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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6095885" data-attributes="member: 54710">I don't think it's proven either (see below).  But I do think we see a systematic problems with that approach and I haven't seen a proposed solution to get around them.  The 4e power structure is based on a shared language of keywords.  Those keywords allows the designers to present very precisely defined powers without having to tediously repeat the same language over and over.  That's a tremendous innovation, but -- at least at my table -- some players were routinely confused because they weren't willing to invest the time to learn this new language.  Likewise, presenting a menu of powers caused some of my players to think more in terms of the powers and the battlemap than in what was happening inside the fiction of the game.  And I think it's worth noting that you can have a table of folks where only one or two people are affected by these issues, and yet the whole table is affected because one or two players slow down play or just aren't as into it.I don't believe that these issues are necessarily inherent to building classes out of a common sense of mechanics.  Nor do I believe that these "problems" are problems at every table.  (In contrast to my regular game, I didn't notice these issues with the table of more combat-oriented friends we gathered to play 4e when it first came out.)  But I do think that these are issues that came from the way that 4e tried to build different classes from a common set of mechanics.  As designers, I think WotC correctly asked the question: "What does a common set of mechanics really get us, and is it worth it?"So I see D&DN as incorporating some reasonable interations of this system.  For example, maybe we don't need a single common set of mechanics, if we can have three sets of mechanics: one for weapon fighting, one for spell casting and one for skills, ability checks and resisting maneuvers and spells.  It's less aesthetically pleasing, I'll grant, but maybe a "unified theory of player action" is just difficult to understand at D&D's level of granularity?  Dungeon World can do it, but that would be very different.For what it's worth, I agree that I'd like to see the next iteration of 4e design.  After playing 4e for a month, my conclusion is that I really wanted to see a 4.5e that fixed the problems they discovered after playing it for another year or two.  To my eyes, the most exciting thing about D&DN is the extensive playtest process and the possibility that it might actually create a game that discovers fewer big problems immediately after publication.(13th Age is a little intriguing in that respect, although I'm not sure that Heinsoo/4e-style combat mechanics blend terrifically well with Tweet/Over_the_Edge-style story mechanics.)  -KS</blockquote>

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