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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7751819" data-attributes="member: 996">Fantasy can be a fairly broad genre, D&D traditionally did it's own oddball take on the genre, more or less by accident, and people really expect it to evoke that very strongly, since it has done so consistently for decades.  4e left that unique sub-genre for dead in a field of slaughtered sacred cows that would have given alien cattle mutilators pause.  Instead, it embraced the broader fantasy genre, particularly the pop-culture 'action' side of it - to the point of being almost more an action-genre RPG focused on fantasy as the default example than a fantasy genre RPG leaning toward action.  It was a disconcerting change. I was way more into 4e than you, and I felt that way, too.  The design didn't beg to be fixed up and re-built in its details the way classic D&D/OSR and 5e do.   Customizing 4e to a campaign/theme/feel was more a matter of taking away what didn't fit than re-designing. It depends on the player, I guess.  I've run or played in games where everyone just happened to play certain sorts of characters.  All-martial, happened a couple of times, with barely an issue (in one case, out of the 13-wk encounters season, our all-martial party flubbed one skill challenge for want of any rituals or arcana skill, for instance - so the following battle was harder, but, hey, all-martial party, we could handle a tough battle).  In other editions, that can easily crash and burn if the DM doesn't take measures to compensate, so the impetus is very much there to hack the system if you do want to do something like that.  Essentials would also ask everyone to play characters from the latest supplement, which, amazingly, also worked fine most of the time.  The campaign I decided to go ahead and finish out (still! 30 is a lotta levels, y'know) is still all Heroes of the Feywild tied-in characters.  Skalds & Thieves have a little trouble keeping up with Epic but it still works... Inherent bonuses came in w/in, I think it was, 9 months, though the idea is an obvious one (it had been floated much later in 3.x, too, IIRC).  Only three items types of items were assumed in the math, if you clicked on inherent bonuses, you could still use items, you just didn't need to cycle those three critical ones about twice a Tier.  You could find a +1 flaming sword, say, and use it your whole career, your inherent bonuses would just replace the +1.  No need to get rid of any other sorts of items, though it was a low-magic option and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to turn it on buy still allow profligate make/buy assumptions... I really like attunement (concentration is kinda bowdlerized 'easy mode' from 4e sustain takin actions or old-school concentration requirements to cast anything, but its still a good idea to have something like it).  I've liked it since I first saw it ('81?) in RuneQuest(c1978), though, so it has that familiarity thing going for me, and, in fact, added a similar mechanic in one 4e campaign (it was a re-boot of an old AD&D one, in which I'd adopted RQ attunement).  Likewise, I feel like Essentials getting rid of the item daily limit and replacing it with lame/arbitrary 'rarity' was a big mistake.  The item daily limit kept the focus on the character.  Like surges only being triggered by healing powers, item needing the character to provide the power/will/whatever to activate their better powers was a nice, genre-appropriate take.  Maybe not s'much as 'destined wielders' and the like but still gave a solid heroic feel.  Of course, it also, and probably primarily, prevented the make/buy/hording of low-level items to spam their dailies, /and/ incentivized longer adventuring days.  Just another case of good design dovetailing mechanical necessities with genre tropes.</blockquote>

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