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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5795465" data-attributes="member: 8461">Okay, I'll admit the title for this thread isn't perfectly indicative of the point I'm looking to make. A better thread title would be "When determining what you want your D&D game to be, it's easier to subtract materials you don't care for than it is to create new materials from scratch."Unfortunately, I couldn't fit all of that into the title bar. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Now, I recognize that once you've added a particular element to your game, it's hard to remove it. For example, if you find that you're unhappy with the nature of high-level play, there's little you can do that will de-level your PCs (unless 5E brings back the level-draining undead! HINT HINT WOTC! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> ).However, when you're crafting what sort of campaign feel you want - before the game-play starts (or at least before it gets very far) - it's far easier to simply remove the parts of the game that are already there that you don't like, than it is to realize that something specific is missing and figure out what it is, and how to add it.This is why I get fundamentally nervous when I hear all of the talk about 5E "flattening the power curve" on player-characters. What if you like the existing power curve in 3.X/4E/Pathfinder? Leaving aside all of the snide responses of "well then just don't play 5E," this creates a problem in that the game, for all its talk of modularity, is now unable to support the play-style you want.I think that a lot of people think that the modular nature of 5E is based around addition; namely, adding in the options you want. But that's incorrect. 5E's modular nature sounds like it's fundamentally based around subtraction - you have the gestalt whole of the options that are presented, and then you subtract the parts that don't work for you. This is a small but vital distinction, because this latter view means that anything that isn't part of that gestalt of the whole of the options is something the game necessarily can't support.Now, I know that they've said that future products will add new options, so perhaps I'm worrying needlessly. But that's still not very reassuring, not when you consider how well trying to add new options to the game after it's already fully-formed has gone over in past editions - 1E's Unearthed Arcana, 2E's Player's and DM's Options books, 3E's Epic Level Handbook and Deities and Demigods, and even 4E's Essentials - adding new options to the game after it's already been designed is hard to do.I want 5E to be truly broad in everything it offers. The power curve should be as heavy as it is in 3.x/4E/Pathfinder; it's easily limited with E6 and other ways of decoupling "rewards" from "increased (combat) power." The more it can do in its initial release, the easier it is to subtract the parts we don't like right out of the box than to have them awkwardly added on later.</blockquote>

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