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But do they represent exact things or do they represent approximate things and roundings? Do people actually "level up" at once or is it a more gradual process that's just rounded to the nearest level?

This is a distinction I don't think is appreciated enough; the one between rules as physics engine and rules as user interface to a fictional character in a fictional world. I prefer the latter but both are common.

Not only were they expected to be - but they were wargamers and that was considered part of skilled play. It was a goal of play.

I'm curious who says that worldbuilding belongs exclusively to the players? Because I have literally never seen anyone say that the GM is not allowed to worldbuild or introduce NPCs with backgrounds they have created. I'd therefore be very curious to read any of these threads you cite. I can...

And the Stanford Prison Experiment is extremely relevant with respect to older versions of D&D because BT being TOLD to strip the class abilities the game TOLD the DMs to be jerks. And yes not every viking hat DM is a jerk - but only about a third of the Stanford guards were abusive. It's not...

And not every piece of guidance is equally good. One of my common critiques of D&D in general and both sandbox and adventure path play in specific is that the characters might as well have been Isikai'd in, all from different universes because, with the DM having absolute control of the setting...

There was both power and a push in the setup of Stanford due to its setup and the closest thing we have to reproducing it (due to ethical concerns), the 2002 BBC Prison Experiment worked to avoid the push and produced very different results.

Look at the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Milgram Experiment. No amount of rules restrictions will make a jerk into a non-jerk, but it only takes a small amount of rules encouragement to fairly consistently turn a non-jerk into a jerk. Meanwhile I can not think of one single thing of value...

Turned into? I thought that that was the premise of the thread - that the warlock didn't just give all agency to the DM

In my experience the biggest problem with the classic Paladin rules was that they told uncertain and new DMs to do bad things. Not to shift the blame but encouraged them to do things they wouldn't have done at all. Round here the folks skew old; this was originally a 3.0 board after all. And...

For starters because Oathbreaker is comically evil. Oath of Vengeance or Oath of Redemption both to me look like much more interesting and nuanced changes to flirt with. Or even the implicit nihilism of Oath Of Glory.

These rules were removed from paladins for a very good reason. Those being that they actively encouraged bad DMing and negative play experiences for the players. And the cleric and paladin actually get their power by levelling up. Warlocks are no different here. Indeed stripping powers the way...

I'd also say that the quality of games is better now than it has ever been. Both the NSR and the post-post-Forge character driven games are frequently awesome in ways that there hasn't been in any previous period. (For that matter the 10s post-Forge and OSR games were often doing things that...

One of my stock "once per campaign" encounters is mid-high level PCs running into a group of bandits. If they're trying they see the bandits before they are spotted - and once the bandits spot them the bandits all decide "Nope. Not messing with that". It's a five or ten minute aside and just...

What makes 5e scaling hella weird is that this isn't the case. The level 20 barbarian might have been at the Conclave of Treachery, waded through the Demonweb Pits to headbut Lolth in the face, and saved Mystra's divinity - but does not mechanically know a single thing more about religion or...

That is a big part of the real underlying complaint, yes. That the DM actions aren't meeting the expectations the player signed up to the game with. The promise of TTRPGs that makes them in many ways superior to e.g. CRPGs despite being far slower and having far worse graphics is that you can...

That and how you did it. A wide area dimensional lock would have been less invasive and less disrespectful of their character's agency and competence than stealing small objects off their persons.

What does "never that big" even mean? Out of potential attacks on one character? A single multi attack encounter power means a multi attack per 3-4 round fight. That's a lot. Character optimization isn't concerned with what ought to be the baseline. It's concerned with what actually is the...

Oh, indeed. I wasn't the one who brought up Expedition 33 however.

Pretty much. The one time I have felt railroaded in a CRPG was Mass Effect 3 - and that's because the Mass Effect franchise's previous installments had lead me to expect much more freedom. CRPGs can't create NPCs on the fly the way TTRPGs can; they are different genres. And we don't say Sandbox...