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Yeah, this is quite true. I think the concept for the Druid is a solid, interesting archetype, but it did cover too much ground in its 3E implementation. Shapeshifting + Animal taming + Nature Priest is too much, when almost any one of those three would be good set of class abilities on its own.

My viewpoints are not self-contradictory, thank you very much. :p And yes, I dislike the Fighter class. I don't think its cynical. After all, it has historically been both a very problematic class (it was terribly underpowered in 3E, in particular) and is very broadly designed to embody simply...

The Esperanto analogy is a bit forced... especially when you consider that Esperanto is not a learnable language. People have tried to raise kids with Esperanto as their first language, and they've failed. Esperanto is a language with no irregular verbs, but anyone raised with Esperanto as their...

I like the idea of magic being something scaleable and flexible. Rather than having huge spell lists, Wizards and other spellcasters should have limited lists of spells that have lots of different options. Something like 3E metamagic, except without the feat dependancy and better scaling of...

I'll admit that I haven't been following the conversation that lead to this, but I'll just use your comment here as a bit of a springboard for some unrelated thoughts. What happens in The Lord of the Rings has very little to do with game roles, and really shouldn't be called upon to discuss...

I would say "simple". I'd rather see complications emerge in systems available to every character equally, or every character of a certain type (such as Arcane Spellcasters as a whole). That said, I'd argue against the idea that 4E classes are simple, or simple to learn. They're not, at all...

Cynical? Disspirited? Sorry, but you're completely mistaken there. I'm actually rather optimistic about 5E. I vastly prefer to like things rather than hate them, and my wishes are closer to being a hope for positive change rather than a despair about an unfixable solution. The real issue, I...

I'm really not sure what to do with Clerics... I'd like to see the Arcane and Divine magic get more cleanly differentiated than they have in the past. Traditionally they've been mostly identical except for spell lists, but it might be more interesting to have them be as distinct from each other...

Completely new artists would help. It would be nice to see more use of art to clearly illustrate important concepts and ideas being presented in the books. Too much art in 3E and 4E was just a bunch of characters standing around trying to look angry and awesome, and served very little actual...

Yeah, I was. Too many Mearls/Malhavoc books with Iron in the title, apparently. :p Edit: Looking over the samples you linked to... I would not like that kind of system. Too complicated (very complicated...) for too little effect. Not enough flash, just a lot of numbers. Penalizes people for...

The Book of Iron Might certainly did a lot of things pretty well (personally, I'm a big fan of its feat system and lack of magic items), but a lot of its other mechanics were pretty flawed. The recurring "build up tokens that can be spent on special attacks" system had promise, but it ultimately...

I really like the idea of roles. It helps create more interesting, balanced classes and helps convey the core ideas of a class to a player in an efficient manner. There are a few really big problems with how they were implemented in 4E that need to be fixed for 5E, though. 1) Roles need to be...

I suppose you need to find some common ground outside of the two opposing viewpoints. Choosing between one of the other won't work, and there really is no direct middle ground. Thus, the only option is to either provide a framework that includes both to some degree or another, or to propose a...

I honestly do question this. I've often wondered if the PHB system was the best model for D&D. Certainly, the entire concept of "dials" they're advertising for 5E is a very different paradigm than what has come before, and it might require an equally different method of presentation. Imagine a...

To be honest, I hope WotC does everything it can to kill the very idea of "core" in 5e D&D. In many ways, I think the massive divide between "core only" players and "use everything but the core" players during the 3E era is the true root of the modern Pathfinder/4E divide. The goals of 5E, which...

I wouldn't like this at all. I'd much rather see a system of a large number of less complex, but very well flavored and mechanically focused, characters. Generally I think it is better for a system to have a fewer number choices to make, each with a lot of meaning and variety. A talent tree...

I think this is completely the wrong way to look at it... I don't play an edition of D&D because it is "perfect" or "the one true edition" or something like that. I play it because it is "good enough" or "better than the alternatives". No edition of D&D so far has been perfect, or even remotely...

Feats were a good idea back when classes were fairly static and there wasn't a lot of customization, but as more and more customization options were introduced to classes themselves Feats lost a lot of their purpose. They also suffered a lot from introducing a lot of small bonuses that tended to...

I'd rather not see that be a Fighter class feature, but it would certainly be nice for every character to get that option.

First off, I want to say that the following comes from the perspective of someone who has grown estranged from 4E and doesn't like Pathfinder. I started with 3E and grew dissatisfied with its many flaws, but neither of its replacements really suited me. I loved a lot of both the core ideas of 3E...