Quote from: Batman;966490This can largely be done currently by messing with a few things:

Good points but in the end it is a exception based design. Means you can keep how things work but change the feel by revamping the exceptions. The difference between the different sets of Magic the Gathering is an example of that and how they kept the game fresh over the years. With D&D 4e, they came out with high fantasy and stuck with it throughout active publication of the line.

Quote from: Batman;966490Require the necessary things the power says it needs: This is something that I already do in my games. If a Rogue's power says "Sand in the eyes" then I'm going to require sand or something similar to a fine, but gritty substance, to throw into someone's face. Just because the power says this is what you do does't necessarily mean you can do that when you're depraved of said material. This should be applied to all spells for components and probably other things too.

I did this as well when I ran 4e. Help make it feel a little more grounded. But still was high fantasy 24/7.

Quote from: Batman;966490Downtime rules, background info and things that 5e did for your character's ideals, flaws, bonds, etc. are all excellent avenues to add into the game. Not entirely sure what else should be added that doesn't just sound like more mechanical constructs to promote the system-as-reality that 3e did?

I am talking about class powers that have nothing to do with combat. The stuff above is certainly useful but list of stuff that a character class can do shouldn't be solely focused on combat like 4e is.

Quote from: Tequila Sunrise;966338Hm, I'm not sure exactly what a refined 4e would look like. Obviously build those expertise, improved defenses, and masterwork armor bonuses into the math this time around, as you say. There are a couple of fan projects floating around the internet, one of which I'm excited to try!

Speaking as someone working on one such project (though likely not one you've heard of) my fix for the expertise/defenses/masterwork bits was to institute much flatter math (which also helps with the mass combat rules) where attack bonuses cap at +10 for the most twinked out build at max level but is more typically in 6-8 range for weapon attacks and where AC caps at 20 with 15-19 being more typical for adventurers equipped with armor or magic (non-combat NPC's could be as low as 9). Instead its "hit points" (which are renamed to make it clear they are skill/fatigue/morale and not meat) and damage (i.e. how much work a target has to do to avoid having the attack deal debilitating damage to them) that scales with level. When a 0-level soldier has 2 hp and deals about 2 damage even the starting PC warrior is a "veteran" who could take on several of them at once with a good chance of winning by comparison, but even the toughest warrior with a hundred hit points can be worn down by sufficient weight of mooks thrown against them.

This is one of the areas I think that 5E got right in theory, but bollixed up in execution because it wasn't quite flat enough (indeed the gap between a good and a bad save in 5e is as bad as it was in 3e).

QuoteI'd also like a return to pure AEDU design, with a module/variant/option to replace EDU powers with super-simple passive features.

To avoid Hasbro lawyers coming after you (they don't have to be right, they just have to outlast your legal budget), I recommend against overt AEDU design if you plan to take a fan project commercial. I think so long as the resource system is universal across all the classes you can get close to the 4E feel even if its not a direct clone. My solution was for two additional resource pools; one short term and regained with just a minute or two to catch your breath (so 'encounter' like) and a long term pool that functions like a combination of healing surges and action points and recover a point or two (depending on your CON score) for every hour of rest (during which you take penalties to Perception and defenses as you're off your guard).

To avoid power spam (common to many mana pool systems), you get a significant bonus to your attack check the first time you use each attack that burns a short or long term resource during an encounter. If you wanna spam the same one again and again you can, but you'll be more effective if you switch up your maneuvers so the enemy can't adapt to them.

QuotePersonally I don't have any objection to 4e's clearly defined roles; in fact I'd like the controller to be better defined.

I'd agree here too. My solution for the roles was to tie them into specific minor actions available to each class (and remove the ability to spend your move action to take another minor action). The striker's extra damage, the defender's marking, the leader's buffing/healing and the controller's AoE's and improved control come from their minor actions. Multi-classing gives you additional minor action options, but since you can only expend your main or minor action to use them you either have to stop performing your main role or give up your main attack in order to use that alternate ability.

QuoteGoing with your paladin example, by my way of thinking, a non-defender paladin is just a paladin by another name -- cleric, avenger, or invoker.

