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I really, really am beginning to get a bad feeling about this release schedule. I'm with many of the others: it's clear to me that Hasbro kept WotC on a tight leash and really wasn't expecting much out of 5e. Now that it's fairly clear it's a hit, they're scurrying around trying to figure out...

Psionics. Let's at least get a peak at what they're going to do with psionics.

I can't put a finger on why I never liked them but I'll take a stab at a hypothesis: it's all par for the course. I've found that those players I know who don't like the 'WoW' aspects of 4E--powers, over emphasis on balance, Dragonkin, etc.--loathe healing surges. To the man. They seem to...

Don't think Saga of the Plieocene Exile is fantasy? Huh. Okay, YMMV. But one might as well be consistent about it, right? Because by that defintion... ...neither is the Expedition to Barrier Peaks fantasy. ...nor should you even allude to spells or 'powers' that mimic clearly psionic...

No. If the DM doesn't want psionics, he or she bans 'em, period. And there was already an option for giving psionic abilities to non-psionic classes. Wild talents. Keep that option. But not creating a psionic class/classes doesn't make sense if you're to use wild talents. I mean, when the...

I think of charisma as simply personal magnetism. Now beauty as a concept is in the eye of the beholder to a certain extent but there's a lot of commonality in what many people consider beautiful or handsome (take a look at the magazine rack; many magazines focusing on the body wouldn't be...

You mention the 'feel' issue and I get it. I've struggled with it too. I think it's because we see the term 'psionics' and almost automatically think of science fiction (the Jedi, Vulcans, etc.). There's a bit of a paradigmic jar to that. I've seen it integrated well--like I mentioned...

Playing Devil's Advocate here... By that yardstick, 4e was right to leave out the gnome initially. If it's a popularity contest, we're going to end up with a rather truncated game because although there's fans for every single race and class combo, just from anecdotal evidence (and the...

To what degree should psionics be incorporated into 5e? I know psionics in D&D has been controversial since, heavens, the beginning practically. It's the old 'fantasy vs. scifi' argument that, I believe, really presents a false dichotomy (I prefer to think of both as subgenres in a larger...

I actually play with no more than 3, mostly because I concentrate on playing with family (wife and kids). With a spread of children in the family from 21 to 4, time management becomes an issue and I really haven't got a lot of freetime to go off for three or four hours to game. So...I stick...

I'm all for splitting Charisma again and bringing back Comeliness.

Huh, that's interesting how different styles of campaigning come out. The world I created WTF back in '89 was centered around a massive, multi-continental empire ruled by lich-like god-emperors. The imperial default alignment was Lawful Neutral. The civilization itself was nearly 45,000 years...

One of the best things about 4E was finally giving the devil his due. Literally. If Asmodeus is as bad-assed as he's been portrayed since at least the late 2E, then he's a god. Pure and simple. I love that idea. Pathfinder did it too. And then they muddied the waters by making demons...

Character Creation Races Human Elf High Drow Wood/Sylvan Half-Elf (multiple builds for racial combinations beyond simply human/elf) Dwarf Mountain Deep/Duergar Half-Dwarf/Mul (multiple builds for racial combinations beyond simply human/dwarf) Gnome Halfling Half-Orc Planetouched...

Well, that depends. One could have the class 'Warrior' with subclasses 'Knight' and 'Barbarian' and do away with the term 'Fighter' in toto. That way, you've covered your bases and refined the concepts a bit; boiled down the archetypes. 'Warrior' would be your generic, semi-skilled...

I'm not saying the class itself shouldn't be in there--I'm all for it--it's just that the name strikes me as being referential to a person your usual first level character isn't: older, more experienced. Just a bit of semantics. Nothing more.

'Knight' would work for me. Funny, but a couple of years ago I was thinking about alternate names for classes and I thought 'knight' would work as an alternate name for 'paladin'. But it works just as well for 'warlord' too. Completely eliminates the impression that the character is older...

Oh sure, we've shoehorned in modern sensibilities to some extent into the modern fantasy genre but fantasy--high fantasy at least--is still feudalism, the divine right of kings, etc. Hardly progressive in the modern, Lefty definition of the term. But all of that's fine. I understand that. My...

Which is why 'Marshal' for me works better. However, they both have the same problem: how can a young pup, greener than an Elven fruit salad, be called a 'marshal' or a 'warlord' with a straight face? 'What're you, Aubric?' 'Me? I'm a Marshal in the Order of St. Denys the Dastardly!'...

I loved the idea of the 3.5E Marshal but the implementation of the 4E Warlord left me a bit cold and for the very reason you brought up--the design-role-by-mechanic seemed utterly forced to me and simply added to my impression (which grew with time) that 4E was more a superhero game than...