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I'm not actually happy with my complex system either; it's objectively too complex and breaks my rule that no gaming rule should require division. It's just that I'm more happy with it than I am with any alternative. And, it does pass your test of "people do sometimes survive falls from...

Yes. How is that my "very argument"? I never said anything of the sort. In fact, if you'll go back and read me from the start I implied something quite the opposite of that. Moreover, I never said "It's magic therefore it's just another wizard". That quote isn't even a paraphrase of...

Is there even an argument being offered in that? Are you offering up anything in the way of evidence? And to the extent that you are offering up an argument, it's a semantic argument and therefore it supports my position. I've already anticipated and disarmed it by pointing out that the words...

I mean it's magic. What is magic? What is psionic? Just because they are two different words doesn't make them two different things. Psychic powers are magic. Magic is psychic powers. Psionic is just psychic powers. It's all the same getting the universe to conform to your wishes...

So to understand where I'm coming from you have to understand my idea of what a monster should be is built around the idealized D&D combat. The idealized D&D combat is 3-7 rounds long (average about 5) and in each of those 5 rounds both the PCs and the NPCs are making choices, moving around, or...

Because it does not and never has used an entirely different kind of power than magic. It's just magic. The more you look at it, the more obviously it's just a wizard in a different set of robes. There is so much overlap. Crystals. Mental discipline. Mind over matter. Rigorously training...

Because the "I Attack" fighter is terrible design to? I mean, I can point you to the threads on this boards where people talk about just how terrible of a design that is. Here is one of mine as a sample: D&D General - The Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard Problem Designing the fighter is one...

I largely agree except that in mimicking the genre at any point before tier 4 when we are dealing with Justice League level superheroes, the hero always hesitates before making that jump and I want to capture that hesitation in the game and fiction and you can't do that with RAW. Hense, I'm...

A con artist.

OK, sounds fine. I can work with that provide it's an internally consistent request. Let's see. Wait a minute? I thought you just needed something to capture the flavor of the psionic. Now you are saying that to capture the flavor you need ... mechanical differences? What does that have...

Back like in 2004 when I was processing the conversion of my 1e AD&D campaign world into 3e and what I would do with psionics and in particular what I felt was the best way to bring psionic monsters into the game that might have been missed by the core 3e game (which don't get me wrong, I...

I beg your pardon but this is exactly how it works. The full quote is: "There is no rational reason for wanting a psion that shouldn't be addressed by better design of the core magic system " If there isn't a rational reason for wanting a psion, then there is no need to change the design of...

You tell me. What is the thing missing from the core system you describe that you feel you get from "psionics"?

Hate seems a strong word. I find every past expression of "psionic" fundamentally flawed and every expression of it post 1e AD&D strictly unnecessary. The only concept for psionic that every made sense was innate arcane knacks or gifts that did not depend on the level of the character and as...

The fewer magic powers that a character has the harder it is to balance. A broad smattering of relatively weak powers is easier to balance than a few powers because with a few powers either there are too many times when what you can do isn't relevant or else that one power is a hammer than can...

I would encourage you to read the works of Jon Peterson, starting with "Playing at the World". The D&D wizard comes from Chainmail and predates D&D itself. And most likely inspiration for the Chainmail wizard was a war game scenario where the battle of Minas Tirith was played out and which...

3e most likely, although I really didn't like 3e Dragons either. I've got a thread where I fixed the 1e dragons: D&D 1E - Revised and rebalanced dragons for 1e AD&D The reason I wrote that was I wanted to reboot dragons so that I could then translate them into higher additions in a more...

Guns from before the 19th century don't change very much owing to their very low rate of fire and relative low power. They do give a small leg up to low level characters in terms of "first strike" power so that a group of 1st level fighter riflemen with flintlocks is vastly more dangerous to...

They certainly still happened and they have a "shock" value that exceeds the actual casualties that they inflict because people aren't actually rational and resisting a charge is not instinctive but something that requires a high degree of military barring. I said that bayonet charges weren't a...

That's a widespread ahistorical myth. As early in fact as the 18th century, melee fighting was already no longer playing a major role in combat and only generating single digit percents of the casualties inflicted. The bayonet charge persisted largely despite its effectiveness rather than...