You'd be amazed the degree of difficulty I have had during both 4E and early on in my playtesting that people had letting go of concepts they associated with the older D&D names. The example of the guy wanting to play a Bow-using Fighter being told to make a 4E Ranger and insisting "No, I want a FIGHTER" is not a myth. I've encountered it first hand. They spent a ton of effort trying to fight the system because to them it is the NAME of the class (and the innate fluff associated with it in past editions) that is more important that its actual mechanics and then are unsatisfied when the result isn't nearly as effective as the guy who just made a 4E ranger with the archery build.

I had similar problems, even with 4E players when I started play-testing because they kept associating the concepts of what a 1e-3e or 4E fighter could do to the class I had named the fighter (or the rogue or the wizard).

As a result I ended up killing the classic names (at least at the class level... Barbarian and Monastic are backgrounds; Wizard and Sorcerer are paths of arcane magic). The "Skilled" classes are things like Captains, Defenders, Ravagers, Sharpshooters and so forth. Spellcasters include Abjurers, Benedictors, Interdictors, Maledictors, Summoners and so forth. Now depending on what you want to do with it; the "bow fighter" would be either a Sentinel, Sharpshooter, Skirmisher or Captain.

It doesn't hurt either that most of the fluff is tied to your background, classes are purely about how you fight... so D&D Fighter fluff is the Military Background, D&D Ranger fluff is the Barbarian background and D&D Rogue fluff is the Outlaw background. But they could all be Skirmishers who make extra attacks with their minor actions using light weapons (short swords, hand axes, short bows, etc.).

Being able to say "There are no fighters" or "Barbarian is a background not a class" or "Okay, but what TYPE of wizard do you want to be?" has stopped virtually all of the fighting against the system to fit ingrained preconceptions; at least in my experience.

Quote from: Batman;966485I get what you're saying. This largely plays in part to the poor math early on where low-level monsters had FAR too many Hit Points. Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale was a LOT better supplement in terms of common monsters that were re-done with appropriate-level Hit Points and Math. A high-leveled Daily (we'll say a 15th level one) should be able to completely destroy a 1st level Standard monster. Unfortunately that's not the case in 4e. Cone of Cold (15th level Wizard daily) sadly deals 3d8 + Int damage and assuming an Intelligence of 24, with +3 implement and maybe a feat to boost cold damage (another +2) will only result in approximately 25 or so damage while a Dire Rat (level 1 Brute) has 38 Hit Points. So on that note I completely agree. Riders and effects like being frozen in place are cool and fun but the disparity between a mid-level daily and a lv. 1 Brute is simply FAR too little.  

The game REALLY REALLY does not want you running fights between level 15 PCs and level 1 standard Brutes. Standard monsters are supposed to be PC near-peer threats. If they're more than 3-4 levels below the PCs they should be replaced with Minions, 5-8 levels higher than the standard monster stats.

For my game I gave minions 1/4 the hp of a standard monster, and I use those as the "normal" foes, the ones noticeably weaker than the PCs. So I'd convert a Brute-1 standard into a Brute-6 minion with 88/4=22 hit points*. Which could indeed be taken out by a Cone of Cold. Standard monsters work best as enemy leaders & champions, or en mass as rival squads of adventurers, elite troops & such.

*This has proven extremely popular with my players. 4e players IME hate fighting 1 hp cardboard minions, but they love taking out some guy with 12 hp with a single blow. Or frying six of them with a Burst-2.

Quote from: Chris24601;966502To avoid Hasbro lawyers coming after you (they don't have to be right, they just have to outlast your legal budget), I recommend against overt AEDU design if you plan to take a fan project commercial.

I am confident that Hasbro lawyers are not interested in monopolising AEDU (and game rules per se are explicitly excluded from copyrightability). They generally only care about Trade Marks, and to a much lesser extent direct copying of literary & artistic works.

Quote from: S'mon;966528I am confident that Hasbro lawyers are not interested in monopolising AEDU (and game rules per se are explicitly excluded from copyrightability). They generally only care about Trade Marks, and to a much lesser extent direct copying of literary & artistic works.

First, a point of clarification; Are speaking about some fan-made rules thrown up on the internet with no profits involved -or- are you speaking about a commercial product sold at a profit?

Because if you're only speaking about the former, you're right. They don't bother with people who aren't trying to make any money. But if you're trying to make money off the project, let me ask you... at $200 per hour in lawyer fees, just how many hours of legal representation can you afford if you're wrong when testing that theory?

