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I think you're understating the importance of the spells. Approximately half the paladin can prepare come from the oath. For example, a 10th level paladin receives 6 spells from his oath and can then select 6 others from the paladin list. A 10th level paladin's nine spell slots are a...

I agree with the OP in that I think of Monks as being somewhat like Jedi. They are lightly armored warriors with a significant skill profile (equivalent to rangers) and a collection of mystic abilities. I see their magic as being different from arcane magic, but am agnostic as to whether it's...

Using class groups seems like a very effective method of handling the magic item problem (or other prerequisite problems), although I think the "trickster" label is pretty lousy. But the examples at the bottom of the article are silly and seem like remnants of prescriptive "role" design from...

Man... I loved that spell. Good times. Still, it's a better example of a complicated way to scale a spell than a good way to scale a spell... -KS

Agreed. I think the best version of the bard was the 2e bard in the Complete Bard's Handbook. With kits like the Blade and the Loremaster, the bard class covered a wide range of concepts. This bard looks like just a narrow subset of what the class could be. -KS

Agreed, and all good examples. But I think it's important to avoid trying to turn every spell chain into a scaling mechanism. In other words, having Charm Person increase duration with higher level magic is better than having it turn into Charm Monster. Two reasons for this. First, you...

I'm not sure I like how the restrictions work in practice because I agree with the point that they seem to restrict some perfectly reasonable builds (like a Dex based fighter/rogue build) as well as some highly sub-optimal builds that players end up taking for pure role-playing / character...

The universe of publications can handle a huge number of subraces, but any given game only needs a handful. Are you running a game about elves? Well, it might be helpful to have half-a-dozen or more subraces to handle all the different factions. Other games might find it useful to have...

Yeah, sure. Just like the magic-user is a totally different class than the 4e wizard. -KS

The Psion class comes from 2nd edition where (under the name "Psionicist") it was essentially completely different from magic. In fact, it was so different from the regular magic rules, it slowed the game down quite a bit. Also, "psionics is different" was the rule. A psionicist could operate...

I understand the motivation behind separating out backgrounds from the sub-class names, but I don't think it's worth the price is genericness. I don't want a fighter subclass called the "defender". That's more of a mechanical concept than a game world thing and I'd like my mechanics to have...

The Gladiator is not the complex fighter option. It's a complex fighter option. In one of the podcasts or streamed games (I don't recall where), Mike Mearls mentioned that the Duelist fighter subclass used the same "Combat Superiority" framework as the Gladiator, but with a different set of...

This seems like one of those situations where the designers have discovered a useful tool but are applying it too broadly. (i.e. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...") Using sub-classes to provide different versions of the same class that have different complexity is a...

In the same way that divine magic is different than arcane magic, psionics are primarily different from arcane magic because of the spell list. At least for telepaths, psionic blast (I.e. psychic damage), mental communication, direct mind reading, and psychic surgery (memory and personality...

I'm agnostic on the organizational point, but I've always viewed the difference between psionics and arcane magic to be the whole point of introducing psionics into a campaign. I get how plenty of folks want to allow all the class mechanics without introducing the additional story, but the...

It's important to remember that Pathfinder was starting from a very different place than D&DN. Pathfinder was trying to evolve 3.5 in the same general way that 3.5 evolved from 3.0. It wasn't trying to create an entirely new version of D&D. D&DN is a much more involved process where they are...

One of my favorite small changes is the re-introduction of the 3.x rule that casters don't have to prepare all their spells at the beginning of the day. I always liked the idea that casters could prepare 60-80% of their spells, and leave some open slots that they can fill once they have a...

I'm with Mistwell on this. A lingering injury ruleset is conceptually interesting, but I've never seen one interesting enough to want and simple enough to use. Instead, what I'd like to see is more attention paid to slower healing paradigms and the default set to something less than "full...

Building on darjr's answer... 1) Unbalanced encounters are a key part of many adventures. Strategic games like Night Below and The Red Hand of Doom frequently involve encounters that are designed to be difficult or impossible if the PCs run into them head on. Risking the possibility that the...

Healing isn't the only part of a long-rest -- I don't want the cleric to wait a week to regain spells. Also, even the old school BECMI/1e/2e provided some healing for overnight. Regaining some (easy to remember) number of hit dice seems reasonable to me. Either way, the amount of healing...