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Well, see, that's my point. I'm not complaining about such players or GMs. I'm just saying they exist, and hence the GM whimsy.

My players did not feel the same way about 5e, but then I generally ignored the given CR/encounter rules. I don't think they're very good, and they really didn't work well with our schedule. Even so, difficulty is still not the same as deadliness, because "I kill everything" isn't necessarily...

Your particular whimsy meant their "ingenious" ways to avoid a fight were acceptable. GMs will not always agree on the realism or acceptability of any given plan, nor will they adjudicate them the same way...some calling for a roll here or there where others would not. "Gotcha" monsters...

That doesn't really get you out of it. Whatever plan you make to avoid combat is up to the DM's whimsy. He's the one that decides how the world (and hence your plan) works. There are not nearly enough mechanics to avoid it. So, if you try your clever scheme, and the DM doesn't like it....you're...

AFAICT, any edition is only as "hard" as the DM makes it. Success or failure in the early editions had little to do with "hard" or "easy" and more to do with random or whimsy, IME. Random, in this sense, means everything from a missed save, bad HP rolls, or bad stat rolls. Whimsy means whether...

I'd go even simpler....just eyeball it for the kind of game you want. If you want superheroic jumps to be more common, lower the DCs. AFAICT, there isn't anything in the rules that says that X ft = Y DC. * I don't find that detailing something like the exact width of a chasm or whatever...

For me, least to most: Basic * 5e - 3e - 2e - 4e - 1e *I find most Basic editions simple in structure, but often with large gaps or weird quirks like indoor/outdoor measurement. So Basic and 5e kinda float around each other in different ways, in my head. 4e to me is odd because it looks...

I wasn't really sure how to vote in the poll. I agree that they are "same-y", but I do think that they should have all been subclasses of magic-user. So...I dunno.

I agree with the cancelled stuff being just a social thing....there's a similar phenomenon with "free speech" and "censorship" where, oddly, right wingers who (in the US at least) espouse all manner of deregulation, but then complain when they are de-platformed by private corporations or...

I would make two points in response to this: 1) I think that has more to do with D&D discouraging the players from breaking off combat through its combat mechanical oddities. Even in some of the earlier rules, there were popular "parting shot" or "free swing" variants for disengaging. And...

The Sha'ir was like a slow, versatile Warlock. He had a little gen familiar that would fetch him spells (even clerical spells) from somewhere out there in the multiverse. But it took some amount of time. I can't recall if he was a little thief-y as well, or if my players were multiclass. He...

I lean similarly....except that the obvious division should be Fighters, Magic-Users, and Thieves. Choose your weapons, ser! ....I kid, I kid.... ....a little.

Sha'irs (2e Al-Qadim) might argue against that point. Even as a kit, they broke a lot of the "wizard" mold.

Well...that's if you want to keep all the "moving parts". Personally, I could do with a few less by a fair sight. I like 5e overall, but I find a lot of the different specialized fiddly bits to be really a little too picayune. I could really be happy with a thinner base "Magic User" class with...

It uses similar artwork/styles and it takes off big-time inspiring a lot of cosplay.....:eek:

I was about to say something similar to this. In contrast to the chorus of "mechanics can't do it". You need mechanics to encourage it. The big carrot for players tends to be XP. So, you need to build an XP system that rewards going through a character arc of some sort. I think The Shadow of...

I believe you are correct, that sounds right to me.

Well, counting the "hits" is the way WoD does it. There is also the bizarre way that Whispering Vault (and some kind of WWII supers game that I forget the title of) did it (which involved finding the total of the most matching dice vs difficulty, IIRC), Cortex Plus (Marvel Heroic, Firefly...

Sure, although I'm not sure I call something like GURPS a dice pool. I guess it technically, is, though.

I've been mulling over the idea of making combat rolls a combined attack/defense like Dungeon World (as @vincegetorix) mentioned upthread. However, I think I would add a bit from Blades in the Dark. That is, you have three scales Advantage(Controlled), Risky, Disadvantage(Desperate). That way...