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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9640852" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Okay, then. I, on the other hand, can only speak to my experience of having actually played through 1e for years, because I am, sadly, old as dirt.Of course choices and consequences matter. In fact, they matter more.In 1e, we all rolled for ability scores, with consequences that lasted throughout the entire life of that character. No choice there.In 5e, my group uses point buy or standard array: they choose where they want their strength and weaknesses, accepting the inevitable consequences. Of course, various options for creating characters through random dice rolls also exist for groups that choose that method. So...more choice, not less.As an example, my monk chose intelligence, strength and charisma as dump stats, with the consequence that they are crap at things like investigation, persuasion, etc.I chose human as their species because A) role-play reasons, and B) it gave access to a particular starting feat that I wanted (consequences).She doesn't have access to any magic at all, as a consequence of my choice to make her a monk.What has changed is more player control over how we want to balance choices and consequences. Players have far more control over how they want to build their characters in 5e...which is a good thing. More choices, not less. What are gone are many consequences that reflect the game designer's choices rather than your own.For example, the game doesn't tell you that if you want to play as a dwarf, you cannot be a wizard because Gary Gygax didn't think those things went together. However, if you as a player decide that your dwarf won't be a wizard because those two things don't go together, you are free to do that! Or your DM can build out a game world where dwarves can't be wizards, and let the players know in advance. More choices, not less!...at the consequence of giving up a different feat or ability score increase that would have helped in other ways. For example, when my monk hit level 4, I chose to increase her dexterity because it would shore up her core class features, as a consequence of which I couldn't take any of those cool feats. It's a trade off. Choices=consequences. There are now far more choices and consequences during character progression than in 1e, in which there were very few beyond spell and equipment selection.Uh-oh, "hurt a player's feelings." I think we all know where you are coming from now, but let's look at your statement for its veracity. Which spells, exactly, in 1e were dangerous to the caster? Which ones in 5e? In general, D&D has never been a game in which spell casting was particularly dangerous to the caster unless you choose to blow yourself up with a fireball or something.As for denying the player the "thrill of combat for more than a round or two," this can and still does happen in 5e; in fact, in my very last game at school (Thursday) two of the players had their characters possessed in the first round and lost control of them for virtually the entire battle, until their own party beat them unconscious. However, as a rule we probably don't want a lot of situations where players don't get to play their characters because games should be fun. Passively sitting there is not, as a rule, as fun as getting to participate and make choices that have consequences. I think that was your implicit priority?D&D remains a game about niche protection, and your consequences argument, as I have shown, is fallacious. I'm pretty sure that players still experiment with different classes and tactical approaches. See [USER=7030563]@ECMO3[/USER] for lots of examples - they specialize in bespoke builds and inventive tactics.</blockquote>

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