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Before we went on hiatus, our group was all 5e. Part of our group got back together when one of our members took a swing at running "Honey Heist" a few weeks back over Zoom, which was silly, but very fun. And got all of us jonesing to get our game going again. My fiancee's intro to roleplaying...

"Savage Worlds" uses a card-based initiative system. You'd have to fiddle with how to marry it with D&D's various bonuses and feats, but the concept is certainly workable.

Or...not. .

I'll echo this. I am certainly not a great archer, but I'm alright. With a good bow (in the 45-50 lbs. draw range) and reasonably straight arrows, I can drop arrows into a pretty tight cluster reliably out to about 20-30 yards. Beyond that, I need to take more time to aim. One mistake a lot of...

That's just...well, not exactly untrue, but totally incomplete. The only real advantage a spear has over a greatsword (or ACTUAL longsword) is the same one that a quarterstaff has - REACH. Some people seem to think that swords are incapable of being used at close range and that's just not...

Funny, I don't remember Van Helsing casting spells. ;) I've never read the other two books you mention. Does either one of them actually make use of divinely-granted magical powers? And if so, which ones?

There's actually a very good and interesting point made here. People often comment that epic level D&D characters are superheroes. But that's putting it mildly. They aren't JUST superheroes. They are the most cosmically powerful superheroes. An epic level character in D&D isn't Batman, Flash...

The real problem with the cleric class is that it lacks a fantasy archetype outside of D&D (and D&D-inspired fiction). In most fantasy fiction, spellcasting priests are just that - priests who cast magic spells. They're basically wizards sanctioned by the church. Or they're holy warriors who...

I promote Option 4... "DM's Sidebar: What to do if you (accidentally) have a TPK? "If all the party members go down in a fight, remember that this does not necessarily have to be the end of the campaign. Did your players enjoy the way things played out? Are they talking about the epic way they...

For me, it's: 1) Ranger 2) Fighter 3) Rogue 4) Bard Ranger has always been my favorite, for the combination of archery, lore, woodcraft and skilled combatant. I also tend to like the questing knight archetype, but I've usually tended to do it as a fighter rather than a straight paladin. But...

Where?

I could actually get behind characters who "come into" their class abilities a bit more slowly. However, I would opt for still giving 1st-level characters enough hit points to make them reasonably "tough/lucky." The best example I can give of this from fantasy fiction is the Emond's Fielders in...

I voted +3. Which seems good enough to be meaningful and small enough that it keeps the to-hit bonuses within the range of acceptable variability. Because it means something VERY different, I have no problem with higher bonus damage numbers. I'd actually have the to-hit bonuses of magic swords...

Well, it's pretty easy to get to about +10 in 4e without getting into ridiculous stacking. For example: Skill Bonus = Primary Stat (+4) + Trained (+5) + Feat Bonus (+2) = +11. Atk Bonus = Stat (+4) + Proficient (+3) + Class Bonus (+1) + Feat Bonus (+1) = +9. My personal preference would be to...

I think what the OP is getting at here is not really so much about the escalating numbers, but about making sure that there's enough design space at the low end of the system. Taking the combat example, if a "trained" fighter gets a bonus to hit at 1st-level of +5, then there's theoretically 4...

Perhaps this is a lesson for DMs and players alike. And it speaks to the notion of hit points as combat capability. Player1: "We lost our first fighter? Oh no! Run away!! Head down that hallway!" Player2: "Oh crap, they brought reinforcements..." Player3: (to DM) "What're you trying to do? Kill...

While there are fantasy settings that use psionics, they are usually the only magic in said settings. Off the top of my head, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series and Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series both use psionics. And while both series have a sci-fi element, in that they involve...

Just as a quick comment, I think that, despite the credit on the column, this was written not by Monte, but by Mike Mearls. The author refers to himself as the "Senior Manager for D&D R&D" and about halfway through the first paragraph, he refers to Monte in the third person. I just don't think...

My math is fine. Read more carefully. The critical hit argument (down in one hit) works fine if critical hits do double damage. A perfect crit drops a fighter with up to 16 hp. I admit that 13 hp would be the appropriate number for a first level fighter if I was dead set on him going down on...

Oh? So tell me, where's your degree in Anglo-Saxon languages and literature? How much work did you do as a translator of ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts to help create the New Jerusalem Bible? Yeah, I didn't think so. It's true that Tolkien used languages he invented, but he did so with...