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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6255486" data-attributes="member: 1210">I disagree with the premise that a game should be designed to be as system-neutral as possible. Look at, for example, the World of Darkness games. Strip the White Wolf playstyle out, and you have.... not World of Darkness. I think we, as D&D players, are in a weird, special position, because D&D was the first RPG. It's what most of us cut our teeth on, and because of that, we all want it to appeal to us. In addition, all the talk about supporting all playstyles has led us to expect a style-neutral game from 5e. However, I don't know that it's possible to completely strip playstyle from a game. I'm a huge advocate of supporting multiple playstyles, but I think the base game WILL have an inherent implied playstyle simply because any combination of rules implies an inherent playstyle. What I hope is that the implied playstyle is only lightly implied and easily changed. The whole "hard to die" issue that XunValdorl_of_Kilsek is focused on is one area where I think, to succeed, 5e MUST be extremely customizable. There are lots of high-lethality groups. There are lots of low-lethality groups. There are even lots of NO-lethality groups! I don't care where the default is set, as long as the "dial" that lets me set the game's lethality is sufficiently flexible, and I'm pretty sure that the designers are very aware of it. (At least I hope so!)For the record, for well over a decade I have considered and proclaimed my D&D campaign my favorite art form. So I disagree here- but this is absolutely a subjective thing, so think of this as a difference in perspective rather than an argument or assertion. <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=":)" />This is an interesting issue. I assume- as it sounds like you do- that the comment about 'diceless' as a playstyle was referring to resolving things without dice, including combat issues. I'll agree that in that case it's generally an issue of mechanics, not style. OTOH whoever said "but 3 sessions without rolling!" is talking about a distinct playstyle- it's not "truly" diceless, but rather usually diceless, because these groups do roll the dice when the rules call for it; it's just that those circumstances (e.g. combat) almost never arise. If we're going to call that a "diceless playstyle", okay, 5e should support that... but I wouldn't use "diceless" to describe it.Mostly agreed (although you certainly don't have to jump through hoops to die in MY 4e campaign! - at least, not until epic levels, when death is designed to be a speed bump).Sticking to the lethality/healing topic, I really don't much like the 5e take on Hit Dice. (The full recovery on long rest thing bothers me in 4e, too.) Systems that modify lethality by working with HD are likely to remain too heavy-healing for me. I just ran a couple of 1e games, and the old "1 hit point per day" was extremely refreshing. I like lingering wounds. I like that the pcs sometimes need to rest up for a while.  A Hit Dice-based system may be able to appeal to me if set up correctly, but we'll see what it looks like in the end.I don't know- I'd argue that even a game that tries to set its rules as a world-describing set of fantasy physics, which is what I thought 3e did (and did pretty well), implies a playstyle. Heck, even if you use the actual laws of physics, they imply a certain playstyle- certainly not the heroic "My 10th level fighter will jump down a 50' shaft and attack" playstyle that D&D usually employs.</blockquote>

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