I will cut this part out first:
Quote Originally Posted by hamlet View Post
Claiming that such an advantage is entirely due to a dungeon is not very honest.
It was intended to be a bit of hyperbole. If you want to call that "dishonest" you can.

My point is simply this: If you need terrain to defend your group, you're relying on that terrain being around, or having enough time to (say) dig trenches. Yes, there are rocks & boulders & trees & ravines outside. All of these can be avoided far more easily than, say, a 5'-wide dungeon corridor. Chokepoints are not everywhere.

(And I'll head down to here...)

Quote Originally Posted by hamlet View Post
Yeah, except our fighter did perform trips, disarms, shoves and grapples, and a whole host of other things. It's right there in the playtest rules for you to figure out. And, with a high strength and a reasonable dexterity, he was quite able at them, more so than others who tried them. So, yeah, he was the best fighter at the table.

So, again, I will assert that, on some level, a lot of folks are failing to make use of what is actually in the rules of the playtest and blaming it on bad design.
I am not blaming it on bad design. Boring design, sure. But not bad design. I still run and enjoy 1e; I don't find that to be bad design, either.

All of the stuff you mentioned above, with the various ways in which the fighter did cool stuff? Could other characters have done the same? And if so, what's the point of the Fighter?

Let's go down a different thought experiment. I have a new spellcaster - call him a Caster for sake of argument. The Caster has a spell he can cast over and over again. What can the spell do? Well, he can make attack rolls and deal damage with it. Want to do anything else with it? Talk to your DM. Use the environment to your advantage. Improvise.

Is such a system sufficient for a spellcasting system? Is it an interesting system? Would you pay a game designer for it? (If so, I'll send my paypal address!)

-O