I know I'm revivifying this thread but I had to get my two cents in.
@whisper: We shouldn't have to defend D&D to you on this forum.
And you don't.
You were the one who "had" to get your two cents in. I did not compel you.
It seems to me that you are using a lot of energy trying to make people who don't really care about you (read: this forums members) tell you why you should keep playing d&d. If you are so unhappy with it I suggest you use all that energy to talk to the gaming group you are in. Don't do it by breaking/bending the rules. Just sit down and try and have a talk with them about it.
Unhappy isn't the word I'd use. I'm not unhappy. I like gaming. What I am is an engineer, both by trade and by inclination. Which means I am not unhappy, but frustrated. Someone is waving a deeply flawed design in front of my nose every week. My fingers itch to fix it, or replace it with something better.
On your wife abusal analogy: I suggest using your own analogy that the rest of us are masochists and actually like it (thus meaning it isn't abuse) and that YOU are the one being abused because YOU are the one going back to it over and over again without really enjoying it.
You fail to understand both my analogy, and how domestic abuse (not wife abuse, it happens to both genders) works.
Victims of domestic abuse are not masochists. They do not enjoy being hit or denigrated. But they believe that no better options are available, and that they deserve the abuse. They think it is their fault. This is why they will not only stay in these relationships, but vigorously defend their abusers against outside criticism. They think the abuse is the price of being in a relationship at all.
Every D&D player knows what sucks about D&D, if they can do math, and care enough to read the rules, and understand their implications. But they regard all this suckage as the ticket fee to ride the train at all.
I've never heard anyone even try to claim that AC works as designed, or that crafting system isn't broken, or that melee classes aren't hopelessly feeble compared to everything else. Even the most ardent D&D fan doesn't bother to defend their system on this and a score of other, similar, points. But they regard it as inevitable. Shrug your shoulders and put up with it.
Or worse yet, they blame themselves. "If only we poor sinners didn't rape the system by DMM persisting Divine Power", "if we buff the fighters instead of casting Solid Fog/Silence/Black Tentacles, they could feel like they were contributing"... "If only we were to do the game designers' jobs for them, and figure out which parts of the game aren't horribly unbalanced, and play those"...
It reads to the observer like a sort of Stockholm Syndrome.
