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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ColonelHardisson" data-source="post: 3015552" data-attributes="member: 363">That seems more like the 1e paradigm that I saw over the course of a decade running and playing the game. Most 1e combat sessions I was ever witness to went like "I swing at it. DO I hit?" "Nope. It swings at you and...hits. 8 points of damage." "OK, I'll swing at it again. Do I hit?" "Yep." "OK, I do 7 points of damage." "OK it swings at you..." and so on and so on. It was very rare for a player to try anything fancy. Mostly, this seemed to be because there was nothing in the game itself to encourage such stuff. I'm sure someone will make a smarmy remark about how I must have been gaming with unimaginative cretins, but I really didn't. I gamed with a wide variety of people, especially in D&D's late 70s/early 80s heyday, and anytime a game came along that specifically mentioned ways to do fancy combat maneuvers, those players would go to town with them. I also saw a good bit of house ruling to put such stuff into D&D. So my theory is that the game will encourage players to do more if more is codified that they can do within the rules of the game. A lot of people say they like to "wing it" on these boards, but I rarely ran across anyone who really enjoyed gaming that way in any of the groups I ran across in real life.</blockquote>