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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6596227" data-attributes="member: 221">Yeah, I've played across 5 or so editions since 1982 and I don't recall ever having such a thing happening. Now what did occur, iirc, was infravision would not work in areas in which there was torch light (heat messing with the senses don't you know) so that if you wanted to use infravision you needed to be outside the area of the torchlight (which could work as those with infravision stayed in the lead as scouts). But it was not an on again, off again thing for game balance - it was trying to define infravision as heat vision (which had its own sort of quirky problems; darkvision is a vast improvement in that regards).  Eh, the inability to turn off the light of a magical sword is given, not as a hard and fast rule, but as something a DM could do if chosen: "The DM can rule that magical weapons shed light... and can't be concealed when drawn."But in practice, in my experience, light shedding swords tended to have an on/off switch and/or an activating factor (ala Sting and Orcs). Again, it was mostly a DM style thing as to how to make it work story-wise... Normally, they took a penalty to their attack, unless they had multi-classed.Rather than deal with these point by point (unless you really want someone too...), let me make two points...One, you remind me, in part why I felt like the 3e rules were so readily adopted, in that, they made canon certain things that many of us were already doing, via house-rules, such as allowing demihumans to take whatever classes they wanted,...Two, I have already said, I think, that all of these things are highly subjective matters of personal taste. What bugs one person in one context may not bug another, and that same thing may not even bug the original person in a slightly different context. A lot of times it all boils down to how well a person can rationalize any given mechanic. And some of it is simply presentation and options. In, for instance the case of the Stunning Fist, not every fighter was forced to choose such an option in 3e. By forcing the choice, I think 4e misstepped by not allowing those for whom it might be problematic with having alternatives. Secondly, DnD has traditionally put a limit on many player chosen supernatural effects (ie Vancian Spellcasting). If one views Stunning Fist as a supernatural effect then there is less disconnect. But, again, if one then forces this choice on all fighters, one runs the risk of having a subset of the population interpret (because of traditional interpretation) all fighter effects as suddenly being supernatural. Which I think did happen. While some could internally rationalize it as different than this, others could not. This is not to say one side or the other was right, it is simply what it is: a matter of taste and individual perception.</blockquote>

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