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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 4655942" data-attributes="member: 59082">Wow, what a doozy I started. There is way too much to touch on and I just enjoyed skimming the ride, but a few points stuck out for me:This is a terrific idea and exactly what I was getting at. Most of the other posters took it into a place that I wasn't going for (nothing wrong with that). But this really addresses the example I cited: a Tolkienian elf wizard vs. a hobbit rogue--how can they possibly be balanced while still retaining their essential characteristics? Byronic addressed this quite well, for certainly Frodo et al had a Special Something that all the great elf lords and dwarvish warriors and human rangers didn't have, an "X factor" if you will.Yes, excellent point. Right. And in a GURPS game a tech geek could have a more crucial role than, say, a scholar in D&D. Let's face it, D&D--perhaps especially 4e--has a very specific flavor. It is "magnificient seven adventuring fantasy." Meaning, it is based on the assumption that the game involves a group of similar-but-different characters going on adventures, fighting monsters, and seeking treasure. I am curious if people have found it adequate for others styles of fantasy. One of my big beefs with the rules as written is that it cannot accomodate the classic "off-the-farm" epic fantasy; there are no zero-level characters, everyone starts out rather heroic. Again, I like this kind of play but it is rather specific. The Dungeons & Dragons game is NOT the Any Kind of Fantasy You Want Game.This wasn't even really the case in 3e, where you had the OGL which allowed for all types of d20 games. This may be why some say 4e is more "old school" than 3e.Yes, exactly--and this relates to what Explorer Wizard said in the quote above. 4e is so focused around combat (for better or worse) that the only way to balance classes is to make them equally good at killing things. I'm wondering how they're going to fit the bard into this! (Killing Song? Banshee Wail? Twanging String of Doom?)That's a very good point. But again, it seems to put the cart before the horse, or game balance before diversity of imagination. What I mean by this is that it seems that 4e was designed with the idea that everything must be balanced above and beyond any other consideration. This is enormously restrictive and why, I think, many folks complain that the classes aren't different enough...in other words, there is a kind of homogeneity that has occured.I used Talislanta as an example of a game that totally eschews balance. You have archetypes that combine the game's dozens, if not hundreds, of races with culturally relevant professions. But the races are extremely varied, from muscle bound ogre-like creatures to wispy fairies to obese nobles to crystalline ice warriors. There is no way to balance all of that, at least in terms of combat. So Talislanta, which values its diversity of imagination above anything else, pulls the cart of game mechanics after it.I know, I know: different strokes for different folks. It is the ultimate equalizing (ahem, balancing) tactic used among the children of postmodernism, which includes the majority of RPGers. I am not saying how any one should or should not have fun. But I think you really come up with a different creature when you put imagination before mechanics or mechanics before imagination. Now in a sense D&D doesn't break this cardinal rule in that its core imaginative structure is the dungeoncrawl, this the mechanics are meant to--and quite adequately--serve that. But it just limits non-dungeoncrawl types of fantasy.I agree wholeheartedly, or at least the simulationist in me agrees; the gamist says "phaw! if it ain't broke, don't fix it."I actually kind of like this, though, because it allows a certain kind of creative thinking on the part of the players, who won't as easily run up against the wall of "you can't do that in these rules."(Standard disclaimer: I like and play 4e; I just find myself bumping up some pretty big limitations)</blockquote>

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