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This is a significant reason why the Tier Analysis of classes may be right in some narrow academic sense, but it is very often unimportant at the actual gaming table. Most Players want to have fun, not achieve some optimized rating based on someone's rubric found on a forum. So Fightery...

There was mechanical differentiation. M-a-g-i-c. I-t-e-m-s. The DM customized your character to his liking, and you were grateful. That sounds harsh. Over time, I am finding greater and greater affection for 1e. It is not that I have any particular interest in playing or DMing that game...

Not nasssty optimizzzzation. No. Not that, my precioussss. I am surprised how eager some seem to dance around the word "optimization", with the implied presumption the word were a pejorative. It is as if some editions rise above by the blessing of "good play", "smart play", "making the best...

I hold that we should start with strong rules of thumb that cordon off expertise. I put a number of my thoughts in a previous thread. What I would like to see a strong vision, based on the "Ghostbusters Test", i.e. Who Ya Gonna Call? Who ya gonna call when facing a demon infestation...

Lots of great points made in this thread. Fundamentally magic lacks any coherent vision. No vision of what it is good or bad at. No vision of professional specialization should look like, because to be a real wizard is to specialized in doing absolutely every well, apparently. In mythology...

I am extremely skeptical that 1e or 2e were significantly easier in that regard. The main difference is one of expectations. Non-newbie DM knew that such things were error prone, and had no expectation that the something like a magic CR rating could be counted on as being useful. Hey, one...

To a degree, that is inevitable. If I were running an Arthurian Campaign, would we complain that "Chivalric Knight" background seems pretty darn useful? If the campaign is strongly focused, there will be an onus on the DM to help create non-lousy options that provide differentiation. Sure...

This is where it is useful for Bloodied to (usually) be an overt sign. If your party hits it fives times and it isn't yet Bloodied, well, you know you might be in trouble.

Yup. I remember watching the preview for Dude, Where Is My Car? and rather enjoying it. Of course, I am pretty certain I saw every scene I would consider worth watching within that 90 seconds. But the preview did not stink.

For some reason, the extreme consistency of mechanics was a turn off for me. Maybe it made sense to start there in core, but it seemed that there was room to experiment with other mixes of resources than having but One AEDU Availability Schedule To Rule Them All.

The Healing Paradox exists because it is a Sacred Cow to not add any complexity to the Hit Point system. It is an easily solvable problem as game design issues go. But it is an impossible problem to solve to everyone's satisfaction at zero cost. There were once many D&D-like systems that had...

Hey! Some moderator moderate this immoderate moderator, right now. Obviously, I did not mind dying for Ridley (who would?), but my death was really the elf's fault for dissuading the dwarf from coming in and lending a hand. Never trust the folk with the pointy ears.

<sigh> The movie franchise has gone down hill from such a promising start. :cool:

Your points have merit and I think there should be some kind of Finesse Fighter in the game, but Dex is already over-modeled. In the well-meaning race to simplicity, it is has been abstracted away the fact that combat is a full contact sport. Those who have physical Str and know how to use...

There is an important break from the past: now most every spell is potentially highly useful against (almost) any opponent, even low level spells. The big guys can be beaten down. Instead of being 100% or 0% useful, we have spells like Sleep that are 100% useful against these weak targets...

And that runs smack into Mr. "I hit hard and takes lots of hits" (the Barbarian). At least in 3e, the Fighter's ceiling on simple damage was held down by the Barbarian class. The Simple Fighter is possible, but it is going to be something like the Slayer (consistent damage) or the Tank (heavy...

Yes, the Fighter needs some breadth and schticks. The problem with "the best at fighting" is it does not work as a goal. From a design perspective, you cannot have your Paladin or Ranger choose their ground for a fair fight and get their arse kicked by the NPC Fighter every time. These leads...

That is tough one. BW's engine is built around dramatic and narrative logic, so failures can simply be plot detours. By its nature, one is likely to love it or hate because it is strongly geared towards specific styles of roleplaying. D&D is at it core a war game with enough mechanical...

The "I DM a living world" argument cuts both ways. The amount of bloodletting even a lazy party typically dishes out every day is so huge that it is not necessarily sensible for the survivors to do much about it (otherwise than just flee for the hills). Replacement monsters would not be...

I would argue that is a side effect of overmodeling Dex -- these peculiarities are bandaids to keep the problem under control, not the underlying problem.