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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6664146" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm not the one running it - it's the same guy who ran our most recent 4e games (who is also fairly fresh, though less so than most of the group). If anything, they've pegged it as a style thing. These are folks who've never visited a D&D message board in their lives, but they've picked up on 4e's more tactical, detailed nature and 5e's more open, interpretive nature, and clearly favor the latter (they've acknowledged that the detail and option wealth might be better for someone who is more "into that stuff" than they are). The decision points are bigger and clearer overall for them. We've got a wizard player and a druid player and a bard player. We're 4th level. The distinction between cantrips and other spells is big in their minds. The distinction between burning hands and charm person and find familiar is pretty clear - they're not all options at once. It seems to be about relevance and differentiation. In fact, my pet theory is that the loosening of roles in 5e helps contribute to that distinction. Now, the wizard player isn't choosing between powers that all do kind of similar things (control the enemy), they're choosing between powers that do remarkably different things (charm, fire damage to an area, get a pet weasel, etc.). I'm telling you that this doesn't match my experiences. In a group of people who've been playing the game for about a year, moving from 4e to 5e had them make decisions that to them, felt more powerful and relevant and easier to make. You're welcome to volunteer that your experience is different, but you can't hope to have an actual conversation when you're dismissing all counter-evidence as "nonsense" simply because it doesn't agree with your pre-existing narrative. Again: not the DM. I'm quietly playing my dragonborn cleric next to them. I might help clarify the jarogon for them, but I did that in our 4e game, too. The confidence to do that is directly related to system mastery. You don't hand-wave something the rules tell you is important without knowing that you know better than the rules, and someone who is a fairly newbie DM isn't going to have that confidence. More complex systems are consequently harder to master and thus more difficult to simply hand-wave away complexity. Right: the lack of precise balance helps 5e accommodate more winging it, making the system more robust. Not to someone who doesn't use it. The point is, every new option you don't personally use in play is chaff, even if it's good. The 3e rules for incarnum might be great, but that book is pure chaff for every table that has never used it (ie, most tables).</blockquote>

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