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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alkiera" data-source="post: 4236009" data-attributes="member: 41353">I like what you said here.Another way to look at it is the presence/absence of 'fiddly bits'.  The 3.x approach to D&D had lots of fiddly bits; the skill point system, massively-multiclassed characters, all the different bonus types and templates etc.  The conflict resolution system was relatively simple, but character building was begining to approach GURPS or HERO in difficulty, especially if you started above first level, and especially compared to earlier versions of D&D.  For 4e, they seem to have stripped a lot of that out.  Lots of the complicated bits are replaced by 1/2 character level.  Skills are still around, but are now binary; you're either trained, or you're not; no needing X ranks in skill Y, and skill Z having a +2 if you have 5 ranks in skill R.  Hitpoints are now a fixed number per level, based on class role, and vary between classes less than in 3.x.  And that's just the PC side; on the monster side, there's a handful of tables (as best I can tell) indicating generic stats of monster type X(brute, soldier, artillary) by level.  No longer do you build a monster by grabbing the 'standard array' or 'elite array', adding racial mods, then throwing levels of a class or pseudo-class on top, with all the PC skill/hp/BAB/saves fiddly bits.  In 4e, you grab the row off the enemy type table with all the basic stats, give it a few attacks or other powers, a little racial flavor so it blends with others of its race, and you're done.  You can tweak it some, sure, but there are guidelines for that, too.The people who want all the fiddly bits are often simulationsists, but not always.  Unfortunately for them, 3.x was really the only version of D&D like that, afaik.  Unless you were a spellcaster, the majority of your character sheet in 2e was your inventory, the rest being about the size of a 4e monster statblock, or smaller.What WotC seems to have done is rather like what Intel did with the Core CPU line.  Instead of continuing from the rather different Penium4, they stepped back to the P3 design and worked from there to get the Core and Core2 processors.  It seems like WotC decided that 3.x went too far from D&D's center, so 4th edition went back to a simpler era and moved forward from there.</blockquote>

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