That's interesting. It sounds like in our AD&D days we were actually seeing different things.
Not exactly surprising, that. Seemed like every DM had his own stack of variants back in the day. Even - heck, especially - the ones who said they were playing by the book.
DMs also seemed to vary a lot in their attitudes towards such 'creativity,' with shutting it down or outright punishing it with disastrous results not exactly un-heard of.
Sounds like we agree that there should be different levels of complexity/choice in every class, and within each class?
Not in the least, no. Pegging it to class is inherently problematic, since it takes concepts and walls them off from certain player styles. The Fighter, with the relatively choiceless Champion, choice-poor BM, and merely sub-part 1/3rd-caster BA, was the right idea, just with not enough swing from choice-less to choice-rich, and it was basically alone, when most classes 'should' really have both simplistic and rich options (sub-classes) - in an ideal world, anyway.
But that's a 'should' in an extremely hypothetical sense.
Speaking for my group, there may have been two factors. The first may have ben a case of mismatched expectations. That is, players who veered toward fighter-types ended up suddenly being confronted with more choices & tracking than they were used to in 4e.
Nod. I saw that a lot. Even long-time/returning players who probably would generally want to play a more interesting character once they got to know a system would sit down and go "I'll start with a fighter... wtf, were's my weapon? what are these color-coded things? argh! this is not D&D! "
They might as well have been reading from a script.
In stark contrast, genuinely-new players would glance through a character sheet and pick it up quickly.
5e does a much better job of meeting the expectations of long-time and returning players. They expect a game where fighters are simplistic beatsticks with little to contribute but their own blood & their enemies' pain. They get it, at least for the first couple of levels. If they want more of the same, they go Champion, if they want something more, they
change classes er, go EK or BM at third.
Number of choices is one factor
You take a player who has no choices when playing a fighter, and give him 4 when playing a fighter, and his creativity crashes and burns. You take another player who has dozens of choices when playing a wizard, and give him 6, his creativity crashes and burns.
It's not the number of choices. It's certainly not having /too many/ choices.
So, again, I think there's a sweet spot between "4e style glut of options" and "nothing."
The thing is, every caster class, in every other edition, is far outside that spectrum.
The second may have been hyper-tactical focus.
Meh. 3.5 (and 2e C&T, for that matter) had tactical focus in plenty and didn't have that effect, at all. The classic game started as a wargame. Grognards first threw 'grid dependence' at 3e, then 3.x/PF hold-outs picked it up and threw it at 4e.
As a criticism, it's like "ROLL playing," it reveals little about the game - mainly it reveals that the would-be critic is mad at it.
My theory was that something about the 4e system was shaping the play experience in a way that diminished creativity and improvisation.
That's some reasonable empiricism, there.
I mean, you see a set of behavior in players, and it's more pronounced in the player with the fighter than the wizard. You change games, and you see that behavior diminish in both? What's up?
Well, what's different?
Too many choices? No, because the wizard has fewer.
Nature of those choices? Maybe, in a way. The way 4e powers worked was very clear, the way spells worked in the olden days, maybe not so much. If you wanted to get the best use out of the spell you had memorized, it might behove you to buck for a certain interpretation - you get 'creative' in order to get the bang for your buck. In 4e, your buck just banged as advertised. In 4e, the fighter & wizard were remotely balanced. In the classic game, again, not so much. To remain relevant, it behoved the fighter's player to stretch to make up some of the vast gulf in versatility between his and others' classes. You don't need to push beyond the boundaries of the rules to play the fighter you wanted to. So you just play the character.
It's not like it'd be the first time a generation learned to love the old ways of doing things precisely because they were harder.
Anyway, back to 5e:
My limited personal experience playing 5e (usually I DM) is that the thief rogue's Cunning Action & Fast Hands really supported my creative ideas for using the terrain against enemies. Whereas I didn't get the same feeling of creative empowerment with the 5e fighter.
But you did get it from the 1e fighter, who had nothing like those Rogue features, either, and less going for it in terms of options than even the 5e Champion.
And I think one way there is to focus on quality/character of choice.
Again, look back at what gave you the desired effect in the past. Did the fighter have 'quality' choices? What was the 'character' of those choices?
Yes, something like a stunting system unique to the fighter is exactly what I'm thinking. Merge 4e's page 42 with Basic's weapon mastery and some of the action options in the DMG, and I think something very playable could emerge.
I've certainly played in & enjoyed systems like that, myself, but then I also played & enjoyed 1e, 3e, & 4e, (2e & 5e I almost exclusively ran, if anyone's wondering about the omission) so I may just have a broader tolerance....
And, again, there was also nothing like that in 1e - though I'm sure any number of DMs may have come up with something..
Now, 5e already allows the player to declare any action he can think of, it's just up to the DM to narrate what happens, and call for any checks to help with that. So the door for creative improv is wide open, to everyone.
