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In the group I play in, monsters almost never provoke OA. I'd wager we get 1 every 4-5 combats at most. I'm playing a fighter who focuses on defense, so I'm ok with eating an OA to give flanking to our party rogue. Likewise, our Artful Dodger rogue will happily suffer an OA to get into...

I love Greyhawk because adventurers drive the action. There's plenty of stuff going on anyways, but there are tons of opportunities for the PCs to just go somewhere and do something important. The world isn't so big that the actions of the PCs feel irrelevant, which I sometimes feel with other...

I don't have a complaint with the quantity of points allowed, I have a problem with the cost of certain ability scores, in particular the steep cost for higher ability scores. It makes certain combinations of classes and races too much more powerful than every other combination. In practice...

100% disagree. Unlike every other role, the the second defender actually actively interferes with the first defender. The value a second defender adds to a party will never approach the value the first defender added. We have a party with a Fighter and an Assaulting Swordmage. The Swordmage...

I've seen level one goblins be completely ineffectual against level 3 parties. As in, the party spent MAYBE 1 healing surge total, and no daily powers or magic item powers. Monster level is easily the most important factor in determining how appropriate it is for an encounter. Since attack...

Just buy a bag of holding (or, since 4e bag of holdings blow, a handy haversack) and don't worry about it again until an extraordinary situation comes up, which might happen 3-4 times in an adventurer's career. Encumbrance isn't fun to track, so don't unless it's explicitly involved somehow...

No prophecy involved. I do second the opinion that KotS is a mindless slog though. Off the top of my head, there are roughly 25 combat encounters and maybe 3 given opportunities to role play. It's mostly a straight up hack and slash your way through waves of kobolds and goblins.

Cartographer's Guild is your place for all things mapping. For instance, I think you can achieve just what you're looking for with the pictures in this thread: http://forum.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=8095 (You may have to create a free login to download attached files).

Use fewer monsters of a higher level. The higher level means that your monsters have a higher attack bonus and might do something meaningful. Against a normal party, a swarm of minions of level-2 is almost worthless because they can't hit. Against a party of defenders, minions have to be...

Right, thanks, I edited my post. This I think is the real flaw. If all those healing items only worked with surge healing, then it's not so bad. As it is now, clerics have quite a few ways to exploit these stackable items/feats with surgeless healing (Astral Seal and Spirit of Healing being...

Spirit of Healing. Level 6 utility. Allies who hit a target heal 2x Wis mod. Now add in +Wis from cleric. Add +2 from a healer's brooch. Add another +2 from your implement. If you're level 8 with a 20 Wis, you're healing 19 hit points every single time you hit on an attack roll. For the...

Holy Healer's Mace only applies to Healing Word. Healer's Brooch adds an unnamed bonus to all healing. Healer's Implement adds an unnamed bonus to all healing. If you stack that on top of the Cleric's +Wis to all healing, it's quite ridiculously large.

This is one of those DM-Player social contract situations. The DM has a certain vision as to how people behave in towns in his world. He'd like to have the players play along with that vision. In exchange for the PCs giving up a tactical advantage, the DM will guarantee that any combat taking...

I'd level them to level 2 as fast as possible. Level 1 is dead boring. You have one option in combat other than at-wills or dailies.

3e is hard and complex. 4e is simple and easy. If you like complexity (and it sounds like the original poster does), then I think it might be better off sticking with 3e, so long as you're ok with the amount of effort DM preparation takes. Otherwise, you'd be better off going to 4e. It makes...

If you look at the guidelines for new character wealth, it's pretty much assumed that in the course of adventuring, PCs will lose 25-40% of their "wealth" through using consumables or selling outdated stuff at 20%. I'd pretty much assume that it's part of the plan. You're supposed to use the...

Make it brutally hard and force the PCs to win it. The most memorable combats are always the very hardest ones. And if the PCs fail, it makes for an excellent backdrop for your next campaign. Although now that I think about it, it'd be a very interesting premise for a mini-campaign to have...

Between two campaigns, the highest we've gotten is 8th level in 18 sessions. We didn't start 4e until about 8 months after release as we finished our epic 3.5 campaign.

My fighter is pretty awesome at actually defending. Come and Get It is an amazing power, since it lets me pull enemies off the squishies and simultaneously marks them. If I keep spamming Close Burst attacks, I can keep that mass of enemies occupied for a really long time. Also Shield Push is...

Oops, my bad. Still, once you factor in lower enchantment (as it's a back up weapon), no weapon expertise, and ranged penalties, you still have a bad chance of hitting. Also, there are quite a few melee characters who don't have very good Str or Dex.