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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9115312" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Upper management folks, and more importantly their fickle whims, change even more frequently than designers do, in my experience, so that's not particularly convincing to me either.Fairly sure they did. It's almost guaranteed that whatever they said no longer exists outside of the Internet Archive now, given WotC has nuked their own website like three times in the past 15 years.And yes, Mearls was in a lead position with Essentials--which departed in several significant ways from the initial design concepts of 4e. You may not be surprised to learn that many folks who liked what 4e was originally weren't keen on Mearls' new direction. Now imagine 5e being taken over by some youngblood after Crawford and Mearls have retired/left the company. The constraints of being the &quot;apology edition,&quot; of long-running balance issues, of slowly-built-up cruft and bloat, etc.Even Pathfinder couldn't justify keeping to the confines of &quot;3e, but with iterative additions&quot; for more than a decade, which put that system at, yes, about 20 years old. Hence my skepticism of the idea that they won't ever make more than small, iterative tweaks--and the idea that small, iterative tweaks could ever add up to being a wholly different game. Iterative tweaks constrained by backwards compatibility won't change CR. They won't change full casters being straight-up superior to non-casters. They won't change magic item issues or the anemic equipment rules (seriously, Larian has absolutely trounced the tabletop game in this regard, equipment is SO much better in BG3 than in tabletop 5e it isn't funny.) Etc.Iterative tweaks confined by backwards compatibility will mean 5e remains essentially the same game forever. There is no &quot;frog in hot water&quot; thing here (which, incidentally, that metaphor is false anyway, frogs will jump out when the water gets too hot!)--the water will never be allowed to get hot enough.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9115312, member: 6790260"] Upper management folks, and more importantly their fickle whims, change even more frequently than designers do, in my experience, so that's not particularly convincing to me either. Fairly sure they did. It's almost guaranteed that whatever they said no longer exists outside of the Internet Archive now, given WotC has nuked their own website like three times in the past 15 years. And yes, Mearls was in a lead position with Essentials--which departed in several significant ways from the initial design concepts of 4e. You may not be surprised to learn that many folks who liked what 4e was originally weren't keen on Mearls' new direction. Now imagine 5e being taken over by some youngblood after Crawford and Mearls have retired/left the company. The constraints of being the "apology edition," of long-running balance issues, of slowly-built-up cruft and bloat, etc. Even Pathfinder couldn't justify keeping to the confines of "3e, but with iterative additions" for more than a decade, which put that system at, yes, about 20 years old. Hence my skepticism of the idea that they won't ever make more than small, iterative tweaks--and the idea that small, iterative tweaks could ever add up to being a wholly different game. Iterative tweaks constrained by backwards compatibility won't change CR. They won't change full casters being straight-up superior to non-casters. They won't change magic item issues or the anemic equipment rules (seriously, Larian has absolutely [I]trounced[/I] the tabletop game in this regard, equipment is SO much better in BG3 than in tabletop 5e it isn't funny.) Etc. Iterative tweaks confined by backwards compatibility will mean 5e remains essentially the same game forever. There is no "frog in hot water" thing here (which, incidentally, that metaphor is false anyway, frogs [I]will[/I] jump out when the water gets too hot!)--the water will never be [I]allowed[/I] to get hot enough. [/QUOTE]

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