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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8938186" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ain't it the truth.Fully agreed. Hence why I usually cite the 3rd edition D&D Monk as an example of bad design, and explain why: it is clearly designed to be (and described by the book as) a highly-mobile combatant intended to be doing high-flying wire-fu action. However, its tools cannot accomplish that goal because iterative attacks are too important and nothing is given as an alternative to them. It further has a pile of features, most of which are each individually fine, but collectively add up to less than the sum of their parts due to the rest of the game's structure. It is "bad" design not because it has unwisely chosen goals for its design, but because it is objectively, testably bad at accomplishing the explicit goals for which it was designed. The best goals in the world mean nothing if your efforts to meet them are simply wrongheaded. And it isn't like this can't be fixed! The "Spheres of Power/Might" alternate system for Pathfinder, and the Book of Nine Swords classes (and their 3PP derivatives) show how it is possible to deliver the intended design of the 3e Monk without radically rewriting the game itself. The execution on the 3e Monk is just woefully inadequate.Yep. Something can be extremely well designed toward unwise or unproductive goals. However, just as the rules of writing cannot tell you whether it is wise or appropriate to write an essay comparing New Coke to genocide, any knowledge we may build up about game design cannot tell you whether it is wise or appropriate to pursue any specific intent. Such things are properly the domain of ethics.I have criticized a couple of systems on moral grounds, and certain choices during playtests. Specifically, for the first, "Myfarog" (a game that literally uses Nazi race categories as part of character creation) and FATAL (a game that is overtly trying to be offensive; the original acronym phrase was Fantasy Adventure To Adult Lechery); for the second, the proposal during the D&D Next playtest that wanted to make dragonborn developmentally disabled dragons because Mom and Dad failed to get God's permission to have children. (I get where Wizards was coming from on that idea, but it was really really bad and they should have known better.) So while I agree that criticizing a game on properly moral/ethical grounds is rare, it isn't totally unknown either.Unfortunately, at least in the context of D&D, that's a big "if."</blockquote>

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