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Reading this thread (and others) suggests to me that WotC has similar problems with all of the traditional martial classes (fighter, ranger and rogue). Each of these classes have had significantly different mechanics through the editions, and the community understanding of "what is a ranger"...

Yes, yes, yes. Pictures are great, but I'm not going to show the picture to the PCs. I'm going to use words to describe what the PCs see. The very least the monster manual could do is make this task easier. -KS

This makes sense. Not all tiers are suitable for all playstyles. But you can have multiple playstyles at the same tier. For example, plane-hopping but otherwise traditional dungeoneering, Bloodstone-style armies and kingdom management, and wuxia/Naruto-style adventures are all reasonable...

That's not the way the terms are typically used in D&D. -KS

I hadn't noticed this before, but Monte's statement here is terrible. I like high-level play, I want functional high-level play. I just want it to be fast, to provide an experience different from low-level play and to include the modern character options and task resolution mechanics of the...

I don't like how Monte conflates the different problems that high level play causes at high levels. It's true that the game changes in each edition, but in different ways. In 1e-3e, the balance between the characters changes dramatically, with spellcasters becoming more powerful than the other...

Part of the whole point of having races is that it provides for a wider variety of possible PCs. That goal is defeated if the race-class synergies are so strong that each class is dominated by a small number of races. -KS

I disagree completely with the second sentence. Yes, the concepts have been there all along, but D&D isn't just a collection of rules. It's an immersive experience and the words we use to describe the elements of D&D have an effect on the immersive experience. In the case of 4e, terms like...

A class is a package of abilities organized according to a coherent theme. It's definitely not a role-playing theme or a personality. It shouldn't be a non-combat role, although it can be if a class is written very narrowly (generally, a mistake, but probably ok for optional classes in...

When they discuss having two different "styles" of D&D at the same table, they mean character styles, not game styles. That means you can have a simple Slayer-style hit-and-damage fighter at the same table as a 4e-style martial exploit fighter. It's not really different from 4e essentials...

I agree that the term "power source" should be taken out back and shot. D&D is a fantasy game. The term is out of genre (as is "power") and shouldn't be part of the working vocabulary of the game. That said, I would be totally fine if some character classes had access to arcane spells (or...

This was my feeling also. As a general matter, D&DN should encourage custom game worlds. In this particular instance, the flavor and shared cultural benefits exceed the need to make customization easy. After all, it's easy to cut the names out or replace them with campaign-appropriate names...

It's certainly true that OP became more popular when LG came out. Most of the popularity was probably due to the fact that 3e was so much more popular than 2e circa 1999, but it's also true that people liked creating their own characters. That having been said, the quality of actual LG...

I'm going to show my age here and say that WotC ruined organized play when they started Living Greyhawk in 2000. Before that, you had tournament play with premade characters build for the module. It was great. You got to play in highly themed parties that you wouldn't get in a home campaign...

I hope not. Or, rather, I agree that they are a different style of game, but I hope the same set of rules can accommodate both styles with different modules and levels of play. I always thought this fed into the great lost opportunity of tiered play. Tiered play should allow campaign-level...

I'd like to see the traditional trilogy, just because there's a lot of information in D&D and the trilogy is reasonably well designed for giving you the book with the tools you need for a particular job. The one change I'd like to see to the typical 3-book format is that I'd like to see the...

Hey -- that's the basis for a great game! The PCs complete a simple adventure, pissing off a powerful enemy. The enemy kills them all the next night. For the rest of the game, the PCs play their own ghosts, having to face many of the same obstacles -- except now they are insubstantial so some...

Here's the issue: If the PCs gain power at a reasonable rate, early threats become obsolete over time (often a good thing). Then middle career threats become obsolete, and -- if the game goes long enough -- it's hard to threaten the PCs without resorting to some of the most unusual creatures...

That's not surprising to me. Skills (in whatever form) are the primary way of differentiating characters in a non-combat capacity. Critical hits (again, in whatever form) are fairly uncontroversial way of adding fun swinginess to combat and letting the players feel awesome. There are more...

Nine alignments plus unaligned is probably the right default structure, but we should also see good-to-evil and lawful-to-chaotic 3 alignment structures, the 4e strangeness (where "good" sort of mapped to "chaotic good" and "evil" sort of mapped to "lawful evil"), and a more ad hoc allegiance...