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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5068262" data-attributes="member: 2067">What I love about 3e/PF is that everything CAN be explained by the rules, but nothing HAS to be explained by the rules. Part of what I don't like about 4e is how arbitrary it can all be. In 4e, the numbers are the numbers and how you justify how they work is up to what kind of explanation you want to use, if you even want to use one. Mechanical effect first, then narrative explanation. In 3e, the numbers can represent something in the game world, and have a real impact. It's more of a "toolkit," with a reason for things to happen in the world of the game. Of course, thanks to Rule 0 if nothing else, they can also be just as arbitrary as they are in 4e, too (4e did make it much more transparent what the numbers should be at different levels, which is entirely a good thing). I do think 3e did not emphasize this nearly enough, and I'm glad 4e brought out a lot of these elements, but I feel that while 3e let me go in both directions (mechanics -> effect with Rule 0, or effect -> mechanics with the rest of the system), 4e only lets me go in one direction most of the time (mechanics -> effect). There's little in 4e that says "do this if it makes sense," there's more in 4e that says "do this as long as it doesn't make combat unbalanced." Which is kind of not how I usually game.I say this as someone who is generally pretty OK with 4e (I own 4e books, run one 4e campaign and am about to start playing in another, but I only own the PF core rulebook, and I haven't flipped through it since I bought it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />). I don't like going backwards from the mechanics, having to figure out my destination before I figure out how I'm going to get there. I'd much rather figure out my first step, and let the road take me where it will (and have game designers giving me a clear path to walk down so I can know kind of what to expect).</blockquote>

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