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Message: <blockquote data-quote="VHawkwinter" data-source="post: 9788369" data-attributes="member: 7040136">My biggest attachment to the D&D franchise is FR Novels. To a lesser extent Planescape and Spelljammer, and an even lesser extent than that Ravenloft.Yes, Hit Points have always grated on me for D&D for that reason. It's not describing a setting where training involves making yourself supernaturally durable. I haven't come up with a good houserule for that that doesn't break the rest of the game - I would definitely prefer some kind of "GURPS Forgotten Realms" with 2e style spellcasting and an indepth magic item building system, but that doesn't really exist.I think it also works for fiction approaching DBZ or Chinese Cultivation fiction, where leveling up explicitly means developing levels of supernatural durability. But I agree it's a poor fit for the world described in the D&D setting books, adventures, and novels.I have not come up with a great way to fix that. I considered minimum and maximum HP ranges by creature size category - with combat that looks more like RM or RQ or GURPS, and maybe specific magical defenses or hit parrying / dodging resources you exhaust to dodge would-be hits or something. Never finalized something good there though.But sure. D&D for me HP are a big black mark against evwry edition of D&D. Absolutely. I would rather something closer to RQ or perhaps RM combat. But theres no need to make it worse by piling MMOesque Encounter Power cooldowns on top.Many of the x/day abilities in 3e (the ones where it doesnt make obvious inworld sense why it would have x uses which recharge after a night's rest) also grate on me. There's not any edition of D&D out there that checks all the boxes of what I want from an RPG (which would make it play something between GURPS 4e (out of combat) and RuneQuest 6 (in combat), with the prebuilt content and magic for FR, Planescape, and Spelljammer, and with some gameplay expansion subsystems that I've not encountered better versions of than in old 3e splats). But 3e comes the closest, and some of that is because of 3pp stuff that I haven't found a better equivalent to for any other game - like Book of Strongholds and Dynasties for building projects (fortresses, guild halls, whatever).Even if I were not put off by 4e's boardgamey mechanics and "everything is a skill challenge" gameplay outside of combat (where my campaign will take place ~50-67% of the time) - 4e opted to not convert most of the content that I would want, and much of what it did convert is wildly different. If I need the stats for (some creature), maybe 4e has it maybe it doesn't, which I expect would often leave me converting it or reskinning something and converting the special abilities the thing is supposed to have - rewriting all the monsters. Basically all of them got converted to 3e by 2008 though. If it turns out we need it playable? In 3e that's no problem, in 4e that's a bigger headache. And that goes for monsters, but it also goes for playable species. And magics shown in the sourcebooks and novels.The amount of effort it would take me to run a game of D&D I would be satisfied with in 4e is more than if I were to try to convert 2e style spellcasting with the core and FR spells and schools and lists; as well as magic items - to GURPS. If I'm ever going to that degree of effort converting content anyways, I may as well go all the way to a better system rather than feel chained to D&D.But I know 4e players are big on 'just reskin something, getting noticeable details right doesn't matter' - so I won't be terribly surprised if you're bewildered at the idea that a shortage of /correct/ prebuilt content would be something I would consider a big barrier to satisfaction with 4e (likewise on wanting indepth out of combat gameplay. 4e fans generally don't care about that at all, nevermind having it as a high priority).TL; DR:No, "If you tolerate some thinga you dont like when running / playing 3e, you should discard all the parts of it that you do like (including the prebuilt mechanical content for 2/3 of the settings you like) and replace them with more things you really don't like" - is just not a compelling argument. "I don't enjoy the things you do so I prefer this other game and don't care that it lacks the things that made you like the previous edition" is fine. I'm not telling you you can't like 4e. But telling me to pick a game that's significantly further from the type of RPG gameplay I enjoy / find good, and ita best to discard the things I like in 3e, for a different game thats lacking most of the content from the D&D settings I enjoy while claiming it will do what I like better - makes 0 sense.Show me where 4e became something closer than 3e to being like GURPS noncombat (maybe augmented with the noncombat stuff I can find better versions of in 3e than in GURPS) + RQ6 Combat (or maybe RM4 Combat), with some kind of universal fatique system for physical exhaustion (maybe like SR4e), with AD&D magic and creatures (esp FR and Planescape content) prebuilt relatively close to how they would have shown up in older sources so they're at least as recognizable as when they show up in the fiction, and I will acknowledge 4e as doing 3e but better, rather than it being "Nearly every bad game design idea from 3e, but with none of the good stuff, albeit yes with pretty balanced player classes in combat".</blockquote>

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