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<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8609964" data-attributes="member: 6801845">I'll pick on 3.x's handling of climb DC because it's simple.&nbsp; They gave DCS for climbing different types of walls, a rough stone wall versus a brick wall for example.&nbsp; It seems like that is more specific, more accurately depicting reality right?&nbsp; Well ... I'm not so sure.&nbsp; All brick walls are not the same and it's the DM who decides what the wall is made of in the first place.&nbsp; What really happened in my experience was that the DM had an idea of how hard the wall should be to climb based on the desired challenge level and then looked up the wall chart to reverse engineer what wall was needed to get that DC.With 4E we went from 3.x's measurement of counting every other diagonal as an additional 5 feet to just saying diagonals didn't matter.&nbsp; While 3E was a closer simulation of reality, 4E was easier.&nbsp; That affected not only spheres being represented as cubes, but how people's movements were tracked.&nbsp; Let's say you have 2 people moving exactly the same speed down a football field towards the goal line.&nbsp; One is moving diagonally from one side of the field to the other and back, the other is moving straight down the center.&nbsp; Both reach the goal line at the same time.&nbsp; Maybe using simplified diagonals never crossed your mind as an issue.&nbsp; But it visibly and clearly broke how things work in a world that works similar to ours.&nbsp; There were other examples, but I really don't want to get into edition wars.&nbsp; Every game makes compromises on their simulation of reality, for me there were parts of 4E that just took it too far.&nbsp; With 3E they tried to more accurately simulate reality but it was a never-ending rabbit hole of clarifications and layers of rules that ultimately (for me) did not add much to the game while adding an unnecessary level of complication.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 8609964, member: 6801845"] I'll pick on 3.x's handling of climb DC because it's simple. They gave DCS for climbing different types of walls, a rough stone wall versus a brick wall for example. It seems like that is more specific, more accurately depicting reality right? Well ... I'm not so sure. All brick walls are not the same and it's the DM who decides what the wall is made of in the first place. What really happened in my experience was that the DM had an idea of how hard the wall should be to climb based on the desired challenge level and then looked up the wall chart to reverse engineer what wall was needed to get that DC. With 4E we went from 3.x's measurement of counting every other diagonal as an additional 5 feet to just saying diagonals didn't matter. While 3E was a closer simulation of reality, 4E was easier. That affected not only spheres being represented as cubes, but how people's movements were tracked. Let's say you have 2 people moving exactly the same speed down a football field towards the goal line. One is moving diagonally from one side of the field to the other and back, the other is moving straight down the center. Both reach the goal line at the same time. Maybe using simplified diagonals never crossed your mind as an issue. But it visibly and clearly broke how things work in a world that works similar to ours. There were other examples, but I really don't want to get into edition wars. Every game makes compromises on their simulation of reality, for me there were parts of 4E that just took it too far. With 3E they tried to more accurately simulate reality but it was a never-ending rabbit hole of clarifications and layers of rules that ultimately (for me) did not add much to the game while adding an unnecessary level of complication. [/QUOTE]

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