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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5693840" data-attributes="member: 54877">Leaving out the later stuff in each edition, I'd say that the design/development of 3E and 4E are like this: 3E: Selectively ambitious in spots, but overall leaned slightly towards cautious in approach. This led to a lot of half-hearted compromises in places where it would have been better to have either left well enough alone, or alternately, better to push the intent of the design with conviction. OTOH, the gaping holes in it, like much of the versions before, can be easily tinkered with at the edges. Ripping out the whole skill system, and replacing it with something consistent, is hard. (I know, I tried more than once.) But if you want to tweak stuff all over the place, it really won't matter much. Part of this is because an already unbalanced system can take a lot of abuse without losing anything appreciable, but on a more positive note, systems with such compromises tend to have multiple ways around any problem introduced. (Single class fighter not getting it done? Multiclass fighter/rogue might. Still not matching up with cleric, druid, or wizard at high levels? Nothing you did was going to anyway--so marginal improvement from mixing in rogue levels won't hurt.) 4E: Overall very ambitious, mixed with a bit of selective caution in some spots and outright timidity in others. The intent of the design is largely pushed with conviction. This means that it succeeds or fails on its own terms. When it fails, it fails hard. OTOH, the transparency is there. When it works, you know it works, and you can probably easily see why. And if you can't, someone else can help you see it. It's so easy, that even some people that don't like it, don't play it, and don't fully understand it--can glimpse some of the essential interactions. Likewise, when it breaks, it is usually equally obvious. This means that there are wide areas that you can touch easily and with impunity, knowing that you practically can't break them. (The magic item usage by PCs is far more robust than even most early and thoughtful fans appreciated.) OTOH, if your preferences happen to require touching one of the areas that are not meant to be messed with, you are out of luck. (You'll have to really think about the whole design to make such changes well.  You can't whip up a such a change off the cuff.) For this reason, 4E is selectively resistant to "drift". Since it is the first version of D&D to combine this hard resistance with transparency, it can really tick people off. (Earlier versions were also somewhat resistant to drift in places, but not nearly as obvious. This meant that it took a long time for people to realize, "Hey, that really don't work well when I change it." What you don't know doesn't often irritate you.)</blockquote>

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