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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8794010" data-attributes="member: 87792">Yes it would. You'd then have an incredibly mechanically bland subclass that no one would bother to fix because it would inspire no one. Meanwhile the Four Elements Monk tries to use the actual monk mechanic rather than just being a bland bolt-on.No it's not. If functional were 100% the reason we had rules everyone would be playing Fudge or Unisystem; the rules to both are perfectly simple - but they really aren't terribly inspiring or evocative. (And yes I mean Fudge not Fate). People no more want rules that are just perfectly functional than they do to just eat plain white rice.The reason we have rules is to evoke and to share our vision. And every successful ruleset has started out by inspiring people even if they were barely functional. Meanwhile the rules that start with functionality, the Fudges, the Unisystems, the GURPs of this world have not got very far. Rifts from memory comfortably outsold GURPS and I'd hardly call Rifts functional. But it was inspiring. Nope. That has been the tendency in recent years. But especially doesn't seem to be the case in D&D. And we start with the inspiration and then polish the rules, removing the parts that get in the way, rather than starting with dry bland rules  in almost all cases.[ATTACH=full]263392[/ATTACH]What you aren't asking is why, if the trend is so heavily the way you say, all the early editions of successful RPGs were so complex that they could be simplified in the first place and the systems that started by prizing simplicity didn't make it that far.</blockquote>

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