Often when I read discussions online about D&D -- whether it is stuff about the newly revealed tidbit for 5E, or about the Good Old Days of OD&D -- it seems to be dominated by issues of numbers. When folks discuss the relative value of playing a fighter versus a mage, or about monsters or spells, or even about trying to bribe a guard or seduce an NPC, the only thing that matters is what the numbers involved are.And i have to say, I just don't care. Maybe it is because I started with BECMI and my brothers and I just played it the way we played it, and then I moved on to 2E where the fluff outweighed the crunch 100:1. I never did get into the concepts of builds or balancing encounters or any of that mess in the 3.x/PF era.
Obviously, right now the focus is on 5E discussion. It's hard to get into a thread on, say, the subclass reveals because inevitably the discussion turns to numbers and builds and quantitative comparisons. What I really want to know it, is there enough variety in there to allow players to get into the game and their characters so I can run fun adventures that may result in those characters ending up kings or corpses, depending on some choices and some die rolls. The question of whether the round-by-round damage output of the warlock is greater or less than that of the fighter not only leaves me cold, but actively goes against the whole point of the thing.
Maybe it is because I spend most of my time on the DM side of the screen, and therefore PC class comparisons are not especially relevant to me. Even so, CR balancing and treasure counting are only marginally more interesting, and then only in the context of "is this a fun thing?"