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If you don't care about carefully crafting your character, you can just pick Race, Class, Background, and Specialty, and you're pretty much done. If they want to simply further, they could have a default Background and Specialty for each Class.

I don't see any mention of refreshing at the end of your own turn. I only see: "When you spend a martial damage die, you cannot use it again on the same turn." Also, Flurry of Blows is now really good, compared to the previous version.

It's optional in the sense that all RPG elements are optional. If you really don't want a Paragon Path, it's hard to imagine a reasonable DM saying "no, you must take one". And without one, you're not missing anything essential, the way you would be if, say, you refused to use an implement on...

Another approach to what Mearls seems to want PrCs to do would be 4E's boons system. Basically, mechanically, just treat memberships, and "achievement" type stuff as grounds for giving boons in place of similarly-valued treasure. If you want to have bits of mechanics that the GM can grant to...

But then any and all mechanics that could possibly appeal to anyone are "perfectly valid", and it's thus effectively impossible to discuss the merits of anything. There's nothing wrong with arguing in favor of PrCs, but the "modular game system" angle is irrelevant to that discussion. Game...

That is true of literally any RPG mechanic ever. It is universal to the point of failing to be any sort of distinction, and useless to any discussion. It being "optional" does not excuse bad design (and they don't seem at all interested in fixing what was bad about PrCs). If they want to do...

Ugh... Prestige Classes were just terrible design. They took 3E's already broken multiclass rules, and just blew them up further. And I hate baking story-based prerequisites into the rules. Giving the DM story hooks is great, but they should be ideas, nothing more. The rules should only limit...

Considering that some have a prequisite of a given level, and some do not (and some even have a different level prereq), I think it's pretty clear that the level in the title is just where that feat is granted if you take the prebuilt specialty. Consider, also, Superior Skill Training, which is...

If classes and feats are well-designed and balanced in the first place, then "cherry-picking" is not a problem. So instead of doing this, I'm saying you could just decide whether you stay pure fighter, or take Wizard levels to pick up a few spells. There's still a choice, but it's a much...

So then, to be clear, 3.5 is not, by the book, a game that qualifies as D&D? Because rolling in order is not any of the provided options. If you do roll, you're rolling how good of stats you get to choose to distribute, not rolling to determine class or archetype or any sort of implied...

Sure you could do all those things, but then if it doesn't "scream" D&D, it seems to me it's due to all those other things you've done, not just taking ability scores out of combat. Are ability modifiers in combat really what makes 3.5 "scream" D&D, and without them, it doesn't? Is the...

I'm not saying it should. I did say "feats", too. Well, I think BAB is a bad mechanic to begin with. Scaling to-hit makes things really hard to balance, and there's a pretty small "sweet spot" on to-hit rates, so you might as well just set it there, and stick with it, more or less. I would...

My 4E campaign started out as a pretty direct adaptation of Stargate. With islands instead of planets, and extremely inhospitable seas rendering ocean-going ships impractical (at least, to the home island of the PCs). Even the Go'auld as "magic jar"-style disembodied souls taking people over...

All of which can be done without ability scores. They add nothing new. OK, that's exactly what I'm saying. Perhaps you're misunderstanding my position. What I'm advocating for is to by able to say "I'm a great Fighter" or "I'm a great Wizard" or even "I'm a hybrid of Fighter and Wizard"...

You non-combat spells are Rituals. A number of classes get the Ritual Casting feat for free, and others can pick it up like any other feat. For helping with combat grind, I'd suggest looking at Monster Manual 3. They fixed the math so that monsters get fewer HP, but bigger damage. But even as a...

Why would it be cookie cutter if you have races, classes, specializations, and feats all allowing character to differentiate themselves in combat? What does 6 ability scores really add there? If anything, ability scores make things more cookie cutter, because if you want to be a good Fighter...

He didn't say to not have skills be based on ability scores, but that class abilities should be independent of ability scores. I think the mention of Rogues was to suggest that making their skill-based design independent of ability scores is tricky precisely because skills would still be based...

When I say "do you [the DM] permit me" there, I mean to imply that the DM himself is deciding, not based on any rules, but on whatever ethereal, intangible ideas he has about what "should" happen. This is in contrast to the player considering what the rules permit him to do. You really think...

It is. But if the player decides on an objective, it is much more satisfying to be able to realize that objective through application of well-defined rules, and say "I do this", than to ask the DM "do you permit me to succeed?", which is what a player must fall back on to in the absence of...

You don't need to know every programming detail to understand the rules of the game. And even if not told up front, it's enough that the game has rules to be discovered, adapted to, and exploited. And puzzle games usually are played with the rules and objective known up front. Or at least...