NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eric Tolle" data-source="post: 5617088" data-attributes="member: 53859">Of course not- there's plenty of room for people to ignore RAW in any actual play of any rpg. You can have a heroic high fantasy version of Runequest, our a WH40K game tha explores tolerance and multiculturalism. But that really says nothing about how the rules are written, or expected style of play. The most publicized style of play is for the oozed power gamer, and that's the style of play the RAW support.I don't think it's a misuse of his statement at all. While in the larger D20 system mastery may only be a component (it's much less important in True20 for example), it's obviously central to the 3.X experience. When one of the base classes is little more than a trap for the inexperienced, when you get concepts like the following:Someone who hasn't built up a mastery by studying dozens of sourcebooks and the synergy between hundreds of racial attributes, feats, powers, etc..In fact this points out the  intended parallels between mastery, sourcebooks and Magic the Gathering collectors: just like MtG players have to buy hundreds of cards to build up powerful decks, so do 3.X players have to buy as many sourcebooks as possible to get access to components to build uber-characters. Likewise, the set-up of the sourcebooks is in parallel to  purchasable magic decks; you have the useless fluff no one pays attention to; the obviously useless classes and feats; the occasionally useful versions of the same; and finally, the "rare" classes, feats, templates or powers that can be used in combination with the right attributes from other books to make unbeatably powerful decks- er, characters.And there you have the core of the Third Edition experience. This explains why True20 failed (no material for power gaming builds), and why 4E isn't doing so well (the emphasis on balance gives power gamers nothing to buy).This also shows the problem Pathfinder faces. It's popular now as a continuation of 3.5, so power gamers feel they can use the standard builds. But if Pathfinder doesn't start giving the munchkin crowd material to build uber characters with, it's popularity will probably decline.Finally, this is why 5E will be so problematic. Unless it gives the "build a munchkin character" crowd plenty of opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of complicated uber-builds, the gamers are the 3.X base will claim the game "isn't really D&D. On the other hand, of 5E is built to please the 3.X power  gamers, then those of is who like to create simple characters and be assured of their usefulness won't buy the game.</blockquote>

Verification