I'm not sure I agree that 3/4e had classes that were all fun to play
And I’m sure I don’t agree with that thing I never said.
instead, what you had was a bunch of barbarian concepts that were pretty boring/bog-standard, and a few who were insanely fun for the right kind of player because they broke the game. Same with every other class, only the ratio of bog-standard to broken builds changes by class.
I disagree. There were all sorts of interesting ways to play some classes, some of which did break the game and in so doing made them not fun. Other classes, like the barbarian, were just boring to play no matter what. 5e is overall an improvement over that, but still a little lacking.
Except if they only change one, they don't really commit to their design goal, because both changes support it. Specifically, both changes reduce the amount of complexity in the game, which would otherwise focus player and DM attention on the mechanics of the game rather than the other elements that make the game, as an RPG, distinct from other kinds of tabletop games.
Reducing complexity isn’t the reason Mearls stated for the changes, so I don’t see your point here.
I mean, I was a fan of 4E, but I know a lot of people who basically got bored with low-level 4E play not because it was a bad system, but because it was pretty much the same game mechanically they'd just played a couple of nights before when they played Arkham Horror or Touch of Evil or Last Night on Earth.
I really, really don’t care about your opinions of 4e. I’m here to talk about 5e.
If you try to reduce the rules overhead, but leave in the high amount of mechanical complexity, then what you have is a game that tries to pull you in two different directions -- do you focus on the simplicity and free-wheeling aspect of the game, or do you dive into the mechanical complexity and ultimately find the unbalancing factors there (which become unbalancing much more rapidly given that the rest of the game system isn't trying to hold those factors in check anymore). Ultimately, the mechanical complexity will 'win' in most games, because, as noted many times previously, optimization as a play style drives out other play styles.
The designers had to do both, or they had to admit that their stated design goal wasn't their real design goal.
Reducing rules overhead was not their stated design goal, so I’m not sure what tree you’re barking up.
But why? There are already literally countless ways your 1st level rogue can be different from my 1st level rogue. Mine could be a street urchin while yours is a bored noblewoman looking for excitement. Mine could be looking for a big money score while yours sees wealth as people or organizations rather than money. Mine could have a flaw where he claims not to want to be a hero, but can't help throwing his hat in when needed, even if there's no money in it, while yours can be as brittle as a dry bone when presented with unpleasant choices. The ways to distinguish your rogue from mine are unlimited within the context of a role-playing game; that both characters get Sneak Attack at first level doesn't invalidate this, and arguably having a rogue option that got some ability other than Sneak Attack that you could take at first level wouldn't necessarily make our rogues any more distinguishable as characters, just as game pieces.
Thats all great, but it’s a game too. I’m glad we can make our characters’ narrative as different as we like, but it would be nice if our characters could also
do different things as a result of those narrative differences. If the
game actually demonstrated differences in the story.
I fundamentally disagree.
K.
Rather than spend yet another post trying to explain this, I'll just
point you at a very well-written essay (from back before 4e even came out) that makes the salient point:
"The 'character' must make choices based on personal motivations rather than strategic or tactical advantage. This is the 'My Character Wouldn't Do That' factor. The correct move in chess may be Queen's Pawn to Pawn 4, but if the King decides, 'I want to protect my Queen more than I want to protect my Bishop, even though the smart move is to protect my Bishop,' then we have a roleplaying game."
Nothing about having more choices for how to build your character prevents making choices according to your character’s personality as opposed to tactical reasons. Also, one does not have to make poor tactical decisions to roleplay.
No, it doesn't. What it does is means that the DM now must serve the role of maintaining balance that previously was presumed to be the designer's role -- in that sense, had the designers gone this route, I'd agree that you could call them 'lazy' for making up a game with a ton of mechanical complexity and then, when DMs asked for help balancing the options, just shrugging their shoulders and saying, 'nope, that's your problem."
See, I’d prefer they developed a game with a higher degree of mechanical depth than 5e, but still made low complexity a priority, and allowed the DM the flexibility to make rulings according to the needs of their table, instead of trying to write the rules to make their role as minor as possible.
You're missing the bigger picture -- both parts of the philosophy implicated the same goal, reducing mechanical complexity and rules overhead in order to get the game closer to a goal of supporting different styles of play.
No, I understand that both changes served the same goal, I just don’t think both were necessary to accomplish that goal to a satisfactory degree.
And while I don't necessarily think you're a bad person just because you're a fan of power gaming, I will point out that Mearls himself starts the thread by effectively saying the lesson of 3/4e is basically, 'if you design a game for jerks, expect to have to deal with jerks'. I'm involved in an infrequent Pathfinder game, and my feeling at the end of each session is always that the biggest problem with Pathfinder as an RPG system are the people who really like Pathfinder as an RPG system.
I never said I was a fan of powergaming. I said I don’t think powergaming is a bad thing. What I’m a fan of is making decisions, for both tactical and roleplay reasons.
My guess is that all of your 5e characters feel the same because they are all the same: the "my character is the best in the world at what he/she/it does" character.
You’d guess wrong. Kindly don’t assume such things about my play preferences.
I find it curious to consider playing endless variations of the same character as a role-playing game, just as I'd find it curious to see someone lauded as a 'great actor' when he only ever portrays one role. Adding more mechanical complexity wouldn't actually make a better game; it would just allow you to distract yourself for a bit longer before realizing you're just playing the same character, over and over, in a glorified board game.
If that's what you want to do, cool -- as noted by other posters, there's a ton of third-party material to let you do just that. Just don't cram it into the 'core game' where I as a DM have to deal with it, because running a game where I'm dealing with the characters' mechanical strengths and flaws is way less interesting to me than one where I'm dealing with their personality strengths and flaws.
I don’t like playing the same (or same kind of) character over and over though. I like playing many different characters. I like playing them in many different ways. And I like being able to express those differences through both story and mechanics. If you want to insult my play style, the angle you should go for is not power gamer but special snowflake. I like to express my creativity by playing the most unique, different characters I can, and I want the difference to be both in how I narrate my actions and in how my characters behave mechanically.
