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I don't think I'll ever be able to understand this mindset. Why would you want to deliberately build an incompetent character? I can understand the idea of building a character with flaws. Or building a character to specific RP parameters. 4e actually encourages this it seems, as a low...

Martial characters. For some reason, D&D was convinced for decades that pretty much any type of martial effect should be fluff only and not mechanically supported. Make your attack roll and describe it. Can you imagine if the only magic spell was Magic Missile, and you were expected to just...

Per encounter isn't a perfect fix, clearly. But as a martial arts(real and fantasy) fan, the way 3e did it (performing the same manuever over and over again in every round) harmed the believability for me FAR more than per encounter does. Not only did I find it less believable, I found it...

Thanks for all the fun Gary. The next time I slaughter an orc, I'll do it with an obscure French polearm in your honor.

Interesting. I don't have a good in character explanation for that one. Depends on the flavor they attach to marking though. It's possible there's something I'm not thinking of. It's also possible they just said "It just makes for a better game", which is good enough for me.

You are assuming that Dex is mechanically superior to Int in 4e. What does Dex add to in 3e? Reflex save, AC, missile attack bonus, initiative, and some skills. Int now adds to Reflex and some say it adds to AC as well. To hit bonuses are typically derived from your class's prime attributes...

How many people are there like this in your world, really? I've never read anything about Cohen the Barbarian, but we've seen nothing to indicate that those stats would give any sort of physical offensive capability. About all we know is that these guys would have a good will save(totally...

This is a FANTASTIC value. If they do the rules database well, I might never buy another D&D book again. I could spend around $40 each on a phb, mm, and dmg. Or I could spend $120 and get access to every single piece of rules material they publish all year. It's an easy choice to me.

James Bond fits the charismatic rogue role pretty well.

Some players like to create their characters before they even think about rules. For some reason, they like getting ridiculously specific about what their character can and can not do before they even consider whether the rules will support it. This type of player tends to view rules as an...

For everybody that is asking why you can't sneak attack with a club, greatsword, or long bow, I think the answer is flavor. Rogues should be using weapons like light blades, crossbows, and slings, thus they are rewarded for doing so. Shortbow probably would have been appropriate, but bows are...

Evasion, uncanny dodge, and trap sense can all easily be attributed to either luck or survival instinct, rather than training. You wouldn't need to be able to perform a cartwheel to do any of them. At any rate, I'm not going to continue arguing in favor of the genericness of the 3e rogue, as...

Sneaky fighting yes, disarming traps not so much. If you didn't take Disable Device, the trapfinding ability did absolutely nothing, and might as well have not existed.

I agree with you on this one. I like my classes having some flavor to them. 3e rogues were way too generic. In practice I didn't mind much, because I could easily create the "thief" characters I wanted with it. I think it was a bit of a disservice to the game though. Classes(especially the...

I'd do it pretty much the way Wizards is doing it. Look at things that are being done a certain way purely out of tradition, and see if they can be done better. Recognize that I'm making a game, not writing a novel or trying to accurately model medieval life and combat. Severely diminish the...

I find it EXTREMELY unlikely that they'd do this. One of the big things in 4e is "equalizing" the wizard and the fighter(to a degree). Giving some classes more powers than others will just lead to the same problem all over again, and I can't think of a good reason for them to do it at all...

For a good real life example of this sort of thing, consider the Gogoplata choke. There's probably hundreds of Jujitsu artists that know how to do this manuever. They could, in theory, try to do it as often as they wanted to per day. However, as far as I know, only four mixed martial arts...

I find this thread funny, because it has Wormwood complaining about 4e and Lizard arguing against his complaints. :D Nothing like a good show of crunch to shake up people's expectations! The rogue looks great. Finally some good attack options other than Flank->Sneak Attack. The rogue has...

Definitely ranger, though I'm looking forward to all of the martial classes really.

Fantastic change. I was really hoping they'd finally do this. Ranger has always been one of my favorite classes, and I always hated the casting aspects of it. Always felt like it was tacked on as a symptom of the "only magic gets to do cool things" mindset of earlier D&D.