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I haven't read much past the OP, so maybe this has already been said: Imbalance among players is bad, period. The hard part of balancing a game is recognizing the problems to begin with. If you've identified those "balance meters", then you're 95% of the way to fixing the balance. So just...

The goal should be complete and total balance at all levels of play. Note that this does not mean sameness or equivalence. A Fighter that excels at keeping the monsters off the Wizard, who'd surely get shredded otherwise, and a Wizard that excels at killing those monsters, is a potentially...

My problem with Vancian casting is the focus on per-day abilities. I think anything more than minimal per-day balancing is simply bad, and is almost guaranteed to produce an imbalanced game. I think 4E has a bit too much, as it is. I'm loathe to see a return to those old mistakes. Hopefully...

I do not see what this has to do with the post I responded to. In both systems, a character is fine until he hits 0, with no degradation of abilities (and in fact, 4E characters are the ones more likely to have some degradation). That is the only issue you raised, and that I responded to...

Uh huh, because being fine right until you hit 0 HP is something totally new to 4E, and totally isn't how the game has always worked from the moment Gygax first adapted Chainmail. Your insult is complete nonsense. If you had said "DnD" instead of 4E, it would at least be coherent (but still...

I think matching the racial proportions of the DnD player-base would be a reasonable goal. Match the world-wide ratios, and it ends up looking bizarre to the majority of customers, as the vast plurality of illustrations would be Asian or Indian (as in India). It would end up looking like a...

Structured rules are far more essential to playing the game than "structured content". The rules are specifically designed to support and facilitate DM-generated content. Homebrewing new game rules is a fundamentally different task. It's the difference between using a word processor to write...

They are?

Certainly not to me. I have next to no interest in published modules. Almost all of my RPG experience has been with homebrew campaigns. I do see the value for new DMs/groups, and for those that simply enjoy them, but I don't see that as coming anywhere close to rivaling the mechanics...

I think the problem with using all those examples is that they are not PCs in an RPG campaign where they are co-equal protagonists with 4 other people. Many of them are simply too broad, and have little need for relying on anyone else on a regular basis. How many Wizards in the literature...

For 4E: Skills (primarily Thievery, Stealth, Perception, Nature, Dungeoneering, and maybe Arcana, for Detect Magic) Rituals (there's a whole category for "Exploration", but others would qualify) Powers (particularly certain Druid forms) Magic Items (Portable Hole [I like 4E's take on it better...

I have no problem with classes as a design idiom. They're a good way to organize mechanics, and keep them balanced. They're good for providing niche protection, which I feel is important in tactics-focused RPGs. Point-buy isn't the be-all, end-all of good RPG mechanics.

He should use a heavy thrower. One that's a single "plus" less than his main weapon should be trivial to get, and still very useful. And at low level, before he gets a magic thrower, it shouldn't be hard to have enough DEX to be good enough at using a Bow. And as for the caravan? He probably...

Random events are quite metagamable. Even moreso than hand-crafted encounter designs, because there's a concrete system to them that can be figured out. Random doesn't mean completely unpredictable. Random encounters and such work for certain kinds of games. But I find that those aren't the...

Bucket o' game mechanics, plus some default fluff. The notion of "I want to play an Archer, but don't want to be a Ranger" is bizarre to me. It's trivial to build a 4E Ranger with no magical abilities, and trivial to refluff any of the woodsy stuff. The set of Ranger mechanics make sense for...

There's a significant difference between the new edition's "autosuccess" rule, and Take 10. Under Take 10, you get to assume an average result. In 5E, it sounds like you have to assume the worst result. Even if you removed Take 10 and Take 20 from 3.5, 5E-style autosuccess was implicit. If...

I'd rather they just standardize on "Players always roll". That way, they can just print those 11+score numbers in the monster stat blocks, and it removes a step of decision making that serves little purpose. The appeal of saving throws is the feeling of having the power, in your own hands, to...

Going back to Saving Throws instead of Attack rolls for spells would be like bringing back THAC0 and descending AC. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. Any mechanics that can be represented using Saving Throws vs a DC can be exactly replicated using attack rolls vs. a Defense. Want to make Spells...

The god's sense of fair play? The ability is Divine Challenge, which implies a sense of honorable combat inherent to it. And that's assuming that a god is literally watching the fight, ready to smite the opponent for being naughty (but only a very specific kind of naughty). Which seems kind...

Well, I think "rules first" design is great, so... But as far as in-game representation? It's the fighter getting in the targets' face, keeping their attention, maneuvering them away from his allies (within the area the minis occupy), etc. Marks get overridden because keeping someone's...