They don't have to be right. They just have to outlast your ability to pay a lawyer to represent you in the venue of their choosing and have a reason to make an example of you.

Call me risk averse if you want, but if some tweaks here and there help make it obviously not a direct clone for a project where I'm putting up real money to minimize the risks of a bored Hasbro lawyer deciding its worth spending 5 minutes to throw a boilerplate cease and desist order my way and cause me all manner of headaches, I'll consider it effort well spent.

One of the problems is that there's a pretty fine line between 'game rules' and 'presentation of game rules' in terms of copyright and trademark. They may not be able to copyright the process of rolling damage and inflicting a condition on a hit, but they can copyright the specific expressions used such as "Hit: Deal 4d10+Intelligence modifier psychic damage and the target is stunned until the end of their next turn" and claim the use of powers with different colored bars to represent usage as part of 4E's product identity. If they decide to make an example of you for whatever reason it can get pretty ugly.

So to me its worth it to have some pretty obvious and significant differences between the project I'm working on and 4E. Thankfully there's quite a bit of 4E that's covered by the 3.5SRD and OGL, even the use of spell attack rolls vs. static Fort, Reflex and Will defenses and the basic concepts for Action Points are in the variant rules section. Even most of the conditions are in the SRD or else are so self-evident that they can't be covered (slowed for example). Others are close enough to stand in for 4E conditions pretty nicely (using "flat-footed" instead of "grants combat advantage" for example).

Frankly, just doing the same sort "question everything/sacred cow slaughter" on 4E that the developers of 4E claimed to have done on past editions of D&D probably separated my project enough from 4E to be safe (I use a different mechanic than 'save ends' for duration tracking and have short/long recovery "mana" points with a carrot for not spamming the same one instead of AED powers). I believe the changes that I implemented make my system a BETTER game than 4E, not just a different one.

Throw in math flatter than 5e for combat (which makes for better sandbox campaigns), shit-canning feats and utility powers for a background layer separate from class that provides your skills and non-combat abilities, replacing the '8-20' ability scores with a '-1 to 5' range (i.e. the mods directly which are all 4E uses for anything of relevance anyway) and a much more codified skill system (with set DC's for specific tasks/obstacles and no difficulty scales with level and skill challenges) and it IS a very different system from 4E on paper even though the playtests feel pretty close to 4E's tactical combat.

That said, I'm not planning on marketing the game as a 4E retroclone. At most I might put a 'inspired by the 4th Edition of the World's Most Popular RPG' line on the back cover and referring to it as a "Tactical Role Playing Game" on the front cover. Beyond that my planned draw is a post apocalyptic schizo-Magitech setting in the spirit of Thundarr the Barbarian with everything from sprites to beastmen to actual dragons to the shadows of murdered children available as PCs (not to mention the usual suspects, though with twists like the steampunk cyborg dwarves) and the heroes are the champions of civilization, clearing out monster filled ruins and uncovering lost treasures to strengthen the fragile realms that have grown from the ruins of the past age.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;966460Instead, they tried to do something different, but it isn't clear what. If the change from gp=xp default is any indication, they were recognizing that there was a movement away from a "go to the dungeon and haul out all the loot" method of playing.

It's more perplexing than anything. That's my overall take on 2e--it's a perfectly fine game that I don't understand why it exists as it does.

1: Removing gold for EXP was more likely an attempt to slow down levelling. No one was thinking about facilitating anything.

2: TSR had just ousted Gygax and the then partially complete or nearly complete 2e was unusable and they scrambled to come up with a replacement. They cut-n-pasted text from revised AD&D whole cloth. In a way 2e feels more like Revised.5. Dave Cook has a fair amount to say on the whole mess.

Quote from: S'mon;966526The game REALLY REALLY does not want you running fights between level 15 PCs and level 1 standard Brutes. Standard monsters are supposed to be PC near-peer threats. If they're more than 3-4 levels below the PCs they should be replaced with Minions, 5-8 levels higher than the standard monster stats.

For my game I gave minions 1/4 the hp of a standard monster, and I use those as the "normal" foes, the ones noticeably weaker than the PCs. So I'd convert a Brute-1 standard into a Brute-6 minion with 88/4=22 hit points*. Which could indeed be taken out by a Cone of Cold. Standard monsters work best as enemy leaders & champions, or en mass as rival squads of adventurers, elite troops & such.

