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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 5545508" data-attributes="member: 54629">I never played 1e and only played 2e briefly as a teenager in the 90s, but more recently I've been playing D&D 3.5 and D&D 4e as well as Star Wars Saga Edition, and all those little rules "flourishes" are definitely something I'm starting to feel is lacking from the overall d20 engine. I would agree that more streamlined = more boring.Let's take the SWSE ruleset, for instance. It's still my game of choice, but I'm finding more and more that I want to insert lots of little "flourishes" like having some kind of "concussive blast" built into explosives (as it stands, you have to take a feat in order to be able to push someone around with a grenade, which is just crazy) or including a chance that you might drop your weapon if you get kicked to the ground or thrown across the room (which is something that happens with great frequency even to Jedi Masters in the movies, but which is something that can only happen in the game if the attacker deliberately tries to disarm the target).Some of those sorts of things are still there, but in many cases they've been relegated to feats and other special abilities. In SWSE, you can't grapple someone without taking a feat first. You can't "bull rush" someone without taking a feat. Yes, 4e lets you bull rush someone as a basic combat action, but in many cases it's even worse with regards to "you have to have x, y or z ability to even try that".I also miss a lot of the randomness from previous editions. Too many things are static now. Take the chance to recover after being knocked unconscious in SWSE. It's 10 rounds. Always. Why? OK, maybe it's easier to remember, but still ... it means that if a PC goes down early in a combat, then that player has nothing to do for the rest of the combat. I ended up changing it to 1d8+2. So a max of 10 rounds but a minimum of 3 so they don't bounce back up too quickly.Anyway, I don't think I miss stuff like weapon speeds and weapons that do different damage depending on what you're attacking or whatever. That seems a little too fiddly for my taste. What I miss is all the little "flourishes" that make combat more dynamic and cinematic. As it stands, d20 combat just gets too static and boring.And while you could dismiss me as a "mean" GM who is just looking for ways to do "mean" things to the PCs, to be honest, I actually want my players to be more interested in pulling these sorts of stunts and having these sorts of effects go off on the NPCs - instead of just always "taking a shot" or whatever. None of my players seem all that interested in expending character resources on pushing or grappling or tripping or any of those things. They just go for what I see as being the stale and boring "the quickest way to victory is to deal damage!" approach.</blockquote>

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