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Suppose you're up against an evil cleric who has used the Prayer spell to toughen up the AC of his cultist minions. Does it strike anyone else as problematic that you improve your party's chances of hitting more by casting Bless on your enemies than by casting it on your allies? Someone in WotC...

Loving the "two attacks at half damage" thing. Only thing I'm wondering is if it cuts sneak attack in half; hoping two-weapon rogues are viable rather than terrible. I'm also hoping that multiclassing will be enough to get at least the +2 "proficiency bonus" on magic attacks. It's not awesome...

Note that this playtest does not contain flanking, and that hiding usually takes an action. If you expect Sneak Attack only every other round, the damage seems rather more reasonable.

So, you've got a swarm of kobolds and/or rats, and are aggrieved at having to roll large quantities of pairs of dice when they all have advantage? Fortunately, there's an easier way to deal with it. Say you've got 10 advantagey kobolds rolling against a single target. Roll 10 d20s. Set aside...

Hey, 4e player here (who previously burnt out badly on 3.5, and loved reading the 1e AD&D books as a kid). I like the at-will spells and the reaper feat. They seem D&Dish to me, and cause no harm to my suspension of disbelief. I will be less eager to pick up 5e if it excludes the things that I...

There's some funkiness with how certain rules interact, possibly as an artifact of merged systems. Ranged attacks against prone creatures have disadvantage, unless the attacker is adjacent - but you also have disadvantage when making a ranged attack in melee reach of an enemy...

Well, since these involve a video game, they can actually be codified. In The Legend of Zelda: a Link to The Past, each sword upgrade generally doubles the damage dealt - the basic sword does 2 damage with a swing, while the final sword upgrade does 16. The Master Sword (and each upgrade...

With the discussion of morale earlier, I see an opportunity here for something like this: Turn Undead: As a standard action, a Cleric wielding a holy symbol can make a single Charisma check against the Morale rating of each undead creature in Close range, with success affecting the creature as...

Each player gets a controller. Saving throws are resolved by Quick Time Events. Ability scores are superfluous (they're just a thing you do math to in order to get modifiers), so they get removed - your character's primary stats are simply now Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, determined by your...

The best D&D campaign I've ever played in had Aspects and Fate Points added into it, and it worked beautifully. (And helped a great deal at cushioning the Epic-threats-at-level-3 tone of the campaign...)

Think of "take 20" as actually "take 1 and 20" - if the 1 results in an irretrievable failure, it's not a take 20 situation. If it's something that can be endlessly retried, take 20 is the shortcut to skip all that rolling. If you're searching a room for a secret door, the door won't typically...

For spells, 4e did basically have short, medium, and long ranges. They were just 5, 10, and 20. I expect to see 5e's Fireball say something like "long range - large spread", and then the tactical module will define "long range" as "20 squares on a battle grid" and "large spread" as "3 square...

Interestingly, it appears that the 4e Executioner Assassin's poisons were designed for both modes - there's a CaW and CaS effect for each of them, depending on if you slip it in someone's drink or just stab them with a knife covered in it. This suggests that "support both" is possible in at...

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So basically, it's still one long encounter, but with encounter-long effects nerfed. Bleh, time to rework my builds and go back to daily item powers. :/

So, I've been playing too much LoL and not enough D&D lately. I mostly play Lux, and this idea recently got stuck in my head... Lucent Singularity - Wizard attack 1 At-will * Arcane, Implement, Radiant, Zone Standard action - Area burst 1 within 10 Effect: The burst creates a zone...

Here's what the Rules Compendium has to say on retraining powers: Nothing in there stopping this. Same type: encounter, same level: 1, same class: warlock. Likewise, it's possible to retrain a Mage or Bladesinger's free Magic Missile into another wizard at-will, which is very handy for those...

I was fiddling around with various builds in the DDI CB, and noticed something odd with its retraining behavior in a particular situation. Then I took a closer look at the rules elements that had led to that particular outcome, and realized that by RAW it was technically behaving correctly...

When I'm DMing, I offer the willing target two options: 1. They can choose not to avoid the attack, granting CA to their ally and taking no further penalties, or... 2. They can deliberately intercept the attack, making it hit on anything but a natural 1, but causing them to grant combat...

Almost invariably, through all the systems and campaigns that I've played, the DMs that had the most trust from the players were the ones that gave the most narrative authority to the players. The game /is/ about the players, or at least the PCs. The best campaign I ever played in (with the DM I...