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The over-reliance on healing spells in the previous editions apart from 4e definitely meant that the entire party operated according to the cleric's schedule. When the cleric ran out of healing spells and everyone was wounded, it was time to pack it in. Part of the problem is daily magic, but...

Howard's Conan stories cover a pretty wide range of moods and themes. Conan himself is sometimes a king, a conqueror, a pirate, a thief and a mercenary. Likewise, sometimes he easily kills a sorcerer with a thrown sword, and sometimes he's helpless against sorcery.

It all comes down to numbers not being interesting, exciting or rewarding. Numbers only matter in relation to other numbers. They're necessary for a system like D&D to function (although I'm pretty sure there are role-playing systems which don't use any numbers). But there's only so far you can...

I think one of the false assumptions that are often made on this subject is that only magical or otherwise extraordinary actions deserve or require discrete abilities to represent them. I don't think that's true.

This strikes me as focusing a bit too much on PvP balance, so to speak. It's not about Fighter versus Wizard, it's about Fighter and Wizard versus the challenges of the adventure. Or heck, even Fighter versus Fighter as opposed to Wizard versus Wizard - the latter is an exciting duel of magic...

Eh, it could go either way. The Fighter/Rogue division is pretty artificial when it comes down to it. But I'd imagine the Mouser more like primarily a thief/rogue/however we call it who also knows how to handle himself in a scrap - Fafhrd would be a fighter who is also a resourceful thief when...

Or they're a spell-casting class, in which case they expend their magic juice and make things happen, while retaining their ability to improvise if they want to or need to. Back to square one of this discussion, I guess.

Do they need to be this way? Pardon me, but what on Earth are you talking about? 3e had a handful of half-assed maneuvers, of which tripping was the only one worth noting. Apart from that it was just to-hit and damage over and over again. Have you ever seen a system with an in-depth combat...

We know how long it takes in a given edition of D&D. So we can imagine how doing something similar would go in real life if someone was actively trying to kill you. And my imagination tells me: it wouldn't go well. And the rules completely fail to present combat as fluid. You can dress it up...

That's an important part of this. Plenty has been said about non-magical characters being forced to conform to realism, but they're actually frequently staggeringly inept by any realistic measure - especially in combat. No trained fighter in real life has ever spent a battle attacking in the...

Yes, this particular example may not apply as much as it used to. But it's part of a larger issue in which non-magicians always roll the same way, just with bigger numbers, whereas magicians can spend magic juice and just make things happen. Also, non-magicians are more sharply limited in their...

Knock and similar spells would be a lot less of a problem if the rogue didn't have the extremely fragile niche of 'the person that unlocks doors and disarms traps'. With that said, making it extremely noisy isn't a bad solution, really. It becomes the magical equivalent of just breaking the door...

This here is a big thing, really. Any balance they may have struck, and it certainly is better than it was in 3e, is quite fragile, since the options for non-magicians to do more than just deal damage to single targets is so limited.

That could work, I suppose, for another quick-and-dirty fix.

Of all the problems 4e classes do have, I don't think the AEDU structure is one of them. And honestly, what problems there are for the most part don't really apply to martial characters - they're as good as D&D ever got, apart from Tome of Battle.

It just feels like a big waste to me if no matter how many situational benefits or obstacles you encounter, you're only re-rolling once. It's better than 3e's tons of fiddly bonuses, but not by that much. Exactly. Numbers aren't exciting; they're only relevant in relation to other numbers...

Since it all kind of shifted towards a discussion of 5e's merits... I think what emerges from it all is that 5e is highly unlikely to make any sort of big impact on the industry, because 'rocking the boat', for better or worse, is directly opposite to its design goals. Although I'm curious about...

I'm frankly getting tired of "you just don't want D&D, go play something else" arguments, so I think I'm going to address actual rebuttals to my ideas. It's mostly that I think they ought to stack - not infinitely, since that way lies madness, but this way two sources of advantage/disadvantage...

It might become a game that provides he same experience D&D always has - that is, playing a group of adventurers in a pulp-fantasy setting - only with mechanics that provide for more varied, smooth and engaging play. It's not that crazy an idea. I wouldn't say I was making any claim or other...

I'm just going to second this.