*This has proven extremely popular with my players. 4e players IME hate fighting 1 hp cardboard minions, but they love taking out some guy with 12 hp with a single blow. Or frying six of them with a Burst-2.

What I don't like about minions is they feel contrived. I kind of wore out on how every 4e monster was customized, so you never really knew what you're fighting. I actually find it a bit refreshing to be back in a context where, for example, an orc just is 2d8+6. Players can reasonably expect that two solid weapon hits will take one out, unless they see one that I specifically point out as being extra burly and mean.

Quote from: Omega;9665711: Removing gold for EXP was more likely an attempt to slow down levelling. No one was thinking about facilitating anything.

2: TSR had just ousted Gygax and the then partially complete or nearly complete 2e was unusable and they scrambled to come up with a replacement. They cut-n-pasted text from revised AD&D whole cloth. In a way 2e feels more like Revised.5. Dave Cook has a fair amount to say on the whole mess.

Cooks talks about working to deadline and making compromises due to player expectations (hence why they kept the pointless decending AC) but does not say anything like what you suggest here. He seems rightly proud of most of his 2e rework and has good reasons for his decisions like removing the monk, assasin, improving thieves and bards, etc.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966443The core rules of 2e were, for the most part, the core rules of 1e. The Player's Option books were mostly bad. In the core, weapon proficiency system was just a bad idea. NWPs are incoherent. The updated reaction table is significantly more complicated without really being any better. With the exceptions of initiative and THAC0, just about every difference I've found from 1e makes the game worse, not better.

I disagree. Player Options is so late in 2e's development I never even saw them as I dropped out of D&D with the arrival of 3e. Fail to see what the issue is with weapon proficiency, as I recall it is optional and fiddly like most optional rules, did you find it unbalancing? NWP are character flavour those who obsess on them as a mechanic are missing the point. Don't even remember the reaction table, never used them as I figure it is up to the DM and PC to RP those reactions.

Thieves, bards and monks were significantly improved, the bard actually rendered playable. Priest spheres was a huge improvment on the generic cleric. Not to mention the rules were much more clearly written, laid out, referenceble at the table  and encouraged you to pick and choose what you wanted for your game.

Quote from: Chris24601;966559First, a point of clarification; Are speaking about some fan-made rules thrown up on the internet with no profits involved -or- are you speaking about a commercial product sold at a profit?

Because if you're only speaking about the former, you're right. They don't bother with people who aren't trying to make any money. But if you're trying to make money off the project, let me ask you... at $200 per hour in lawyer fees, just how many hours of legal representation can you afford if you're wrong when testing that theory?

They don't have to be right. They just have to outlast your ability to pay a lawyer to represent you in the venue of their choosing and have a reason to make an example of you.

Call me risk averse if you want, but if some tweaks here and there help make it obviously not a direct clone for a project where I'm putting up real money to minimize the risks of a bored Hasbro lawyer deciding its worth spending 5 minutes to throw a boilerplate cease and desist order my way and cause me all manner of headaches, I'll consider it effort well spent.

One of the problems is that there's a pretty fine line between 'game rules' and 'presentation of game rules' in terms of copyright and trademark. They may not be able to copyright the process of rolling damage and inflicting a condition on a hit, but they can copyright the specific expressions used such as "Hit: Deal 4d10+Intelligence modifier psychic damage and the target is stunned until the end of their next turn" and claim the use of powers with different colored bars to represent usage as part of 4E's product identity. If they decide to make an example of you for whatever reason it can get pretty ugly.

So to me its worth it to have some pretty obvious and significant differences between the project I'm working on and 4E. Thankfully there's quite a bit of 4E that's covered by the 3.5SRD and OGL, even the use of spell attack rolls vs. static Fort, Reflex and Will defenses and the basic concepts for Action Points are in the variant rules section. Even most of the conditions are in the SRD or else are so self-evident that they can't be covered (slowed for example). Others are close enough to stand in for 4E conditions pretty nicely (using "flat-footed" instead of "grants combat advantage" for example).

