Man, you cannot force people to accept a playstyle that doesn't work for them. And "Wizards are the BEST EVAR" is as valid a playstyle as "Wizards are not the best ever." It's fun for some groups. Not my groups, but my preferences don't matter at tables I'm not sitting at, and I really don't care what those tables play like. 13 year olds the world over will use deity stats as excuses to kill Thor. Not my problem. Hope they have fun.
That's not what I'm saying at all. If people want that kind of game - more power to them. My point is that,
how the options to achieve both this style of game, and also the one I prefer, are presented will determine the
default culture around the table. If the game presumes that you will use a process-sim ruleset as default (i.e. pushing a giant has huge penalties) and tells you "ignore this if you like" - that sets a certain tone for interpreting the rules of the game, just as setting an effect-based approach as the default and telling you "here are some options you can use to make it more realistic" sets a different tone. That presentation will define the culture of the typical table.
That's all I'm saying. It will have a great impact on how the game is played at a majority of tables. I have no problem with a wide variety of approaches to D&D, nor how others play for the most part, but I don't want the default presentation of the game to favour one approach over the other. I think that would be a mistake, and so far, it looks like it's doing so, and not the approach I prefer. That bothers me.
I think an essential part of running D&D, if you're kind of old hat, is establishing how your table runs. It's how DMs leave their own mark on their players' experiences. It's an AWESOME feature of the game, that each group has its own dynamic. The best thing the rules can do is get the hell out of the way of that.
I agree, and why I think that the rules will have to be carefully written so as not to present one set as a kind of "preferred" way of doing things. That will turn me off the game in a big way. Especially where it concerns finding a game or group whose style I enjoy. Not everyone lives in a hugely populated area, so choices can be limited for a lot of gamers. Especially if they don't like online play. Even so, I've found online games tend to gravitate towards whichever approach the rules suggest as "default" so getting this right (read: as neutral as possible) is even more critical to PbP gamers.
Ok, I see...
But 3e was designed in such a way that in fact many times supposed the group was using all the rules. There were lots and lots of character and monsters abilities that directly related to the action economy, to hard-coded conditions, weapon classifications, or e.g. to attacks of opportunities, flanking etc. Lots of "IF <condition> THEN <ability>" where the <condition> is very clearly defined, and if you started to ignore some of that stuff, suddenly many feats or spells or special abilities had to be removed from the game as well. 3.5 made it even worse because it added a couple of more actions types. I am not familiar with 4e, but I thought it was quite the same, just as codified. I don't think any of these editions allowed to easily ignore a list of 6-8 different actions types and just go... 5e seems much better than the previous 2 editions with regard to these, although it's still going to have IF-THEN abilities (most of which at the moment seem to gravitate around the (dis)advantaged condition).
I'm not 100% clear about the point you are trying to make here, but if I read it right I can answer you by saying that yes, 4e is similar in that there are a lot of clearly defined conditions and situations. However, it has little to do with action types and ignoring them - it is the approach to things that differs. In 3.x, the process of how you do something is given more weight than the end result, whereas in 4th, the result is important and how you arrive there is a matter to be worked out based on keywords and what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] calls "fictional positioning." This is why, for example, you don't see any lists of penalties for trying to bull rush a giant based on your relative size, while in 3.x you do. 4e cares about the effect, about what
happens; you make your attack vs Fortitude of your target, and if you succeed, you shove your target. 3.x cares about modelling the particulars of what's
happening; you make your attack, adjust for relative size, strength, take an OA just for trying (unless you took a feat), then if you don't get clobbered and you still overcome your target with all the modifiers, you move the target.
The distinction is huge, and for me and many like-minded gamers, crucial to my enjoyment of the game.
Also for simulationist reasons there were rules for such thing as weather, although most of the times these were indeed optional. In our case we usually just handled everything with default circumstance bonuses, which was really a precursor of the (dis)advantage mechanic.
Weather mechanics and other things like that are completely irrelevant to the discussion. It has very little to do with action resolution. I can easily (and sometimes do) import the weather tables for use from the old Wilderness Survival Guide (1e). As to circumstance bonuses, nothing prevents those from being handed out in any edition. I sometimes use them for good or bad descriptors that a player gives.
But maybe you're referring to something else, if you think 3e was more simulationist than 4e... maybe the average intricacy of every spell, special ability, feat etc. was significantly higher than in 4e?
Yes, this is a part of it, and obviously true. 3.x as a process-sim rules engine, is concerned with lots of modifiers for
how and why things happen, hence the
simulation. 4e moves away from this concept (though is not divorced completely from it), and is more concerned with the
what happens, than how or why - that is generally up to players and DMs to decide for themselves - typically whatever makes the most sense for what is going on in the context of the fiction.
There are lots of discussions about this all over this forum, but I don't think this thread is really the best place to get into it Yet Again; it's already thoroughly derailed as it is.
Standard 5th is not the game you want, and its not even trying to be anything close to what you want. Criticizing it for not being what its not trying to be leads to less interesting conversation (imho). And I don't mean to get personal with this, and maybe you personally, are fine with that direction, and feel 5th isn't the game for you and that's fine. But it seems to be a re-occurring topic in a lot of these threads, and I used comments in your post to address what I see as an on-going, and often irresolvable issue.
The problem seems to be stemming from the fact that the designers are trying to sell 5e as an edition for everyone. If that's not what it's intended to be, that's fine, but then they need to be up front about that.
I get what you want out of your RPG, I think its an interesting way to play the game, but 5th is really trying to emphasize story telling, not tactical combat...
If this is your impression of how 5e is different from 4th, I am very confused. Yes 4e has tactical combat, but it also emphasizes storytelling to a much greater degree than most other editions that I have played. The fact that the game runs so well with a scene-framed approach is testament to this.
WOTC has you covered though, and I really hope they pour a ton of development time into the module that will follow in 4th footsteps. You guy deserve an awesome game dealing with the type of play you want.
Yes, so they keep telling us, but if what we get is just a tactical module, then they will have missed the point by a mile.
