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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4302412" data-attributes="member: 2067">I haven't noticed it being the same folks. Simplicity, as far as I am concerned, is a pretty good thing, and 4e is in many respects a simpler game. It might not go too far enough, though, for the newbies.I think it's kind of perversely hilarious that if it DID go this direction, the outcry would be even greater. Maybe I should have worded it better.Combat will always be (and should always be) an important part of D&D. D&D had its roots in wargaming, and has always had wargame elements: tactical positioning, number-cunching bonuses, blah blah blah.Maybe a region where 4e could have broadened the appeal would have been in cutting some of this wargaming out, thereby killing one of D&D's sacred cows. I mean, why do you need so many powers? Because there are so many different things to do in a fight. All those different things you can do blow up complexity to a huge level, and can get overwhelming quite fast. There's a lot of "moving parts." The great quantity of powers and bonuses that you get to various different things in combat just increase the complexity of these "moving parts."If combat was streamlined, simplified, modified to be a quick few die rolls or something, it could maintain the appeal (combat is a vital part of the game, after all) without getting bogged down in the shifting pushing pulling morale insight feat power electricity acid poison ongoing recharge opportunity attack battlemat miniatures minor action BLARGH that...well, honestly, every edition has probably suffered from to varying degrees. Keep combat.Get rid of the complexity of combat.That's the sacred cow that could make the game instantly easier to grok right off the bat.Add a "miniatures handbook" or something for a more detailed combat system later down the line.Keep the core system neat and elegant and quick and easy with a minimum of "moving parts." They should be interesting, but limited in quantity.I'm just spitballing, here, but I think it might be a promising idea.Right, which is why I probably slightly mis-spoke. <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=":)" /> Definitely keep combat. Slay the sacred cow of "wargaming roots" that the game has to make combat easy to resolve quickly and without a lot of fiddly bits. This cuts down on your need for powers (reducing the Chapter 4 Wall), and cuts down on your need for things that affect those powers (reducing the number of game-specific terms), making it more approachable to newbies, because they can quickly understand the moving parts there are, because there aren't that many of them.</blockquote>

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