EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I would consider that stuff needing spot-fixes at best, rather than part of (again, as described) a "review...of the entire system top to bottom," which Lanefan has doubled down on that meaning exactly what it sounds like, calling it a "comprehensive review" and specifically expecting some things in a "needs-a-complete-rebuild" category.The one that comes to mind was the math-patch feats. There were also a few other feats that were just bad (and we didn't want to leave laying around as traps). I seem to also recall there was some stuff wrong with some of the Heroes of Shadow material, but I don't recall we ever got around to fixing it before that campaign ended.
The "math-fix" feats are an area I think most players just had a different understanding of how things were supposed to work. The designers wanted fights to get (mathematically) harder at high levels, so players would have to make use of their more-powerful abilities and synergistic effects in order to rise to the challenge. IOW, the designers were specifically trying to avert the "treadmill" effect in a very mild way. Instead, people reamed them for it, so they relented in the only way that could preserve their original intent while letting people address it if they wanted to.
Most feats weren't that bad--nothing nearly as bad as Pathfinder's Death or Glory, for example, and AFAIK nothing hitting the lows that 3.5e did--though I grant that there were some that just weren't really worth it 99% of the time. I don't, personally, consider that a breakdown of the system. There should be some value in learning what are good feats and what are mediocre feats, but there shouldn't be gaps like the difference between 3.5e Natural Spell and 3.5e Toughness.
So you need to have a totally comprehensive, encyclopedic knowledge of everything contained in the entire game before you even begin preparing to play? That's patently ridiculous. More importantly, it will guarantee the eventual death of the TTRPG hobby. Ain't nobody got time for that.Well, a "lot" of things is probably an overstatement unless a system is seriously problematic but you still want to use it for some reason (perhaps because everything else you can think of for a given campaign would require at least as much work), but I'm not convinced "top to bottom" is. Until you have a good gestalt of the system as a whole (which I'd read that as being what you need to look at in that phrase) you're either going to think things are problems that aren't, or not see problems where they are until you trip over them in play.
Ditto.See my comment above.
It was satire.Well, I expressed my opinion about that sort of hyperbole in my prior post.
Er...nope. I've never once encountered a "bug" in 13A or DW. 4e had a few, mostly because it was rushed out the door (it seriously needed another 6-12 months in the oven.) But almost all of those were addressed within the first year, and addressed extremely well.Or have had their bugs baked in so deeply they've become integral parts of the system...and yet are still bugs.
Discrete subsystems are a bad solution to most things. They should be avoided unless they are absolutely necessary, because they add complexity without guaranteeing any more depth or richness to the experience. Players appreciate complexity which leads to depth and richness. They do not appreciate complexity that adds nothing other than complexity. That's the reason TTRPGs in general have abandoned the absolute nightmare tangle of overlapping, contradictory, esoteric subsystems of early D&D.An example applicable to all three of 3e, 4e, and 5e: the shoehorning of what should be discrete sub-systems into universal mechanics.
Do you have a practical example of something that you think would be significantly improved by being a discrete subsystem? Again, I'm not saying it's impossible for discrete subsystems to be of value. They're just an unwise design choice unless you're very confident that you get back more than you're metaphorically paying for them.
As Thomas Shey said above, "big-tent" and "universal" are not the same. The former is welcoming a variety of players within whatever areas the tent covers. The latter is offering to support all possible things one might want to do with it.Which, in the case of a big-tent RPG system, is itself a rather significant bug.
The fact that many D&D fans think the Monk should not exist at all, while others love it and want to keep it, proves that it is not possible for D&D to be simultaneously universal and big-tent. It must either become exclusionary, or tell folks who are exclusionary "sorry, you aren't going to be able to tell people who like that stuff to go play some other game and leave your precious D&D alone."
As a major fan of things like dragonborn and Warlords, I can tell you right now, there's a very vocal group who would be pleased as punch if
But that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about reading a literal textbook--because that's what the DMG is!--and comprehensively knowing literally every single thing in it, down to the smallest detail, and then comprehensively reviewing every single one of those details, somehow testing them without playing them, adjusting them (and testing those adjustments, again somehow without playing them), before you allow yourself to prepare even a single campaign.If I read through a paper with an eye to editing it and only end up making a very few changes, I've still given it the same depth of read as if I'd changed or rewritten whole passages of it.
That is completely ridiculous.
It was satire.Either there's a typo here or this just doesn't make sense.
Chocolate ice cream and strawberry ice cream are not the same through and through, even though they are the same in some ways e.g. they are both ice cream, both frozen, etc.
People keep asserting that, simply because there is a common format, all 4e classes must be perfectly identical in every meaningful respect. Thus, because they can be said to be "the same" in one specific way (they use a common format for "powers"), they must be "the same" in all ways. I was highlighting how ridiculous that claim is if you take even a moment to analyze it, as you have just done.