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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5489035" data-attributes="member: 46713">I'm not sure what to make of this article.Firstly, I feel the 'calculation' of complexity to be flawed. Just counting the decisions you have to make isn't the whole story, since these decisions might be easy or difficult (which also depends on the number of available options) and have a low or a high impact on a character's overall effectiveness.Second, he's talking about 'simple table look-ups'. You've got to be freaking kidding me, Mr.Mearls! I guess, next he's going to try to tell me that Rolemaster is less complex than a World of Darkness game, because in Rolemaster everything is resolved by looking up values in tables and in World of Darkness you need to do math (counting dice!).Now, this may be a personal problem, but I _hate_ lookup-tables. They're inconvenient and inelegant and imho a good indication that a rpg system is a bad one. You cannot usually memorize them easily so you end up flipping books all the time, which sucks.I vastly prefer simple, consistent calculations over tables.E.g. 'calculating' passive perception and insight isn't even something you have to calculate during character creation. You just have to remember that you have to add 10 to your skill bonus to determine it. Similar things apply to bloodied/surge vales.My favorite example is the original Runequest rpg: Everything can be calculated on the fly. The only look-up table is the one to determine which body part you hit.I'd say Runequest is about as complex as Rolemaster, but the former is vastly more playable (at least imo).Finally, I don't care all that much about the degree of complexity (as long as it's still playable!). I care more about all characters having the same complexity. Hence my preference of 'Classic' 4e over Essentials.Imho, A better way to provide for players who feel complexity is too high is the approach taken in the DSA/TDE rpg:Character Creation is extremely complex. Using Mr. Mearls way of measuring you need to make about a hundred decisions or more (it's a point-buy system).But the player's handbook also includes about two dozen fully developed character 'archetypes'. You can play one of them without changing a single thing or you can customize them.'Classic' 4e already offered something like this with it's recommended builds. A useful addition might have been to also offer advice on what to pick at higher levels.Essentials builds were created with a similar idea in mind: Reduce options by offering a 'tighter' archetype with some of the decisions being eliminated in favour of powers every character using that build gets.</blockquote>

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