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What most people seem to forget is that most 4E players, pretty much everyone except the teenagers who started after 2008 (you guys rock, the game needs new blood), has been a 3rd edition player, or even around much much longer. That's why you hardly ever see the same vitriol from the 4E camp...

Ok, so you want the 3.5E Monster Manual V, which invented monster roles implicit in design but didn't make them explicit. I mean, yeah, the devs could remove the descriptors and leave it to DMs to figure out that they should put some fat Ogre in front of the squishy kobold archer. How does that...

Please explain. What is wrong with Barbarian Rage? I agree with the idea, but you'll have to create a huge body of rules if you want this to be defined exactly. Do you really want the GM to pause the game and look up the table for "lightning spells in puddles" when the player tries something...

I think the devs figured that people who can't be bothered to visit their website, or any of the organized events, to give their feedback, are not the target audience. Seriously, they opened this process to community feedback, it's on us to participate. What else do you want? Mike Mearls...

I think there should be as many classes as fit into the system as long as * the class represents a distinct fantasy archetype (bookish wizard, rely-on-your-wits rogue, power-of-music bard...) * the playing style feels distinct (stand in the front and put an axe to their face, unleash the power...

There are tons of small indie RPGs out there that already work like this. They are smaller, self-contained systems that can be learned and played in an afternoon. I don't think this is the way D&D as a whole will go, but I could imagine a series of self-contained modules under the D&D brand...

This post is an attempt to focus on the important things. I know there is a new edition on the horizon, and similar to shows like American idol, many classes are in the race but they will be voted off the island until only a small number will be left to appear in the PHB. And no matter what the...

Planescape Boxed Set This was a rhetoric question, wasn't it? For second place, I'd vote the 3rd edition PHB, because it raised D&D from the dead and ushered in a new era.

This crops up every time a new edition is announced. I should save a standard reply so I have a post ready when 5.5 comes out in 2017.

Did you playtest this idea? I predict static fights where everyone just stands in place and whacks the nearest enemy. No thanks.

I agree, for simple practical reasons. There is only so much you can put in a 400-page PHB. I'd rather have more classes and more options for heroic/paragon play, more fluff and more introduction for newcomers. By the time typical campaigns reach epic levels, the epic handbook can be out. The...

Today I read a post in a different forum where someone complained how roles create this straightjacket for classes. On the next page, in a different post, the same guy describes how his 3rd edition party created this great system with a tank, say a fighter in the front, a damage dealer, maybe a...

I fully agree that WotC needs to publish more modules that tell a story instead of presenting just a string of fights, but how is this tied to the edition of game rules used?

I don't think simple / complex is the right axis here. Chess was a good example - it has only very few, easy to learn rules, but it is increadibly complex if you want to beat a pro. It's both simple and complex at the same time. A good RPG should be similar. It should have a few transparent...

Back in the days of 3rd edition, we had weekly "Fix the Fighter" threads on the WotC boards. I've never seen one on 4th edition boards. In 4th ed, the class works perfectly fine, once you wrap your head around the fact that it requires tactics, not just an endless repetition of "I whack the...

I don't think any edition of D&D has found the right multiclassing formula yet. It's very hard to balance power and flexibility. 3rd edition multiclassing came to the point that 3rd level fighters were ridiculed. It rewarded single-level dips and created headaches with caster level (I never...

Each class gets different sets of abilities that define the role. I'd call them paths. I'd also keep the role definitions rather broad and loose. For example, striker could be a heavy-hitting tank, or a sneaky bastard with poisoned daggers, or a wizard shooting lightning to the sky.

If you want a pile of pictures of, say, a guy in armor fighting a dragon, some video game art company in China is the place to go. A good Western Fantasy artists costs $2000 or so, I'm sure the Chinese don't take more than $200. But looking at some of the 4th edition artwork, this step may be a...

Sorry to activate voice of reason mode here, but did you consider time vs. benefit here? How many players do you have? Five? How many of them want to play fighter/rogue/ranger? One? Two? How many of them want some classic/essentials hybrid? Zero? Maybe one? The point I'm trying to make is that...

I'm worried about encouragement the other way around: How often do you want PC's to smack the NPC first for a +2 bonus when the DM calls for a Diplomacy check?