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The problem with making it simply optional (all spells are "safe", vs. all spells are dangerous) is that it's a balance nightmare. To have Wizards be balanced either way, the class and its spells need to be significantly different with and without. Perhaps there could be a specific "unstable"...

I think it should have been obvious that when I said "balanced game" in that quote, I did not mean perfect balance. And when I said "Even in a perfectly balanced RPG", I meant a theoretical perfectly balanced RPG, as a hypothetical. I was not claiming that a perfectly balanced RPG exists. My...

I don't really get why, in a game where magic is mundane and predictable, there's this expectation that all magic items should be special. Why are items held to such a different standard than spells? I'd rather have basic magic items that are just part of a higher level character getting...

So now the Wizard feels screwed over because all of the sudden every fight takes place on sand, or over a grate. Or the DM decides which fights he'll allow the Wizard to use his overpowered toy. So much for player creativity. No, the solution is not for the designers to throw up their hands...

I think there's basically two groups that prefer gridless combat: The indie-RPG, narrative-focused RPG players, who would rather consider the narrative implications of combat, rather than the details, and are comfortable with an abstract world from which things can be instantiated via player...

OK, then what should it mean? If it's to get breathing room to get recentered and improve your defenses, then it isn't really a forced movement ability any more. It's a "get recentered" ability. You're conflating very different mechanics. An ability that lets you push an enemy into a pool of...

That gives specifics on positioning with respect to the goblin. But then it's left to DM fiat where your positioning is relative to the slime. If you can track every relative positioning, between every creature, and every possible terrain feature of interest, then yes, ToM is effectively...

There's a DnD facebook game that is a turn-based, light version of 4E. The Neverwinter MMO, due out later this year I believe, is based on 4E, but is action-oriented, not WoW-style pseudo-turn-based.

Because unless the DM is actually tracking the combat on a mental grid (unlikely), the tactical situation is more a matter of DM fiat and whims, than mechanics. What that all boils down to is "may I push the goblin into the acid slime?", and the DM deciding "yes or no". I do not find that...

OK, then what do you call the traditional DnD Theater of the Mind combat, where you're given precise measurements, and you just do your best with imagining them? There's a huge variance in all those mechanics you're lumping together. In terms of 5E, I think the salient comparison is that kind...

In a ToM system, it's impractical for the DM to have a means to answer that question other than their own whims. At that point, a mechanic ceases to be a mechanic, and is just dressing for DM fiat. A good ToM system avoids mechanics that require that kind of judgement. The problem with ToM in...

The first paragraph seemed to be setting up for a rather different topic. I'm not sure the rest of the post says much that wasn't said in the last blog post about grid vs ToM. My main concern with the agnostic approach is that ToM-compatible mechanics are a strict subset of grid-compatible...

But that's completely unlike DnD. A more radical divergence from traditional DnD magic than 4E. The OP's proposal is much more in keeping with the spirit of traditional DnD. Personally, I played DCC for a little while. I did not like it. I found the magic system maddeningly random, to the...

I'm not a big fan of diety-specific stuff for clerics. I'd rather see all that stuff bundled into Themes, and let us pick which Theme we want for the cleric we're playing, whether it's a literal representation of their diety or not. I don't really like all Sun Clerics being Laser Clerics. I'd...

Maybe whereas the Fighter gets "maneuvers", the Paladin gets a bunch of fancy smites, plus lay-on-hands (and at higher levels, the lay-on-hands ability would gain the ability to remove disease, etc.). That would make it very different than a Cleric with a Slayer theme.

I'd be OK with the alignment "feel" of 4E, where it is almost completely devoid of mechanical meaning, and is not a cosmological entity. Ideally, they'd strip out that last shred of mechanical meaning; I don't think that would appreciably change the "feel" of 4E, since there's so little anyway.

The Feats/Skills/Traits system would make that kind of dial really easy to adjust. The DM can just change how many of each characters get, or permit trading between them. It's a lot easier for a DM to combine Feats, Skills and Traits into a single pool of options, than for a DM to split them out.

In 3.5, Tiny creatures get exactly as much of a to-hit bonus as they do AC bonus, so Tiny vs. Tiny has exactly the same chance to hit as if they became Gargantuan. Does it really matter if the AC is a higher number? Similarly, have an HP bonus for larger size, with an equivalent damage bonus...

Then 3.5 fails your criteria as well. A 3.5 Kobold is, inherently, no more or less survivable than a 3.5 Elf. They're just usually encountered as simple level 1 Warriors, not higher level, with full PC class levels (which is a 100% legitimate way to build 3.5 monsters). So how do you think a...

I actually object to alignment being a cosmological "thing" more than mortals having alignments. I'm OK with people self describing as "Lawful Good" or whatever. I don't like alignments being these quasi-physical properties of things. Don't you mean Law vs. Chaos ;) But anyway, no, it...