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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8999860" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Best of luck arguing that around here. We have at least one person (and probably several) who will gladly tell you that they have, and exercise, &quot;absolute power&quot; at the table. And I use those quotes very intentionally. Unrelenting insistence on the phrase &quot;absolute power,&quot; no caveats--and if players didn't care for that, they may vote with their feet.The only design philosophy in 5e is, &quot;Do what we can spin as being traditional.&quot; Even when those &quot;traditions&quot; were invented no more than 15 years before. Numerous systems within it do not actually engage well with the described intent of play, and its &quot;playtest&quot; period was so fraught in large part because, lacking an actual design philosophy, its makers were easily blindsided.* There was a similar issue with 3e, where it was designed with the false assumption that everyone would play it exactly the same as 2e, without considering the ways the rules had changed, and that blind spot is what gave us &quot;CoDzilla&quot; and &quot;God Wizards&quot; and such.That's why we had things like Monte Cook absolutely earnestly saying, &quot;what about what I like to call 'passive perception?'&quot; even though that concept was invented by 4e (and, in turn, the idea of &quot;passive&quot; checks was just a generalization of the earlier &quot;Take 10&quot; rules.) Yes, that is in fact an exact quote. At the time I tried to be forgiving of it. I should have listened to the critics.*It happened on at least two occasions. The infamous &quot;ghoul surprise&quot; was the big/obvious one, but the quiet collapse of Specialties, and as a result the total abandonment of the &quot;Warlord Fighter&quot; even though the devs had been very serious about supporting one, was another. The weaknesses of the Sorcerer and Warlock classes are in this boat too, and likely the flaws in the Fighter overall, since they dithered for almost two years before they finally settled on something.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8999860, member: 6790260"] Best of luck arguing that around here. We have at least one person (and probably several) who will gladly tell you that they have, and exercise, "absolute power" at the table. And I use those quotes very intentionally. Unrelenting insistence on the phrase "absolute power," no caveats--and if players didn't care for that, they may vote with their feet. The only design philosophy in 5e is, "Do what we can spin as being traditional." Even when those "traditions" were invented no more than 15 years before. Numerous systems within it do not actually engage well with the described intent of play, and its "playtest" period was so fraught in large part because, lacking an actual design philosophy, its makers were easily blindsided.* There was a similar issue with 3e, where it was designed with the false assumption that everyone would play it exactly the same as 2e, without considering the ways the rules had changed, and that blind spot is what gave us "CoDzilla" and "God Wizards" and such. That's why we had things like Monte Cook absolutely earnestly saying, "what about what I like to call 'passive perception?'" even though that concept was invented by 4e (and, in turn, the idea of "passive" checks was just a generalization of the earlier "Take 10" rules.) Yes, that is in fact an exact quote. At the time I tried to be forgiving of it. I should have listened to the critics. *It happened on at least two occasions. The infamous "ghoul surprise" was the big/obvious one, but the quiet collapse of Specialties, and as a result the total abandonment of the "Warlord Fighter" [I]even though the devs had been very serious about supporting one,[/I] was another. The weaknesses of the Sorcerer and Warlock classes are in this boat too, and likely the flaws in the Fighter overall, since they dithered for almost [I]two years[/I] before they finally settled on something. [/QUOTE]

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