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I will never understand why martial characters capable of legendary feats are more part of the world's collective story-telling than reality-warping wizards, yet people are more accepting in D&D of Wizards who can do anything and Fighters Who Can't Have Nice Things...

Ugh. I hate perform and craft skills. There's no real reason to ever roll them even if you're performing those actions and they mean you have to waste perfectly good resources if you want to be able to do those things. I'd prefer to just write any of those applicable things in my character bio...

The idea for Favored Enemies is neat; if they do have Favored Enemies, it'd be nice if it was something like that. That said, I hope Favored Enemies is one of several options and I can take Quarry instead.

I would vote all the classes as tier 1 "strongly and mechanically unique."

The key to that, is understanding when codifying an ability with a power, feat or other game mechanic actually cuts off options (it often did in older editions) and when it exists as a supplement to options (like in 4e). The presence of powers that, say, knock opponents prone does NOT preclude...

I also agree that the Illusionist should be part of the Wizard class, much like schemes for the Rogue. If it has its own class, then you equally need a Necromancer class, which is fine and supports its own class, but then you also need an Abjurer, Conjurer, etc., etc. Most of the ones that...

I disagree that D&D has those assumptions and would argue that you're building a ton of assumptions into the system that frankly just aren't there. Worse, taking such a regimated view of what a HP is totally de-abstracts them, which is not a particularly good thing for either side of the...

What if you award both advantage and disadvantage to the contest? Characters doing the surprising get advantage, those who are unsurprised roll normally and those who are surprised get disadvantage. I would think that a group of ambushers rolling two dice and keeping the best would most often...

Yes, but in that same section, Gary also writes "It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place." He further classifies the "actual physical harm" as "nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises,"...

Any group that doesn't have clerics are likely to have other healing resources available and if the cleric is dead will likely head back to town rather than camp in the woods for weeks. And I still don't see why the healing rule is that big a deal; it's so easily houseruled its ridiculous...

But again, why? Isn't the point entirely moot, as I mentioned? I've been playing D&D since 1986 and I have NEVER, in any game with long natural healing times, had my character naturally heal. When I was young we just entirely ignored the rules and as I got older, we always had magical healing...

The funniest thing I find about the entire argument against overnight healing is that its largely an ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT RULE. It's a fair assumption that most groups will have access to magical or otherwise faster healing which will allow the PCs to resume adventuring within a day or two, tops...

The distinction between what is a class and what is not a class is definitely arbitrary; most of these classes we're discussing date back to the earliest editions of D&D, when arbitrary game design was the only type of RPG design there was. No one thought twice about having very broad classes...

You've definitely hit on THE best reason to keep them as classes. I don't want to spend all my customization on making a ranger character when I could START with the Ranger class and spend my customization elsewhere into making it the Ranger I want to play. Other reasons that I can think of are...

I've never understood why people keep pushing for Rangers and Paladins to no longer be distinct classes. D&D has always been a class-based system; if we're going to start whittling classes down to just a few, why not just go completely classless? Remember that one of the biggest points of D&D...

I like the intimation that the fighting styles are linked to themes and not the ranger class itself. So presumably, you can just pick a different theme and not worry about TWFing. I do worry a little that themes seem to be doing a little too much - what if I want to use the TWF style AND I...

LOL! I've been gaming something for more than 25 years and I only have probably about 15 D20s. Sometimes I lose them, sometimes a friend of mine "accidentally" swipes them. I also usually only carry about half of those 15 with me to games... So lots of attacks with advantage tend to be...

Yup, I think very few mechanics would stand up to a 90 percent test. Compromise has to land somewhere and at certain points the designers have to make a choice that won't please everyone. Two-thirds in favor of a mechanic is a clear majority and it's not right if a vocal one-third can hold the...

I did as well, for the same reason.

I view 3.5 as a bad source. How about 1st edition: "...The majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers) and magical fources." Straight from the mind of Gygax. The Moldvay Basic book actually declined to define it at all, just refering to it as the...