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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6597755" data-attributes="member: 996">Nod, the classes are very different, mechanically.  You can also go into specific builds using classes and class combinations. You have a tremendous number of choices in 3e.  However, unless you make your choice from a much small sub-set, you could very easily find yourself overshadowed or even non-contributing much of the time.  That's the difference between many choices, and many viable/meaningful choices.  That balance, in 3.5's case, the lack thereof.   Nod.  More classes, fewer build options, but still a lot of choices that are mechanically differentiated.  The jury's still out on 5e as far as balance is concerned (and it doesn't look good), but it also suffers from another issue that D&D always has struggled with.  While you have a lot of mechanical choices, they're tightly coupled to conceptual choices.  You have not one but 3 spell-casting schemes for archanists, for instance, and something like 13 sub-classes among those.  All together, there's about 30 options for casting.  Non-casters, OTOH, there's only 5, and all of them have little to contribute but DPR in combat.  You can choose simple resources management or complex, but you can't choose complex resource management unless you play a caster.   Yep.  The classes aren't differentiated by vast differences in resource management.  Instead, they're differentiated by each having unique choices for maneuvers (inexplicably called 'exploits'), spells or prayers, each having unique class features that support their role, and by Source.  So, you can play the concept you want (broadly, source) and the way you want (role), and you won't end up in the dustbin because someone else at the table ends up strictly superior or you end up non-contributing.   Nope, only the resource management.  Spells/exploits/prayers - all presented in a clear 'power' format, as are monster attacks and abilities - class features, role support, and permeating all of that, class & source concept, are all radically different.  The PH classes all pay very, very differently.  You can't help but notice that if you ever play the game.   That's a very cynical way of looking at class differentiation.  If it's only imbalance that can differentiate classes, then most classes end up there just as contrast for the few at the top of the heap.  Which is pretty sad for anyone who's playing the game for anything more than a system-mastery-fueled power trip - for instance, to actually play a character to some concept or genre archetype.  Profound class imbalance was a hallmark of D&D.  That made it a bad game.  Balance it, and it's a better game - but it might not be accepted as D&D.  And, we are back again to the original topic:  The D&D name-plate worked against 4e, because it wasn't bad in the old familiar ways that D&D had been for over 30 years.  It could have been bad in different ways instead of just better, and the result would have been the same.   It demonstrates that the definition 'dissociative mechanics' is worthless.  If the only requirement is that you feel subjectively 'pulled out of the fiction,' then it's just re-iterating dislike, but in a way that presents itself, falsely, as a reason based on some actual quality of the game.If, OTOH, as the original explanations claim, it's a definable quality of a mechanic, then it doesn't matter if you're susceptible to it's supposed effects or not, it should be clearly identifiable, by whatever standards are put forth to identify it.  It just so happens that the standards put forth when 'dissociative mechanics' were defined into being can easily be applied to any abstract mechanic, such as Power Attack. Of course it seems like a ridiculous complaint.  Without confirmation bias, seeing someone complain about 'dissociative mechanics' will always seem that way - because it is.  As pointless as the criticism in your analogy is, for instance, if you hated the cook enough, or would benefit enough from his failure, you could easily find yourself taking it seriously, because you want to believe he's a bad cook, and to believe that others feel the same way.</blockquote>

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