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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 6285943" data-attributes="member: 11821">No - 3e had a completely different set of goals than 1e had. (Although, it should be noted, not all that different from some incarnations of 2e.)...Sprinkle all of the following with heaping gobs of "IMO" and whatnot; I have no access to universal truth, and I'm trying to step away from philosophical BS, but I'll just lay this out and move on.For me, D&D is something very specific. It's a game about exploring dungeons (or other dangerous locales), fighting dragons (or other dangerous enemies), looting treasure, and getting better at exploring/fighting/looting. If D&D isn't the best game at these, no matter what else it's doing anywhere else in the system, it fails for me. And this is why 4e finally fulfilled the promises D&D had been making for decades; it cashed the checks previous editions wrote.That's also why I'm a big fan of 1e and RC; no other editions did the "exploring dungeons" part better, in my mind. It fell flattish on the "fighting dragons" part, but they're top of the heap on that pillar.3e, on the other hand, pretty soundly failed at all of it for me. It took me a while to figure out why, but it's the least "D&D" to me of all the editions because it shares the fewest goals. Its approach to classes is part of it, and its approach to balance is another. But even more than that - it focuses too much on the stuff that happens between adventures, so much so that for many people that's become what D&D is about. 2e really started this ball rolling - it was mired in the 90's when dungeoncrawling was getting a bad rap - but 3e continued down that same vein and took it to an even bigger extreme where skills weren't just a sideshow but a central feature for every character, where NPC classes were a "thing", and where treasure was all of a sudden a mutant point-buy power-up system. That's simply not what I want out of D&D at all. (Again, all IMO - I know that's exactly what some folks want.)...As for the second part - you're consistent, but what you're describing is nothing that I associate with D&D. Not with its legacy, and not with its most important goals. D&D is a game where you should be able to say, "I'm a 9th level Fighter" and that should communicate something important about who your character is and what your character does. Dissolving a vibrant and useful class-based approach in the interest of serving simulation is just bizarre to me when there's so many other games that don't use classes or levels already.</blockquote>

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