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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8426554" data-attributes="member: 6790260">None of those things is "the campaign," first off, which was rather the centerpiece of the OP. So, at least from that angle--sure, if we're broadening to include "whatever form advancement takes, no matter how divergent it becomes," then yes. But that's not a single thing over time. Almost every game with any component of strategy (even "purely random" games!) admits some kind of metric of progression if you're willing to generalize far enough. And "be innovative!" is hardly an "advantage"--it's more like a vital need, one that D&D has actually been pretty antagonistic toward across its history. After all, 4e also iterated in a ton of ways, pushing design, implementing genuinely innovative new concepts, and people actively shat on it and misrepresented it constantly.Second, the subclass and concepts like that go pretty far afield from the "goodie bag"/persistent-character model. Like, they're kinda orthogonal to it. Yes, they offer a wider variety, but you can't mix them together. You're locked in, you're embarked, once you pick a subclass that's your subclass forever. So....that's kinda completely orthogonal to the "you can play this one character, and it never stops growing or participating unless you want to stop or things go really super wrong." It's not an advantage of the levelling experience that you're given a variety of options to play; it's a wholly unrelated advantage, enabling different fantasies efficiently. Which, sure, that's one of D&D's advantages--one it retains to this day, as many games tend to pursue a more narrow definition of fantasy. But it's not the same advantage as discussed in the OP.And, again, that's a design space that the D&D community (and, to a certain extent, its creators) have been actively antagonistic toward. Even when 5e was being made, it was STILL considered a totally normal not at all insulting thing to mock people who like playing dragonborn, purely for that preference. Even when said in jest, such things are really Not Okay (I mean, for real, would you mock a good friend purely because they told you they like sweet, fruit-flavored mixed drinks instead of beer? Even as a playful ribbing, that kind of thing can really hurt!) but it's literally only been in the last couple years that the old hands and the game designers have started to, y'know, actually treat dragonborn fans as serious people who just genuinely like something, rather than dweebs or immature roleplayers or whatever else.Or, for a literal demonstration that just happened on this very forum, consider the "what class do you dislike most" thread, where multiple posters have expressly said that Artificer and Monk shouldn't exist in D&D because they don't fit the fantasy, aka, because enabling that fantasy in some way bothers or upsets those players. And the same thing goes for the Warlord, which some people are actively hostile toward, despite it being intensely beloved by its fans.This is (just) one way that the fanbase can be actively antagonistic to the things that make a thing actually great. Enabling a diverse spectrum of fantasies has always been an important pillar of D&D. It's why have the pseudo-Van Helsing Cleric today, and why Gygax permitted people to play balrogs or dragons at his table as long as they were willing to start weak and grow strong with effort--but it's also always been under attack from the traditionalist fans (and, sometimes, traditionalist designers) who have an uncompromising view of what the game "should" be.</blockquote>

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