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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6174321" data-attributes="member: 58197">I think the distinction between adding elements and changing elements is highly relevant. D&D is, by design, open-ended; building new things and using them in our games is expected. Hacking up the existing things is different.I think of it like a software development platform. If the platform I'm working with doesn't have a built-in library of classes and methods for playing chess, and I write my own, that's not because the platform is deficient, nor does it mean I'm using it in an "unintended" way. However, if the platform does have such a library, and I rewrite half of it, that suggests there is something wrong with the library. It's not proof of something wrong--maybe I want to create some weird chess variant--but if a lot of people are doing this in order to play regular chess, it's a good bet something in there isn't working properly.It doesn't make sense to talk about designing a game to work "for" charop. Charop is an approach to character creation, not a play style, and it works with any system. The value of throwing a system to the folks on the charop boards is that they will suss out which rules elements combine to create unexpectedly powerful combos. That's useful information. It helps Wizards create a balanced game--and speaking as an inveterate tinkerer, a balanced game is great for me. It means I know what my starting point is.There are two reasons people tinker with the rules. The first is to customize the game to better fit the group's desired play style. The second is to fix rules that don't make sense or don't work as advertised. And the sharp decline in house-ruling since the TSR days strongly suggests that a lot of that house-ruling was driven by the latter rather than the former. Returning to the software analogy, if I want to play chess where the queen moves like a king, it's okay if I have to write my own methods for that. It's not okay if I have to go fix the way pawns move because the computer keeps moving its pawns backward.</blockquote>

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