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Message: <blockquote data-quote="triqui" data-source="post: 5521889" data-attributes="member: 57948">I find none of those (3e or 4e) are good examples of subtractive design. The difference among them is Modular Design vs Exception Based design, not simplicity. IE: 3e was not substractive from 2e at all. It added a ton of things, and removed none. Replaced a few -like old odd Breath Weapons, Magic, Death, etc saving throws for Fortitude, Reflex, Will-, but did not take away anything. They made the rules more Consistent (ie: you no longer need to roll high to attack, but low to save, use 1d20 for skills like non-weapon proficiency but 1d100 for other skills, like Move Silently), but no simpler. Quite the opposite, it's more complex (although better)4e did kill a few sacred cows, but their goal was not further simplicity, but, mostly, game balance.   It also added quite a bunch of mechanics (healing surges, for example), whenever the developers felt they should do so for balance, so subtracting wasn't their goal either. One could argue that Essentials is a Subtractive design from 4e, however.</blockquote>