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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6597845" data-attributes="member: 996">Looking for explanations is fine.  But, when you're looking for an explanation for why you /dislike/ something, you have to be particularly on guard, because human nature is to find any explanation that confirms your existing opinion, no matter how logically invalid, quite compelling.  Running an explanation by someone who doesn't share your bias, for instance, could be helpful.  If they, say, find that the standards you're using to judge the thing you dislike are so nebulous as to be easily applied with just as much validity to things you do like, that would be a red flag.   Even though they're nonsense.  A perfect example of confirmation bias. Except capsaicin and salt exist outside the perception of the taster.  You can't label a dish salty if it has no salt in it.  You can label mechanics dissociative at whim. Well, it is the internet. Things get repeated, even things that aren't true - especially things that aren't true, that some people wish were true. Not so much, no.  At first, they were going on about 'fighters casting spells,' then 'realism,' then, as it spread around, they lined up behind 'dissociative.'  The target was always the same:  class balance, non-casters getting some cool  stuff for a change.  The rationalization differed over time. There are many very real candidates.  Rules that used neatly-defined jargon and common formats to achieve greater clarity and consistency.  A common leveling structure that delivered much greater class balance and encounter balance.  Classes that weren't in the PH1.  Classes with formal source & role supported by the rules.  The differences were profound.  They were almost uniformly improvements - sometimes vast improvements.  Too much all at once?  Maybe.   Bad reasoning is hard to let slide.  Bad intentions are unfortunate, but we can't really judge them with much confidence in a medium like this.  I know it can seem that way, but, even though we're mostly just avatars on-line, and most of us aren't putting any sort of reputation on the line, it's not my intent to accuse any specific person of any specific character flaws or wrong-doing.  However, when patterns emerge, I'm not going to deny them, either.   All I've done is demonstrate that the dissociative label can be applied to almost any mechanic, using the same standards and rationalizations as when it's applied to 4e and is therefore invalid.  A rationalization rather than a reason.  People make errors in reasoning like that all the time, particularly where strong personal feeling are involved.By itself, that's not a personal attack, and not meant as one.  But, this has been a fast-moving thread, and you and Wicht, in particular, have come at it from a variety of angles, including analogies couched as involving yourselves, personally.  I'm sorry if any of my answers to any of that could be construed as personal attacks.  That wasn't my intent.  I'd prefer to keep it on the level of discussing games and ideas, not individuals or groups of fans.  But, sometimes the discussion goes there.</blockquote>

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