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The justification is that PCs are the heroes of the narrative, and that each has an individual human to manage a whole lot of bits and pieces. Those pieces need to be enjoyable for them to manage. Monsters and NPCs are just extras and set-dressing. Making them simple lightens the DM's workload...

Unless you are a computer running a simulation, the answer to all of those questions is "whatever the DM decides". You may look at stats to get an idea, but you should base your decisions on what will make the game more fun. Monsters are not PCs, and shouldn't be treated as such.

This is probably the most insightful thing you've ever said, and is the exact attitude I take when approaching the chittering of armchair designers on messageboards. The mechanic is only broken if you play specifically to exploit the system AND you have extreme neuroses about particular types...

I only had to run one game (about three sessions, if I recall correctly) to know that it really (really, really) wasn't for me. The issue we're discussing here was one of a few (interconnected) reasons for that. That game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I honestly thought I was done with...

If you ask me, 4E is too consistent. It is that consistency that itself makes the game-world feel artificial. Quirk is where it's at. But not so much quirk as to bog down the story. (By the way - I'm not reading everything you guys are saying, just interjecting because I feel like it.)

Everyone heals up to full in eight hours anyway. There's no kind of realism going on here. I'll say it again: hit points are a pacing mechanic. Nothing more, nothing less. In terms of colour, you can narrate whatever makes sense for any given situation. It makes sense to me that fighters are...

Well that's where we disagree, because I think he's saying that they're very strongly aiming to fall at the "very little errata" end of the scale. They're just putting a solid plan in place for the inevitable reality that some flaws will be found.

Bad design in this context is when something isn't fun at the table. Everything else is academic. Mearls explained that the way Second Wind works now was most fun for the playtesters. Until you actually play with the rule, you don't have a counterexample to that evidence. Deal.

Great stuff. The adventure sounds great - I love the emphasis on allowing non-combat approaches. This could be my favourite edition of the game based on that alone (even if there weren't a hundred other good reasons). And I really love the way Mearls explains that they're going to allow people...

You realise this is your issue, right? He specifically says that they want people to be able to keep using older versions of the rules if they have no problem with them. Which has always been the way of things, by the way (there are active players of every single edition of D&D, after all), but...

Hit points are a pacing mechanic.

Ha, I hadn't noticed that. Oh well, their loss. They could do with a little levity over there.

Stay tuned for the Kickstarter.

Ha, yeah. I posted this on three boards. It sank without a reply on the Wizards board. Thanks for the love, guys. Glad it brightened some people's days.

Urgh - fixed. Thanks.

Thanks! I spent a lot of time on it that I probably should have used for working and stuff.

A fortnight of previews of the forthcoming edition of the One True Game has culminated in the release of a sample character sheet and a picture of some goblins. Almost immediately, several role-playing messageboards were “critically hit” by dozens of protests. While ordinary folk went about...

I apologise. Got a little carried away there. Play the ball, not the man. What I meant to say was: That style of play just feels so unimaginative and tedious to me. To be honest, just having a thief checking ahead all the time doesn't make it much better. Set up situations. Narrate scenes. Let...

Yeah, I can see the appeal in theory. But there's a huge gulf between an internal reference document and something they'd ever release to the public. A lot of the stuff would be covered by the adventures, so you wouldn't want to repeat everything, and then you'd potentially have to rewrite a lot...

I type "PHB", but I've never actually said it out loud. Why would you? It’s no faster than saying the name in full. I have said DMG out loud - it flows nicely and is much easier than saying the full title. MM is maybe a touch faster than saying "Monster Manual", but it just sounds like...