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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6854558" data-attributes="member: 996">While I'm as delighted as anyone with 5e's repudiation of RAW obsession and general DM-Empowerment, and will agree TotM is part of that, because it creates an ambiguity in positioning that the DM can leverage to keep control of a scene, I have to quibble about 'return.'  D&D started out as a miniatures wargame and has never vocally defaulted to 'TotM' before (and, even though 5e does claim to default to TotM, the actual mechanics offer poor support for it).  If there hadn't been so many games before it that ran without minis, and if it hadn't been a common practice among some groups for decades (I'd often run 2e or Storyteller or even Champions! that way, when I was in college, for want of adequate table space), and if the mechanics actually backed it up, we could even call it an innovation.  As it stands, it's just an empty counter to an empty criticism of 3.5.That is a funny one.  2e C&T introduced the grid to make things easier, but any simplification can lead to little murphy's rules like that.  It's refreshing to see someone else who appreciated 3.0, though I'm a little surprised with the reasoning.  Sure.  OTOH, it is going for simpler play, and it delivers.  Simpler play means shallower play.  The DM can always add wrinkles to tactics & strategy if he wants, by ruling one way or another when players try something clever.   Really bad analogy.  I had a similar experience, in that, in most systems, prep was too much of a pain to be worth it, so my prep time was 0, I'd just wing it rather than spending hours stating out some monster or NPC or trying to plan for every crazy thing a Tier 1 caster might pull out of his sleeve.  In 4e, I could 'prep' a 4-5 encounter 'day' in minutes, if I was just picking and re-skinning monsters, maybe an hour if I were building new ones.  That's a lot more than 0.  Shorter/easier prep means I'm more likely to do some prep rather than none at all, which averages out to 'longer' prep.  Amusing, that. That's undeniably true.  Magic items are game-breaking, again, and squarely under the DM's control.  Casters make up the majority of PC options (30 or so of 38 or so sub-classes, only 5 PH sub-classes have no reference at all to spells/magic in their abilities).  It really constricts the non-magical alternatives though.  In keeping with 'classic feel,' but failing to retain the gains made by other modern editions of the game.</blockquote>

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