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No, I'm sorry, you have missed the most important requirement for a bard: shiny pants.

So you can fight an Angel without it meaning you've pissed off a god.

Interesting. I wonder if this means that Eladrin and Guardinals and sundry will be rolled into one big mass like Demons, Devils, Yuguloth etc were. That would be a good war type thing. Vast armies of good & evil outsiders who had their own goals, and sometimes worked with good/evil Gods who...

Because it takes awhile to print a lot of books. They're waiting until they have the products and distribution set up to release everywhere at once, instead of letting the books diffuse through the country.

Because 4E is working through an Exception-Based rules system, instead of an Inclusion-Based system. In 3E especially players were encouraged to have a single tool and pile as many special abilities on top of that tool as possible, a wizard was encouraged to boost his spell save DC's as far as...

The benefit of being a defender is being hale and hearty enough to shrug off attacks that would have killed other party members, and taking those hits so the rest of the party stays alive. What 4E is doing is allowing you to accomplish that role in an ACTIVE rather than PASSIVE manner, which...

They encourage roleplay by giving you your combat role for free. If I want to be a fast talking charasmatic & diplomatic nobleman, I can be that, and THEN I choose to take levels in Rogue to be a striker. Or paladin to be a defender. Or wizard to be a controller. Unlike 3E where if I was a...

His name's not on the cover, he wasn't the "developer" but he was the principle designer. You can tell everything he wrote because it's all got this description/flavor text problem. I love Iron Heroes, in a completely unhealthy manner. And I've read the book cover to cover a number of times...

As I said, Mearles doesn't understand the description between a description and flavor text. He gets flavor text perfectly, but then the description also becomes flavor text. Take Book of 9 Swords, each ability has an italic "flavor text" portion, and then a "description" part, which more often...

This actually stems from a very specific source, and it's one of my main gripes with Mearls as a designer: Mike Mearls doesn't understand the difference between a description and flavor text. Just for an example, here is the description for "Expertise" from the 3.0 PHB: "Expertise: You are...

Appropriate in who's eyes, exactly? 4E is trying very hard to even the power disparity between classes, and to do that they gave every class a role, balanced that role, and then ensured the class could fill that role at all times. They did this by making at will powers that fill the role. In...

Monsters get one or two powers that recharge, so they still have powers in round 5. PC's don't recharge, but get 10 different powers.

A "points of light" campaign setting is essentially the inverse of the D&D 3.5 campaign setting, which is basically "pools of shadow". Whatever explanation you have for why the big dark dangers that lurk outside of the points of light don't attack can be the same reason for why Great King...

We're playing a game of OD&D right now, and all of the warts are showing. The classes are all either over or underpowered, all task resolution systems are inconsistent. The house rule file is expanding at an exponential rate as we try to do anything other than whack the opponent with a stick...

Or worse, you give that NPC a +50 bonus to Blacsmithing, and by the 3.5 rules it means that's he's got an 18 int, 24 ranks, skill focus, a random +2/+2 feat, and a hammer of +17 to blacksmithing. All of which means he's a 20th level expert who can slap the members of your 5th level party silly.

Lets also not deal with the fact that "cure light wounds" heals wounds, while "heal" cures poison.

Thirded. Monster gotta attack, PC Gotta die. Player gotta ask "why? why? why?"

The character can take 11 days to recover, 11 days of letting his opponents plan against him while he can't go adventuring. Or he can take 21 minutes and 315 gp worth of wand charges. 315gp worth of consumables that, by the wealth by level guidelines, must be added to the next treasure horde the...

Don't forget wounding weapons in addition to swords of sharpness. bleed xhp/round for y rounds.

You will never be able to get players to roleplay by force. You can't just say "okay, and now for the next five minutes you all roleplay with each other." It doesn't work, you're asking for smalltalk between imaginary people that's the height of banality. If you allow characters to develop...