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So what? The DM secretly rolls Stealth for the bad guys setting up an ambush as well. When the party gets jumped, some PCs might not be surprised because their passive Perception met or beat the Stealth check, some will be surprised, and the fight happens. Same with traps with the roll. The...

I agree that complex puzzles can and/or should be resolved by more than a simple die roll. I am just addressing simple traps and the broken nature of the current resolution system. If PCs auto-find such traps, they become a boring non-event. If PCs auto-fail such traps, they become annoying...

That's all well and good for interesting, involved traps, but many traps are just simple pit traps, poison needles in locks, darts/spears launched, etc., and warrant a simple mechanic to resolve. And the simple mechanic offered in 5e seems broken when it operates on an auto-find / auto-fail...

Active Perception takes an action though, unless you are dropping that requirement. Also, asking the PC to make the Perception roll puts them on alert.

TL;DR Summary: If trap DCs are static and passive Perception is static, then you either auto-find (boring) or auto-fail (annoying) traps, so I reduce DCs of traps by 10 and replace with a 1d20 roll to allow for variability, which allows even low Perception PCs to possibility spot hard traps...

I had actually considered that, thinking of swapping out the level 5 Ranger daily for Rain of Steel. It is interesting that you mention Blade Cascade and Unyielding Avalanche together, and effective suggest Blade Cascade should be swapped for Unyielding Avalanche. Per damage calculations...

Possibly back at the time it was first developed, probably would take some fleshing out, but it struck me as a method of doing something that was novel at the time, in a layman sense of the term novel.

That's basically what I was getting it, but got at it better I think :cool:

Perhaps. One more "recent" game innovation has been the Fate Point / Hero Point / Action Point mechanic, i.e., basically in a game, have a limited resource which one can use to adjust the randomly generated die roll (e.g., by re-roll, adding additional dice, etc.), and perhaps at one point in...

It'd be that around that cost if they filed it themselves, but I've seen self-filers really screw it up and/or get rejections that were more than they could handle. But with legal help, it's at least $1k more, plus more if there are substantive rejections. For new small businesses, that might...

I tried to be extremely clear. I am a practicing attorney in IP law, practicing 10+ years, and registered in 2 states and with the patent bar. Did I miss anything else?! :D Attorney's fees are a bit of a mess, because most cases settle before then, and there are often more than just...

Whether something is patentable and whether someone will adopt and use it are two separate considerations. Also, to be patentable does not mean "better", it just means "different" than what existed before. But regardless, games, game mechanics, game rules, or whatever other terms are used may...

Things seem to be shifting during this discussion. As I recall, the first reference in this thread was something about games not being patentable in Canada (probably due to something about industrial application or some such). And there was a couple of times in which you have cited Canadian...

I'm not sure what you mean by rephrasing anything, but to be absolutely clear, I am a practicing attorney in IP law, and registered in 2 states and with the patent bar.

I have been practicing IP law for 10+ years. And unlike you, I am not making a blanket statement about legal advice on registering trademarks. I stick with the general statement applicable to all areas of law that each circumstance needs to be evaluated individually. So in the case of...

That seems highly unlikely, given the breakdown of patent examiners into various fields, etc.

Check out the Magic-game related patent mentioned earlier for a example. This site mentions numerous game patents issued every year by the U.S. PTO: http://boardgames.about.com/library/blpatent.htm This article (http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/15/patent-movies-scripts-cz-df_0812script.html)...

Sigh. We're not talking about Canadian patent law exclusively. In the U.S., the most significant IP market, games can be patented. End of story.

Whatever is invented that is new, useful, and not obvious. If something for an RPG meets those criteria, then it will be patentable. I can't say in advance what that "it" will be - that's the point, it will be new and not obvious.

As I said, it really depends on each set of circumstances. There are plenty of small businesses for which the cost is an issue. There are also plenty of businesses which create a large number of products, and only the most significant warrant the cost and effort of registration. There are...