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I'm not proposing anything new there. I'm talking about what Gygax himself said about HP. There's no "set" number of "physical" hit points. It's just that they're abstract. It's fluid which HP represent intangibles, and which represent actual damage. As they've always been in D&D. That may...

I've suggested before that perhaps we could have a very simple wound system, that works like this: At half, quarter, and zero HP, a wound is taken. Each wound is -1 to most rolls. Wounds are not automatically healed when HP is recovered, and if you've alread taken a wound at a given level...

My overall philosophy is that in-character decision-making should be rewarded. Decisions made on the basis of out-of-character knowledge should be strongly discouraged. Optimization: the rules are the physics of the world. Optimizing according to those rules is 100% in-character decision...

So to be clear, you want things that have never been a part of any edition of D&D, ever? That doesn't sound like what 5E is going for. Gygax himself described HP as largely intangible, with only a few being actual physical damage. Overall, it seems awfully nit-picky to let a little game...

It was never a "mortal wound". Because you would never die from that wound, no matter what. The next wound taken would be a possible mortal wound if it does 2 or more damage. Also, typically, people take some kind of ill effect from mortal wounds, even before they die or fall unconscious. 2...

DM. It's iconic, and there is nothing to be gained from abandoning it. I'm all for slaughtering sacred cows when it makes for a better game, but there's no point to abandoning this one. Heck, I tend to use DM as the generic term, even though I know it should be GM. DM just rolls off the...

I've largely given up hope that DnD:Next will be a game that I'll want to play, or that the "everything to everyone" mandate will actually work out. I'm paying attention more out of pure curiosity than anything. I like reading/thinking about game systems even if they're not part of full game I...

Well then, looks like he was right. No 4.5.

"Next" seems entirely "dignified" to me, at least as a working name. I'm rather confounded by the connotations you are applying to it. Anyway, I very much doubt "Next" will appear on the covers. It'll be "Dungeons & Dragons", just like the 3.X and 4E books had.

You don't have a 5% chance to miss, regardless of expertise. You always have at least a 5% chance to miss. That's very different. Chances are, the lvl5 will have a greater chance to miss than the lvl10. In a "balanced encounter", a lvl 5 would have a greater miss chance than a lvl10...

By Fumble do you mean 'always miss on a one'? If so, it isn't always the same chance. It's just that success rate can't go past 95%. Unless the targets' AC is very low, the 10th level Fighter should have a better hit chance than the 1st level. Same thing happens at the other end. With very...

Well, yes, you'd probably need to be trained in both. Is that wrong? Isn't that what training should mean? That you're good at doing those kinds of things? And that if you don't have training, you probably shouldn't be doing those sorts of things? But the DCs needed aren't that high. Is it...

That's not how it's supposed to work, but it's a common misconception. A same task should have the same DC, no matter what. The DC by level charts are meant to be for at-level challenges. It's the same as with monsters. You're supposed to use near-level stat blocks. Doesn't mean the PCs...

I think they're contemplating that feats would essentially be alternate class features. The core classes would come with feats "baked in", while more advanced games would allow them to be swapped out for custom feats. My concern is that, traditionally, the simplest feats (the ones that give...

The problem is that almost all the mechanics are drawn from previous editions (mostly pre-4E), so it's kind of hard to discuss them without inherently discussing those editions. It's makes sense to point to an edition and say "that mechanic was in that edition, and I didn't like it".

It seems like board games are humming along fairly well. Certainly nowhere near the same feeling of DOOM that seems to pervade the RPG industry. I think the big differences are: * Board games tend to have much less "play time" per purchase, resulting in more frequent purchases. My impression...

I think 4E's initiative is pretty much perfect for a D&D-style game. Group initiative at start of combat is OK, too. I find that over the course of battle, players tend to end up drifting towards each other anyway through delays and readies. I strongly dislike group initiative rolled each...

Essentials was about maintaining balance, while having less sameness between Fighters and Wizards. This is the problem with conflating sameness and balance. I want as much variety and breadth of different options as possible, with as much balance as possible. Too much sameness is boring and...

Balance does not imply sameness. Sameness is just an easy way to get balance. For example, Starcraft has excellent balance, even though each race plays quite differently.

A well designed system would be balanced even with min-maxing. If min-maxing is a useful optimization technique, that means that there are imbalances in the cost-benefits. Is perfect balance a myth? Sure. As is anything perfect, but it's well worth striving for. Sure, but then they get...