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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 3786779" data-attributes="member: 15999">Not as I recall.  Remember, TSR had gone bankrupt, 2E had gotten bloated with the Skills & Powers options, and with new ownership a new edition made sense.  You had a great deal of streamlining with 3E and that was part of its appeal.  The bankruptcy shouldn't be ignored either -- there was a time before 3E when D&D fans thought the system was dead for good.The biggest change was the unifying mechanic of d20 plus modifiers, higher is better.  That made a lot of sense and was generally well-accepted.  Additive multiclassing was more intuitive and more elegant than the 2E version.  Feats didn't seem a big deal at first, just allowing for a bit of customization (I certainly didn't perceive how much of an impact Power Attack would make).  3E really didn't change any game design principles the way 4E looks to.  Demihuman level limits almost never came into play in 2E, so removing them wasn't a big deal; opening up all classes to all races was interesting, but IME you still mostly saw dwarves as fighters, halfling as rogues, and elves as whatever they wanted to be -- just as in 2E.The two biggest changes in 4E seem to be a complete abandoning of two design principles related to wizards.  Paraphrasing from the Mentzer and Moldvay Basic Sets:1) Wizards start weak but can eventually become very powerful;2) Magic is useful, but it is limited, whereas strength can be used as often as needed.Is it still "D&D" if these principles no longer apply, or is it "d20 Fantasy"?  If all classes are equally powerful at all levels, and resource management is the same across all classes?Edit: as a Basic/Expert fan, some 1E/2E innovations (such as Exceptional Strength) had ALWAYS bugged me.  A horrible, horrible mechanic.  I was glad to see it gone in 3E, as it felt like a reversion to a system that I preferred.  In a similar vein, I am cautiously optimistic about 4E returning to some of the more successful aspects of earlier editions, such as monsters not using PC rules in their design.  Although I'd still like to play a high-risk, high-reward, delayed-gratification, resource-managing wizard.</blockquote>

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