Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9162734" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If you think the mile-long incredibly idiosyncratic spell lists (many of which, as has recently been noted here, are straight-up meme-tier jokes), delicate balance predicated on several assumptions which don't apply to the majority of gamers, constant "apology edition" efforts, and terrible DMG guidance are "designed to be widely accessible," I don't know how it's possible for us to come into agreement.D&D, especially the "tradition uber alles" edition that is 5e, is designed the way it is because it has accreted around decades-old elements, many of which were done for a lark (many, many spells, but also a huge chunk of monsters), or to punish one specific player in a PVP-focused game (Clerics being heavy-armored and inherently anti-undead), or because they came from fiction someone liked (e.g. the vorpal sword), or because they fit into an actually decent but entirely unexplained game-balance structure (e.g. Fighters eventually becoming landed nobility with retinues and taxation, and the random magic item tables being vastly biased in Fighters' favor, or heavy armor literally being a defense bonus tied to an XP penalty because GP=XP means weight=XP, etc.)It is almost totally built out of elements thrown together because someone liked how they sounded for one reason or another. Whatever game balance was originally baked into it* was rarely, if ever, explained to anyone else. Over the edition changes (especially 2e->3e), the vast majority of that was lost, while the incredibly quirky and idiosyncratic stuff has been preserved because it's the obvious, visible, surface stuff people grew attached to.That's one of the reasons why people get so testy about any additions to the superficial stuff, even when it has zero effect on them. Yet if you ever try to address the underlying mechanics, well. You see the results here.*To be clear, I am not actually saying OD&D was unbalanced. It is not the kind of game that appeals to me--it is far too baked into a very, very specific perspective on murder-hole heistery and amoral, mercenary skullduggery. But it actually does have quite a few very good game design ideas in it for that purpose. I can still recognize good design even when it isn't design I want.</blockquote>

Verification