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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6078272" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm sure you got a zillion responses to this, but it is not at all clear-cut. After 35 years of playing mostly AD&D I can tell you that there are more interpretations of what is the right thing to do in any given situation than there are people who have played D&D. What I disliked about AD&D's approach was that it is antagonistic. It offers the DM a set of tools to use to rake the paladin player over the coals or just plain punish them. AT BEST you end up with a player playing what they wanted to play in the first place, a lawful good holy warrior. If that's what they were going to do and wanted to do they didn't need all those restrictions in the first place. Otherwise the restrictions are just a source of conflict with the DM since clearly we're talking about some sort of power gamer (why else play a paladin and not want to play your alignment).4e's approach ASSUMES you are going to play what and how you want. This is the answer to Bedrockgames comment too. The WHOLE POINT of the design is not to try to balance via punishment, which always fails one way or the other. Either the player isn't being punished and then they're just playing a more powerful PC, OR they ARE getting punished so why bother in the first place? Instead just make the class balanced to start with and treat the player like a thinking person that can decide how to play. 4e's class design choices will then let you play that concept well with mechanics that work specifically for that. Again, the alternative is mechanics that are overpowered or else negated.There are other dimensions to this way of thinking. Races in 4e have benefits. Some people claim it is "all in your perspective" but its not true. A 4e half orc wizard can have an 18 INT, not the 20 INT of his Eladrin buddy, but just as good as all other non-+2 races. His AD&D counterpart is so far behind the elf wizard that it is pointless to even bother, he's crap, worse than anyone else around. In other words its a proscriptive mechanism, it tells you what NOT to do. Why would you want to tell people how not to be creative? I don't get it. Both systems accomplish "an elf/eldar is the best wizard" but one is far better at fostering some creativity (not even touching on the "thou shalt only play classes X, Y, and Z" rules of AD&D).</blockquote>

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