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This is the internet. Some people will get upset about anything here.

Or attacks with surprise, which is hardly an uncommon event in most adventures. Sure, if the party isn't surprised, and if the party wizard or cleric wins initiative, and if the cleric fails his save against their SOD attack (clerics have good Fort saves, remember), they will be spared the...

First, a Bodak is CR 8. That's not supposed to be a boss for an 8th level party, it's supposed to be a standard encounter. A boss would be something like CR 11 or so. Second, why should the PCs "get a feeling" that something big is coming up? Again, the bodak isn't a boss, it's just a standard...

Actually, I'm fine with that - if it's a very high-level ability. If it does end up being a second level curse or whatever, I'll probably just keep the mechanics (which sound like "miss your turn and take X amount of damage") and come up with some new fluff for how the power works. Because 3rd...

It's probably worth pointing out that 1st edition had an evil-only class in the PHB (the Assassin). So the idea of an evil-only class has been done before, and in the core rules. That said, I do hope the warlock isn't evil-only (or, if alignment is being drastically overhauled/done away with...

Here. Roy's in the afterlife!

Gee, it's almost as if online polls give you biased samples or something ;)

This one. Definitely. The goblin dialogue about what they're going to do since they've heard the heroes approaching is hilarious.

Because the former offers the player (and his friends) a chance to take action to prevent his death. He doesn't get that chance when the bad guy wins initiative, points at him and says "Boo!" and he falls over dead before he can even act because he didn't roll high enough on the d20.

But Dragon and Dungeon are part of the D&DI. You could, in theory, subscribe to D&DI, only read the magazines, and not use any of the other features. So, since Dragon and Dungeon cost money before, and will cost money now, I'm not seeing what's changed other than the format. Were people who...

You had to pay for those when they were in print format too, you know.

Or even a better-than-average roll and a bad guy hopped up on (mental) steroids. I still remember playing in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil; our party was about 11th-12th level and we were running into clerics throwing save-or-dies with DCs in the mid 20s. Even our fighter only had about...

Again, whether or not ENWorld is a reasonable cross section of the D&D playing RPG community is the wrong question. The right question is, are the people who answered the latest poll about 4E a reasonable cross section of the D&D playing RPG community? Of course, no one can answer that question...

Do you know the full extent of WotC's market research? I seriously doubt that they would limit it to just the sources you describe. And if they have, well, they'll probably pay a price for it when 4E is released, so I guess we'll see, won't we?

No. It has nothing to do with what I want to believe. The fact of the matter is that online polls result in biased samples, because they allow self-selection among the respondents. There are any number of websites out there that go into this phenomenon in detail - just Google "biased sample" for...

I'm not aware of any poll that gets treated as scientific fact, no matter how random the sample. Even people who perform scientific polling do not claim that their results are factual, merely that they have a high degree of confidence (usually 95%) that they are accurate. Actually, that's not...

Like I said, I'm just pointing out the absurdity of chanting "options, not restrictions" over and over without giving any thought to what it actually means. There are lots of options people might want - trying to include them all would just be silly. The designers have to pick somewhere to draw...

Exactly. The problem with online polls is not the sample size (many online polls can get a huge number of people answering), it's the fact that the sample isn't random, which skews the results.

I'm just pointing out the absurdity of chanting "options, not restrictions" over and over without giving any thought to what it actually means. I'm not going to tell you that your playstyle is wrong or anything - if it works for you, great - but I think that a fight that the group has been...

Fine. So let's have a monster with a power that kills the whole party in one round with no save. Options, not restrictions. And let's also have a first level spell that creates 100,000 GP worth of permanent magic items per casting. Options, not restrictions. And let's also have blaster pistols...