NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6327040" data-attributes="member: 37579">Could his phrasing have been better? Yes. Could he have been more delicate to avoid ruffling feathers? Yup. Does that make him wrong? Not necessarily. Does The Game reward creative thinking? Do the rules favour creative thinking over optimization? The answer to that is "no". 3e didn't discuss creativity but codified so much that formerly creative ideas became mechanical, and often there were heavy requirements (feats) to even attempt certain actions. There was less room for creative thought. 4e allowed for some creative thought but made this inherently mechanically inferiour to powers possessed by characters, so they were incentivized to always use The Game.It's tricky to even play 4e non-optimized, as some amount of munchkining is assumed. The math assumes characters are stacking their to-hit stat and actively taking ability boosts to that stat, and taking complimentary feats and magic items while actively perusing your combat role. Being less effective hurts the entire party who is expected to synergize and all contribute equally to their role. The counterpoint is DMs can reward creative thinking. However, this is essentially a house rule, which me makes this an e-fallacious argument.The Oberoni or Rule 0 Fallacy states that the argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored is logically unsound, because it supposes something isn't broken if it can be fixed. If the rule is not broken, it shouldn't need to be fixed.Is this all a bad thing?That's the catch... If you don't care about creativity and want a D&D that plays well and is balanced them no, this isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. If you're an optimizer - or at least an optimizer sympathizer - then then the last two editions have been amaztastic. But if you have a slightly different playstyle.... Well, that's a different situation. However, playstyle aside you can look at the matter as a designer. Look at it objectively. There is a rules element that is creating a barrier to entry and slowing down the start of play. Even if people like it, is it good? No. If it's keeping people from playing and scaring people away from the game it's a bad thing, even if some people like it. (And it's essentially polarizing the audience.)How often have you spent the entire first session doing character creation? Should it take three or four hours to make a character. Have you every helped a new player (let alone 2-5) create a character? Or level up their characters? Yes, I can knock out a level 10 Pathfinder character in 30 minutes, but I've been playing some variant of 3rd edition for fifteen years. The experience of being a new player overwhelmed by the game system is an experience forgotten by most of us. (For a quick reminder go to <a href="http://eclipsephase.com/" target="_blank">http://eclipsephase.com/</a>, download the core book, and make a character. See how long it takes you and how you feel about the experience. Them imagine you're about to start playing and can't until you finish and people are waiting on you.)</blockquote>

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