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Petrification in particular seems to work well with gradual Dexterity drain, either a relatively large amount at once, or a certain amount per round over time, depending on flavor. And if you drain the 4E level adjusted Dexterity bonus, you even get easy scaling for free (to ensure that a Medusa...

DM's are usually more deeply interested in the game (thanks to the fact that they tend to spend quite some time with it all on their own), so they are a lot more likely to visit forums. Few players I have met actually cared about design.

Well, the difference would be that Outsiders are generally not playable, so planetouched have an identity (as a PC race) of their own, whereas Half-Elves are just a mixture, thus usually lacking their own niche. Though yeah, I wouldn't mind defining Planetouced by Ancestry Feats, for the...

But the way SoD works, Hercules would actually get killed in at least 1/20 of those tales. In Heroic fantasy, the heroes (certainly the central ones, comparable to PCs) always survive those encounters. So a less deadly system would work better for modelling heroic tales or fantasy. You cannot...

Unlimited healing per day is one of the things that is carefully avoided in 3E, and that I was very unsure about when I used it for my positive energy Warlock variant. But it worked out rather well, and looking back, I don't know anymore why it shouldn't. Turned out even Cleric players didn't...

The way THACO worked fine? 3E Subtypes are one of the things I considered faulty the moment I saw it. Some Types are iffy (Giants for example), not well thought out at all, and it makes no sense whatsoever to tie Saves and Bab to Type. The new system, which seems to be Size Metabolism Shape is...

Half-elves and half-orcs are not fantasy staples as far as I'm concerned. Tolkien may have had them, but you can easily miss that Elrond is a half-elf if you didn't read the Silmarillon, and half-orcs in LotR are really just orcs with a bit of human mixed in to make them resistant to sunlight...

Unless Wizards drastically changes their design, people will recognize High Elves when they see them, even if they are called Eladrin instead.

DM and player (more often DM), for ten years, originally liked SoD, and slowly came to hate it. The most memorable SoD moments are always those were a PC or an important NPC dies in the first or second round of combat with no input whatsoever.

Hopefully, they didn't try to make a decent movie. Why? Well, the one and only way to make a D&D movie enjoyable is to make sure it is so horrificaly bad, it is actually good again. Try to hard, and you merely land at terribly bad.

There is so much done right in this stat block, I'd probably be disappointed if WotC does it much differently.

I don't like (or allow, for that matter), characters taking up a new class without a good explanation either, but I don't believe in discouraging choices by making characters sucky if they take them. "Freedom to suck is no freedom at all" - said by someone whose name I have forgotten.

Oh, but you forget that it is a game and not a simulation. Making some character builds significantly worse than others (and yes, a Sorcerer 10/Wizard 10 by 3E rules make you effectively a pack mule, because you are way too weak to even take on threats below your level), goes a long way to...

Caster Level is a stupid system, and will probably (and hopefully) go the way of the dodo. The removal of Vancian casting will strongely affect Multiclass balance. Up till 4E, a single spell of a decent level was a good deal more powerful than anything a fighter could do in a single round, thus...

Those who suggested that Balors will become melee killing machines, whereas Pit Fiends will become leaders are probably right on the money. I suppose both will be elite monsters, with the Pit Fiend automatically having (or being able to summon), some minions. Nope, that's what level is for...

... what? I'm not aware of any Fantasy Setting in which you have more Dwarven Subraces than Elven Subraces. Elves usually come in the High Elf, Dark Elf and Wood Elf variants, whereas Dwarves only sometimes get "Dark/Chaos/Grey Dwarves" as a variation. And those tend to be very unpopular, as...

The most obvious route would be to make the attribute used dependant on the specific power (or spell) used, regardless of class. So you could have Charming rely on Charisma, Disable Spells on Intelligence, Rays on Dexterity and Scrying on Wisdom. Or for Fighter-Types: Smashy moves rely on...

I love characters with celestial heritage more than any other player I know, and will happily play them if I can (and they don't suck as casters, like they did in 3E, unless you rebalanced them), but I still don't think they are halfway near as useful for the game as Tieflings. There are reasons...

Hopefully it's highly optional and not expected of the random cleric. Necro-Clerics, especially in 3E - in which they were better Necros than Necromancers - have never, and will never work for me. How many gods actually care about Undead anyway? And why is the armored dude who buffs his allies...

Well, you would need to be incredibly stupid or crazy to consider getting killed by SoD fun in any way. Even the strongest proponents probably realize that it simply sucks to get killed that way. That's why (correct me if I'm wrong) all credible proponents of SoD won't actually let PCs die by...