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PrCs too good to pass up? Nah. You do get a little power bump for free if you find a PrC that fits your style. It is not a given that such a PrC exists. Another factor is that Spontaneous Metamagic can be very powerful (and is often houseruled for that exact reason). So sticking with...

I would not go so far as to call it "selfish" to use your class abilities in order to stand in harm's way side by side with the Fighter. Running into melee is often enough its own "reward", so to speak. Nor will I generalize that the Cleric has any inherent obligation to spend the lion's share...

A demonlord also makes a more viable longterm BBEG who is pulling the strings than a god. Killing a god is harder to accomplish without open a big can of worms. A demonlord is entirely expendable on the cosmological scale.

Yes, spiders are a superb example of what could be done. Alien. Predatory. But that is not sufficient reason to enshrine it a the True Way of Drow as Deities & Demigods implicitly did IMO. There are other themes that work well.

The spiders have always been more than a bit overdone... I am not sure whether this was precisely Gary's vision, but the original Drow as depicted in G3/D1-3/Q1 were never all about the spiders. The point of the Drow is that they worshipped various demonlords. Demonlords are inherently highly...

Combat does last a bit longer in 1e than 3e when counted in rounds. 3e PCs hit slightly more often. 3e damage and 3e HPs tend to be higher, but they roughly offset each other. It is not such a big difference.

Just off the top of my head... Reach weapons do not have to be about AoOs for movement. That could easily be changed. Give the reach weapons the spiked chain footprint, and then all reach weapons have a rather minor benefit. Not exciting, but not useless either. I know nothing about what 4e...

If someone really wants to game Per Encounter abilities to make them effectively permenant, the DM could set a limit of Per Encounter really means up to 100 times per day. The overly clever will burn through all their Per Encounter abilities for the day by 11:23 am.

Right. Either you have the advantage of your buffs still being up when the second wave of guards arrive without resorting to spending an action (swift or otherwise), or you have the advantage of getting a refresh and gaining access to Per Encounter abilities you might have already burned on...

In the real world soldiers might fight for a couple minutes, then break off and rest for ten or twenty. Rinse and repeat. The concept of encounters holds within a large mass battle, if the DM imposes some half-way realistic pacing. This is, in fact, one of the reasons ancient versions of D&D...

My answer: The best overall does not necessarily translate into the best at anything in particular. One is a measure of Resource Balance. The other is a measure of Dramatic Balance.

IME for a low level Druid, it does not quite work out that way. The problem is the Druid tend to have the crappiest AC in the party and her only highly reliable and flexible offensive takes 1 round to cast. That is a difficult combination, which really begs for teamwork.

It is common enough in heroic fiction for the not very bright member of the team to occasionally be the most insightful.

I would hypothesize the existence of a God of Hidden Knowledge and Puzzles who choses to strengthen wards that are designed in a manner that is pleasing to him. Mechanically, such a puzzle would have a gp or xp value for creating the warding magical item.

Certainly the potential is real. The number of people reporting that they have seen Cleric superstacks in play is not small. However, the number of people reporting that Cleric superstacks are a genuine campaign-harming issue is very small (to zero). I therefore conclude that this is rarely a...

I think the general conclusion is that it is theoretically possible for a Cleric to be overpowered, but it is rather rare to see it happen in actual play. Buffing the Fighter is just so easy, resource efficient, and tactically versatile. A little goes a long way. You must possess the...

The druid spell list is significantly weaker at lower levels. Therefore I would see no reason for a DM to disallow it.

The tank, of course. My spellcasters have a mantra for this issue: A buffed meatshield is a happy meatshield. A happy meatshield is a brave meathshield. A brave meatshield wants to risk their neck to protect me. The fact is a Cleric can usually do better by laying a single good buff on the...

The argument for such a well-endowed class boils down to the fact that defensive strengths and versatility do not necessarily make for a fun or overly powerful character at the table. If I burn lots of spells to prepare, I can be 110% as good as an unbuffed Fighter. (And smart Fighters can...

"Never" is far too strong a word here. Sometimes they were dumb brutes. Often they were not. A dragon played straight from the 1e Monster Manual could go either way. You have a strong vision of an Iconic D&D Dragon that scales up as a BBEG to Epic levels. There is nothing really wrong with...