In 4e there are only two non-action character concepts that are viable (the pacifist cleric and the lazy warlord) and they still revolve around combat and border on cookie cutter levels, because there aren't enough choices.
Where Reynolds went wrong is trying to justify mechanical failures like "Death or Glory" with the same broad brush. There's nothing wrong with the concept behind "Death or Glory" but a player who takes it is not trying to play "hard mode", he instead is looking for something like high stakes poker; big risk for big reward, and "Death or Glory" doesn't provide any kind of big reward, merely the risk.
I think it's okay for some options to not be as powerful as others. All else being equal, daggers shouldn't be the equal of a sword,
But I'm playing my fighter as a more-chivalrous-than-intelligent knight, so instead I challenge the orc chieftan loudly to a one-on-one duel and then charge through a wall of orcs to meet him in honorable combat. Or I'm playing a scoundrel and opportunistic jerk, and I slink to one side of the combat and begin looting the fallen.
In Option 1 with a character who challenged people routinely, I'd expect some sort of mechanical support if I wanted the character to be viable and to not doom himself and the party. In 4e if I knew I was the sort of character who charged and challenged, I'd take powers accordingly. And be weakned a whole lot less (and weaken the party a whole lot less) because I have mechanics that fit my character. In FATE it would again work - tagging aspects and spending fate points. In something with less fluff not so much.
Death or Glory - because +4 to hit and +12 to damage at the cost of two feats is worth your iterative attacks and giving a big enemy a free attack. Right. Who thought that one up? Especially as Ultimate Combat was published two years after Bravura Warlords started Brash Assaulting and Provoking Overextensions - which is how you do that sort of move properly with those sort of assumptions. Adding insult to injury, you can't launch a Death or Glory charge or even move to get into position - you have to be facing the enemy and already next to them when you decide to do it.
Me too - as long as the game is open about this assumption. If options are worse or are situational then they need to be clearly marked. I wouldn't care about 3.X Toughness if the same feat had been called "Marginally Less Wimpy". It would still be a terrible feat but it wouldn't deceive anyone. If I see a feat called Toughness I expect it to be good for tanks.
Actually, I'll argue it's more organic than the nine levels of spells (10 if you consider cantrips a spell level) that we got in 3.X (9 and 7 back in previous editions). We're just used to say "oh yeah, meteor swarm, totally a 9th level spell". To everybody outside the hobby, that makes zero sense. Seriously, I'm a level 10 wizard, why can't I cast level 10 spells? It's a crap tradition, pointless obfuscation meant to keep the "riff raff" out of RPGs, and, originally, just an awkward piece of oddly designed game mechanic that no designer dared to touch for fear of impotent nerd rage or because of laziness.
I'll admit, the solution isn't perfect, but it accomplishes two things: 1) it makes spells that really shouldn't be of the same power level, different power levels (anybody saying Nystul's magic aura and Sleep need to be the same level; and 2) it gets rid of an old, tired trope that's a barrier to entry for new players.
On the contrary, siloing allows more character concepts to be played efficiently at all levels of play. You might be opposed to that, but I believe that it's a strength of a game when making a choice doesn't take away from my characters effectiveness.
Just because the rules mostly cover combat (like EVERY edition of D&D ever), doesn't mean you can't create a non-combat focused character with personality, quirks and fun little bits of odd roleplaying, it just means that, once a fight does break out, you won't be cowering in the corner waiting for the big loud noises and explosions to stop (you totally could though, if that's the personality you're shooting for). 4E's system simply leaves the RP component of the game in the hands of DMs and players and doesn't hand out mechanical aids to play a bartender or a cobbler; you want to be a shoemaker, there you go, you've been making shoes for a while, no need to dump skill points in craft or whatever, go out and talk how the duchess is a horrible monster who refuses to pay when you fix her high heels!
I've seen a lot of people arguing that, according to 4th Edition's rules, they can't make a crippled (from a gameplay perspective) character, a character with flaws that make him thoroughly useless in fights and claim that's a failure of the system. I've even seen an actual designer of an actual game that is currently in print say that the fact you can't make a combat/adventure-effective and, at the same time, mundane skill competent character is a good feature of the 3.X ruleset. In 19 years of gaming with diverse players from various horizons, I have never met a single solitary one who rolled a character incapable of performing simple tasks in a dungeon adventure (outside of bad dice rolls and deliberate DM/GM trolling). The only times I've seen it claimed was by players of spellcasters ("look, I didn't take magic missile! He's not a combat character!") who still dominated fights whenever they chose to do something.
In short, 4E does exactly what every other edition of D&D ever did; it just doesn't pat you on the back with condescention/punish you with an unplayable character when you make a less than optimal choice. I mean, there were NO skills, at all, back in 1st Edition (no feats or other bits of mechanical support for doing anything outside of combat, aside from a few spells), how did people make characters with personalities outside of combat?
This started mostly in CRPGs, became standard for D&D in 3e, and continues into 4e. And the problem is this: Money is not money and generally isn't used for the things you might ordinarly use money for. Money is a secondary XP track.I simply do not feel that the ideals about gameplay and assumptions the game is built upon allow for the system to reward me in the manner I'd like to be rewarded for those things. A lot of times I feel that I need to make a choice between what I'd really like to do and what the game says I should do, and I don't like that. I've come to accept it as being simply part of how modern D&D works, but it's not my preference, and I can certainly understand why there are others who feel as though support for non-combat activities are somewhat lacking. Still, maybe that is just part of the D&D style; maybe wanting other things naturally leads to games and systems which are more geared toward making those other aspects of play feel more rewarding.