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I'm a man of many contradictions; what can I say? ;) 4e is the best class-based system I've ever played, but I think that 3e/5e style multiclassing has the potential to be the perfect marriage of class-based and point-based chargen. It allows DMs a quick (and ideally accurate) gauge of...

I don't hate 5e. But I have no plans to buy or play it, because I can't help comparing it to 4e. I almost got excited when I read the free pdf and saw that 5e has 3.x a la carte style multiclassing...but then I saw the prereqs and the front-loaded classes, and thought "Oh well." Oh, and the...

For me, the feature of 4e alignment is that because it doesn't actually matter, it's basically a tabula rasa. Groups can use the 4e scheme, the 3x3 scheme, the original L-N-C scheme...or they can just not bother with alignments, as I told a new player just last week. I'm personally not against...

I think the weirdness is the contrast with that neat and visually satisfying 3x3 grid. I'm not quite satisfied with the way that the nine alignments are defined and tied into the game rules -- in any edition -- but that grid definitely holds a nostalgic place in my heart!

I remember that one of my players at the time wanted to use the 3.5 ranger, and that I had thoughts about change for the sake of change, much like you. ~12 years later though, 3.0 and 3.5 tend to blur together in my mind. I remember that the ranger went from d10 to d8 HD (I think) and got more...

I like the Complete 4th pdfs; I don't use DDI, so it's great having an all-errata-included set of references, and I like most of the rules tweaks they make to the game. The only downside is that they don't include monsters or the E-classes. I'm in somewhat of a transitory position myself --...

The difference is that straight-up soaking damage with hero points or a big pool of hit points, like high levels in other D&D editions, means that characters have nothing to fear from most enemies until they get down to their last few points. No doubt this is why early editions have all kinds of...

I like everything from Tolkien to Robert Jordan to Joe Abercrombie to Rowling, but I think of fantasy gaming as an entirely different experience than fantasy lit, so I don't actively try to mirror fantasy lit in my gaming. For example, I don't think I've ever made a character in the image of...

A lot of your analogies seem to involve food. I approve! :D

Okay, fair enough. I'm going to answer a question you asked in a previous post along the lines of "Why should my preferences bother you?", and I hope it doesn't come across as an attack. I understand others' tastes better now, and I actively try not to let other gamers' opinions bug me...

Bolded the part you missed.

Hm, this is interesting. By my way of thinking, encounter and daily powers are equally [un]problematic, so I've never seen dailies as more glaring or obvious. Why do you think dailies are the bigger sore thumb, so to speak? Hm, so you've found one particular narrative for encounter powers that...

Yeah, this is what I mean by 'little to no precedent.' 3.5 has the binder class and ToB, but otherwise D&D has no strong 'X/encounter = supernatural' tradition. In post #246, you comment that fighter daily powers would bug you if you were playing 4e but you make no mention of fighter encounter...

Don't mention it; looking back, I can see how my questions probably came across as a cross-examination. So anyhow, why is it that daily exploits bother you but encounter exploits don't? Is it because daily exploits violate D&D's long-established 'X/day = supernatural' precedent, while there's...

I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm just interested in your point of view. "It's all a matter of taste" is true, and I often get curious about what drives those tastes. Thank you, your answers have been very interesting. I think I have a pretty clear picture of what drives your tastes when it...

So I’m going to attempt to summarize your thoughts on 4e’s daily exploits. Feel free to correct any mistakes I make: You don’t like daily exploits because X/day stuff in D&D traditionally means supernatural stuff, and because they don’t have any concrete meaning within the game world. Or is it...

Oh, no doubt daily exploits are part of 4e's overestimation of the diehard fanbase's tolerance for new questions that are no more difficult to explain than traditional questions! Out of curiosity, have you ever met a player who wanted to play the 'I'm just a regular (really skilled) dude with a...

Yeah, sorry, this is just me being playful with words to talk about D&D's wizards-can't-heal tradition. Agreed on pretty much all counts, and that sounds like a great game design strategy. My point is that dissociative mechanics are only one variety of 'Er, what exactly does this mean in the...

You're right, a lot of the technical gaming jargon that gets tossed around on game forums doesn't hold much interest for me, so I'm happy to take your word for 'dissociative mechanic' rather than read JA's...*googles*...9+ blog posts about this term??? Holy kraken! I wish I had the time to play...

Sadly, the on-again-off-again infravision thing was before my time, so the best citation I can provide is Old Geezer on rpg.net. I can however point you to page 182 of the 2e DMG, under the 'Light Generation' heading for the PC-sensing magical swords. Speaking of magic swords, what happens when...