Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 7792892" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Whatever it was that was quintisential to D&D, beside the trademark, 4E lacked.I believe the missing trope was the difference in combat abilities, and the lack of similarlity of the classes to prior editions' roles for those classes.It had KTAATTS play.It had class and levelIt had d20 for combat relevant rolls.It had single location hit points.It had the use of alignment.It had the standard PHB classes and races, and then some.It had the late AD&D1E and BECMI addition of non-combat skills.It lacked the so-called "Vancian" magic... It lacked disparities of combat power of 3E, AD&D, and BECMI classesTOTM is very much NOT part of the way many played D&D in the 80's...And yet it was part of D&D as experienced.Simple mechanics? Someone's not widely read... D&D 3 is medium-high on crunch... there are MUCH simpler games that cover the same space without being anywhere near as much mechanical complexity. Arrowflight, Barbarians of Lemuria...And 3.X was simpler than AD&D - not a lot, but a bit...  and it did so in key was that made play much simpler for the players. But even before 3E, simplified  games in the same space existed. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Palladium Fantasy, for example (1st or 1st revised)... still a two key mechanic system - attack rolls vs AC, but at least it's linear... and the class skills are all consistently d%. roll low for skills.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Arcanum likewise had d20 roll high for combat, and d% roll low for skills.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Despite it's tables, Rolemaster is actually a simpler game than AD&D. Half the pagecount for the core. more consistent throughout... albeit at the cost of almost half the pagecount being tables.</li> </ul>To be fair, since the early 1980s, there have been games more complex than AD&D, too... Phoenix Command comes to mind.</blockquote>

Verification