D&Deconstruction Part V: Specific Beats General

One of the design principles that seems to be at the heart of D&D is summed up in one of the rules they present: Specific Beats General.  Within the rule system, if a specific power, spell or ability says to do things one way and the general rule says to do things another way, the specific power is correct.  While this seems simple, it points to something that brings me pretty high hopes for D&D5 in the longer term: Expandability.  

There are a lot of built in ways that D&D5 can add content to the game that provides specific variations on the simple general themes.  Classes have archetypes that can be expanded in a fairly unlimited fashion.  Why not a rogue-acrobat archetype, or a rogue-duelist archetype.  New Backgrounds can easily be created by combining any two skills.  Intimidation and Investigation?  You were in law enforcement. Animal Handling and Arcana?  Your parents ran an owlbear farm.  Deception and Survival? You were in the hunger games.  Any combination can become a new background.  Existing backgrounds have variants that allow extra expandability.

This increased possibility of variation means that D&D5 will hopefully take a lot longer to get to the point of publishing pointless new classes or prestige classes that have no point.  And the principle of specific beats general has allowed for the creation of some variations that already break the mold in interesting ways.  The Paladin class is one of my favorites so far.  They've added two significant Paladin variations, neither of which is lawful good, but both of which are definitely holy warriors.  One is a paladin in service to the druidic religion, focused on doing good within nature.  One is a paladin in service to vengeance, driven by revenge to remove the greater evil.  These variations represent a focus on the specific over the general in a way that betokens the possibility of actual adaptability when it comes to the game.  And that says to me that there is room to grow.  D&D5 can add variation without making the existing obsolete.

Like the rule philosophy as stated, this is more than simply the introduction of new material, it seems to be a change in how things are being written.  Specific exceptions are no longer being written into general rules.  Specific exceptions are written into specific rules, with the general rules kept general and straightforward.  This should hopefully alleviate some of the issue of colliding specifics that can cause significant confusion and represents a significant change in design philosophy that I find refreshing.

I could go on about all the different things I find interesting in the new edition.  Short rests.  Changes in movement rules and attacks of opportunity.  Sneak attack.  Variable Magic Systems.  But all of them come down to this.  D&D5 feels like a lot of thought and care went into it.  From what I have heard about the playtesting, significant changes happened over the course of development that led to the game that was released.  Truly, only playing the game will tell how these changes really work, but I am hopeful, and that is refreshing.