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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6015546" data-attributes="member: 17106">I can see how it would seem that way, but it isn't.Let's look at a 3e example. In the PHB, there are a bunch of feats that grant a +2 bonus to two skills. Early supplements often proudly proclaimed that they offered "new feats", which were simply more +2/+2 feats. One could (and, say, Trailblazer has) make simply one feat that grants a +2 bonus to any two skills, possibly with a caveat that they be related in some way. The proliferation of +2/+2 feats is needlessly complicated, but is also dumbing the system down, by spelling out to us the +2 to Diplomacy and Sense Motive makes you a "Negotiator", when you could simply make the generic feat and let the people at the table describe what it means.Similarly, spells commonly do this; there are many lesser/greater/mass versions that waste space with repeated text, when one spell could simply be written with several variations in the description (as the XPH does with powers and augmentation).The same logic can be applied on a larger level to 4e powers, many of which are redundant or trivial variations on the same thing. Is giving you a whole bunch of different ways to do extra damage and add a status effect or forced movement complicated? Sure. But it's also dumbed down; it would be better to have one comprehensive system for determining how much damage you can do and what stunts you can add, rather than split that up into half the martial power descriptions.Some people would say that creating rules for things that previously didn't have them discourages players from asserting themselves. That criticism has commonly been made of 3e Charisma-based skills: people saying that you can simply roll a Diplomacy check and not have to play out a negotiation with an NPC to get what you want. The same criticism has been made of 4e skill challenges: that by mechanizing noncombat encounters, players don't have to actually play them out.In both cases, it raises larger issues about DMing technique, but the point has some validity.There are a lot of criticisms of 4e out there, and with all the above having been stated, I have no doubt there are some contradictions in the community. I take that as evidence of how diverse the community is.This seems a difficult problem to work around. People are constantly trying to articulate what they think, but there is no accepted terminology to do so. I don't think the intent is to misrepresent opinion as fact, people are just trying to say what's on their mind and grasping at straws (dissociative, narrativist, videogamey, etc.) as to how to do so.</blockquote>

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