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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6595130" data-attributes="member: 996">Maybe it's an issue with the use of negation in English, but you're saying the opposite of what's true.  4e was very different from other versions of D&D, precisely because it eliminated so many problems that D&D had historically.  It was the elimination of these "sacred cows" that was the crux of it's problems.  While it didn't do that with every historical problem in D&D, most of 4e's problems stemmed from what it did to fix historical problems (and the reaction of the fanbase to those fixes), not the few perennial issues that it failed to address. Again, the opposite of what's true.  3e required far more 'system mastery,' and had far greater rewards for the same, than 4e, which was, in that way, perhaps, and over-reaction to 3e.Again, you have it neatly backwards.  Optimization in 3.x would leave sub-optimal characters essentially non-contributing.  In 4e, the gap between 'optimal' and merely viable was much narrower. Aid is very nice in 5e, because Advantage is such a dramatic bonus, yes.   In 3.x, the assumption would have been that they gained levels - in fact, you'd build them that way, by adding levels of warrior or a PC class to them, not a quick & easy task.  In 4e, 'leveling up' a monster was simpler, FWIW, but the rationale wasn't explicit.  Whatever reason the DM had for having more powerful orcs - experience, being infused with demon blood, orc special forces school, whatever - the same simple process could be adapted. Well...  D&D had struggled with making armies relevant.  3.5 finally hit upon the trick of grouping a large number of lesser creatures together into a single figure, like a 'swarm.'  4e used it also.  5e didn't drop the swarm, but it didn't apply it to individually non-trivial creatures, using Bounded Accuracy, instead.  Bounded Accuracy is certainly one point, BTW, where 5e is not harkening back to past flawed or problematic mechanics, like THAC0 or attack matrices.  It's closer to 3e or 4e, but with smaller numbers. Oh, I see.  Yeah, that was an issue for D&D for a long time, and more pronounced in 3e.  It was easy to miss the solution 4e came up with.  You had levels for monsters, but also secondary roles.  A relatively week monster that needed to outnumber the party to be a threat was modeled as a similar-level minion, instead of a same-level standard monster, a more powerful one would be an elite or solo.   Now, a 'minion' facing a high-level party might be /the exact same monster/, in the fiction, worth the exact same number of exp, it's just fighting differently when facing mighty heroes than when terrorizing villagers.  Similarly, a much higher level standard monster could be statted as a same-exp-value Elite or Solo when toying with a much lower-level party. The wizard used the 'prepped' version of Vancian, and other Arcanists could be said to, based on one side-bar in the PH.  All other classes:  no memorization, preparation, or spellcasting.  Not 'Vancian.'  Daily resources, sure, Vancian or even 'casting spells,' no.  Each Source had a different reason for having it's resources recharge with short or long rests.Mechanically, though, Daily powers are often problematic, something that D&D has always wrestled with.  4e dealt with the issue by giving all classes a comparable number of such resources.  5e deals with the issue by recommending specific pacing - 6-8 medium/hard encounters per day.   Indeed, that's another way in which 5e is very retro and very exciting.  3.0 ushered in this bizarre era of 'RAW' before all else, and 5e has finally dragged D&D out of it. Keep at it, you'll get the hang of it. Alignment was certainly an RP straightjacket of sorts, tough how tightly it was laced varied over the years, from edition to edition and DM to DM.  <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=";)" />  There's a distinction between mechanics that aid RP - which is most of 'em, really, as knowing what your character is capable of is helpful in RPing it - and those that restrict it (generally much fewer in number, and sometimes used in an attempt at 'balance').  Alignment is restrictive, codes of behavior are another.  Inspiration, OTOH, merely encourages, neither restricting nor aiding, but rewarding.</blockquote>

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