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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeoneer" data-source="post: 6247595" data-attributes="member: 91777">The philosophy behind AEDUAs others have said, AEDU is just one way to implement a certain design philosophy. This, as I understand it, is the philosophy broken down into a few simple rules:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">All classes have interesting abilities to choose between in combat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Those abilities increase in power in a scalable way so that no class is left behind at any level.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Depending on their frequency of use, number of enemies effected and other factors, abilities should have their to-hits and damage output fall into certain predefined ranges.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Every class should have abilities that can be used all the time; no class should ever run out of things to do. Some abilities may be resources that must be managed. These are generally more powerful.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Abilities should be such that whenever a player uses them, they feel like the class they are playing. Using a rogue's ability should make you feel like a rogue. Using a bard's ability should make you feel like a bard. This requires a certain amount of uniqueness, especially for iconic class abilities.</li> </ol>Giving every class the same number of abilities and dividing them into At-Wills, Encounters, Dailies and Utilities is one way to achieve these goals, but it's clearly not the only way. As others have pointed out, you can find alternatives in Bo9S, 4e psionics, 4e Essentials and 13th Age. When I think about 'modern game design' I think about Sid Meier's statement that a game is a series of interesting decisions. We want to give the player a handful of options to choose between in combat, with no option clearly better than the others in every situation. Choice is important, not just to allow the player to express themselves but to make the game interesting. Thus, Rule #1.We talk a lot about balance, but per Rule #2, really the idea is that no class should be irrelevant early in the game or obsolete at later levels. It is not necessary that every class be precisely equal to every other one. And honestly, I don't think that was ever a design goal, even in early 4e. Following Rule #3 should give designers a good mathematical foundation on which to build classes. Although early AEDU classes tended to look a lot alike, at least on paper, the truth is that if we have this foundation you can get pretty creative with your classes. No need to make them all similar, we know that they will all be similarly effective in terms of damage output. Again, it's not necessary that they be precisely balanced, just that no class gets left behind.Rule #4 leads directly to the A, E and D in AEDU. But it isn't strictly necessary that every class have At-Will powers, Encounter powers and Daily powers. We want more powerful abilities to be used less frequently, but there are lots of ways to achieve this. For instance in 13th Age, there are powers that 'unlock' only on certain rolls of the dice. Or a power might have to be 'recharged' in some way after use. We should't have a class, however, that has ONLY abilities that are limited like this, or they might become ineffective at some point.Rule #5 might be the hardest to explain in concrete terms, but it's the reason for the 'power block'. The 4e fighter power 'Tide of Iron' allows the player to push an enemy one square when they're using a shield. This 'feels' like the sort of brute force maneuver we would expect from a fighter. It is more interesting than simply hitting the enemy for damage, which every class can do. This is one of the fighter's At-Wills, so it should be fairly unique to the fighter class. If the bard can also push enemies around with an At-Will it makes this ability less cool for the fighter. The bard should have to use a more restricted ability to do the same thing, or have different requirements apply before it can push an enemy. This way each class feels like it fills a niche, where it is very good at what it's doing.Personally, I like this design a lot, to the point where I'm not particularly interested in a class-based RPG that doesn't deliver it in some way. I don't care if you call it AEDU or not. I want each class to feel unique, have interesting choices and be effective at every level.</blockquote>

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