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Personally, I like the notion that a first level FIGHTER should be able to take 3 average hits before he goes down. He may be an ordinary man, but this isn't his first experience with combat. He's picked up a little something. Taking the die code (d8), a longsword does 4.5 hp, on average. That...

What is a rogue? That's a good question. To my way of thinking, "rogue" is really another way of saying "trickster." Whether you call him rogue, thief, troubleshooter, expert, or burglar, he is the guy who survives by his wits, his guile and his skills. He can win a fight, not because he's a...

There's a very big difference between sacred cows that have been done away with by changing the way the system's math works (the classic 5 Saving Throws, or descending AC, for example) and those which represent something fundamental about D&D. Most of what gets changed from edition to edition is...

I can't say I disagree with you on these three being the standouts. Although, as I said, I really like that picture of Daniel Horne's I put up. It's very reminscent of Elmore though. And I dunno about Elmore being cheesecake. I mean, sure, sometimes - there's a reason he was the artist tapped...

Full disclosure, I tend to favor Elmore and the older stuff over more recent. But I've liked some of WR's work a lot. My list: 1. Elmore's Dragonslayers 2. Elmore's Deadlock 3. Elmore's Avalyne the Lifegiver 4. Emirikol the Chaotic (1e DMG) 5. A Paladin in Hell (1e PHB) 6. Komarck's The...

Never recommend an alternative hit point system before trying it in play. One of the things you learn when you try to houserule more "realistic" systems onto D&D is exactly how awesome the default hit point system IS.

Just FYI, I'd guess that's an image of Eddard Stark cleaning Ice as depicted in A Game of Thrones. The give-away is the Weirwood tree.

Sure. That's a high-level fighter - by the standards of a mostly 0-1st level world. In D&D terms, that character is probably 6th-level or so. If you stretch the game out, you can maybe justify him being as high as 10th-level. While he's certainly impressive by the standards of our world, that...

Anybody here read comic books? Okay, stupid question, of course you do. Characters in the comics have varying levels of "power" - as an example, Superman and Thor are way more powerful than Batman and Captain America. We have this nice metric for measuring "power" in D&D - it's called LEVEL...

Just a random thought here... Is it possible that in an effort to provide "balanced" encounters where death was a real risk, the designers changed the parameters of the system? In other words, each encounter was assumed to use such and such a percentage of your resources (including hit points)...

Look, let's deal with this honestly, shall we? We, as human beings, know that a single sword thrust to a vital target will KILL your average human. I'll let Gary take over here... "It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a...

Just to give some support for not insisting on archer rangers, I'd like to point out that Faramir's Rangers of Ithilien in The Lord of the Rings didn't all use bows. Many did, yes, but some carried spears instead. Although all of them had swords. I think the key to keeping the ranger...

So, in your mind the questing knight errant with no magical powers is a ranger rather than a fighter? I think I'm coming down to the theory that "ranger" really ought to mean "fighter skilled in lore." Now, in another system, that would just mean "smart fighter" - but in D&D, that sort of...

And "Kill things and take their stuff" is a system that worked so well that it spawned dozens of imitators. In fact, it was so successful that if an RPG didn't lay out a specifically different style of play, it defaulted to "D&D in X setting." There's something very satisfying and visceral...

Wanting back the old-school gamers is about one thing, that D&D shares with only certain types of products. Network effects. Because it's a game that you play with other people, like a fax machine, or an operating system, D&D is more valuable when more people play it. That was the whole idea...

A good example I would use of a reasonably high-level fighter is Maximus from Gladiator. During his special exhibition match, Maximus is facing off against one of the most famous undefeated gladiators of all time. The emperor has arranged for a series of TIGERS to emerge from beneath the arena...

On reflection, I think you might be quite correct. If there were a way to make the rogue the cunning sneak, the ranger the tough skirmisher, and the fighter the frontline combatant who's still capable with ranged weapons, I'd be totally okay with it. I'm really opposed to two things: 1) Any...

So, there was an article on the WotC site a couple weeks ago that they didn't know what to do with the fighter class because it was "insufficiently well-defined" or some such. I think the problem may be that, as they've tried to define the niche of other classes, WotC has largely defined the...

Frankly, I like the concept of a firbolg (or similar) being a playable race from an aesthetic (rather than mechanical) standpoint. To my mind, it's the race that fits into the reverse niche of the dwarf or halfling. And the reason I don't want ogres in this roll is because there's a monstrous...

It's not "realism," so much as being genre-appropriate. If you decide that every character who is capable with a bow is a ranger, then what's a fighter? Certainly, any character who shows off stealth or wilderness survival skills must also be a ranger. What that means is that the only characters...