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I'd say that my main criterion for evaluating a DM is whether or not I have fun when they run the game.

A dungeon that "makes sense" would be a smallish one-room chamber with thick walls and a single access point—either a heavy door or a hatch in the ceiling—and would be a thoroughly boring place to have an adventure in. The only monsters would be rats, lice, and other small vermin. So no, having...

None of the above. Believability is not a relevant factor in my opinion about whether or not damage on a miss is a mechanic that should or should not be in the game. I'm not even sure what it means to say that I do (or do not) find the mechanic (or any other mechanic) believable. Could you...

I've played through H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth, as well as parts of Tomb of Horrors and Cairn of the Winter King (which I've only just started recently). In addition, under 'Other', I've played some of the Chaos Scar adventures from Dungeon, played in the first series of Encounters as well as...

A 1 in 5 to an almost 1 in 3 chance of failure isn't significant? That's an interesting outlook. Can't say I share it.

I think you'd have to forbid multiclassing in order to prevent the near-universal result of characters selecting a different class at second level, one more suited to their actual abilities. (Of course, given that the original proposal suggested the players were new and had no rulebooks...

By RAW, an OD&D level 1 Fighting-Man is no more an untried youth straight off the farm than a 4E level 1 fighter is. He's explicitly a Veteran. There are no rookies in the system, no raw recruits. I have no access to AD&D or 2nd edition at the moment, but are they somehow different in that regard?

This is essentially how I want things. My old signature—Math ≠ Magic—stemmed from discussions of the idea back in the days between when we knew the new system was coming, but had yet to see any of the nuts and bolts. I knew the +1 weapon was too sacred a cow to die, but to some degree I had...

While 'feat' was perhaps always a poor fit as a name, these new super-feats make the fit all the poorer. They're really more like … specializations, or something, when presented as they are here. The only reason to retain the name feat is as a legacy. I also can't say I care for the first of...

As someone who has been playing 4E since June of 2008, and DMing it since February 2009, I feel safe in assuring you that neither I nor any of the players I've DMed for feel that their world is 'child-proofed' and lacking in the threat of death, despite the absence of SoD spells and effects...

The thing is, the number of possible reasons that someone could have to want proficiency in heavy armour (or any similar game element) is—pretty much inevitably—going to be higher than the available number of feats that grant that game element as one of their components. I mean, unless we're...

Ahh, but is it all humans, or just human adventurers that get the +1 to everything? As has been the case with all prior editions, a first level player character is not Joe Average, fresh off the farm (and yes, some people play that way, but the game mechanics have never been on their side)...

Outside of those books there's only one class/subclass that Wizards of the Coast has specifically labelled as being 'Essentials': the Assassin (Executioner), which at first was a Dragon exclusive but later was released in Heroes of Shadow. That said, the majority (all?) of the new...

Psychic/psionic attacks reduce HP without ever interacting with physical defenses. 4E, at least, includes attacks that deal damage on a miss. Prior editions include effects that deal half-damage on a successful save. The stated goal of D&D Next is not 'to bring D&D back to baseline', but to...

Unless you can cite extensive market research that demonstrates that a significant percentage of those players who either tried and then abandoned, or simply refused to try in the first place, the 4E system, named martial healing and warlords as their sole (or even primary) reason for doing so...

While I'm in agreement with the general positive response this is getting, there is one line that did give me pause. While this is true, it also highlights the fact that at a glance it's far wiser for a character to spend their downtime and gold on things that travel with them (like knowledge...

While the Punisher may have a rather black & white view of morality (matches the outfit nicely), when he interacts with Spider-Man he represents a very grey area. That's pretty much the point of him as a character in Spider-Man's world: someone who fights evil but crosses a line that, in...

I can't properly respond to that without violating community rules. Suffice it to say, significant real world . . . disagreements revolve around differing interpretations of such lists (further complicated by issues of transferring from oral tradition to text, and multiple layers of...

From now on, D&D will use the barter system. A long-sword is about three chickens. Two for a goat.

Many campaigns do let the players decide what monsters to face and what (relatively speaking) the DCs of challenges are. I mean, isn't that pretty much what a sandbox campaign is? The DM lets the players know what's out there, and they go where they're interested in going, regardless of whether...