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<blockquote data-quote="Werebat" data-source="post: 6359423" data-attributes="member: 40158">Most of us are old enough to remember before 3rd Edition, when there were fewer rules-as-written and the game required more DM calls.&nbsp; One of the things I initially LIKED about 3rd Edition was how so many rules were spelled out, removing the need for a lot of those DM calls, because in the past what would end up happening was a lot of wrangling with the DM and arguments over things like &quot;I want to do a triple-backflip onto the troll's back and stab it in the back of the neck!&quot;, or even just &quot;I try to knock the villain's sword out of his hand!&quot;3rd Edition ushered in rules for almost everything, and as a DM it was easy to feel good about that as you could put the kibosh on a lot of those arguments because The Rules.The other side of the coin was that, with the spread of the internet, players could hit the optimization boards and bring in &quot;builds&quot; capable of breaking the generally assumed PC limits -- builds that worked because The Rules.Of course, some of these builds were laughably OP, like the infamous Pun-Pun the kobold god, and DMs could easily disallow them regardless of The Rules.&nbsp; That introduced the game of trying to guess the maximum level of power the DM would allow in his game before nixing something even though The Rules, and bringing in builds that hit that point (or maybe stealthed a bit beyond it).Not that everyone here takes it to that degree (A friend and I personally self-nerfed our characters in a game we both play in because we each realized that we were becoming cray-cray powerful), enough do that it's been at least an element at the table that would be nice to get rid of.But then I remember 2nd and previous editions where there was always all that wrangling.I'm hopeful that 5th Edition strikes a nice balance, but we'll see.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Werebat, post: 6359423, member: 40158"] Most of us are old enough to remember before 3rd Edition, when there were fewer rules-as-written and the game required more DM calls. One of the things I initially LIKED about 3rd Edition was how so many rules were spelled out, removing the need for a lot of those DM calls, because in the past what would end up happening was a lot of wrangling with the DM and arguments over things like "I want to do a triple-backflip onto the troll's back and stab it in the back of the neck!", or even just "I try to knock the villain's sword out of his hand!" 3rd Edition ushered in rules for almost everything, and as a DM it was easy to feel good about that as you could put the kibosh on a lot of those arguments because The Rules. The other side of the coin was that, with the spread of the internet, players could hit the optimization boards and bring in "builds" capable of breaking the generally assumed PC limits -- builds that worked because The Rules. Of course, some of these builds were laughably OP, like the infamous Pun-Pun the kobold god, and DMs could easily disallow them regardless of The Rules. That introduced the game of trying to guess the maximum level of power the DM would allow in his game before nixing something even though The Rules, and bringing in builds that hit that point (or maybe stealthed a bit beyond it). Not that everyone here takes it to that degree (A friend and I personally self-nerfed our characters in a game we both play in because we each realized that we were becoming cray-cray powerful), enough do that it's been at least an element at the table that would be nice to get rid of. But then I remember 2nd and previous editions where there was always all that wrangling. I'm hopeful that 5th Edition strikes a nice balance, but we'll see. [/QUOTE]

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