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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9433080" data-attributes="member: 6790260">5th Edition D&amp;D is, at its heart, an effort to be an impossible thing. This is well illustrated by the tension over spellcasting and magic items. What did we hear nearly constantly during the &quot;Next&quot; playtest? People wanted magic to &quot;feel magical&quot; again. They wanted magic items to be &quot;special.&quot;And here we are, twelve years later, with magic that isn't any more magical-feeling than it was in 3e, and items that aren't any more special than they were in 3e. Why?Because what people actually want is the feeling they had when they were first discovering D&amp;D, while keeping everything perfectly consistent with tradition and the things they're familiar with. This is an impossible request. The very thing that would make it magical IS unfamiliarity, but when they were given something that seemed unfamiliar before, it was rejected as &quot;wrong.&quot;Hence, 5e is trapped in a cycle of repeatedly trying to square circles. It can't commit to a design philosophy or creative voice, because familiar is boring and different is wrong. It tries to be just different enough to not be wrong, and that goes for a while, but then gets boring. They've recapitulated the same problems races had before (with the minor tweak of three stats, not two) because they're waffling, unwilling to be the different that got backlash (remember how controversial Tasha's stats were at launch!) but unable to remain familiar.When you chase feel and then grasp for mechanics, you're doomed to making the same mistakes over and over. But there was no other direction 5e could have gone.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9433080, member: 6790260"] 5th Edition D&D is, at its heart, an effort to be an impossible thing. This is well illustrated by the tension over spellcasting and magic items. What did we hear nearly constantly during the "Next" playtest? People wanted magic to "feel magical" again. They wanted magic items to be "special." And here we are, twelve years later, with magic that isn't any more magical-feeling than it was in 3e, and items that aren't any more special than they were in 3e. Why? Because what people actually want is the feeling they had when they were first discovering D&D, while keeping everything perfectly consistent with tradition and the things they're familiar with. This is an impossible request. The very thing that would make it magical IS unfamiliarity, but when they were given something that seemed unfamiliar before, it was rejected as "wrong." Hence, 5e is trapped in a cycle of repeatedly trying to square circles. It can't commit to a design philosophy or creative voice, because familiar is boring and different is wrong. It tries to be just different enough to not be wrong, and that goes for a while, but then gets boring. They've recapitulated the same problems races had before (with the [I]minor[/I] tweak of three stats, not two) because they're waffling, unwilling to be the different that got backlash (remember how controversial Tasha's stats were at launch!) but unable to remain familiar. When you chase feel and [I]then[/I] grasp for mechanics, you're doomed to making the same mistakes over and over. But there was no other direction 5e could have gone. [/QUOTE]

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