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The Best Thing from 4E
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6581857" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>For me, the best thing about 4e wasn't on the list, though I didn't think of it in time to check the "other" box.</p><p></p><p>The best thing about 4e is its honesty.</p><p></p><p>I've beaten around the bush on this before, but I'll be direct now: 3e, by comparison, <em>outright lies to the reader.</em> It describes things about its mechanical contents which are <em>provably false</em>. Whether these lies were intentional (e.g. Monte Cook's "ivory tower game design" blog post), or were the designers lying to themselves (e.g. designing a game without realizing that their personal preferences were the only thing keeping it from going utterly haywire), I cannot say. The fact of the matter is, the books and columns and articles and all of that, both implicitly and explicitly, convey descriptions that are false, equalities that do not hold, and a variety of other communication failures. For example, Natural Spell and Toughness are both feats, but one breaks the game in half while the other is so situationally useful as to be an <em>actively bad</em> choice for the vast majority of characters.</p><p></p><p>4e did away with all that. It showed us how the sausage was made, it didn't (or very, very rarely, *coughBinderandVampirecough*) imply equalities that didn't exist, it generally held most selectable-option resources (powers, feats, skills, etc.) to a good albeit imperfect standard of parity, it advised the player honestly and directly (though their recommended build choices were often crappy, I will admit that). Just...the whole thing was an enormous breath of fresh air for me. I finally felt like I could play D&D by <em>making informed choices</em>, and <em>adapting from my mistakes,</em> rather than having to be a Wizard myself in order to get anything good or useful out of the rules.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 6581857, member: 6790260"] For me, the best thing about 4e wasn't on the list, though I didn't think of it in time to check the "other" box. The best thing about 4e is its honesty. I've beaten around the bush on this before, but I'll be direct now: 3e, by comparison, [I]outright lies to the reader.[/I] It describes things about its mechanical contents which are [I]provably false[/I]. Whether these lies were intentional (e.g. Monte Cook's "ivory tower game design" blog post), or were the designers lying to themselves (e.g. designing a game without realizing that their personal preferences were the only thing keeping it from going utterly haywire), I cannot say. The fact of the matter is, the books and columns and articles and all of that, both implicitly and explicitly, convey descriptions that are false, equalities that do not hold, and a variety of other communication failures. For example, Natural Spell and Toughness are both feats, but one breaks the game in half while the other is so situationally useful as to be an [I]actively bad[/I] choice for the vast majority of characters. 4e did away with all that. It showed us how the sausage was made, it didn't (or very, very rarely, *coughBinderandVampirecough*) imply equalities that didn't exist, it generally held most selectable-option resources (powers, feats, skills, etc.) to a good albeit imperfect standard of parity, it advised the player honestly and directly (though their recommended build choices were often crappy, I will admit that). Just...the whole thing was an enormous breath of fresh air for me. I finally felt like I could play D&D by [I]making informed choices[/I], and [I]adapting from my mistakes,[/I] rather than having to be a Wizard myself in order to get anything good or useful out of the rules. [/QUOTE]
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