Do you think it would have worked better if you'd renamed "Sly Flourish" something like "Sneaky Stab" - and/or made it an MBA? Because Sly Flourish basically is the rogue's standard attack power if they have it.
I would have do Sly Flourish in one of two ways. First of all, though, I would automatically let characters with substitute Dexterity for Strength when using light blades. Then I would:
(a) Let the rogue add his Charisma modifier to all his attacks. (Or half his Charisma modifier, if that is too powerful.)
(b) Reformat the power so the text it says something along the lines of, "Make a melee attack with a light blade. If your attack hits, you do additional damage equal to your Charisma bonus.)
I don't think an average new or casual gamer wants to spend a lot of time "mastering" the rules of a game, especially when new to the game. The new and casual gamers I see at the club at school are interested in D&D, and want to sit, listen to a brief explanation, and begin playing.
This is the problem with the very rules-heavy nature of 3e/4e. Most people aren't that interested in crunching the numbers the way people who discuss RPGs on the Internet are. There's a few hardcore gamers out there, but I think the majority of people are satisfied with a fighter whose main schtick is an attack roll.
I'll give an example (and since I'm finally back to gaming after a long hiatus, I'll be giving a lot of these).
I played SWSE (Star Wars Saga Edition) with a group of guys last night. Now, these guys are very beer-and-pretzel kind of gamers. They're mostly interested in killing droids and taking their loot. Now, SWSE doesn't offer much in the game of "special attacks" for these guys. The typical combat round involves firing a blaster or tossing a hand grenade (though there are a few more options for Jedi and some weapons offer special attacks like autofire). We were assaulting a droid factor. My character is a noble. He's bossy and has a handful of skills at his disposal, but his combat options are limited. Throughout the entire night, I resorted to a "basic attack" with my blaster. Everyone else did the same thing, and our weapons were fairly similar (most did 3d6 or 3d8 damage).
Despite this, we all had a great time. Nobody complained about our attacks being "boring" or "samey."
Accepting what you say as true then I don't care to accommodate the "least-common-denominator" in the least bit. If this is true then I absolutely (and implacably) hold that this is a matter of industry and will rather than genetic deficiency. We do not have a gigantic horde of genetically inferior fools walking amongst us. We very likely have a large swath of lazy (intellectually and otherwise) people amongst us as laziness, lack of industry and willingness to get away with whatever the greater cultural body lets you get away with is as fundamental to human primal programming as breathing. I'm not interesting in incentivizing or catering to poor behavior. If you cannot put forth the absurdly minimal, requisite mental exertion to learn a transparent and intuitive rule-set (that you are pro-actively, willfully, investing in as a leisure pursuit and therefore acknowledging that it is in some way important to you and further acknowledging that you are accepting the social accord of courtesy toward the others who are investing their own time), then I have no interest in being "inclusive" of your interests (and thus enabling that sort of behavior and contributing to the feedback). To be honest, I find the entitled expectations of the lazy and the parasitic to be repugnant (Full disclosure: I have a lot of close personal experience with this, and the emotional baggage that comes with it, as a former sibling, now dead from suicide after birthing 3 children and contributing nothing but misery to their lives, held me and my family hostage for 30 + years with this exact modus operandi. Beyond that, I see it at my work and other areas of my life regularly. Its absolutely destructive to the host body and punishes the "good" and "responsible" and "duty-bound".).
There is no such thing as being "unable" to learn the concept of At-wills given the ridiculously low-bar of intellectual requirement for the mechanic. "Unwilling?" Ok. I'll accept that as the explanation. However, I won't accept that willful, poor behavior as the demographic that should be primarily catered to in the design of anything (game design or other).
I agree with most of your eugenics.txt rant, but I'd rather play with stupid people than not play at all.
