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I've found if you're fighting monsters that are threatening the party, they can probably deal enough damage that a second wind isn't really a great use of a standard action, because that's a turn that you're not attacking (which is why dwarves are so awesome). But I can see what you mean with...

It's a "perfectly viable thing" that I have no taste for, I suppose. I also dislike "swingy" combat where one die roll decides way too much. I want it to be a given thing that will be expected to be used often (if not all the time). At the very least, there should be the option to have a...

And I don't want this in any shape or form. I like my in-combat healing thank you very much, I want to see the HP numbers go up and down during combat. Mostly because it's not fun for me to see lots of "miss" on both sides of the table. I never really thought the 50-65% hit rate was a very fun...

There's never going to be a point where DnD is as easy to jump into as a video game. A tabletop game, innately, requires some investment on the part of the player to learn the rules. You can show them the rules while playing the game to an extent, but that's on the DM, and they will still need...

I'm not quite as optimistic as I have some reservations about modules, but if they can successfully pull it off, then it'd probably work just fine. I just have reservations about the "can."

I can't really agree with your conclusions on at-will powers. All it takes is a very quick read of the power to understand what it does--I still can't see why the rogue was so insistent on using a Strength-based basic attack when that basically shouldn't be listed anywhere on the sheet, much...

When I DM'd an encounter with swarms in 4E, I leveraged their resistance to melee attacks in order to move into squares the PCs were occupying with impunity (since opportunity attacks were less effective against them). I think this did a very good job at making them "feel" different than other...

While I agree with you in principle, that particular example isn't as good because you could cast two different spells instead of just burning hands. Maybe three would work. Though I think it should be a very limited approach if they did something like that, and only certain spells would qualify.

I don't see a concern. If you don't want to make decisions when you level up, that's what specialties/fighting styles (to use the fighter for an example) are for. Just give me the option to do otherwise, and don't say "modify the game by taking out a bunch of levels." They already have the tools...

Well, I for one hope they eventually make it so that feats can be taken on an individual basis rather than only part of specialties. For all its problems, it's a layer of further character customization that I like, and I'd be sad to see it go. I'm fine with them keeping specialties for those...

When he says he wants to address healing, it worries me--it almost sounds like he says that players have too much healing, and that's making combat less dangerous. No, the reason combat isn't dangerous is simply because monsters cannot reliably hit a player. It should take multiple hits to bring...

Though 4th edition DnD had a huge amount of customization for characters, in class, race, theme, background, paragon path, epic destiny... it didn't have very many "break the game" combos. What few popped up, most got errata'd out. The power level across the board was fairly even. Granted...

I hear "less is more" a lot, but that's only true to an extent. If you significantly reduce the amount of interesting decisions I need to make when I level up, then I probably won't be interested in the game. My personal hope is that they eventually get rid of "dead levels" in DnD Next and I am...

There are 9 domains, actually. 4 from Neverwinter, 2 from Dragon magazine issues, 1 from Heroes of Shadow, and 2 from HotFL. I think they took that one reasonably far given the amount of time that has passed. There are 6 mage school specializations, though I agree that it's a bad saddening they...

The problem I see with this is, it will probably lead to trying to balance wizard blasting with fighter smashing by limiting the number of times per day a wizard can blast--IE, the wizard's daily output is stronger per spell than the fighter's output per swing. Which is currently what we have in...

The monster creation rules for 3.5 include such fiddling things as picking out spells and feats, assigning skill points, etc. I'm looking at the rules in the MM right now and they are not what I'd call quick, particular if you don't have a lot of basic feats memorized. 4E's monster creation...

I'm largely in agreement. I'm a big fan of 4th edition but I wasn't offended by Essentials, as I saw a number of people were. My experience has been that most of the classes are at least competitive with their predecessors from a balance standpoint--removing daily powers from certain fighter and...

Well, it'd be nice if it was that easy, but for thematic and dangerous encounters you usually need a little more. That monster wasn't just deadly because it had big numbers, it was deadly because of the large number of out-of-turn actions it could take, and how resistant it was to action denial...

All of the powers were "made up," though I'm sure there are functionally equivalent powers. I based the average damage values on similar monsters from the MV, like the level 8 elite brute Owlbear. Of course, as a solo, the monster needs a way to constantly threaten the party outside of its turn...

It's fair if you want ONLY fully-fleshed out monsters, but I don't really care to "fully flesh out" each of the 12 kobolds that my players will fight or bargain with when passing through a particular cave. I think the system should support either. Mechanically complicated? I mean, I've made a...