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My preferred approach to ability scores is that they be used only for skills and improvised actions that have no other rules (so no ability mods all over the place), and have moderate score minimums for races and classes to represents "Fighters are strong" and "Wizards are smart". But that those...

One problem with ablative/breakable shields like those is that it now becomes very useful to carry a bunch of shields, which means that encumbrance becomes an important balance consideration, instead of something that can be ignored with little consequence. Good idea. I'd want this to include...

I'm in favor of having no ability score modifiers at all, low ability prereqs for classes, and just using a roll under system for resolving non-combat tasks (basically, skills). I'm a 4E fan, but OD&D actually got abilities mostly right; ability scores should be more about describing your...

Given 28-point-buy, if you spread stats as evenly as possible (14/14/12/12/12/12), you get 8 advantages. If you min/max as much as possible (18/16/10/8/8/8), you get 7 advantages, and 3 disadvantages. I don't see any way to have more than 8 advantages, aside from racial bonuses. So, all you...

This is an excellent idea, and I look forward to seeing more about it. I think this is a great way to make ability scores interesting. d20+mods vs DC sounds good for skills on paper, but in practice, it's just boring and rife with DM fiat. One thing I advise, that I think you're doing anyway...

You could scale spell healing by number of the target's hit dice. That at least fixes Fighters being harder to heal than Wizards. It makes some sense that CLW isn't so good at healing high level characters. Or you could just do it like 4E does it, which works quite well. Also, CLW wands were...

Nope. Co-opting some words and phrases more commonly used by those attacking 4E, but I do truly believe that bad mechanics are detrimental to roleplaying, that 4E has much better mechanics than any other edition (including its healing mechanics), and thus is more amenable to roleplaying.

But "what happens next?" is all physics really is. When X thing happens, it causes Y thing to happen. If both a Fighter and a Wizard receive the same outcome in a combat (both knocked out), then the rules say "what happens next"; in pre-3E, barring magical healing, the Fighter will tend to...

I'm sorry, but it breaks my verisimilitude and immersion for a Fighter to have a vastly longer recovery time than the Wizard. Mechanics are the physics of the world after all, and broken mechanics mean a broken world. Pretending it isn't so isn't a solution. This is part of why I prefer 4E...

It doesn't make sense that there are limits to how much a person can shake off before they are too exhausted to keep going? Seems eminently sensible to me. I'm not seeing how unlimited healing makes any more "sense". However, the basis of your complaint is false, anyway. You can regain...

I handle it by playing an edition where healing scales sensibly. Namely, 4E.

Choosing an "advanced" class should absolutely not be "rewarded" with more power; certainly not intentionally. Getting to play the specific character you want to play in the way you want to play it is completely reward enough. Wanting to not deal with a bunch of rules is not synonymous with...

Same here; my group's Dungeon World campaign literally started out playing the first playtest packet. I don't think anyone is very interested in going back to playtesting Next. As far as I'm concerned, Dungeon World is everything essential about early D&D that Next seems to be trying to...

If PrCs are to be story-based, then yes, absolutely, they should be treated as treasure. Making them levels was where 3E completely screwed up the concept. I'm not sure about your specific implementation, though. For one, making it depend on "solo combats" is really questionable. The...

My 4E campaign ended last year, and I've been running something else since. While 4E is by far my favorite edition of D&D, I didn't really want to run D&D any more, and wanted to try something else (a sandbox-ish sci-fi game). Meanwhile, others in my group are running Dungeon World, and Savage...

I guess what I'm ultimately aiming for is clarity: if you've got a statblock with combat stats, then it should be stats that are conducive to build fun and engaging combats. If you want to also include other "world building" or "quest hook ideas" sorts of information, then fine, but these don't...

I'm making a distinction between "what appears in the Monster Manual", and "what a DM uses in his campaign". The statblocks in the Monster Manual are just building blocks for making combat encounters, because fun, engaging, balanced combat encounters are the difficult part of running a game...

OK, but that's essentially the same. Why should an animated suit of armor be immune to Disintegrate? Well, note that it was a conditional. I don't know how they'll balance them, and it frankly seems unlikely that they will, or that they are even trying. If casters are not balanced with...

Very glad to see that 3E's nonsense of blanket immunities for undead and constructs is gone. Made no sense for game balance or fiction reasons. Heck, based on the usual fiction, if anything, Zombies should have been immune to non-critical hits... The magic immunity, though, I'm not so sure...

Indeed. One makes your AC 10+DEX+WIS, the other makes it 12+DEX. No possible way to reasonably interpret that as stacking. As for whether it should, I think it would depend on what it takes to get Mage Armor. Just a one level splash in Wizard would be too easy. +2 AC is a pretty big deal in...