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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7739977" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Combining past successful elements does not garuntee success. Dictating your design completely by the results of extensive and mass focus testing significantly (but not completely, since you insist on taking everything I say completely literally) reduces risk, and almost completely eliminates foreseeable risk.If that’s your point then it isn’t a strong counterpoint to the assertion that Wizards of the Coast didn’t take any risks with the design of 5e. Yes, of course it’s always possible that a safely designed product can fail due to circumstances beyond your control. That doesn’t mean that designing a product as safely as possible is “taking a risk,” except in the sense that all business endeavors involve some degree of risk. Unpredictable and unavoidable risk aside, WotC actively worked to design 5e in the least risky way possible.Ok, fair point. Most of the design of 4e was not particularly innovative when you take into consideration design and mechanics from outside D&D, and a lot of it was just natural evolutions of ideas that were already present in D&D. It was by no means a revolutionary design, but it was still a big risk because it challenged a lot of assumptions about D&D, like what “class” actually means, the power attrition economy D&D had been built on, and most of all, assumptions about how to present its mechanics.Then you’re arguing against a straw person instead of me. I’ve repeatedly said that all business involves some risk, but that 5e’s design prioritized keeping risk to a minimum over presenting a clear and consistent creative vision.You’re doing a wonderful job of explaining why extensive and broad polling and focus testing was the smartest and safest decision for WotC at the time. The audience was at its most fragmented, so anything remotely divisive could have killed the brand. Designing based on a single creative vision would have been very likely to even further fracture the fan base, so the LEAST risky move was to make sure at every step of the way that nothing went into the game unless it was approved of by the majority of the audience, and not disapproved of by a significant portion of the audience, even if they were in a slight minority.Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said it took no creativity. The designers still had to come up with ideas to present to the audience for approval, and they had to iterate on the ideas that were received well enough not to scrap but not well enough to include as-is. They took very few risks in their design (yes, I said “no risk” at one point because I was using a conversational tone and I figured it would go without saying that as a business venture there was of course some risk involved). And no one could have done what WotC did with 5e using the OGL because no one else had the reach WotC did to poll and playtest as broadly or extensively. It wasn’t the lowest bar - the lowest bar, design-wise, would have been yet another cleaned-up retread of 3e mechanics, or even just disavowing 4e and going back to actively supporting 3.5 - but it was the safest move financially. Going back to 3e would have alienated the 4e fans, which despite popular opinion was a pretty big demographic, and it would have put them in direct competition with Pathfinder. The safest thing for them to do was to put together a new edition based on the most successful designs of all previous editions and focus test the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> out of it so that any remotely controversial ideas could be stamped out immediately.But what? But I concede when you present me with convincing counterpoints, like above where you pointed out that I was not evaluating the innovation in 4e’s design by the same standards that I was 5e, and I conceded that you were right about that and revised my position?I’d say stop focusing on my word choice and start focusing on the actual content of my arguments. Nitpicking about word choice is a tactic used when someone doesn’t have a strong case against the opponent’s actual point, so they go after the presentation of that point instead. It doesn’t counter my argument and it makes your position look weaker than it actually is.So you’re just going to ignore the part where I said that when it is worth it to use Cunning Action, the optimal choice is usually obvious?Yes, when the creature is fire resistant, the subset of a spellcaster’s options that involve dealing fire damage are no longer meaningful options. This is the same principle that makes the majority of Cunning Action options generally not meaningful. But even after taking Fire Bolt and Burning Hands out of the Wizard’s list of meaningful options, they still have more than twice as many meaningful options as the fighter does.The value of the options is situational, yes. This doesn’t change the fact that more options > than fewer options. Even after discounting the options that are not situationally relevant, the 4e character still has more viable options than the 5e character.That’s not creating a new decision point, that making an option you already had more likely to succeed.That’s making an option you already had less risky to fail.Bonuses don’t enable new decision points, they strengthen options.I’m talking about mechanics that give you options you wouldn’t have otherwise had. That doesn’t have to mean powers necessarily, though it can. Compare the Feat in question to the Wild Magic Sorcerer’s Tides of Chaos. Both can be used to give you Advantage on a saving throw against a trap. The Feat does so automatically and at no cost. There is no decision involved, you just always automatically get Advantage on the save. With Tides of Chaos, the sorcerer can expend a limited resource to gain Advantage on the save. Every time they make a save, they have to decide if they want to use that resource now or save it for later. That’s the difference between a decision and a bonus. One is automatic and requires no active decision making, the other must be actively chosen over other options.</blockquote>

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