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I'm a little confused as to what you're arguing here. Clearly, Shielding Smite is useful at all levels (i.e., you don't "outgrow" it). And Displacement is useful at all levels (i.e., you never "outgrow" it). But they both have different advantages and drawbacks--whether they require a hit to...

Eh. It gives the power a drawback, which makes it more interesting, not less. I figure if a kobold's about to graze your left side and the wizard makes you suddenly appear a foot to the right, the kobold could correct into where your stomach actually is. Yell at the wizard, and hope the next...

Well, that depends on when during an attack the dice get rolled. You seem to think there's no time between rolling an attack and the attacker making contact with their target. It's just as valid to think of the "to hit" roll happening just as you begin an attack--the slight pause when you...

I'm saying both are real penalties, in the real world, for things that happen in a game. The difference is a matter of degree. Your insistence that they're completely unrelated things is bizarre, like someone arguing there's no comparison between a gorilla and King Kong because one is 300 feet...

In a certain sense, all penalties are out-of-game penalties. You try to win at Monopoly not because there's some real sanction that will hit you if you lose, but because you'll feel bad, in the real world, for losing. If I design a game and the rules say "After an hour has passed, whoever has...

Based on your logic, when you play Monopoly you should agree that the loser has to sell their house to the winner for $1. Because that chance makes the game fun! There are a lot of "lose" conditions less severe than a TPK, just as most people feel the risk of losing at Monopoly is enough of a...

Trust me, it's all about Hide in Languages and Find and Remove Pockets.

If you imagine grabbing someone at 10' reach is slightly awkward and you have to stretch to do it, it's not hard to imagine you can't very easily hit them with your off hand when they let their guard down. Creatures with threatening reach are clearly more skilled in making those sorts of...

Maybe. If sales of 3.5 are declining across the industry, though, it could be like buggy whips in 1910. It's not like buggy whip manufacturers went out of business all at the same time; the ones making the cheap, crappy buggy whips folded first, then the ones making decent, serviceable buggy...

That dragon is supposed to be a challenge for a 4th level party. And it sounds like if this playtest had run some of the rules a little differently (take recurring damage at the beginning of the turn rather than the end, use the darkness ability of the dragon) it could easily have been a TPK...

As an NPC? I think it's clear there are some fantasy archetypes that won't be supported by 4e. One of these is the noncombatant. You can get some of that back through roleplay--I had a friend whose barbarian didn't yell as he raged into battle so much as scream like a 6-year-old, cover his...

Lets see--high damage, check. Mobility, check. Lower defenses, check. I'd love to see a Barbarian as a striker. Wade into combat and do massive amounts of damage, but not be able to take the hits like a fighter. Abilities could be things like "Tough it Out" (immediate reaction when hit, get...

Well, I had at least three judges who misunderstood, and several of them were specifically discussing the new rule change that had just come from the designers. And given that I'm not the only one who heard the "minions only die from a to-hit roll", I'm sure there's some basis in truth. Again...

It comes from the designers at DDXP dithering about changing the rule so that only to-hit rolls can kill a minion. I know I had a table where the fighter tried to cleave into a minion, and the judge said it didn't work, because there's no to-hit roll for the secondary effect. So that's where...

I'll admit I can't think about this for too long without getting a headache. But I'm beginning to see the logic in requiring a to-hit roll to kill a minion. There was the example of a Wall of Ice which does 2d6 damage to anything attacking it, and takes 50 hit points damage to bash through...

Not to mention, they could potentially slip rules fixes and clarifications into the galleys. It's trickier, since you generally have a limited space to work with and have to cut things for everything you add, but it's far from impossible.

Doesn't move the numbers much. Mean round of death: 6.7. Median round of death: 6. Mean round of recovery: 8.6. Median round of recovery: 8. Interestingly, if you exclude the trials where you die before you recover, the mean round of recovery drops to 3.8 (median 3). Once you get past that...

Ah. I thought you ran 100 simulations, and each simulation had X trials. Which you did, I guess, if X=1. And it's not rounding error, it's random variation. You're sampling from a potentially infinite pool, and you're only drawing 100 lots.

Hrm. That's an awfully high rounding error. FWIW: I've put a simulation up at Google Spreadsheets. Should be self-explanatory. Unfortunately, Google Spreadsheets are pretty limited so there's only 230 runs. And there's no easy way to recalculate. But I'm getting the same numbers everyone...

My grandmother did it by cutting off the head with a hatchet and then trapping the body under a bucket. I was under the impression that axes were generally used, otherwise we wouldn't have had Mike the Headless Wonder Chicken.