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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 4563313" data-attributes="member: 32740">Well it's just not a shallow subject to explain what I like about even just the class structure of 1E/2E, much less what I like/dislike about ANY given edition, but "simplicity" is probably a good place to start. The original presentation of the game - the way the whole thing was structured - was to distill archetypes into classes. The way I see 4E being presented is quite far from that. In 1E a wizard didn't have the job as "controller" - his job was whatever his spell choices made him out to be. Same with any other class. Most everybody I knew played clerics as "defenders" but that certainly wasn't the only thing you could do with them especially if you didn't want to accept that as the job being dictated to you. 1E/2E was ANYTHING but perfection, but just because 3rd edition was released doesn't mean that previous edtions lacked any merit, just as the release of 4th doesn't mean that it, and it ALONE, is to be viewed as superior in all ways to all players. If anything the release of 4E has shown me that not only is that not the way _I_ cared for D&D to go, but that 3E really took the game in the wrong direction. Mechanically, yes, 3E was vast improvement, but the idea that the game was about some kind of number crunching contest where there was actually even a winner, and the winner was the player who came up with the superior build... Really, I find it hard to explain why I despise the concept of a character "build" so deeply except to say that IMO it just is so not the point. I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of that aspect, but it's just alien to me. I strangely managed to play 25+ years of fantastically enjoyable D&D while suffering under the delusion that my creativity as a player was NOT stifled because I had no choices in making a build-your-own class, the inability to use book after book to individualize my character, or even that I only chose from an insufferably small list of just 6 races. I've come to believe that the less players are made to be concerned with spending time "building" their characters the more time they are likely to devote to PLAYING their characters, interacting with the others at the table which is what _I_ enjoy most about the game and what I always thought WAS the point. That way players spend their efforts DOING with their characters instead of PLANNING their characters with gameplay only being the occasional proving ground that their choices are "correct" or superior to those made by other players. That may not be how it is - but it IS how I percieve it. 3E and now particularly 4E actually have made the "simplistic" 1E and 2E structure and "limitations" of classes more appealing to me, both as a player and DM.</blockquote>

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