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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5764670" data-attributes="member: 87792">Whereas for me the hit point bar with no real healing except magic far more resembles almost every arcade fighting game ever.  It's a video game mechanic, with healing potion replacing health packs - see Doom for details or any FPS.  The 3.X healing mechanics are those of mainstream video games whereas the 4e ones are those of much more niche games that try to work out how to do things right in that specific circumstance rather than going for more obvious choices.4e is to me the least video-gamey edition out there.  If your friends can think of 4e mechanics that resemble a video game, good for them!  I can do the same for 3e - except I just need to say "Baldur's Gate".  Or 2e and "Planescape Torment".  Some of the 4e mechanics might be like those in video games - I have no problem with this idea.  There are after all a limited number of mechanics possible, and video games have been trying to find as many as possible of them.But when I look at the 3.X ruleset I see something that ought to be a video game.  Lots of petty little details to keep track of that could better be done by computer.  Statsheets that need regular rewriting due to cascading effects from buffs - again something that ought to be part of a video game because making humans do it that way is silly.  Spellbooks and needing to wrangle them - very easy on computer with tickboxes, unnecessarily hard on paper unless you have a default loadout.  Inventory management (e.g. scrolls) - again something that ought to be part of a video game - video games do exactly the same thing as is done in 3.X, but make it feel fairly easy.Possibly this is both why 4e feels like a good video game (easy to pick up and very streamlined faffing) while at the same time 3.X has mechanics that are much more like those of most actual video games (especially those based on itself).  The play experience of 3.X is in many ways noticeably improved by turning it into a video game.  That of 4e is not - it was designed that the players would seldom have to do things that a computer would do better.</blockquote>

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