mindstalk | (Reply)

I thought the point of that essay was that you don't need more than 5th or 6th level to emulate most fantasy protagonists. The system goes to 20th-epic, but most authors don't. So yeah, Gandalf and Aragorn are 5th level.

I have to admit that the only time I've *played* D&D is anima_mechanique's 4e-Spelljammer one-shot, so my opinions are largely theoretical. I know Basic/Expert and 3.0 from reading reasonably well, though. I've also seen a lot of opinions from a friend of Gygax's on RPG.net, who still plays Original, and various "old school" essays.

I guess, seems to me that in the early days, characters weren't particularly well defined, even in combat. Fighters had hit points and armor, thieves had skills, magic-users had spells, anything else was your imagination. Combat would be boring rolls, or freeform tactics ("gee, we havve 5hp, let's ambush" "sounds good! you get initiative and an attack bonus") but could easily go into puzzles or social stuff. The system didn't support it, but the system didn't suggest you shouldn't.

Third has a lot more definition -- real skills, feats, prestige classes, so you can actually define characters good at investigation or talky stuff (though you might run out of skill points if you try to build Roy Greenhilt). And it broke down a lot fo the arbitrary restrictions, made things make more sense. Combat was detailed and tactical, yeah, no one likes grappling or Attack of Opportunity rules, but your bard wasn't necessarily defined by her combat ability. It felt like a half-decent open game, like D&D crossed with GURPS, especially with alternate rules in the SRD. But yeah, never played it, though I read part of a high-level Actual Play that had combat but not hugely so.

Though I did note that lots of the spells are combat or weird, and a lot of them have been nerfed from earlier editions.

4e... classes are defined primarily by their combat type and power source. The customization choices are about your combat powers, or utility powers that look mostly useful... in combat. The skill system is simplified -- friends like it, but I look askance. Challenges I only know of second hand, e.g. Alexanders critique. The ritual system is probably nice (I assume it's like the 3.0 SRD one). And there's the whole squares thing, and wonky powers and Alexander's critique of mapping the powers to in-world terms.

So I guess it's
* old: not much definition
* 3rd: lots of definition
* 4e: lots of combat definition

To which I say... meh. For comparison, the games I've actually played longest have been Mage, Ars Magica, and Exalted.