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My math confirms yours. I wonder if rage is missing a component? Should it give the minotaur a few more hp? Or maybe they should just replace rage 5/5 with rage 6/6? With rage 6/6, it is advantageous for the minotaur to rage against an AC of ether 18+ or 12-. Either way, "putting...

Specialty is a much better name for a feat package than "theme." These feat packages are supposed to represent a series of abilities concentrated around a particular method of doing something (a fighting style, a focused area of spellcasting, etc.) This sounds like a specialty to me. In...

I'm happy to have this kind of insight to the monster design process (mostly because I prefer more information to less), but I found the article lacking because it didn't explain why WotC selected this system. For all the unintended consequences of the 4e design process, the 4e designers were...

Lots of reasons. Just because the average dwarf is less dexterous than the average elf, doesn't mean that the average PC dwarf rogue is less dexterous than the average elf rogue. Unless, the weakness is supposed to be part of the race, I don't see why we should handicap PCs. If every class...

A cap of base score +10 could be fine, but you want to adjust the bonuses so characters of the same class all have the same cap in their primary attributes. The key to differentiating an elf and a dwarf is in the secondary attributes, not the primary attributes. Yes, there may be more dwarven...

There's one point I think is worth adding about the effect of the "living world" approach, which is that it's not really a punishment or an incentive to employ the 15 min tactic. All it does is ensure that the 15MAD tactic has side effects other than simply leaving the monsters where they were...

This is one of the major points to the 15MAD problem. Some of us (myself included) don't see a lot of 15MAD, because we don't run many adventures with this "lost treasure" style set up. I go years between games with an adventuring location where "rest and return" is a plausible tactic. But...

Eh... I think those spells are fine for certain cleric spheres, but I like my clerics to be associated with a concept or a domain, rather than an alignment. Worshiping "law" or "good" always seemed like a very esoteric way to build a religion. Yes, it should be supported (it's useful for some...

These are, of course, two sides of the same coin. They are the carrot and stick for conserving resources. As I see it, the key to controlling nova classes is to ensure that the top tier nova abilities are only really usable on a per adventure basis. Higher level spells that can only be...

To be fair, when compared to 4e combat, skill challenges are also "more in the realm of the Dungeon Master's hands than a strict, mechanical definition." I imagine we can safely assume that any skill challenge-like mechanic would be optional (to satisfy the old-school play style), but it's not...

I think this would be a welcome addition to the toolbox. If the balance is pegged at a certain xp budget per adventuring day, it would be very helpful if the rules provided an optional mechanism for milestones that DMs could use to adjust the balance. If I want to run a "24" style game where a...

I never really saw the 15MWD show up in DM-written campaigns. IME, DM-written games don't tend to have large dungeons where PCs would retreat and then go back. Instead, locations were designed to be handled in a single day, and retreating after beginning the assault was effectively the same...

Part of the problem with daily and encounter resources is that they are seeking to measure separate issues. We need to distinguish between: * encounters that threaten to exceed a party's "nova" capability; * a series of encounters that threaten to exceed a party's "daily" capabilities; and *...

This is, essentially, the 13th Age solution. Wizards have a small number of spell slots that increase in level but only marginally increase in quantity. For all intents and purposes, these spell slots can only be recharged between adventures.* Since most spells can be cast at multiple levels...

In my experience, most "one encounter adventures" have only one encounter because combat isn't the focus of the adventure. I like the idea that I can run a 2-hour mega-combat, but that's not a good default answer to adventures with only one encounter. It's a fool's errand to try to make this...

It would take quite a long post to hit all the problems with skill challenges as they were implemented in the 4e PH1, but I want to focus on one in particular: using skill check failures to track the loss mechanic. A "three failures and you lose" mechanic is alright for certain types of skill...

I think WotC can finesse this issue by changing the presentation. Instead of a large "Level 3 Controller" label at the top of the monster, just place that information in an appropriate location in the stat block. Level information (to the extent it is necessary or meaningful) can go with the...

I agree with your insight that we should look to combat to improve SCs, but not your conclusion. The problem isn't that SC lack a damage die. The problem is that every SC monster is the same monster (and making matters worse, it's a solo). What makes a mechanically heavy system like 4e...

As far as we know, this is exactly how domains work. There is every indication that domains involve some armor/weapon proficiencies (for war, at least) and some extra prisons. An orison like Radiant Lance might even be a special benefit of the Sun domain. We'll learn more when char gen rules...

If we're going to try applying grid geometry to "real life", we shouldn't ignore diagonals. On a grid, the center of an ogre will only be 2.5 squares from the center of a human if the ogre is positioned between squares with its center exactly three squares below the center of the human. In...