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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5764991" data-attributes="member: 59082">I only have a few minutes before phase 2 of a mega-meeting at work begins, but I wanted to dive back into this thread. I like that and it makes sense to me. Easier to advance if you use it, but you can still advance it.Sounds interesting. What I'm wondering about is if 4E's "maximum potential" can be "unshackled" through 5E, and still as "Dungeons & Dragons." In a way I think the Holy Grail of D&D design is accomplishing two things at once: retaining and embodying that "classic D&D feel" in all its glory, but also allowing for as wide a variety of different approaches to game play. Now obviously there's a point where something--if stretched far enough--is no longer in the same territory or category. We could posit all kinds of World of Darkness games, for instance, but I imagine that Dairy Farmer: The Milking or Yiddish Grandmother: The Kvetching are a bit beyond the borders.This is not to get into another discussion as to whether or not 4E is "real D&D," but to question whether a game can offer a wide variety of play styles, including "classic D&D", and still be D&D. This goes back to my viewpoint that 4E would have been better served (and 5E hopefully will be better served) by not proclaiming that "everything is core" but instead the opposite: "almost everything is optional," with a relatively simple core default game that embodied a streamlined iteration of the game that stayed true to the D&D legacy, but allowed for different modular options, including a variety of themed campaign possibilities (one of which could have been "Warcraftian fantasy").With regards to the idea of classes-as-starting templates, this could be one of the rules options that a 5E game could possibly use.Good ideas there, LurkAway. I think the key is to be able to re-create something very similar to the classic classes, but also diversify a bit.One analogy that comes to mind is that of musicians. All things being equal, a musician who dedicates him or herself to a single instrument will become more proficient at a single instrument than the same musician learning multiple instruments. But that person is no more or less of a skilled musician on either path; they're just more or less focused in a single area or multiple areas.In other words, all 10th level characters should have a similar degree of power and development, but there should be near countless variations and degrees of specialization. In most forms of D&D, the number of variations is a formula based on only a few factors: class, race, skill specialization, feats, powers, equipment...still quite a lot of variation. But the number of choices would be much greater if the later factors weren't all based upon the class.I've got more to say but I'm going to be late for my workshop! It is one of those emotional processing gigs, so if I'm late I'm going to have to talk about my feelings about being late and how it effects the group! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /></blockquote>

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