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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3880794" data-attributes="member: 4937">All of which is certainly true.Well, yes, but you've created a bit of tautology there.&nbsp; Compare that sentence to this one:&quot;But if you want to support a wide range of character concepts, you need those options.&quot;Your sentence is true almost by definition.&nbsp; If you want to support a wide range of mechanics, you need alot of mechanical variation.&nbsp; But if you drop the 'mechanically' from the sentence, it becomes much less clear that it is true.&nbsp; Alot of 3.X seemed focused on giving access to additional mechanics rather than to additional concepts.&nbsp; (I could be even more cynical than that.&nbsp; Alot of 3.X seemed focused on upping the page count of supplements and not on improving the game.)&nbsp; I'm not sure that the total range of concepts opened up any, rather all that mechanical variation mainly seemed to open up the range of implementation of a concept.&nbsp; I was particularly annoyed by the apparant need to strengthen and increase the number of options available to concepts that were already viable under the core rules.&nbsp; This led to something which looked alot like an arms race, where every concept needed more options and bigger options to compete with the other options latest and greatest possible powers, while options that were less viable had no net gain in viability because the initially strong options were also stronger.Very very few of the feats, classes, alternate classes, PrC's, and so forth really opened up conceptual space.&nbsp; Mostly they were minor changes in how that concept was implemented. 3.5 tended to encourage players to see thier concept not in terms of a narrative concept or a character concept, but rather in terms of a particular package of mechanical goodies and bonuses that they wanted to collect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3880794, member: 4937"] All of which is certainly true. Well, yes, but you've created a bit of tautology there. Compare that sentence to this one: "But if you want to support a wide range of character concepts, you need those options." Your sentence is true almost by definition. If you want to support a wide range of mechanics, you need alot of mechanical variation. But if you drop the 'mechanically' from the sentence, it becomes much less clear that it is true. Alot of 3.X seemed focused on giving access to additional mechanics rather than to additional concepts. (I could be even more cynical than that. Alot of 3.X seemed focused on upping the page count of supplements and not on improving the game.) I'm not sure that the total range of concepts opened up any, rather all that mechanical variation mainly seemed to open up the range of implementation of a concept. I was particularly annoyed by the apparant need to strengthen and increase the number of options available to concepts that were already viable under the core rules. This led to something which looked alot like an arms race, where every concept needed more options and bigger options to compete with the other options latest and greatest possible powers, while options that were less viable had no net gain in viability because the initially strong options were also stronger. Very very few of the feats, classes, alternate classes, PrC's, and so forth really opened up conceptual space. Mostly they were minor changes in how that concept was implemented. 3.5 tended to encourage players to see thier concept not in terms of a narrative concept or a character concept, but rather in terms of a particular package of mechanical goodies and bonuses that they wanted to collect. [/QUOTE]

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