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I think I've finally realized the source of perhaps one of the disconnects. Adopting 5e's terminology of the "standard adventuring day" as a shorthand for "the number of challenges and fights (measured in terms of XP) that a party should be able to handle before it needs to rest": 1. The...

Then you've failed to accomplish your objective. It could be because of bad luck, poor adventure design (maybe the DM used too many monsters or too powerful monsters) or poor decision-making on the part of the players (maybe they attacked monsters they could have evaded), but whatever the...

IMO, it only makes a difference to the narrative. At the table, it is simply a matter of the DM saying, "You rest a week/a month and recover all your hit points." Similarly, in 4e, you could avoid "unrealistic" issues by defining an extended rest as a week's rest or a month's rest in a...

If that is indeed the case, there is no need to "get around having a cleric" because there is nothing to get around - it's just a matter of different experiences. I doubt it is the case, though, as the remark was made in the context of damage mitigation abilities as a substitute for clerical...

This is a fundamental assumption that I would like to question. Why should it be necessary for any character to have access to healing apart from natural healing? To me, the simple consequence is that any time the healing spells or heaing potions would be used, the character(s) simply retreat...

Not quite. Setting aside the extreme (and IMO, rather unrealistic) case where there is not even natural healing, a game without healing simply means that the players ought to be more careful when deciding whether to press on or to retreat and rest.

I am curious as to what you mean by "get around having a cleric". In my ideal game, the specific composition of the party should not matter most of the time. For example, if a party composed of a fighter, a rogue, a monk and a wizard and another party composed of a fighter, a rogue, a cleric...

I think I left out step 0, which is to design the game assuming that a cleric is not needed in the first place. Something along the lines of: Over the average adventuring day at level X, 99% of the time, the monsters will deal less than 50 hit points of damage to the fighter. Hence, if we give...

You let individual groups decide whether or not it is a problem for them. Some players are quite willing to accept that occasionally, the dice will turn against them and they need to be on the sidelines during parts of an adventure. If it is a problem, you let them decide how they want to solve...

"Our goal has been to remove cleric healing as a necessary element of adventuring." And that, IMO, is the first mistake. The goal should have been to remove any kind of healing as a necessary element of adventuring. Whatever the game assumes to be the "standard adventuring day" should be...

IMO, this is only a problem if there is a clash of playstyles at the table, and frankly, in the aftermath of the Idiotion Wars, I think gamers as a whole have already balkanized into groups who can tolerate the playstyles of the other players at the table and who are a lot more careful about...

I'd be quite happy for warlords to have a mechanic that directly restores hit points for those who prefer that hit points are largely intangle, as well as an alternate ability (granting temporary hit points, or simply enhancing attacks and/or damage) for those who can't get behind the idea of...

This post.

I think the italics might have made my point a little too subtle. Maybe I should have used bold or underline instead. :p

I completely agree. I occasionally read similar views expressed in messageboard posts, and I usually fail to see where the posters come from. It is a point of view I can't understand. I just don't get it.

The exact penalty being imposed on the opponent is not the issue. The point I was making is that my preference is not for the PC to take a penalty in order to induce the opponent to do what he wants, but for the opponent to take the penalty or do what the PC wants.

Here's another fundamental disconnect: I don't see why the PC has to take any penalty at all. Why can't the PC impose a penalty on the target unless it does what he wants instead? Either it moves adjacent to the PC or it takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls, for example.

Yeah, but the pointless display of swordsmanship adds 30 feet. :p

In a way, we've come back to the original premise of the thread. Magic is not disassociative because it can do anything. The player's decision to have his spellcasting character cast a spell can closely mirror the character's decision to cast a spell, and the spell can have whatever (reasonably...

Frankly, I'm not sure that 5e has got the baseline math right. The current approach seems to be to balance the game assuming the PCs have no magic items at all, and the more magic items they have, the easier it gets. I think 4e handles a game with no magic items better (i.e. use inherent...