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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ferratus" data-source="post: 4066696" data-attributes="member: 55966">Like I said, it depends what you want.  If you don't want classes or class roles at all, I could see an argument could be made that this is a sacred cow that should have been cut.  If you didn't like that there was any class focusing on thievery for moral reasons because it isn't heroic you could argue that I could easily see an alternate history in which design decisions were made that made D&D into a GURPS clone.  With 4e, the powers that be at WotC might have decided that specific races and classes were a relic that limited player choice and the kinds of stories that the DM can tell.  They would have, of course, been right.   Other people have argued that leveling up disrupts the narrative flow of a story and forces too much attention on combat.  They are also right.   Now all of these features have positive aspects as well, but one could imagine the decision being made that the cons outweighed the pros.  So if 4e had made the changes to remove specific races, classes, and leveling up from the game would it still be D&D?  Of course it would, because it would still fill the function of killing dragons in dungeons with weapons and magic.   I could also imagine a less likely alternate history where Palladium Fantasy was so successful that TSR was bought out Palladium Books instead of Wizards of the Coast.  A subsequent product could have used the "Dungeons & Dragons" name and probably would have resembled Palladium Fantasy more than a little, but it still would have been an edition of "Dungeons and Dragons".  I make no promises as to how successful it would have been.Ah, a few mistakes or disagreements make the whole body of work worthless?   That seems oddly familiar to some criticisms of 4e.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />   I think somebody can acknowledge Aristotle's shortcomings without saying he should have never bothered or that he had nothing positive to contribute.  I also think he should be acknowledged where he (or his tradition of thought) is superior to other philosophers.  So too with 4e should it be acknowledged where things are being fixed without the instant backlash that fixing those problems is making D&D not D&D anymore.</blockquote>

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