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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 5986418" data-attributes="member: 5100">As a general rule, it wasn't so much the number of rules as it was how interrelated they were. When we tried the armor as DR rules from UA (3.5), it radically changed things like poisonous critters. They're balanced with the idea of doing less damage up front, but slamming you with the poison. There's a rule, though, that says anything that does no damage doesn't get to give poison damage. So, the fighter would walk through scads of threatening vermin in his full plate, with nary a care in the world. That sounds pretty cool, but the CR was totally out of whack. There were tons of little gotchas like that with just the armor as DR rule. Other tweaks had their own issues, many of which had daisy chains of downstream effects. Yeah, I've got enough experience that I probably could rework things to balance out again, but it wouldn't have been easy. I also don't think it's fair for my players to practically have an alternate PHB just for my campaign. A couple of pages of notes is cool and flavorful, but a tome just sucks.The other thing with d20 is that something about the way the rules are presented implies a degree of "this is immutable law" I hadn't encountered in D&D previously. I don't know whether it's the implied balance, the interconnected nature, the detail, or something else, but it's there. I played AD&D with the same group for years without issue. After about two years of 3e, there was a marked shift in the tone of rules discussions. I had a player go from thinking my house rules were awesome and bragging them up to others to actively calling me out on perceived minor rules violations, even after I told him that his character found that odd, as well and it might be a clue to something else. Now that we're play testing 5e, that same player is, once again waxing favorably to how "cool" my tweaks to AD&D were and looking forward to me bringing back some of the flavor.I can't tell you exactly what the root issue is, though I have my suspicions, but 5e appears (at this early stage) to be bringing back something that hasn't been available to be in well over a decade. I'm very, very excited by it.</blockquote>

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