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Rhialto the Marvellous's avatar

In your "better fighter" example I'd contend that there are (at least) two essential features of a D&D character: class and level, and this is evident when one compares a classic D&D character to a current iteration D&D character. In your example Fighter #2 wouldn't be a "bad" classic D&D fighter as the levels increase, since the difference in Strength characteristics would be less of a factor in determining "distance from the essence" (or whatever the philosophical term is) of "classic D&D fighter". The opposite is true in the current iteration of D&D, where the six core attributes are significantly greater factors in the essence of a "D&D character" at low levels, and still significant at high levels (though less so than at low levels). And this difference in essence is why classic D&D (and its ilk, like ACKS) is objectively superior to current iteration D&D: as a player I have more agency in determining "fun fighter to play" in classic D&D (where a Str 9 fighter is still "playably fun") than the current iteration D&D (a Str 9 fighter is "playably unfun"). Or something like this. :-)

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2econd's avatar

I find that people, especially more socially disaffected people, can't really grasp that saying something is different isn't a denigration of that thing. I like apples and oranges, I can evaluate both of them in very overlapping ways, but an apple and an orange are different and if I went to bite into my apple and I got peel and pith and citrus flavors, I'd be likely be unhappy even if it was a wonderful apple shaped orange.

Saying two things are fundamentally different, and saying that they have different optimal uses because of those differences, should be relatively normal and uncontroversial, but alas it is not.

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