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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5377436" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, philosophically, to abuse this poor thread one last time perhaps, I think there is a widely held opinion that 4e focuses too much on mechanics and too little on emphasizing narratively significant things. In a sort of general way you can see that here in this debate. 4e can to some extent 'synthesize' narrative concepts like "this guy is quick" out of a bunch of different mechanics but it doesn't hew to it at all and doesn't do it really consistently.A completely different, but more plainly illustrative, example are monster defenses. They bear virtually no relationship to anything ABOUT the monster itself to any significant degree. They are set based almost purely on difficulty level, with at best a bit of a tweak. Higher level monsters ALL have higher reflex defenses, even if they hulking immobile armored brutes than the quickest and sprightliest of lower level monsters. Even at the same level the variance is pretty small, maybe at the most extreme 5 or 6 points. These defenses are determined almost PURELY on the basis of general game mechanical considerations, the narrative concept of a quick monster that is hard to pin down effectively doesn't exist. The other defenses follow the same pattern.Pretty much all other elements of the game are this way as well. Personally I think a LOT of the reluctance of a large part of the community to embrace 4e is related to this. older editions gave very little credence to mechanical considerations and as a result were in a game mechanics sense pretty much of a mess, 4e unfortunately went almost to the opposite extreme and basically threw out the baby with the bathwater.The players can noodle around a whole bunch and kind of reconstruct some sense of connection between mechanics and narrative by careful use of mechanics and fluffing things, but it would be a really vast improvement if the game were to simply meet them halfway.</blockquote>

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