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I agree completely with Pawsplay that those were major changes to the flavor of the game -- and I agree with Redbadge's original point that those were just flavor changes: I can't say I fully share (or understand) this list of core 4E "innovations": I think the 4E designers made a valiant...

I agree completely with his point that D&D isn’t -- or wasn't -- one game but a range of games: I have a theory that in the days of AD&D, there were a few things at work that helped shape D&D. In the AD&D days, the rules had enough leeway for DM judgment calls that a group could bend and twist...

Yes, a monster with a large strength bonus, wielding the largest weapon with the widest damage range and a x3 crit multiplier, can do 36 points of damage. My point is that a character who expects to survive roughly eight sword, spear, or arrow hits cannot succumb to one. Or two. Or three, or...

Is the game also going to have hit points, or will a hit versus AC force a resistance roll to keep fighting?

I'm a big fan of realism, I'll admit it, but you have to admit it's 100 percent badass to stare down your opponent until he breaks and runs, and all kinds of action heroes do just that -- Batman, countless samurai and gunslingers, Samwise the Hobbit (with a little magical help), etc. I'd like...

Gygax did not disagree with my suggestion that players would want to emulate Tolkien in D&D. As you admit, he included elements of Tolkien in D&D to attract the many potential players who would want them in a fantasy role-playing game. And what holds for Tolkien holds for Howard, Leiber...

I think that's an excellent starting point for understanding pre-modern societies. There is no state; there's only the local lord and his men. There's no notion of universal human rights; you have whatever rights your own ancestors earned from their own lord, etc. They're a kind of property...

Don't be silly. Tolkien's works are definitely the kind of thing we'd like to emulate in a fantasy role-playing game like D&D, whatever genre labels you decided to apply. And Robert E. Howard's works are similarly full of "high-level" characters dying with a single stroke -- just not the...

I have long felt that posturing should hold a major place in "combat" -- with cool-looking combat gear -- plumed helms, war standards, etc. -- made cool-looking specifically in order to be literally awesome. I keep returning to the idea of zombies taking "critical hits" when they "should" die...

As I've said before, hit points are terrible for emulating action and adventure stories. They're certainly terrible for emulating Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings stories, in which Bard kills Smaug with a single arrow, Legolas kills a fell beast in the night with a single arrow, the Witch...

D&D characters start off at first level both incompetent and lacking plot-protection, mechanically, at least. Arguably they have negative plot-protection, with just one hit die, because many ordinary people have survived dozens of stab wounds or gunshot wounds in the real world, but we all know...

In D&D -- OD&D through 3.5E, at least -- if you're kill-able in one shot -- with an ordinary sword, spear, or arrow, from an ordinary warrior -- then you only have one hit die, which is a weakness in itself, and you must be first-level -- or zero-level -- and thus weak and not powerful in other...

Well said, Celebrim. Well said.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what you mean. I don't believe the nature of escalating hit points was well understood at the time, because many, many not-stupid game designers tried to improve on D&D by removing them or reducing them, without understanding what purpose they did serve, only what...

I do not want a low-level minion to typically kill anyone with one shot at any time. I believe a low-level minion should have some chance to kill a competent character who does not have plot-protection with one "lucky" arrow in the eye, or whatever -- without side-stepping most of the combat...

That's a bit like saying that a modern slave could learn nuclear engineering. Slavery is not predicated on ignorance. If anything slavery is predicated on the economic reality of slave labor being worth the military cost to acquire it. It's hard to argue that either Roman aristocrats or their...

If a game world has no slavery, are all wars then wars of extermination? Why else would you keep a prisoner alive, except to ransom him back, if he's from a wealthy family, or to use him for slave labor, if he's not?

Exactly. Not only does a class-level system enforce thematic consistency, through its classes, but it provides portfolios of abilities balanced against each other. I don't think D&D's power curve was thought out in advance. I think the designers stumbled across the idea to give a "hero" four...

It's not just heroic PCs who get a buffer of luck and divine intervention in D&D; it's anyone competent. And that buffer of luck and divine intervention does not protect them from many things, just "hits" that do "damage".

While I agree that "unforeseen consequences" can be an example of "plausible deniability", I strongly believe that complex systems routinely exhibit much more complex behavior than people expect -- and the way that we handle such systems is to repeat whatever seems to be working and to stop...