Frankly, just doing the same sort "question everything/sacred cow slaughter" on 4E that the developers of 4E claimed to have done on past editions of D&D probably separated my project enough from 4E to be safe (I use a different mechanic than 'save ends' for duration tracking and have short/long recovery "mana" points with a carrot for not spamming the same one instead of AED powers). I believe the changes that I implemented make my system a BETTER game than 4E, not just a different one.

Throw in math flatter than 5e for combat (which makes for better sandbox campaigns), shit-canning feats and utility powers for a background layer separate from class that provides your skills and non-combat abilities, replacing the '8-20' ability scores with a '-1 to 5' range (i.e. the mods directly which are all 4E uses for anything of relevance anyway) and a much more codified skill system (with set DC's for specific tasks/obstacles and no difficulty scales with level and skill challenges) and it IS a very different system from 4E on paper even though the playtests feel pretty close to 4E's tactical combat.

That said, I'm not planning on marketing the game as a 4E retroclone. At most I might put a 'inspired by the 4th Edition of the World's Most Popular RPG' line on the back cover and referring to it as a "Tactical Role Playing Game" on the front cover. Beyond that my planned draw is a post apocalyptic schizo-Magitech setting in the spirit of Thundarr the Barbarian with everything from sprites to beastmen to actual dragons to the shadows of murdered children available as PCs (not to mention the usual suspects, though with twists like the steampunk cyborg dwarves) and the heroes are the champions of civilization, clearing out monster filled ruins and uncovering lost treasures to strengthen the fragile realms that have grown from the ruins of the past age.

I was talking about commercial works.
"Product Identity" is not a legal concept or form of Intellectual Property, it only has meaning within the OGL licence.
Be as legally defensive as you like. But from looking at past Hasbro legal behaviour, I don't think what you are discussing is at credible risk even of a cease & desist letter. Where you will get a C&D is use of trademarked terms and copyrighted images, including monsters they claim to own. I don't think your advice reflects how they actually behave.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966582What I don't like about minions is they feel contrived. I kind of wore out on how every 4e monster was customized, so you never really knew what you're fighting. I actually find it a bit refreshing to be back in a context where, for example, an orc just is 2d8+6. Players can reasonably expect that two solid weapon hits will take one out, unless they see one that I specifically point out as being extra burly and mean.

I agree, it can definitely be an issue with 4e and an advantage of 5e and other versions. I generally try to avoid mucking around with the levels of non-minion foes at least. 4e does assume a variety of Minion levels, eg there are umpteen different versions of ghouls up to level 26 Abyssal Horde Ghouls for PCs to fight across their entire careers. But most minions stay within a Tier, eg you have orc minions at level 4 and level 9, hobgoblin minions at level 3 & 8, human minions at level 2 & 7.

Quote from: Omega;9665711: Removing gold for EXP was more likely an attempt to slow down levelling. No one was thinking about facilitating anything.

I got the 2e DMG pdf recently in the drivethru sale and been reading the XP section. The advice on levelling seems to assume a similar rate to 1e AD&D and BX, nothing like the "at least 10 sessions to level" stuff I had been hearing about on the Internet. It actually says:

An average pace in an AD&D game campaign is considered to
be three to six adventures per level, with more time per level as
the characters reach higher levels. However, it is possible to
advance as quickly as one level per adventure or as slowly as 10
or more adventures per level.

Which is good advice. Except unfortunately some people thought 'adventure' here meant 'published module' (eg Temple of Elemental Evil) not 'session'.

Quote from: Voros;966602I disagree. Player Options is so late in 2e's development I never even saw them as I dropped out of D&D with the arrival of 3e. Fail to see what the issue is with weapon proficiency, as I recall it is optional and fiddly like most optional rules, did you find it unbalancing? NWP are character flavour those who obsess on them as a mechanic are missing the point. Don't even remember the reaction table, never used them as I figure it is up to the DM and PC to RP those reactions.

Thieves, bards and monks were significantly improved, the bard actually rendered playable. Priest spheres was a huge improvment on the generic cleric. Not to mention the rules were much more clearly written, laid out, referenceble at the table  and encouraged you to pick and choose what you wanted for your game.

I had a similar impression of 2e - I never bought a 2e DMG though, only the PHB and MM to use with my 1e DMG. NWPs are listed as optional and I never used them.

