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But that's not really how it works. If you're a defensively oriented fighter, then you never get to use those dice on offense because you're saving them to parry. Sometimes you are missed or not attacked and the dice are wasted. If you're an offensively oriented fighter, then you use the...

Great test, but it's worth noting that you're testing zombies just as much as you're testing dwarf fighters. It's important to have zombies in the game, but I'm not sure that they are a "typical" monster. I would be interested to see how the experiment changes against goblins or orcs. -KS

The power level of first level characters should be based on the designer's opinion on the right place to start new players, not the weakest characters experienced players might want to play. WotC should provide a level-0 module for experienced players wanting to start from "completely...

A good society that wipes out evil -- that's fine. But when they turn to "who's next" then they are no longer good. "Not killing the neighbors for no reason" is a basic tenant of the good alignments. But I agree with you regarding "the balance." Good creatures that want to impose goodness on...

In my experience, Theater of the Mind handles speed and movement by ignoring it until differences in speed or movement matter. In the last playtest I ran, hobgoblins had laid down a field of caltrops forcing the PCs who wished to enter melee with the hobgoblins to choose between making the Dex...

QFT. True Neutral is an odd artifact of D&D,* but it has its place in the game. But the addition of an "unaligned" alignment for the average person who doesn't care was a really nice advance of 4e and I'd like to see it incorporated into D&DN. -KS (*) Ok, I get the idea of keeping law and...

Any time you see almost word for word copying from a prior edition in a playtest packet, there is an excellence chance that you're looking at temporary filler text. Temporary filler text is a particularly good conclusion when it reflects the design of a previous edition and contradicts a stated...

Of course the editing is "bad." The editing isn't done yet. This is like criticizing the plating 20 minutes into an episode of Iron Chef. -KS

The same analysis applies to the fighter's CS dice in a Deadly Strike. The rules language for Deadly Strike makes it sound like it is extra damage on the attack (and would be halved), while the language for Sneak Attack makes it sound like it is a separate source of damage (and wouldn't be...

Then, yes, I expect this is just a difference of how we process space mentally. To me, "the orc is 20 feet in front of the fighter and the gnoll is 15 feet to his left" is enough for me to have a decent sense of whether I can catch both of them in a fireball. Particularly, if we're playing...

I guess I just disagree with the OP. When I do theater of the mind, I vastly prefer feet over an abstract measurement. Unlike "squares", distances like 20 feet exist in the game world. Yeah, I don't really sweat the difference between 25 feet and 30 feet unless two characters get into a...

Two points: * Stats are capped at 20. * Those are pretty good rolls for 4d6, drop 1. -KS Edit: too slow...

No doubt. One of the cool things about specialties is how they let players create interesting and unexpected combinations. But that doesn't take away from the fact the term "specialty" is better than "theme" for communicating how players use these feat packages. Yes, a "healer specialist...

Specialty is a better term than theme because "theme" doesn't actually provide any information about what that package of character abilities consists of. ("Class" is similarly problematic, but we've had it for decades...) Specialty suggests that it describes the specific manner in which the...

The real problem here is that the "take 10" minimum is too high. It leaves the rogue with a huge gap between the checks they can succeed at automatically (where they have to roll a 10) and the checks that have a maximum success of 50% (where they have to roll an 11). The Knack ability can...

If you removed "preparing spells daily" and "careful though to prepare" I would completely agree with you. How a wizard uses magic does say a lot about the nature of magic in the game. Personally, I think it makes sense that some magic is so draining that a wizard can't do it repeatedly, but...

The characteristics of the "2e" group could be better expressed, but the OP speaks to my experience. I learned D&D with the BECMI red box, and quickly switched to AD&D. But 2nd Edition came out while I was in middle school so the bulk of my high school, college and convention gaming used 2e...

Traits are the term they used to describe abilities for the "interaction" pillar. Every player gets to choose a background that (right now) appears to include three skills and a trait. So far, the backgrounds we've seen are knight, priest, soldier, commoner and sage. Those five backgrounds...

I agree with the sentiment that the kickstarter announcements are taking up too much space in the news thread. I look to the left of my screen and 9 of the 15 "hottest news items" are kickstarter threads (including this one). I like finding out about new projects, but too few of these...

That's a pretty cool idea, but quite a divergence from how traits are currently conceived. Right now, traits aren't really "traits" in the sense that you (or normal English) use the term. The current playtest traits are more about the character's pre-adventuring occupation than the character's...