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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 5516819" data-attributes="member: 38357">I agree completely, and that's been my (limited) experience with epic D&D.It seems (to me) to come from things like the "extra life" powers that most EDs have, as well as some of the design slant of 4e. It's also influenced by the way that 4e scales... Specifically, the reward mechanic in 4e is XP, which is generally seen as power gain. The issue is that, because of constant scaling (necessitated by the narrow band of "acceptable challenge") there's no actual power gain. The PCs don't really get to butt heads with things they can beat... yet..., nor do they get to mow through what was once a serious threat.So the result is that the players are looking for that "power". They want the game to get easier, not harder. And IME "easier" gets combined with "more convenient". And there's a lot of work in the 4e design aimed at removing the possibility that the DM might act like a jerk, which IMO leads to the assumption that if the DM is doing anything that "isn't in the book", then that's exactly what he's trying to do.And that last bit isn't even anything new. But 4e seems in a way to be the culmination of the idea that players need the system to protect them from "bad touch DMing". And I think that has had the unfortunate side-effect of seriously eroding the idea that players should actually trust the DM. The way I see it, the DM has really virtually unstoppable power, even in 4e. If the DM wants to TPK the party, or otherwise just make them miserable, the rules aren't really going to stop it. And the illusion that the rules provide an actual balance between the players and DM might be comforting, but that just means that anything that threatens to dispel that illusion is scary.So, just to conclude my mini-rant, there are bad, abusive DMs out there, but I think we've gone a bit too far in trying to pull their fangs. Particularly since IMO you don't want to be playing with those people in any case. And this is in part a problem with the people I play 4e with, but I've had a hard time (well, OK, I'm actually lazy and maybe I haven't tried as hard as I could) finding people who both want to play 4e and are interested in real challenge / responsibility.I'll add two side issues to this: One, I don't personally like the kind of "powerup" that exists in 1-30 D&D. It doesn't match up with the "source material" that I prefer to call upon, and I'd like things a bit more gritty. On top of this, I would really prefer to slow down advancement. Way down. I think the published 4e adventures (H/P/E series) are about the right length that 3 or 4 of them would make good pacing for a single level, maybe slightly less at levels 1-3. And secondly, most of my D&D players don't want to think about / discuss the game nearly as much as I do (in some cases that doesn't apply to other RPGs). So I could totally see fixing a lot of my complaints with a few houserules, but no-one really is all that interested.</blockquote>

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