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This applies only to melee basic attacks, not any other kind of attack. The Slayer and Knight will rely heavily on MBAs, but on the other hand do not get any dailies or much in the way of encounter powers, which should balance things out. Probably be doing something like 2[W] + huge static...

Describe it. A rough stone wall is going to be easier to climb than a glass-smooth wall that's slick with beholder boogers. If it's to decipher a ritual using Arcana, the character probably has some idea if he's familiar with that type or not, and to what degree. And so on.

Disagree. WHY should it not be harmful? If the only reason is "It conflicts with my intuitions about how the game should work, and any argument to the contrary is stupid rules lawyering" then I don't accept that. If the cleric wants to end the dying condition on a buddy without any risk, he'll...

Twenty sessions is five MONTHS of time commitment for the DMs running this. Quite a lot! Saw the pregen characters tonight. Not really amazed by the Mage, the stat assignments seem weird (16 to Cha?!) and his feat choice is IMO stupid. The Dwarf Slayer (immediately christened "Buffy" by our...

I seem to recall something about "delayed blast fireball" in HotFL, so maybe they've beefed up the 'ball some. I also recall reading that feats will no longer be separated by tier, that you can take any feat at any tier if you have the prereqs, so that feat which lets you exclude certain squares...

Mike Mearls casts spells as a 10th-level fighter, fights in melee as a 17th-level gnome illusionist and can only be hit by cursed weapons.

The Gauntlets also give a +1 bonus to Athletics and all Strength checks at one level lower than the Iron Armbands, which have no such bonus. In addition, the Gauntlets are hands slot/power bonus items. That means you can use a shield with them (occupies arms slot) or stack Bracers/Armbands (arms...

Can you give some examples of DCs which should not get higher just because you are higher level?

Better than they are now, I think (+5 damage to one melee hit, once per day). Given that they are likely to be going to a low-level character when they appear (like, say, level 1 or 2), a +2 damage bonus to all damage rolls for one encounter is likely to be a nice bonus for several levels. For...

Power source doesn't matter to me, it has no mechanical meaning and even the fluff importance has gotten diluted. The early power sources - Martial, Divine, Arcane - made sense to me fluffwise, but then they introduce "primal" and "shadow" and what have you. Primal and shadow don't really seem...

Makes it easier to spot magic items hidden by the DM. In some of the adventures, items are hidden in piles of rubble or underneath straw in a stable, places where the players may not think to look.

Isn't that just the Laser Cleric from PHB? If you changed the Laser Cleric's at-wills to have an effect regardless of hit or miss, like the Warpriest, it would feel very much like this with an essential-ly feel.

"Staff of the Magi" - I remember that from AD&D 1e... doesn't seem to be in the D&Di compendium, new item?

I played the mage in this game; The first two encounters went OK. Used the Beguiling Strands as written, shifted the monsters around to give the slayers combat advantage, and that helped in the first. Second one was a target-rich environment, blew away I don't know how many minions with...

Having actually played a brawling fighter that encountered a swarm (the Mul in Dark Sun Encounters), I feel that this is all a storm in a teacup. Sure, the Mul could have grabbed the damn swarm, but it had a damaging aura, which made that a pretty stupid idea. It doesn't make sense that a...

Or just put the obvious pressure plate on the floor that the players will avoid, but stepping on the plate disarms the trap...

Re: Head mounted lasers Shark is NOT one the character options on the table! All we freakin' wanted was to play a shark with a freakin' laser in its freakin' head! C'mon WOTC, throw us a bone here!

Yeah, I think that's what they are trying to do. The big, big difference between Basic Set D&D/old AD&D and Essentials/4e D&D is that Essentials is a proper subset of D&D 4e. Just as you can play 4e with the three core books and never use anything from any other book or resource, you can play...

Mapache: Is that interpretation correct? Weapon focus now reads, "...bonus to the damage rolls of weapon attacks you make with a weapon of that group..." As I understand it, just because you are using a weapon as an implement, that doesn't make it a "weapon" attack. It would have to have the...

Agree w/Joshua Randall, with the caveat that Essentials thief may be able to use Dex instead of Str for melee basic attacks without using a feat (we don't really know yet). On another note, OMG they nerfed PRESTIDIGITATION! :p