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I wasn't around for the heyday of any setting but Eberron. I don't mean to insult others' personal preferences when it comes to setting, and I admit that I don't actually know a whole lot about Greyhawk or Dragonlance or what made them great during the TSR era. My understanding is that...

No, he doesn't mean that. What you describe is the equivalent of re-tooling old campaign settings and adventures for 4th edition (as with 4e Dark Sun), not the equivalent of producing all new content for older editions. Producing all new, exclusive, first-party products for 2nd edition AD&D...

I'm kind of shocked so many people seem to think this is a real possibility. Wizards might as well just light their money on fire or dump it into a giant pool and swim in it like Scrooge McDuck as try to simultaneously churn out quality new materials for six or more different systems at once...

I wouldn't mind expertise dice for the Warlord. Hopefully they'll remain a bit behind the Fighter's, though, and be applicable only to groupy buffy things rather than directly to damage or debuffs.

I don't like it, simply because martial weapons can't use Dex mod in place of Str mod. In my mind, two-weapon fighting should be primarily the purview of Dex-based combatants. If you make the first feat in the two-weapon specialty something that only benefits Str users, that makes TWF primarily...

Disease and fatigue/endurance saves are an extremely niche thing, in my experience. I can't recall ever hearing of a DM who just said "the plague is going around, so you'll be making a lot of saves against disease." Likewise, fatigue and endurance come up pretty rarely. Maybe two or three times...

A Dex-based melee character has three options: A 2-hander (1d8 damage) Sword and board (1d6 damage, +1 AC) Two weapon fighting (1d6 damage, doubled and halved) The advantages of two weapon fighting are: Consistency: your damage output is more predictable, you rarely have to deal with the...

If Con mod didn't apply to hit points at every level, I would dump Con, no question. Sure, I'd be slightly more vulnerable to poisons, and worse at a handful of Con-keyed tasks, but it would be the obvious dump stat. The 2 or 3 hit points would be negligible beyond level 2. Heck, I'd just be a...

Now that we've talked about everything important from the second packet, it's time for a thread about incredibly petty things from the playtest that bug you. As in, you'd deserve to get snarked at if you ever called them dealbreakers. 1. I hate 3 foot tall halflings. Seriously. I know this...

I'm super glad to hear this; it's certainly a good sign.

Ah, I see. So the solution to my issue does indeed seem to be "make it DM-optional." I suppose that's the only way to avoid both sides of the problem. I guess that pushes it onto the grounds of the "DM-empowerment vs. player-empowerment" argument, an argument I like to avoid.

Yeah, the basic fact of the matter is, the standard monster creation rules have got to follow 4th edition's lead over 3rd's. This is one of the few areas where I would dare to say that 4th edition's way is simply objectively better. Having to build high level monstrous NPCs by giving them class...

Your background gives you skills, and your specialty gives you feats. That's the way the second playtest packet works. As of yet there is no official option to pick your feats and skills (and backround traits--this applies to them as well) a la carte, piecing together your own "background" or...

My impression, honestly, is that the designers never intended that Next be modular to the degree that everyone is expecting. I admit I don't have any particular quotes to back this up, and maybe someone could refute me by going back to early announcements and interviews. But I really suspect...

The Healer specialty is all kinds of problematic. The number one problem is this right here: Any cleric who doesn't take this specialty is gimping himself. Voila, every cleric is now pigeonholed into being a healer. That would be a crying shame. Second and closely related, Healer's Touch...

And I think that's as it should be. If an attack were to require both, it would have to be very powerful to compensate. So you'd have two problems: two dice rolls to resolve one action (not elegant, not conducive to quick combats) and very swingy spells that don't work most of the time but...

Probably an oversight in the playtest package. My random guess is using a weapon you're not proficient with = no base attack bonus, but I suppose that might not be drastic enough at level 1 to dissuade greataxe-wielding wizards.

I think this is all but confirmed considering what Mearls tweeted about encounter and daily XP budgets. If they're manipulating those for the sake of the playtest, I'm pretty sure they're manipulating the XP-to-level too.

I can see why Street Rat/Guttersnipe is more of a background than Thief, and why it might be a bit much to allow a 1st level character to have Full-On Knight as his background. But I don't see how Priest Acolyte and Artisan Apprentice are more background-y than Priest and Artisan. They're just...

#1 Solves #2 . There will be many more backgrounds. I have no particular comment on monster design; I haven't looked at it much yet and it's something that particularly needs playtesting and not backseat speculation. Rolling stats will be the first option presented in the rulebook. It was...