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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6799394" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't have a lot of experience with 3E/PF, but what you say here strikes me as plausible. It seems to build on a certain tendency in later AD&D. (Whereas I think earlier D&D, including the earlier period of AD&D, did have a particular experience in mind as a goal of play - such that, for instance, particular rules could be critiqued on the basis that they did or did not contribute to that experience.)I agree that 4e both posits and actually delivers PCs who are broadly competent (though some still find the fighter a little narrow, that hasn't been an issue in my own 4e campaign), and that this facilitates a loose, "opening one door as another closes"-style of GMing. Upthread [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] talked about designing encounters around PC competencies, but in 4e I haven't tended to worry too much about this - and often the PCs have capabilities that I don't know about or have forgotten about (4e PC sheets are very long and complicated). Generally the players, via their PCs, have the resources to make a decent fist of taking on just about any challenge in any of a range of ways (combat, social, subterfuge, etc).In my BW game we started with 5 Lifepath humans (but only 4 Lifepaths for the mechanically stronger elves). These PCs are pretty competent in their areas of specialisation - direct comparisons to D&D are tricky but I'd say comparable to 5th level or so AD&D PCs - but the game takes for granted that some, even many, challenges will arise that fall outside these areas of specialisation, and so the PCs will fail a lot of the time.I agree with you that, in that sort of game, "fail forward" is a must. Otherwise the game would just grind to a halt as some sort of baroque parody of someone's bad RQ or RM campaign from 30-odd years ago.</blockquote>

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