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What money? Obviously, if you're getting xp for treasure, the DM needs to drop a lot of treasure. That can be draining through maintenance and training costs, or you can adopt a Conan-like rule where treasure must be spent on a "no permanent benefit" lavish lifestyle for it to count as xp...

This strikes me as almost completely backwards. Kobolds have the shifty power because the story for them is that they are small and adept at skittering around their opponents. Hobgoblins get AC formation bonuses because of the Hobgoblin story: they are militaristic, so the designers game...

It's peripheral to your point, but it's still a reasonable demonstration of how "move without shift, plus ranged and area attacks" is a harder rule to remember than it would seem. But all of that ignores the real complexity of the system: shifting. The best reason to get rid of OAs is to get...

Obviously. You can't really have 100s of orcs without some kind of mechanic to simplify what would otherwise be an unmanageable amount of die rolling. (That's how I did it in 3e too.) -KS

This. The real point here is that the D&DN designers have recognized that low-level humanoids should also have a useful "horde" role for high-level characters. Humanoid hordes are part of the fantasy genre and have been under-represented in D&D editions of the past because the rules rarely...

Fortunately, the WotC designers have figured out how to do that. Themes and backgrounds are great examples of rules structures that support both those modes. -KS

If WotC provided three sets of classes, they would effectively be writing three different d20 games, and that's not the objective. Classes are a major part of the game, you can't replace them without ending up with something very different (e.g. 3.x vs. Arcana Unearthed). Also, it's not like...

I tend to theme that schools of magic are best handled with themes, for two reasons. First, the primary difference between a specialist and a non-specialist is spell selection. Wizard (and sorcerer) class mechanics should be sufficient to allow casters to select spells appropriate to their...

Totally agreed. "Per level" resources assume too much about the pace of advancement, which needs to be adjustable without changing half a dozen other rules. -KS

I'm not fond of them because they are a primarily gamist construction that isn't well tied to any aspect of the in-game fiction. Although you can express them as an "extra effort" ability, they are more of a player resource than a character resource. Also, a rich variety of character abilities...

I think that's correct on both counts. On the other hand, the playtest (and the associated articles) are a great opportunity for WotC to experiment with getting the crunch / fluff interaction right. One of the problems we've been seeing in late 3.x and 4e design is that a lot of thought and...

A knight character could have a knight-like background, theme and class. In the current rules, knight is a background. It gives you some appropriate skills, a "knightly" social position, and maybe better-than-average equipment. A character could also have an armored-horseman theme or a...

My read is that, on a hit from a hook, the target takes 1d10+4 damage and is impaled (i.e. an "impaled" condition is imposed). The "Impaled" rules say how you a character can un-impale himself. "Twist and Bite" is listed as a "Special Action", so I assume that it takes an action for the hook...

Since the playtest specifically provides an "old-school" mode without backgrounds, themes, hit dice or long rests, I think the real question is why you didn't decide to play that. It's marginally useful to know that there are some people who are simply unwilling to play with a fast-healing...

I'm pretty sure those examples are from a version of the playtest rules before they broke theme and background into two separate concepts. Today, I don't think any of those would be themes. In fact, knight (your example) is explicitly a background in the current public playtest. -KS

Assassin is a class for mostly the same reason that ranger and paladin are classes. According to the designers, a class is what you do and a theme is how you do it. An assassin class may be similar to a rogue class (and may share some mechanics), but it is more focused on stealth...

Well, to start off, a knight (like sage), is a background -- not a theme. As to the difference between themes and backgrounds, a background is about a character's place in the world - particularly before the character started adventuring. A theme is about the flavor of a character's abilities...

That has been my experience in every version of D&D I've ever played. Unless you want to make armor a lot more complicated than it is, there are only so may "best" choices. Once the PCs get enough resources to get whatever choice is best for that character, the variety of party armor will...

Exactly. The genius of the +1 to ability scores is that it is an elegant and simple way to provide a bonus. The problem is that it doesn't reflect how many people think about the in-game reality of ability scores. For comparison, imagine that - instead of a +1 to ability scores - humans...

It sounds like they are considering using stamina as "mana" for martial maneuvers, not unlike how the current version of fighters gets "Fighter's Surge" twice per day. The more tactical/complicated version of the fighter might get a series of martial maneuvers that they can expend stamina to...