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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dark Eternal" data-source="post: 4326042" data-attributes="member: 7932">My original point was simply this: some players/characters/parties/gaming groups play the game with certain priorities, and others have others.  Your enjoyment of your heroic character may not be dependent on me playing a character who is sub par in combat, or vice versa.  Perhaps Juan's enjoyment of his  heroic character is.  Maybe everyone in my 3e game plays characters designed for, amongst other things, a higher-than-usual degree of challenge from the game's combat encounters due to their character's lack of combat effectiveness, which they make up for with cunning, ingenuity and wit.  Maybe my players in my thursday night campaign didn't like the fact that their combat effectiveness was of no use to them when they encountered the ancient dracolich, and they were forced to rise to the occasion by talking their way out of certain death by finding some way to manipulate the creature using social wiles instead... and maybe by next thursday night, that was all they could talk about.  The point I'm really making is, the options that the game provides define at least a certain bare minimum of the world in which the characters live, breathe and think.  In 3rd edition, the options allowed that world to be nearly as dynamic and realistic as the player's imaginations combined with the DM's creativity could allow.  Is this same thing true in 4th edition?  Not yet, certainly - there's only a little bit of material out there so far.  But from looking at what they've already got, do I have reason to rest assured that my game world will be every bit as fully realized as my 3rd edition one was?  In a dynamic world, all kinds of people may be motivated by events to try and take up the gauntlet of becoming a heroic adventurer.  Some of them will be true heroes, destined from birth to be mighty conquerers or fearsome warriors or what have you.  Some may be farm equipment builders.  Some of them may even be former villians, redeemed from lives devoted to the most insidious of evils by the selfless love of an innocent woman, who now want to atone for the sins of their past.  Even 3rd edition didn't make room for all of these would-be heroes, but I think it made room for more of them than 4th edition does.  In a dynamic world, some of those people may be useless at killing things, but good at persuading things not to kill them.  Some may be afraid of their own shadow, but able to stand before a King and convince him before all and sundry that they deserve to be equipped and sent forth to slay the dragon that sunders the land.  Some may even be sickly, weak mages who have given their all for their magic, and who manipulate the actions of their supposed allies from behind the scenes to weave a tapestry that will guide them to a destiny greater than any dared or feared.  Does 3rd edition allow me to portray more of these things than 4th edition does?  Does it allow me to do so more convincingly?There is certainly no reason to say that you can't do things in 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, because the truth is it's our game.  We can do what we damn well please with it, whether it's designed to do it or not.  But it's going to do it better if it IS designed to do it.  And if I've gotten the impression that it's not, from what I've seen so far, then perhaps it's me not looking at it right... or perhaps it's the game not being designed to do it.  I don't know which.  But I've not yet seen a single person say "4th edition lets players do so many more different types of characters than 3rd edition did!"</blockquote>

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