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The only place I can see this being an issue is if for some reason you use Minions which are much higher level than the PCs - and that's something you shouldn't do anyway, because there are lots of powers that deal minor damage without an attack (Flaming Sphere, for instance). And the fact...

But that's the thing - it wasn't a moot issue, because using the options that kicked ass on swarms/incorporeals/whatever were less effective in general, so there was a trade-off: * Make your primary weapon Ghost Touch - well that's one less +1 you can have in general. But against incorporeal...

How is deciding to attack an ally for a good reason a "bag of rats" trick? Fighter gets frozen in ice which can be melted. Wizard decides slightly scorched Fighter is better than immobile Fighter surrounded by enemies. Wizard decides to target Fighter as part of fire spell. That's not a...

For some powers - especially Utility powers, there's no ideal category. Making them Daily powers makes them too rare - are Feather Fall and Dispel Magic really that potent? But making them Encounter powers makes them usable every five minutes, which can be problematic. So I'm proposing a new...

Why has this even gone on for five pages? :confused: As mentioned many times already, you don't need a to gouge out their eyes or use a blindfold, you don't need houserules about teleportation, and you don't need dimensional locking magic. Just use a deep enough pit, a windowless room, or...

Scrolls still take half the normal time to cast though, and there's not usually a difference between 5 and 10 minutes - they're both too long in combat or such, and quick enough when unthreatened.

The vast majority of rituals could be free. In fact, in some cases, the fact that they aren't free makes them nigh-useless: Knock - This does not open the door automatically. It allows you to make an Arcana check at +5 instead of a Thievery check. The problem is that anyone with Thievery...

And given that encounters get longer as you get higher level (because HP scales faster than damage), it's not even as if having more encounter powers would make your at-wills useless. You'll still end up using them, just not for 90% of the fight. Also, I find it strange that your number of...

LowSpine - an interesting system, it looks like it would solve the swingyness/polarizing issue, as well as having more potential for interesting halfway states. The only issue I can see is that if the party has ~50% chance to succeed at the checks, and the challenge is significant (6+ states)...

Since 4E values simplicity so much, the 4E-style answer is probably that momentum is not conserved, because saying it is opens a whole can of worms. However, you can have a lot of fun with momentum-conserving teleport - see Portal. So if you don't mind a bit of added complexity and want to see...

Just because creating custom monsters/items is possible, doesn't mean an error isn't an error. For instance, in 3E, there was no specific rule that you couldn't have a weapon with a 19-20/x4 critical, which the Talenta Sharresh had as printed. This was, however, a mistake, and was later...

One thing I wonder about: Let's say we have a group of guards trying to knock out a suspect for capture. But one of the guards is secretly a criminal agent, and wants to eliminate the suspect so he can't spill the beans. Case 1: The other guards hit him several times, trying to knock him...

The "wonder" of magic items comes from how interesting they are, not whether you're forced to use them or not. If you just say "It's a +2 longsword", then that's not going to be wondrous, no matter what the incentive to keep it is. I mean, there's an incentive to keep flasks of oil around, but...

I'm not surprised it went on a fairly long time - hit points seem to scale faster than damage, so I wouldn't be surprised if Epic monsters took dozens of rounds to even get to bloodied. The problem is really that while combat taking a long time might sound exciting from a cinematic point of...

Yes, ancestral weapons work great if you ignore the item rules completely and ad-hoc them. They'd also work great if the rules were better. And then it'd work across games and in the RPGA as well. And while the non-item treasure you find is enough to supply one PC with an unusual weapon type...

I'm also a bit baffled by the 1/5 ratio. Say that, in the course of your adventures, you get a +3 longsword. But your weapon of choice is a shortsword. Now you can only have a +2 shortsword? How is it "balanced" to get a weapon five levels lower because you wanted a slightly different type...

You can't really "remove" Take 20 though - you can just make the game slow down when people use it. 3E example: Rogue: We have plenty of time to check this door carefully, so I'll Take 20. 4E example: Rogue: We have plenty of time to check this door carefully, so I'll spend two or three...

A hammer replaces Knock. 4E Knock isn't worth saving - let it die. And hopefully the Rogue has a role beyond one use of one skill - assuming the party even has a Rogue; there are other strikers out there. I like the new Portable Hole, although I think there should be an Epic-sized Bag of...

I never claimed it was impossible to run from someone with the same speed (although you'll never outdistance them by more than one move's worth). The point is that it's impossible to run from someone with a speed even one point higher (such as an Elf), whereas previously you could run from...

I've often heard "know when to run away", as advice for the wise adventurer. But that's easier said than done. Even in 3E, many monsters tough enough to run away from were also mobile enough that you really couldn't escape. But at least against foes with roughly comparable movement (not twice...