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Personally, I don't need the quirky minutia. Fireball, for instance, can be listed in a statblock as: fireball (burst 8 within 10, Int vs. Ref, [Lvl]d6 fire damage; half damage on a miss) or in saving throw nomenclature: fireball (40' rad, 50' range, [Lvl]d6 fire damage; half damage if save...

The mess is that they had to be dealt with on a spell-by-spell basis in the first place. Why does every spell need to have individualized disruption parameters? Resilient sphere is not resilient to most disruptive magics, but other effects are. It's a hodgepodge that you really can't expect a...

They're critical in 3e because the nullification rules are wonky. There are all sorts of complicated layers to it. You can't damage it, but you can dispel, negate, cancel, or disintegrate it? Some uniformity was needed. And the reference to resilient sphere was odd since they rewrote most of...

Morrus asked for a comparison of magic items. Let's take Bead of Force. her'es the 3.5 version: Bead of Force This small black sphere appears to be a lusterless pearl. You can throw it up to 60 feet with no range penalties. Upon sharp impact, the bead explodes, sending forth a burst...

Over a year ago, I wrote an article called To Build a Better Stat Block. But given the discussion here, I would agree that prosaic description should be incorporated into the main text. To take the 4e sleep, I would "wrecanify" it as follows: SLEEP Wizard Daily 1 Arcane, Charm, Enchantment...

The problem is how much guidance the game gives you to make a mind-flayer who has some sneaky attacks, and can also wield a mean longsword on the frontlines. The 4e approach is to tell you what the defenses, attacks, and hp should be for a creature of that level. Level up (or down) your...

I know. I tried coming up with something more neutral, but it got too watered down and made it seem like I was just asking about roleplaying, which seemed like a silly thing to ask about concerning a roleplaying game. Aggressive was the best adjective I could come up with that connoted the...

This isn't supposed to be complicated.

To clarify, I am not a developer of 5e and am not an employee of Wizards or Hasbro. I've freelanced for them in the past, but this thread and accompanying polls are entirely my own.

Because they're goofy fun, and sometimes thought-provoking. Do they need to be more? It keeps people engaged in the process. I don't think anybody at Wizards thinks these polls are giving them reliable data.

In various places, it has been asked what player abilities should be encouraged, discouraged, or rewarded by the next iteration of D&D. This is a crucial question for the designers, as it sets up what players and DMs they hope to attract to the game. I have identified eight different...

That's pretty much what I did with Piecework Creatures

I agree with jerome. The best part of 4e is the ease of designing encounters. Now instead of spending half my prep time statting monsters, I spend half my prep time coming up with great plot twists and double-reversals. My players enjoy the change as well.

Then why should shareholders be more generous than the fans? If the people who love the game won't sacrifice their earnings for the love of the game, why should a Hasbro executive be expected to show more generosity? I like Rich Baker. I like Steve Winters. But I'm not going to take money...

If you want to save the jobs of people working on the D&D brand at Wizards right now, spend as much money as you can afford (or more) on D&D products, regardless of their quality or desirability. As long as D&D makes money, the budgetary constraints are lower and layoffs become less of a...

Even there, it's no more useful than "Auto for Trained; roll for everyone else." I'm not. I'm only claiming that Mearls' description doesn't clearly explain what his proposal is trying to accomplish, how it accomplishes it better than the existing system, and why accomplishing it in this way...

No system can cure the problem of two players wanting to play different games. If the party wants to play "Poke & Prod" then they the DM sets the search difficulties for stuff at the level where people have to roll to find it. If the party doesn't want to do that, the DM sets the search...

As to Monte's substance, I'm still not clear as to what benefit his system has over the current system. Right now, we can say that anybody trained in a Skill automatically sees the secret door. And that's pretty much what his new tiered system offers.

Monte isn't revealing he doesn't know that Passive Perception exists in 4e. He's not so subtly reminding everyone that he invented Passive Perception back in 3e with "taking 10". Heck, as far as I know, he invented it in 2e working on the Options books, and the term just percolated around TSR...

He may have been required to write it and then afterwards, the Blumes (or whoever) put it on the inside. Also, time changes memories. He may have genuinely loved it and then, hearing criticism of it, internalized a "Well, I didn't write it" which became "I never liked it much".