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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 4198935" data-attributes="member: 1210">I definitely get 'the feeling' as well. I can't wait to get my hands on the books- heck, even on Keep on the Shadowfell- and try it out. Damn, but I can't wait!! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Anyhow, as far as design philosophy and approach goes, I see pre-3e as kinda like a cobbled-together monster of a machine. You don't know why it works, but man! It works great! It might be messy, and you have to improvise on it a lot, but it produces beautiful results full of character. 3e, on the other hand, took a lot (imho) from the Magic design approach. With MtG, the cards have to be balanced against everything else in the play environment. There are lots of options, but there should rarely (if ever) be an option that is flat-out the best. Likewise, in 3e, you have lots of class, race, feat and spell options, and there usually isn't a no-brainer of a choice. (The worst offenders were fixed with the 3.5 revision.) Weapons are the best example of this- all martial weapons should be about equal, when you factor in their damage die, special abilities, threat range and critical multiplier. Encounter math- how many of what CR make the EL you need to challenge your party?- becomes very important too. If you design encounters sloppily, you might easily provoke a tpk by underestimating the potency of a monster (or several monsters).4e seems to take the best of both worlds, using rigorous math to ensure that the game doesn't go off the deep end into tpk land (assuming appropriate encounters) and working hard to ensure balance between the classes while still being willing to leave the room a mess and take the car out for a random joyride to the caves under the dam at midnight. 4e seems to have a harrowing sense of fun like the Thai 'sanuk'- fun is almost getting eaten by an otyugh, but narrowly escaping and then slaying it with your bow. Fun is jumping 100' off a mountaintop into a raging river to escape pursuing orcs, or stealing the evil necromancer's spellbook and getting away with it. It looks great to me so far. We'll see in just over a month. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/6.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":6:" title="Six    :6:" data-shortname=":6:" /></blockquote>

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