Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morty" data-source="post: 6360894" data-attributes="member: 6778261">You know, I looked at my post, thought about it and decided not to edit, because hey, it's not like people are going to pick apart my word choice. Ever the optimist. To address your actual argument, 5e introduces one mechanic that is actually more efficient - advantage and disadvantage. And it doesn't even use them to their full potential. Their other good idea, expertise dice, were gutted due to being "too complicated". Maybe, maybe not. Names, trappings and iconic elements aren't unimportant, but there's so much more you can do while still keeping them, more or less, even if you decide not to discard them. Like I said - form and function.  Well, the class structure, for one. 3e made the mistake of making fighters a separate class alongside much more specific classes which are also of the warrior archetype, like rangers and barbarians, not to mention all the non-core ones like knight or swashbucklers. Fighter, as a concept, only really works if the other classes are Thieves, Clerics and Magic-Users. I don't really blame the 3e designers for this decision - they were trailblazers and the other big name in RPGs at the time was the Old World of Darkness, which makes 3e look balanced and stable. Classes are also generally rigid and inconsistent - we have extremely broad ones like fighters and rogues, but we also have specific ones like paladins and barbarians. And then there are sub-classes, which beg the question as to why the eldritch knight is a sub-class but the paladin is a separate class. Or, for that matter, what separates a hybrid sub-class from a multi-class character. So that's one thing. Another is the HP and AC system, which is far less efficient than it could be and is one of the reasons non-magical combat is so dull. It's not like anyone is asking them to switch to a Riddle of Steel-like robust combat simulation - but re-examining the old model so it's deeper, easier to narrate (avoiding the 'are HP meat or luck' debates is a nice perk too) and allows for more interesting interaction isn't too much to ask for, now is it? Then there's the assumption that bigger numbers and frequent attacks of the non-magical classes equal the sheer breadth of options magic-users get, which has hounded D&D and the entire gaming industry since then. Because all those things are minor. Borderline houserule category. And in case of bounded accuracy, the benefit they give to the game is dubious. I'm of the opinion that bounded accuracy can be good, if done right - but you need to make sure competence and difficulty expand horizontally instead, not just cut the numbers down to size and leave it at that. Advantage/Disadvantage, like I said, are one of their few actually decent ideas, if underused - but it's hardly revolutionary, is it? Nope. 4e is a decent game for what it does, especially with errata and later material, but not really my RPG of choice. Sorry for not falling neatly into edition war categories.</blockquote>

Verification