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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5487855" data-attributes="member: 54877">I know I am starting to sound like a broken record on this point, but ... Separate out the complexity in D&D that is designed to pad space (and thus fill books to sale) versus the complexity useful towards making the game better--and only then can we talk intelligently about the tradeoffs on the useful complexity. As it is now, the overriding concern with powers (or 3E or 4E feats, or 2E kits, or spell in 3.5 or earlier) is that there are simply too many of them. Don't tell me they can be fixed. You can't have hundreds of near identical but not quite things, written as "exceptions", and not have failures. It can't be done. At best, you can build in some kind of feedback loop or other mechanism in the surrounding mechanics to minimize the failures as they occur. Second best, you can encourage a style of game that will minimize the failures. Better do a good job conveying that style in the rules, if you want groups to enforce it at the table, or work around its lack if they choose not to. Arcana Evolved is an excellent variation on 3E, especially if played without 3E mixed in. People like to focus on what it put in (new interesting classes, new ways to do magic, etc.) But one of the crucial things it did was leave things out. You can mix it with 3E or 3.5, and it will work about as well as those things do by themselves. (There are some edge cases where not, however.) Edit: Also note that were WotC to deliberately go with a "minimalist, best in class, design," this would not only remove padding from their products but pretty much destroy any chances for 3rd party additions as a viable business model. The whole business strategy of such a design is to sell more copies of fewer books, of a higher quality. It is possible that a wider acceptance of such a quality product would make 3rd party adventures more commecially viable, but that is a lot of "if" on top of an already risky strategy.</blockquote>

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