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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 4971275" data-attributes="member: 3586">When is a rule not a rule? When it's an exception! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I refer to Mark Rosewater's column on Elegance because it reads a lot like 3e played: a stat-block was a lot more complicated than it appeared because keywords kept moving down and becoming more complicated. A simple spell reference (say, "Flesh to Stone") has layers of subreference beneath it.3e also had cascading effects: use a Ray of Enfeeblement spell on a monster and you know what I mean. Some weren't quite obvious in effect, either.This is not to say that 4e doesn't have rules, but I think it has much fewer layers of rules. There is a basic layer of rules you need to know, and it's not as basic as (say) OD&D's, and from there you have the exception (the actual power on your powercard) which doesn't really add much in the way of complexity to the rules (normally), just a new way of applying them.(The worst aspects of 3e's reference system were ameliorated in 3.5e when they moved "typed" monster immunities back into the statblock - consider what undead were immune to in 3e, and then consider what actually showed in the statblock. Yes, it makes the statblock cleaner at the cost of needing the DM to keep a lot more basic rules information).How much rules knowledge do you need to run a 3E game compared to a 4E game or a oD&D game?The comparison with ASL and Combat Commander: Europe makes an interesting one. In ASL, when you make an attack roll, you look up the die result in a printed table to see what effect the attack had. However, on top of that you need to......check if the DR equaled the Sniper Activation Number and thus caused a sniper to fire....check if the DR was a doubles and the unit might cower...check if the DR jammed or eliminated any support weapon firing in the attack...check if the coloured die indicated ROF retentionThat's a lot of information to keep in mind for each die roll, and there are a lot of other die triggers in ASL.In Combat Commander: Europe, the dice rolls are printed on the cards in proper proportions. However, each card may also have a "die trigger" such as "Jammed", "Event", or "Sniper" that occurs when that particular card is drawn, and thus eliminates the need to remember what various die rolls mean: it's right there on the card.D&D 4E may have thousands of powers, but because most of those powers use a very limited number of terms, the knowledge you need to play the game is less than you might think because no-one needs to actually know what all the powers are: just the 20 or so that are used in a particular game.The very basics of oD&D make an even simpler system to run and play, but there are some complexities there from its genesis on Chainmail and then added to through the supplements that make it requiring more basic rules knowledge than it strictly needed - although chrome does add a lot to the game!Cheers!</blockquote>

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