Does DDN do it better?

[Ahnehnois]

These don't feel appropriate to D&D to me. I can understand why the closest option you have is hacking 3e, but wouldn't you be better served by seeking a (not D&D) system that directly addresses those desires?

The same could be said for anyone who wants something different than what is already published under the D&D name. For example, why would someone who wants wizards and fighters to use the same power system play D&D? That's as un-D&D as it gets. Until someone published it and put the D&D name on it. 4e is a laundry list of things that, prior to its publication, you might have made the same statement about. Moreover, I bet the same could be said of any edition transition to some extent.

My desires are influenced by other rpgs. They're also influenced by published D&D variants (there's a lot of Uneathed Arcana in that wish list), and by logical extensions of existing D&D rules. It's not uncommon for a late-3e character to be built with five different classes, with each class taking alternate class features, substitution levels, or other variants. Pretty much anyone who wants Evasion can get it somehow, despite it being a "class ability". Is 3e D&D really a class-based system, or a point buy system in disguise?

I'd argue that deconstructing my 3e fighter and rebuilding him with skills and feats based approach and no firmly defined class, with a wound system and a deeper set of combat rules is a far more reasonable expectation for D&D 5e than being able to recreate a shardmind warlord. My expectations are quite a logical extension of 3e's design direction.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

These don't feel appropriate to D&D to me. I can understand why the closest option you have is hacking 3e, but wouldn't you be better served by seeking a (not D&D) system that directly addresses those desires?

I thought the same thing. That list sounds like Savage Worlds to me....



-rg

 

[keterys]

The same could be said for anyone who wants something different than what is already published under the D&D name.

Yes, that's true - though there's certain levels of that. For example, someone might say "I'd like a version of D&D that's simpler and faster".

But one that abandons classes?
Has skill-based casting?

These aren't new and exciting horizons previously unexplored. There are _tons_ of great RPGs that can do all these things already. If they're trying to present a golden "This is the best of D&D" it will never include those options, because they weren't any part of any iteration of D&D.

Not that I wouldn't love to see them adopt from other RPGs, but that's not their design goal as far as I can tell. Hopefully we'll both see lots of interesting things presented in later modules.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Ratskinner]

My desires are influenced by other rpgs. They're also influenced by published D&D variants (there's a lot of Uneathed Arcana in that wish list), and by logical extensions of existing D&D rules. It's not uncommon for a late-3e character to be built with five different classes, with each class taking alternate class features, substitution levels, or other variants. Pretty much anyone who wants Evasion can get it somehow, despite it being a "class ability". Is 3e D&D really a class-based system, or a point buy system in disguise?

Sounds like a version of Mutants and Masterminds might fit your bill.

 

[Ahnehnois]

These aren't new and exciting horizons previously unexplored. There are _tons_ of great RPGs that can do all these things already. If they're trying to present a golden "This is the best of D&D" it will never include those options, because they weren't any part of any iteration of D&D.

That depends on where you look. There are a lot of variations of D&D out there, especially with the OGL. There is point buy D&D. If you're talking about official stuff, then okay. But really, what is new territory? Were skills and feats 3e inventions? I think not. They work though.

Not that I wouldn't love to see them adopt from other RPGs, but that's not their design goal as far as I can tell.

I'd rather see those goals shifted. That's all I'm saying.

P.S. I'm somehow not surprised that you turned a question asking why you don't play other RPGs into attacks on 4e. At a certain point, it's probably safe to drop the hate and move on. It's been 8 years and a whole edition.

It's a simple rhetorical point, one that is independent of any hatred I may have for said game. One might just as easily have asked around 2000 "if you want thief skills available to everyone, why are you playing D&D?". Or go back another decade or so and say "I don't know what this 'tenar'ri' is; in D&D we have demons". Your point was that my suggestions didn't feel like D&D, and I'm deconstructing that notion by suggesting that things that don't feel like D&D often get adopted anyway. Agree or disagree, that's all that need be said.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Sounds like a version of Mutants and Masterminds might fit your bill.

It might.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Nope. Uh-uh. Simply not true.

There is nothing in 4E that hadn't been tried before in other editions of D&D, either as core or options. The application of these things may obviously be different than in other editions, as of course they would have to be when mixed together in a new edition; but 4E is not a whole-cloth different game than past editions of D&D - 4E is 100% derived from and in the same family as any other D&D edition. It is not a completely new or different game with just the D&D name slapped on it.

There is also nothing in my wish list that hasn't be tried in some form of D&D. D&D has been around a while. There are a lot of things that have been tried.