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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6134181" data-attributes="member: 6680772">Let's start by saying I don't want to argue for people I may not have ever met nor may not agree with.  So let's leave those "people" to their arguments and only focus on what I, myself, have said in my own words. Yes, but that all falls under "configurability", rather than hacking.  That's why the analogy fits, precisely because "reskinning" is just the kind of thing Mac OS lets you do, quite easily, but I don't think anyone would consider changing a desktop theme as "hacking".You seem to have taken my statement that hacking is not a feature of 4e as some kind of criticism.  It is not.  What I'm talking about with hacking is removing whole bits of the system.  Tacking on systems from whole other games.  Writing up your own systems and sticking them on.  What makes AD&D/Classic D&D amenable to this is that they are made up of non-integrated systems, so hacking one sub-system is less likely to have knock-on effects.  This is essentially why you had fantasy heartbreakers: a D&D kernel onto which new sub-systems had been hacked, which is also what you see with retro-clones.Over two boards now, whenever I've suggested the simplest of hacks -- removing a disliked sub-system, such as healing surges or powers, the response from 4e players has always been that that would be a very bad idea, and that such changes would have to be done with someone who really understood the system and had a good grasp of the math-interactions of HP and damage for both monsters and PCs.  That's not easy to hack.  That doesn't mean it can't be done, any more than a Mac OS can't be hacked.  It just means you need to know the system to do it right.  4e was designed to "work out-of-the-box".  For the vast majority of gamers, hacking shouldn't even be necessary, because the game is so highly configurable.  Just like the Mac OS, that's a strength of 4e, not a weakness.  It's why many people love it.  Other folks, who perhaps prefer to hack for the hack's own sake, don't take to it like they do to other systems, some of which have virtually no inherent configurability, but explicitly say, "Go ahead, hack this however you want."  The high variability of hacks is the whole point.Moreso than other editions, 4e is a feat of game engineering.  It's integrated.  It runs smooth and elegant.  Doing great violence to the system would affect that integration, and affect that elegance.  It's no slight to say that 4e is not as easy to hack as other editions -- it was made so you wouldn't have to hack it.  That's a feature, not a bug.  Many people have repeatedly declared their love 4e because they didn't have to hack it to get the game they wanted from D&D.  4e doesn't have to do everything as good as or better than other editions.  It does what it was designed to do much better than any of them.</blockquote>

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