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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6248099" data-attributes="member: 87792">That depends what you mean by "judge those mechanics as wrong".  If mechanics work well to their intended effect and the effect is worthwhile for some groups while not contributing to social problems then no you can't judge them as wrong.  You can however say that they are not something you personally like because they don't fit with the way you want to play.  And that's absolutely fine.If Gygax had intended to create a simulation he would never have given us hit points.  Indeed, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?328837-Gygax-on-Realism-in-Game-Design" target="_blank">Gygax's view on realism</a> has been quoted on these very boards - and is very clear that D&D was first and foremost a game.  (I don't believe that at the time he was writing simulation was separated from realism in gaming theory).1e doesn't promise that you'll be a Big Damn Hero either <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  People are therefore no more upset when 1e doesn't deliver this than when Call of Cthulu doesn't deliver this.  There is no implicit promise in 1e that's been broken when the game delivers a nasty experience.  (2e is an odd case because the text absolutely promises big damn heroes, but the rules are almost as clearly not fit for purpose).  So when a character dies almost out of nowhere in 1e there's no sense of betrayal - the game has done exactly what it told you it would.  That just sucks.  It doesn't even suck that badly - your friends will have all the loot you were carrying, and a new character will take only a few minutes to create; it's not inconceivable that if you died to a lucky blow in the first attack in the battle you can have a new character ready to go before the battle itself is over, and the DM will place your replacement in the next room.  Sure, it sucks a little - but them's the breaks.3.X (definitely including PF) on the other hand appears to promise you a big damn hero.  Which means that when you die as a chump the game itself betrayed you.  Also characters in 3.X can easily take half an hour to build between the thirty something skills on the skill list, the dozen or so spells the wizard gets (or whatever the cleric is preparing), feat selection, and everything else, which makes creating a replacement character a whole lot more obnoxious than it was in 1e.4e if you died like a chump you were taking on something that could treat you like a chump.  It wasn't a random hit from the second orc grunt on the right who's going to die in one shot to one of your friends.  It's because you accidentally blundered into a Roper at level 2.  At which point there are only two questions that matter - "Who put that Roper there?" and "Why didn't we see it and avoid it?"  (And possibly "How many sessions before we can take revenge as a worthwhile quest?  It's a big enough enemy to be worth it.")Also a mismatch between expectation and reality is, in my experience, the single biggest driver for hardcore character optimisation that isn't simply a game played for the fun of it (no one ever expected to play Pun-Pun).  In my experience most people have some sort of conception of their character and what they can do - an expectation guided by the game they are playing.  And it's this sense of betrayal at there being a broken promise, combined with the fact that there is something you can do to get the character you were promised that leads to some forms of munchkin behaviour.  This, incidentally, is something used by a lot of modern RPGs - when people don't feel they are fighting the rules to do what they want what they want tends to be relatively modest so you don't actually need rules to rein them in for this.</blockquote>

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