utility powers which can give them a level of focus and additional ability the 3.X rogue can never touch (that said, at level 10, the 3.X rogue can take skill mastery and avoid low rolls). Hell, it's entirely possible to design a 4e (human) fighter with enough skills at first level to make a 3.X rogue jealous. And the rogues don't find their abilities getting trumped by the wizard in the same way.
(For the design: human fighter, background to add perception as class skill, and the Twilight Adept and Sneak of Shadows feats - gives you training in Stealth, Thievery, Perception, Athletics, Intimidate, and Streetwise. In 3.X terms that's Hide, Move Silently, Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Open Lock, Spot, Listen, Search, Climb, Jump, Swim, Intimidate, Gather Information, Knowledge (Local)).
So yeah, tell me how 4e doesn't support an intrigue or stealth game - when it does it for skill based characters better than any other edition of D&D there has ever been both from the DM's side (skill challenges) and from the skill based PC's side (only Rogues getting such skills pre-3e). If 4e weren't this flexible it wouldn't be my D&D of choice.
Now, there are two things 4e doesn't support - grit and overwhelming PC magic. Your characters
will be larger than life. And it's hard work to make a mage tricksy enough that you retire him to prevent the DM tearing his hair out (I've done it in 4th but tend to stay away from wizards in previous editions).
So don't tell me stealth can't be done with 4th when I have run an entire stealth and asymmetric warfare based arc for my party and been supported in it by the rules in a way no other edition of D&D would come close to. No skill challenges, stealth skills locked up tighter, a no-caster party. And don't tell me that intrigue can't be done in 4th when I've done that too - and would again say that 4e is better suited to intrigue than any other edition of D&D I've either run or played.
And on a sidenote, 4e isn't actually good for dungeon crawls - combat moves too slowly. It's superb for large, meaningful battles - and can do the single-monster-gank as well as anything. But for orc guarding pie fights, don't bother. It just slows the pace to a crawl. That they tried to present dungeoncrawls in the initial modules (such as Keep on the Shadowfell) was a huge mistake (Keep was in general).
It kinda sucks and some outrage is understandable and expected, and many will just turn their backs on 5e. Comprimise and sharing is too hard.
If 5e were presenting just about anything I couldn't do in 4e except the ability to eliminate dozens of kobolds with a single spell several times per day for the wizard there might be a point. But the key to any game is in the execution.
That said, there's still time to improve. 4e wasn't perfect out of the box - and it even took three years before there was a decent illusionist. I just don't see what playstyles it facilitates better than 4e. The hit points in the playtest made D&D Next PCs relatively tougher than 4e PCs - which means you aren't getting away from heroic fantasy in the slightest.
Using that terminology kind of undermines your point.
That kind of terminology was the literal title of one of the linked posts in the comment I was replying to.
There's a target market and a vision, I think. The vision is AD&D 2e, and the target market is people who played it, and earlier versions.
It makes some sense: the edition war has soured the fans of 3.5/Pathfinder and 4e, so they aren't as good a market anymore; older versions of D&D /were/ the most popular in terms of sheer volume of units sold, so there's a proven demographic out there who did buy a lot of D&D at some point, all you have to do is push the right buttons to get them to do it again, and you can get that lightning to strike twice. Fads of any sort tend to come back when the kids that were into them reach a certain age, and the time to tap that enduring marketing phenomenon with regards to the D&D fad of the 80s is now.
That ... makes a little sense. Thank you.
