Shooting the messenger? Give it a rest. I know you get a rise out of arguing with anyone who contradicts one of your fastly held views, but since it obviously escaped your attention, I wasn't deriding him. I was simply characterizing his approach to rules design; being "rules conservative" is not a derision, so I don't exactly see how I am "shooting the messenger".
Sigh...may I suggest that you're jumping at shadows, Alan. You're finding offense where all that was intended was explanation - not an attempt to "get a rise" out of you. Truth be told, I thought we were having a civil little discussion until now.
It was meant as a turn of phrase to explain how a perception could arise, not as an accusation that you, personally were "shooting the messenger" as such. I mean that just because he's the person saying it, it's not necessarily just him that holds those views - case in point being the wild magic thing. From what I gather, 3E designerthink in general holds that random power level special abilities on PCs are a bad thing - and I don't think that's unique to SKR, I've seen posts on the Wizards boards in the past implying that it represents a standard agreed upon by the entire 3E design team. I'm suggesting that just because he's the only one who bothers to comment on it doesn't make them his views alone...
He is on a private DND rules mailing list I am on, and trust me, his views there are consistent with his statements from the company.
That's exactly what I meant - if he's not the only one holding these views, he may be just the guy airing them rather than the only "culprit" who shares them. Therefore, holding him responsible personally for what the company line probably is doesn't make much sense to me - he may support the logic behind it, but he's not the only one. Then again, that's not to imply that everything he says falls into this category either, just that the topic ("random power level abilities such as wild magic being bad for game balance and therefore bad for 3E") has been implied as such in the past.
Please don't expect the worst from me Psion - this was, for instance, a genuine misunderstanding. You'll know for sure when I'm out to get you, mark my words.
