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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5609900" data-attributes="member: 4937">My observations:1) "Tactical Positions": Tactics are a function of terrain, weapons and circumstance.  Anyone that expects complicated tactics on terrainless map with generic melee weapons is going to be disappointed.  But, in any edition of the game, if terrain is present then tactics will naturally be present.  Likewise if weapon disparity is present, then tactics will be present and so forth.  Personally I feel that the advantage of 4e's only edge here is in the straight foward way that it educates the players about tactics by providing clear and unambigious descriptions of the tactical advantage you gain in a particular circumstance.  In most cases, how you should handle the situation in other systems is much less clear.  But I've seen no end of 3e battles lost from winnable positions by players who adopted poor or uncreative tactics, so I'm pretty much completely unconvincable that 3e doesn't heavily emphasis tactics and cooperation.  There is just little or nothing that says, "If you arrange this situation you'll get this obvious numeric award", except for flanking.And all of this is as true of 1e/2e as well.As for combat length, I played in an open dungeon crawl format in 3e that typically saw fights last not much longer 1e/2e precisely because the fights tended to be of the 20x30 room containg a few monsters sort, and so there was little in the way of tactics but closing and opening up in a brutal melee that generally only lasted 2-3 rounds.  We'd often cram 5-6 fights into two hours, and that includes exploration, narration, and so forth.  However, in my current game while I sometimes see this in simple fights where I don't even get out the map, in 'boss fight' situations I'm trying to encourage more complex fights and often fights go 12-13 rounds (or more).  In some cases, I've had 30 different combatants on the map.  In those cases, fights can take an hour or two to resolve rather than 5-10 minutes.  2) "Promotion of Roleplaying": I agree with your initial observation, that this is a function of the group and of the DM in particular.  Diplomacy only can be used to bludgeon through the act of roleplaying if the DM allows it.  At my table, in order to make a diplomacy check you must earn it through roleplay.  You know more can make a diplomacy check without stating what you say, than you can make a climb check without first stating that you walk over to the wall and proceed to climb it.  You can no more make a diplomacy check without stating precisely what you say, than you can make a search check without stating precisely what it is you are searching.  There must be an in game action which the out of game mechanic is arbitrating the success of.  So, "Well met.", is fine.  "I [want to] greet the merchant.", is not.  Anyone that offers up the later proposition immediately gets the question, "Ok, how do you greet the merchant", in the same way that some who says, "I [want to] search", immediately gets the question, "What do you want to search?" or a person who says, "I [want to] search the room.", immediately gets the question, "Ok, where do you start?"Once you've roleplayed sufficiently that the content of your message is clear to me, you make a dice roll that determines the effectiveness of the delivery of that content.  This encourages RP in some ways more than 1e/2e because, unlike those earlier editions, the DM is freed from having to judge the player on the basis of the style and persuasiveness of the player's delivery.  As such, players who know that they personally are not very persuasive and who are perhaps introverted IRL are encouraged to speak up because they know that no matter how stuttering, stumbling, and inept they speak, that the game doesn't punish them on that basis.Now if the DM/players prefer a game without roleplay, then the diplomacy skill obviously allows for that as well.  And if the DM does allow diplomacy checks to be made without accompaning RP, that's his decision of course, but then he can hardly blame the system for this result.  This is a decision about how to play the game that operates at a level above the rules.  But unlike 4e, 3e has nothing in the way of a 'skill challenge' that priviledges mechanics over RP.</blockquote>

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