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Message: <blockquote data-quote="keterys" data-source="post: 5827167" data-attributes="member: 43019">I might lean towards Gamers trying to break the game being bad for choice _and_ balance. <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=";)" />Like the idea of fairly freeform magic in Saga sounded great, until I asked if I could cast a spell to buff the casting stat of the other caster... and I could... and he then cast an even more awesome spell to buff my casting stat... and suddenly I could solve any problem at all, by waving my hand. (All, sadly, as a  collateral result of us trying to figure out how we could possibly hit dragons, due to a statistical imbalance in the game)Too much choice can be bad for the game, by making it unplayable (too strong and too weak) for too many people. There's a real balance act there.Too much choice can also be bad for people in terms of decision paralysis and rules exhaustion when leveling occurs. I... game way too much, several times a week, I memorize entire rules books, have made thousands of game elements (feats, items, monsters, etc)... and this hit me when I was playing D&D Online. I leveled to a certain point and realized I needed to decide on what class level to take. And when pondering that I suddenly realized that, in true 3e fashion, that effectively meant I needed to decide _everything_ about my character. So I started reading all of the various build options, requirements for PrCs, feats, whatever their fiddly little benefit thingies were, etc... and then I never logged in again, cause I couldn't be bothered to care enough.At the other end of the scale, I know 3-4 people who just have 1-2 other people make characters for them, because they don't want to figure out all of those fiddly choices. They just want to play. Based on 5e's stated goals, this could work perfectly for them - the ones who want complexity get it, the ones who don't can dodge it...But that doesn't really work if the guy with the complexity is 2 or more times as effective. No matter how awful they were for a couple sessions at the start of the campaign before they leveled into their awesomeness. And XP penalties certainly wouldn't solve that, at any end of the scale.</blockquote>

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