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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4668011" data-attributes="member: 2067">I could apply the same logic to combat though. Having a magic missile at-will (for instance) allows the player to quickly and easily bypass the challenge of resolving not having a spell to attack with through problem-solving or role-playing.The fact of the matter is the rules are the game -- you can free-form and ask DM permission for anything you want, including combat. But the rules are what is supported.4e overwhelmingly supports beatin' the fudge out of things as the most ideal method of conflict resolution.One person's "bypassed [combat] encounter" is another person's clever strategy or interesting role-playing choice (why SHOULDN'T an enchantress PC be able to avoid combat using other skills? Why SHOULDN'T a clever sneaky rogue PC avoid combat by not being noticed? Why does combat HAVE to happen?).Every edition before it was largely OK with that.I, as an improv-heavy DM, was totally OK with that.4e is NOT OK with that.This is a problem for any genre or playstyle that does not want to encourage combat. Not every play style or genre should encourage combat.4e doesn't HAVE to be that way, especially going forward. It's understandable that it would look that way in the first round of books given 4e's "progressive core" model and the importance of combat in general, but my big concern is that 4e won't bother to model other genres or playstyles, and continue to use the trappings of those things to just change up the combats. There is, as I said, a lot of design space for non-combat challenges in 4e that has yet to be tapped.That's 4e's focus, the idea that D&D is a combat game, but that certainly wasn't how the game was played around my table -- and isn't how it continues to be, even as I DM 4e. Solving your problems with spells and skill checks is still creatively solving your problem using character resources. The core of my D&D gaming looks nothing like what the first three core books actively support (that is, minis combat). The designers, with regards to my campaign anyway, were wrong.Here's a clunky Rituals system in a tacked-on chapter because people liked the old problem-solving spells. Oh, and here's some broken skill challenge rules because some people don't want to fight everything. Oh, and here's an encumbrance system that still measures things by the pound because who DOESN'T love that?4e doesn't get a pass in the "providing useless rules" thing.Now who's being short-sighted. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The D&D game has always embraced a diversity of playstyles, and 4e even tries to (it just fails to, so far). D&D was what each DM defined it to be, not what TSR or Gygax or WotC defined it to be.That doesn't change what 4e clearly supports in the rules as published thus far, and that is combat. This makes 4e, as published so far, an awkward fit for many styles and genres that don't put as much emphasis on combat as 4e does, and who need more robust options for handling non-combat options than 4e provides so far.I believe I clearly stated that 4e doesn't HAVE to be like this, even if it has been like this so far. It's totally possible for a Dark Sun 4e to introduce more rules about survival, resource management, long-term exposure and survival, breaking equipment, stone age crafting, etc., then core 4e has. I'm just not necessarily confident that it's going to happen, given that 4e seems more interested in applying different window dressing than in changing what the game can be about (which, I'm sure, is as much a branding consideration as it is a game design philosophical descision). Most of your post is arguing specifics, which is not what I'm doing here, so I'm ignoring that part of the post.The thing to note is that it was more dimension and variety.It didn't necessarily need to be a lot more -- as many have rightfully pointed out, the focus on combat in D&D has been omnipresent, and combat SHOULD be focused on in D&D. But challenges other than combat deserve a lot better than what 4e gave them. 4e gave them this shallow treatment because 4e, so far, doesn't want you to resolve things in ways other than combat, whereas other editions were, to varying degrees, ENCOURAGING you to avoid combat by giving you easy outs and by making  your characters easy to kill (especially at low levels).The entire philosophy of 4e thus far believes that combat is the One True Fun.That idea is wrong.In fact, for me, if I wanted to fight goblins, I'd go play a video game. D&D, especially for me, is not a game about fighting goblins, and never, ever has been.</blockquote>

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