It makes you consider when to spend (or not to spend) resources. Making mistakes will lead to bad outcomes. Nothing fundamentally bad or broken about that. That's how games work -- they give you opportunities to screw up and then the whole process of play is avoiding screwing up.
Hoarding (and thus wasting) resources is an understandable mistake, but that's what it is: a mistake.
Similarly, in real-time strategy games, many novice players gravitate towards building big bases, then building big epic units (or big epic armies) -- and they inevitably lose to someone who is actually playing the game.
You are missing the big difference between TTRPG and a video game. In video game when you die or lose, nothing happens. You died or you lost, load the save or checkpoint.
If you die or lose in TTRPG, then a character you put so much work into is just gone. Yes, you can have ways to bring them back to life, but there is a huge contingent of people who despise how this cheapens the game and removes the stakes.
Your approach may work for OSR type games, where you challenge the player and the character is disposable, but for a lot of modern players this isn't an rpg, but a wargame.
I don't know what part of anything that I said in OP or any other posts in this thread made you think about "gritty realism". Does
this look like gritty realism to you?
Your entire point stems from trying to make fundamentally unrealistic game "more realistic".
And for the love of all the ugliest cannibal gods, do you seriously think that I could not know about WFRP, a big role-playing game tied to one of the biggest fantasy worlds out there?
Your arguments sure sound like you are trying to fit D&D into a Warhammer shaped hole, so my question is - why not just play Warhammer?
The most annoying part of voicing any opinion contrary to the "common wisdom" of RPG community is instant assumption that I must be an idiot who doesn't know anything and somehow never got exposed to the "common wisdom", and not, you know, a rational person who thought about design and came to the conclusion that commonly parroted common wisdom isn't universally applicable.
But you are also assuming people did not have this conversations, with others questioning "common wisdom" before. Which they did, and their arguments failed to really overthrow "common wisdom", and yours just sound like echoing them.
I do love WFRP, but generally I have a much easier time getting folks to play a modified 5e.
That sounds like a problem with individual players, not game design.
As I've said many times, lasting injury should IMO be a thing in D&D-like games. However, I feel it works best as a possible consequence of falling to zero hp.
I attended a panel where a paramedic explained exactly severity of various types of wounds that can result from cuts, bites or burns, how extremely hard is to heal some of them and what long-lastinc consequences are, all cullminating with him answering question whenever rpgs should include mechanics reflecting all of that for the sake of realism with this:
From a complexity standpoint I'm adding in tracking superiority dice, when to use it, what die to use. From a story perspective I'm relying on what I consider a metagame mechanic unrelated to the in-game story of the character. I see no reason in fiction of the world for my BM to only be able to do that precise strike 4 times per rest. It's better than 4e's fighter encounter powers but it feels much the same.
Barbarian uses Rage, a resource they have limited number of uses. Rogue can only use sneak attack once a turn. Wizard cannot spam the same spell over and over and the spells are arbitrary divided in levels. Monk has limtied number of focus points, Sorcerer has literal metacurrency. Why other breaks from reality are acceptable but fighter is singled out for the sake of making the class, let's be honest, suck?
On the other hand I'm playing a barbarian, I have a supernatural ability to connect to a primal power, I accept that my rage is a supernatural buff. It's part of the story of what makes a barbarian a barbarian. But a fighter? Sometimes I just want a mundane Joe who has dedicated themselves to being really good at fighting. I acknowledge that kind of stuff doesn't matter to a lot of people, it does to me.
That is flavor, and flavor is both free and disposable.
You can't unring the bell. If the core fighter were more complex, those players would be screwed. If you make a simple fighter and have a more complex subclass addon, both those who want a simple fighter and those who want a more complex fighter can be happy.
They're not happy. Pretty much everyone I ever talked about who wants more compelx fighter absolutely despises that the only way to get it is to sacrifice the subclass and never feeling like they're playing a full class.
Not everyone wants to be a rural rager. Fighter is the better class to be simple at the core and more complex with subclasses.
We don't need two classes that fill a niche of being simple and dumb. You can reflavor barbarian for free, say they aren't Raging but enter "the zone" and focus on combat and you're good. Fighter can be something interesting now.
Sometimes I want to play a barbarian sometimes I want to play a champion fighter. I gave my reasons. Why do you want to limit people's options to your preferred build?
Because your preferences block one of classes from actually being fun and interesting for the sake of something another class does better.
Simply having to go through all of the maneuvers to pick the one I want to spam is more choice than a lot of people want to make. Just let the base fighter be simple and pick BM if you want yours to be more complex.
If we deleted Fighter and replaced it with antoher name, say, a Knight, would you still be makign that demands?
