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I don't think anyone should be made to play a character who is designed to fight in melee and can't take one good hit from anything. Unless you're view of orcs is more bad-ass than usual, I disagree. I think fighter PCs should start out more powerful than the average humanoid warrior. I...

I think time limits can be used to great effect. Red Hand of Doom (except for the sad dungeon crawl between the battle and the post-battle "second climax") is a great example of a time limit adventure. The key is to allow some strategic flexibility and a way to affect the timeline. (E.g...

I think the best part about the article's comments concerning the 15-minute adventure day was that it says the problem is principally one of adventure design, not mechanics. (1) That is correct. (2) Maybe they will design adventures that don't have this problem. -KS

I think if you do research about what players find fun in actual play, you get results that are very different from 50/50 chance of success. To take a trivial (but often misunderstood) example, PCs need to have a dramatically better than 50% chance of succeeding at an average encounter...

I totally understand the motivation to minimize calculations and character sheet reference, but I find the archtype comment interesting. Are you opposed to options in class abilities? Or do you think that two fighters with the same level, abilities scores and equipment should be identical from...

Purely as a matter of curiosity, what about skills and non-weapon proficiencies do you dislike? Are they too fiddly? Too complex? Encourage die rolling over describing what your character does? Some other reason? -KS

I don't really care what the sorcerer is, but there needs to be non-Vancian method of casting wizard spells. Whether that's the sorcerer class or a variant of the wizard doesn't matter. D&DN needs the ability to play a non-Vancian, Int-based, wizard-like character with wizard spells and a...

It wasn't really a choice in the poll, but I prefer a mixture of at-will abilities (like 4e powers or these magical feats) with a flexible pool of daily magic (like the 3e sorcerer or psion), possibly with some encounter-level resources mixed in. I could imagine liking a system like the 3e...

In talking about high level characters there are really three separate issues. The first issue concerns the "bigger numbers." The key here is to figure out a way so that both PCs and enemies get tougher (so as to preserve a sense of progress) while having larger numbers of weaker enemies...

Another blog entry up, this one on whether high level play should just involve bigger numbers. More interesting is a discussion of how complicated high level play should be. Personally, I want high level play to be as simple as possible. Of course, some complexity is unavoidable just because...

Speaking just for myself, I want themes / kits because I think readily available character customization is important. On the other hand, I'm not fond of prestige classes, paragon paths or epic destinies because I think D&D gets too complicated at upper levels and I don't think D&D needs...

I think they are getting at two different things. When WotC asks "should it be an option?", they are asking whether holdings and followers should be an optional module. The folks saying "yes" to that are agreeing with the idea that holdings and followers should be part of the game, but that...

Followers and stronghold are one of the defining characteristics of high level play. (Other hallmarks of high level play include: availability of higher level magical solutions, easy transportation, mass combat and planar travel.) I'm not sure what the default should be, but followers and...

I like the idea of a wound module that reflects long-term serious injury for grittier style games that care about this kind of thing. But any such system needs a few characteristics: 1) It needs to be an optional module. Core D&D doesn't need this kind of complexity. 2) It needs to be pretty...

I voted "other" as well. I don't want to see ability modifiers, but I want the racial abilities to be significant. Ability modifiers mess up class/race variety. If you give one race a strength modifier (or worse, Str/Con or Str/Dex), that race because significantly more attractive for...

Adventures aren't more important than the system, but they are important for three major reasons: 1) Adventures teach DMs how to run games. For experienced DMs first picking up a new edition and for newbie DMs making their first try behind the screen, adventures provide a structure for their...

That's true, but psionics is optional and has a long history in D&D. As they noted in this week's Rule of Three, clerics aren't really part of the overall fantasy genre even if they are a core aspect of the D&D sub-genre. I'm not a huge fan of the psionics-cthullu-far-realms aspect of D&D...

That's not quite right. A Defender Aura only creates a penalty on attacks that don't include the Knight (or allies that also have a Defender Aura): But, yes, less complicated mechanics can fulfill the defender function. -KS

The defender's mission isn't to make enemies attack them. It's to prevent enemies from attacking the defender's allies. Being attacked themselves is the side effect of the marking mechanic. I tend to think that a better defender mechanic would have been a straight debuff aura (e.g. "enemies...

I agree with this 80%, but the remaining 20% is also important. Balancing combat with non-combat is tricky, as you say, because (1) different campaigns allocate time very differently between combat and non-combat, (2) different campaigns allocate time very differently between types of...