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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 5547363" data-attributes="member: 78958">Seems many people like gritty after all... I'm surprised, this being a D&D forum.The D&D ruleset doesn't lend itself to gritty play, in my opinion. It's highly abstract and tries to balance game option wherever possible (even though it fails in this latter regard in high-level play). IMO a game system to support grittiness must do the two opposite things: make things 'realistic', and remove game balance from the design's intention.For example, Hârnmaster takes the realism approach: it takes loads of rolls to get a single round of one-on-one combat done. Taking a wound or two is likely to cost you the battle, regardless how tough you are. You're more likely to die of shock or, later, wound infection, than you are of dying to a stab to the face - even though the latter is still highly likely to happen, and if it happens, to be the end of you. Well armored characters will rarely lose to unarmored characters, even if the unarmored one is the greatly more experienced combatant. Armor (while being extremely useful for keeping you alive in battle) is massively expensive, slows you down, and gives you harsh penalties to just about everything while you wear it. Wounds can bleed so much that you have to give up fighting just to patch them up, even if they're otherwise far from fatal. Weapons can and will break, yes, even your prized ancestor's blade. And so on.Hârnmaster also throws balance out the window. Some skills are vastly more powerful than others. Some PCs have extremely useful natural psionics simply by chance, while others don't. Spellcasters are dead meat for much of the game, unless they survive a long time by great big chance (and just plain cowardice), in which case they can dominate everything. Being born under the right starsign gives you very tangible benefits (huge potential increases to combat skills), while other starsigns make you better at Brewing or Tending Livestock. Fighting with a shield is just plain better in every way than fighting without a shield. A rigid caste system ensures nobles get everything they want, while farmers get nothing - and this even translates into PC power. And so on.In my opinion, if you want 'gritty', there's systems that simply lend themselves better to it than D&D or its derivates. I can totally understand people saying 'but I like to play D&D, AND I want it to be more gritty'. Just saying that other games might be more to your liking, if only because you don't HAVE to think about game balance so much if you're not playing D&D.</blockquote>

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