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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6018446" data-attributes="member: 4937">I know some people really enjoy 4e, but IMO most of the 4e design ammounted to simply sidestepping some of D&D's more intractable problems rather than truly solving them.   They did this by standardizing the classes in such a way that no class could truly excel another class greatly, but as a result they created a game where hitting things with a pointy stick and wielding arcane power fundamentally feels like the same thing and where fighting goblins and fighting Orcus fundamentally feels like the same thing.4e's tightly defined and universal framework did argubly solve the balance issue, but at the expense of weakening the utility of magic, magic items, and even skills.  To me it treaded too close to the idea of, "So, we have this problem where the fighter only hits stuff, and that creates imbalance.  How are we going to solve it?  I know!  Let's make it where every class only hits stuff!  Problem solved!"   Whether you see it as turning every class into a spellcaster, or turning every class into the fighter you end up in the same place.For me it comes down to the fact that prior editions of D&D did a remarkably good job of capturing the entire range of literary spellcasters - from the stumbling apprentice of neglible power to characters of phenomenal cosmic power capable of reshaping reality to their whim.  That's not something I think ought to be sacrificed; it's part of what makes D&D unique.   Part of the problem is that the literary inspirations of fighters don't have the same range of ability (at least, in Western literature).  The most familiar formidable fighters don't scale up in power to above 10th level or so, and as such, there was I think never a push early on to model epic fighters.  And conversely, it was assumed by many players that those familiar fighters - Fafrd, Conan, Aragorn, etc. - represented 20th level of ability, and hense the upper limits of what a fighter ought to be allowed to do.   For me, the problem is that in everything but hitting things with a pointy stick, the 20th level of fighter is really about the 10th level of what fighters ought to be able to accomplish.</blockquote>

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