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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Hitcher" data-source="post: 6309831" data-attributes="member: 63747">For my sins I just read through this entire thread. Well, most of it - I skipped some parts of the really long and nitpicky posts. At the risk of adding to an already long and tedious argument and flogging a horse that has already all but decomposed, I have to strongly agree with those who are championing 5E as the more flexible and improv-friendly system.I bought 4E when it came out, and I think it's a beautiful thing - it's this tightly constructed clockwork of rules that work to construct these exquisitely balanced tactical combat situations. I read the books and they made me happy (even if the power lists were a bit tedious to plough through). But then I played the game, and I realised the monumental problem that the 4E rules create: because the entire system is organised around balancing classes and powers and combats, everything else becomes secondary. If you fully engage with the core of the system, then it is (as others have said) counter-productive to do weird improvisational stuff. Normally, I love a really good tactical combat game (you guys should definitely check out Card Hunter - it's similar in many ways to the combat of 4E, and is bloody excellent), but to me an RPG is an entirely different animal. And when I play D&D, I want to exist in an infinite possibility space, not one where everything is codified and presented like a menu at a Vietnamese restaurant. You can cite page 42 all you want. Page 42 is not a rule that fits into the complex clockwork of the game. It's a concession to the fact that D&D is an RPG, and that "yes, sure, you can make up your own rules if you want to. But mostly you won't have to". But the rest of the system does absolutely everything it can to push you into rational, tactical thinking and away from a purely creative frame of mind.Of course some people are able to be creative even inside that system. And I salute you, I really do. It's fantastic that others have managed to have great times inside a system that almost immediately made me feel claustrophobic and frustrated. But I think you'll find that my response (and the similar responses of several others on this thread) reflect one of the major reasons why so many people bounced off 4E and went looking for their RPG experiences elsewhere. And it is most definitely one of the major things that Mearls and co have been trying to address since day one of the 5E playtest (as they've stated in various forms over the last couple of years). It's a huge problem for many people (like me) who tried and wanted to like 4E, perhaps even THE problem. And it amounts to far more than can be solved by simply saying "you're doing it wrong - check out page 42".</blockquote>

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