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L&L: Putting the Vance in Vancian
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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 5833853" data-attributes="member: 694"><p>Yeah... no. If the core of the game just involves "baked in" feats and skills, but those things are still present "behind the curtain," then something has gone wrong. The core of the D&D experience, the simplest possible expressions of the game -- OD&D, D&D Basic, AD&D (especially 2e) with most of the fiddly options ignored -- is *not* a game about mechanically customized characters, or about characters built up with lego-bricks of abilities. And bonding the legos together with rubber cement doesn't change what the build is... uh... built from. (Bad analogy is bad. Give me a break, it's 2AM in my time zone and I'm on very little sleep right now.)</p><p></p><p>The point is, in a proper core to D&D, yes Fred the Fighter and Joe the Fighter should be pretty close to mechanically identical (assuming the same level and ability scores). How that's achieved is less important than the fact that it gets done, but "baked in" feats would only be on the marginal fringes of acceptable for those of us who prefer simpler, older expressions of the game where the differences between characters of the same class are entirely role-played and non-mechanical. We don't want to have to even deal with possibility that a player might want to customize something. As in:</p><p></p><p>PLAYER: "Can't I just swap out this...?"</p><p>DM: "Nope. The 'feats' module isn't being used in this campaign."</p><p></p><p>^</p><p>(This is not irony or satire. This is really what I want to be able to do with 5e. But, crap, if I ever actually have an exchange like this with one of my players, it means that that player is more interested in "building" a character than role-playing one, and I don't need to deal with that kind of metagame, immerson-breaking bad mojo at my table.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 5833853, member: 694"] Yeah... no. If the core of the game just involves "baked in" feats and skills, but those things are still present "behind the curtain," then something has gone wrong. The core of the D&D experience, the simplest possible expressions of the game -- OD&D, D&D Basic, AD&D (especially 2e) with most of the fiddly options ignored -- is *not* a game about mechanically customized characters, or about characters built up with lego-bricks of abilities. And bonding the legos together with rubber cement doesn't change what the build is... uh... built from. (Bad analogy is bad. Give me a break, it's 2AM in my time zone and I'm on very little sleep right now.) The point is, in a proper core to D&D, yes Fred the Fighter and Joe the Fighter should be pretty close to mechanically identical (assuming the same level and ability scores). How that's achieved is less important than the fact that it gets done, but "baked in" feats would only be on the marginal fringes of acceptable for those of us who prefer simpler, older expressions of the game where the differences between characters of the same class are entirely role-played and non-mechanical. We don't want to have to even deal with possibility that a player might want to customize something. As in: PLAYER: "Can't I just swap out this...?" DM: "Nope. The 'feats' module isn't being used in this campaign." ^ (This is not irony or satire. This is really what I want to be able to do with 5e. But, crap, if I ever actually have an exchange like this with one of my players, it means that that player is more interested in "building" a character than role-playing one, and I don't need to deal with that kind of metagame, immerson-breaking bad mojo at my table.) [/QUOTE]
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