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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6285969" data-attributes="member: 17106">I was referring to 3e being designed on the same plane as its d20 offshoots; Modern and SW and so on. I don't know that 3e has the same goals as 2e or 1e did. I would imagine not. Neither does 5e.That's fair enough. I would expect a game with D&D on the label to deliver that. However, I think it's become a great deal more than that, to the point where it is functioning as the generic fantasy rpg, even if it wasn't originally intended to do that.That may be. However, 3e is the best generic genre/world simulator by a mile (of the D&D editions, anyway). 5e, according to its goals of capturing all editions of D&D, kind of has to cast a net big enough to include this.That's all fine and good, but as you note, it's not even one edition. 2e and 3e both broadened the focus of the game. Did this move it away from its dungeoncrawling roots? Absolutely. Is it less "D&D" because of that? I suppose that depends on one's perspective.But again, if 5e is really going to capture everyone, it can't just be about a competitive "Hunger Games" style dungeoncrawl where each class's contributions are being tracked on some imaginary scorecard. It can have that, but it can't be just that.In 3e, it communicates that you don't understand how prestige classes work. That being said, I'm not sure what the big deal is here. Regardless of whether a character is built class-based or not, you really have to read the whole character sheet to get enough information to convey the complete set of capacities of an entire person.Couldn't you say the same of anything though? Classic D&D doesn't have a maneuver system. Tons of other rpgs do. If you want a maneuver system, just play Iron Heroes (where Mearls should have stayed), or some other game that does. Dissolving a simple d20-based approach in favor of a more complex scheme serves what exactly?I don't see how saying "I attack the goblin", rolling a d20, and not saying or doing anything else is not D&D enough. That's what all those old-school fighters were doing over and over again. Sounds pretty D&D-ish to me.***I don't think it's that radical. Already 2e had proliferated splatbooks that tore the old class niches apart. D&D had gone from fighting man and magic user to dozens of classes that hybridized all the old niches and combined abilities freely. Multiclassing and dual-classing became the norm. Kits and NWPs were all the rage, which amount to either rebuilding your class to do what you want, or adding abilities completely independently of class.Skills, feats, and open multiclassing are certainly different, but they're a logical next step in the direction the game was already going: towards more flexible and open-ended character creation and away from artificial niche protection. We still haven't taken the next steps (merging feats and class abilities and merging skills and all the other d20 rolls) after fifteen years, which I think is rather odd.We've also established that the same is true of all those "broken" 3e (and previous) spells. If you really can't handle the polymorphs and calling spells, there aren't that many of them, and most of them are high level and out of reach for most characters anyway. And yet you seem rather concerned about them.</blockquote>

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