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More like support the popular, and ignore the unpopular. I don't think people play dwarves over minotaurs because of mechanical advantage, other than a small subset of players, they play dwarves over minotaurs because dwarves are dwarves and minotaurs are monsters. :p

I was actually expecting that thread to be much worse than it was. I'm not sure what that says about the level of expectations the internet has given me in general.

It's just down to whether you call it godplate or not, +6 platemail is essentially godplate. I'm happy enough to get rid of the silly names, personally, but there's no reason you can't keep calling it godplate if you like the names.

This article makes St. Cuthbert happy. You don't want St. Cuthbert to get cranky, do you?

Would like to also give Shoe a thanks and a shout-out for his work on DDM, which was a pretty awesome competitive experience while it lasted (especially playing Limited) and an absolutely wonderful product for D&D use as well.

I've heard via the grapevine that Steve Schubert is also moving on.

I feel like the core issue here is actually a social dynamic, not rules.

Fire Storm is back to enemies-only, but the other 3 nerfs to it stayed, that seems about right now.

There's just as much original content in 400 as there has been in every issue. The anniversary reprint stuff is *extra*, and there are a ton of players out there who never had the chance to see this stuff before. I have the old Best of Dragon compilation that has the article and the CD myself...

A big part of the issue for me is they mostly abandoned their campaign settings, which is where almost all their best fluff work had been done in the past, going back to TSR days even. All the 4e flavor stuff is tied to the new cosmology and the undetailed 'default' PoL setting, neither of which...

I could easily see several more types of warlocks being introduced. Their flavor is such that it is very easy to come up with new types, just like the wizard and cleric. I don't really see this as a problem personally. As for the gloom pact and dark pact, flavor-wise they're not really all that...

I think that's just a nostalgia reprint, not an updating to 4e, but I could be wrong.

My point is that by defining all these things as skills in the first place, you create a bunch of characters who can't use them - everyone who didn't take the skill, spend points on it, etc. That is especially bad when there is mechanical pressure to spend your limited points on things that are...

Fair enough. I just was struck by one more idea related to our discussion and wanted to throw it out there: The more granularity you add to the skill system, the more situations you create where a character can't do something. I'm not sure this is some great insight or anything, but it just...

I disagree. I think you increase the possibility, because now people aren't forced to pick between this and essential D&D sorts of stuff like "can I climb" and just have the freedom to say "I learned to play the harmonica when I was stationed in the trenches" or the like. Stuff like that doesn't...

I think maybe you're misunderstanding me. What I don't want is a system that forces a character to choose between things that are effective in one part of the game (say, a utility power that is constantly useful in combat) vs. things that are far less consistently useful but add a lot of flavor...

EDIT: Never mind I think I misunderstood what you meant by the power not working.

Well you left off this bit from that statement: If I have a party with no characters with any performance background, why am I throwing something that requires one at them in the first place?

The line in your character background writeup that says you're a musician. ;) Performance and crafting and stuff like that, I just would leave up to the players to write into their histories. Then I can play off that stuff in designing an adventure that those characters will be participating...

I want to say the spy-world term would be "handler".