I was just looking at the 2e DMG Reaction table and it is definitely inferior IMO to the BX 2d6 Reaction table. But it's no worse than the 1e d% table. The 2d6 version is the only one I regularly use (in various games) to set initial monster disposition, because I can keep it in my head.

Quote from: Voros;966602I disagree. Player Options is so late in 2e's development I never even saw them as I dropped out of D&D with the arrival of 3e. Fail to see what the issue is with weapon proficiency, as I recall it is optional and fiddly like most optional rules, did you find it unbalancing?

The first issue is that a large bonus to one weapon is a penalty to using all others. The second issue is that the rules leave it up to the DM to decide what the categories are. The third is, of course, that swords are far more plentiful than other weapons.  The fourth is that it's too granular. A few broad categories would have been much better than what they ended up with.

QuoteNWP are character flavour those who obsess on them as a mechanic are missing the point.

The rules can't figure out whether they're supposed to be flavor or not. Some NWPs are just a nice bit of background. Other NWPs say you need them to do something. They're vague and not well-written.

QuoteThieves, bards and monks were significantly improved, the bard actually rendered playable. Priest spheres was a huge improvment on the generic cleric. Not to mention the rules were much more clearly written, laid out, referenceble at the table  and encouraged you to pick and choose what you wanted for your game.

Definitely like the bard better, and of course the organization is better.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;966658The first issue is that a large bonus to one weapon is a penalty to using all others. The second issue is that the rules leave it up to the DM to decide what the categories are. The third is, of course, that swords are far more plentiful than other weapons.  The fourth is that it's too granular. A few broad categories would have been much better than what they ended up with.

Excluding Complete Fighter's guide weapon groups, categories only existed to determine which weapons only got half-nonproficiency penalty when you were not proficient in them, but in a related weapon.

However, the overall point is very much right. Weapon either needed to be rethought, or the weapon proficiency system was problematic. Here is my take:

• Weapons were unbalanced. The same is true in 1e if you didn't use WvsAC (and even then, it was not well balanced). That's fine if there is no proficiency system. If you find a +3 war hammer (avg damage 6.5/5.5 s-m/l), you make the decision on whether the bonus to hit (and being able to hit various monsters) is worth picking it compared to your greatsword (5.5/10.5). There are no beggars or choosers with the spoils of victory. However, if you have to dedicate a proficiency ahead of time, of course you are going to pick the one with the better base stats. No one ever picked warhammer (or battle axe, or spear) except if they were going for flavor-over-benefit reasons. The best weapons in the game were longswords, greatswords, bastard swords, longbows, and for some reason longspears if you had that splatbook (plus things like daggers if the DM enforced penalties for fighting in confined spaces). The only non-flavor reason to pick otherwise was class limitations.
• Likewise, magic item distribution was unbalanced. Again, swords were king, but after that daggers, bows and staves. Despite having dozens of polearms, it made no without-DM-adjustment sense to ever be proficient in them, since once you hit fights-magic-weapon-requiring-monsters level, you would never use said proficiencies again (and again, these had worse damage). So again, forget having bec-de-corbins on the weapon list, you are still choosing between longsword, greatsword, and longbow.
• Further, every expansion added new weapons. Each Complete guide added martial arts weapons. The fighter's guide added samurai weapons, swashbuckling and pirate weapons, stone and bone weapons. Each of these was a new proficiency you needed to take separately.
• And finally, the expansions kept using wp for more things, eventually disincentivizing taking broad arrays of weapon proficiencies in favor of greater combat effectiveness with a core set. An example (using Complete Fighters): Two characters are fighting each other, or just competing to benefit the party more. One takes broad weapon groups in as many categories as possible, trying to become proficient in them all. The second spends 5 wp to become specialized in longbow and bastard sword. He then spends all the rest of his wp (plus any bonus languages his Int would provide), and spends them on two-handed fighting style, weapon and shield fighting style, ambidexterity, two weapon fighting style, one-handed fighting style (twice), and then specializes in martial arts or wrestling for the rest of his career. This character now has a 1-3 point bonus on any given modifier--to-hit, damage, speed factor, AC, or can fight with two weapons (or weapon and shield). And other than flavor-wise, is not penalized compared to the guy making sure they can fight with awl-pikes and belaying pins.

So yeah. Weapon proficiencies are a fine concept, but not with leaving the rest of the weapon system (damages, magic item charts, etc.) as is.