Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Rice
That's an interesting point as we always considered ITL as an extension of Melee and Wizard rather than a replacement. I'm only using Melee at the moment as I want to get what I considered the "base system" solid before moving on. Surely ITL hasn't changed that much in its base mechanics? There are more weapons and spells but they don't invalidate the ones in the base games. There are a few exceptions I'm sure, like the staff Spell, but not that many. Surely you don't consider them separate games?
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I agree; in the old days, ITL WAS just an extension of the base rules, with nothing in one that invalidated the other. However, that seems to have changed in some surprising ways with the publishing of Legacy Edition. (I'd note there's some backing from SJG for my point here as well -- since I recall a post by Phil (I think) that said basically the same thing I'm saying here.)
Base mechanics are very similar, but there
are some changes to them in ITL -- and those seem to be the cases being brought up by discussions like this. So, to be honest, I kind of DO consider them almost separate games now, simply because there are enough changes between the two that you really have to make a command decision to go with one set of rules or the other -- which will affect a LOT of how you judge individual issues in combat. So far, we're seeing most of the commentariat focusing on issues with physical combat, but I expect within the next few months to start seeing more and more of the same kinds of issues pop up between
Wizard and ITL as well. (Some, of course, already have, with people posting various notes on how you can twist the Legacy rules to minimax and metagame the magic system, but so far a lot of that has been more theoretical than the kinds of crunchy issues we're seeing with
Melee vs. ITL now...).
Mind you, that may be just my perception, but I think you'll agree that we seem to be having a lot more trouble this way than we did with the "classic" games (about the only big arguments back then that I recall were over pole-weapons -- which, oddly enough, still seem to be a major source of confusion, despite efforts to fix them).