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Being maxed-out with all slots optimally filled -- having that +10-15 AC at 11th level -- made CR-appropriate challenges a joke. It wasn't that PCs were underpowered in 3.5 without the Christmas Tree; it's that they were overpowered with it.

I'd rather see magic items not be for sale.

But 3.5 wasn't originally built around one item in every possible slot with stat boosts up the wazoo. You needed a magic weapon after a while, but if you were fully decked out in a min-maxed way with all the slots filled, you'd just slaughter things of an appropriate CR. What the Christmas...

Heh. I also think letting the player of an inactive PC run a monster or NPC could be cool. In the very best campaign I've been in (MarauderX's), the players care about what the other PCs do, root for the other PCs, and *do* appreciate watching the story unfold. It's like if you're an actor on...

Like Fallen Seraph had planned for 4E, I had this feature in my 3.5 campaign backstory. Deep in the mists of time, the Faerie drove the Elder Evils from the world, forcing them to the darkness far below or the stars far above. Eventually, mortals came to be, and from mortals, the gods. The...

I'd look at it from a game balance point of view. Let's say that I'm the DM and in my world, with the types of challenges faced and the types of opponents faced, I think the monk is going to be very useful without Improved Natural Attack. I'd just tell the player "Well, it can be interpreted...

It sounds like you're meaning to make a general point about wording, not specifically an in-depth discussion about Improved Unarmed Strike. There are always going to be some feats, items, monster abilities, or whatnot that are poorly worded. Always. My preferred fix would be general guidance...

I actually really like the idea of PoL, especially the way that PC screw-ups carry the risk of extinguishing a point of light. Enemies tracking you back to your safe haven? Uh-oh. And I've always liked the idea of PCs having a real impact on the campaign world from a relatively low level (one...

The best way to have this work is to make wizards very cautious about using their magic. In LotR, Gandalf is cautious because using magic would alert Saruman and Sauron to his whereabouts. In Dragonlance (and Harry Potter, come to think of it), wizards have a pact to not interfere in the affairs...

Definitely thumbs down. What might have sold me on 4E would be if they had mentioned these as the issues to be fixed: 1) "Your wizard will no longer be defined as just a magic-user. His knowledge and intelligence will be as great an asset as his spells." -- instead, we get unlimited...

Sounds cool! The key is to outsmart the PCs (for a little while at least), not just out-buff them. That's hard to do, since there are more of them than there are of you, but here are a couple of ideas. The BBEG could work through intermediaries or lieutenants. Conveying false information...

If it's primarily a flavor issue, then whether something is in the core rules or not is rather beside the point. Nothing in the core rules prevents you from putting your elf in a tight blue shirt and calling him "Spock" and calling his Magic Missile spell "Phasers on kill," but such a PC would...

True, the DM has noted that he hadn't thought about dinosaurs one way or the other. Neither actively including them nor actively excluding them. This situation led to one player having a certain conception of the world (in which PCs riding dinosaurs did not fit the "feel") and another player...

I'd recommend that you ask any players of druids in your game to limit their selection of companions, wildshape forms, and summons to animals that the PC has seen. Not just dinosaurs, all animals. It's a moderate restriction on power and entirely in keeping with the flavor of the typical...

Wouldn't it be great if they were? If your players had such a clearly defined image of what range of creatures were in your world that the existence of an aboleth would be the mind-numbing Lovecraftian horror that it is meant to be? Or if they actually reacted to a vampire according to their...

Maybe it's because I've played a druid that I am failing to grasp this argument. I recall emailing the DM to ask what animals I might be able to find as a companion, what forms I had knowledge of for Wildshape, and what creatures I could summon from the list (as well as what I knew about their...

Please re-read my post: Call it a "strawman" if you like -- I was trying to make a legitimate example to illustrate one particular point. I don't know how clearly-defined the OP's world is, so I created an example using a world that most readers would be able to grasp an image of. Oh, sure...

A vargouille is very low CR. Let's say I have a party that has defeated hobgoblins, worgs, ogres, and even a hill giant or two. I would EXPECT them to react like "What in the Nine Hells is THAT??" upon seeing a vargouille. It's just so strange and out of the norm. Excuse me? Reacting in...

I don't view the MM as a "default setting." Too many large predators, too many intelligent species, too many extraplanar beings, and too many things that would just destroy all life on the planet in a matter of weeks (wraiths, shadows). I don't regard it as necessary for the DM to tell the...

Please note that I said "at least a nominal amount of attention to ecology." Nowhere did I say that a completely plausible and detailed ecology was necessary. But if you want dinosaurs to appear where they were previously unknown, you at least need SOME SORT of an in-game explanation. Either...