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Immediate interrupt or immediate reaction? Probably should be interrupt to be useful. Sounds very strong, compared to the paladin's or the swordsage's mark: the paladin's target takes middling damage, the swordsage's target either takes a basic attack or has it's damage reduced by a fixed...

I think the general idea of companions worked out along the lines of the ranger's beast has merit, but I'd lean towards making it a particular class's shtick. (Maybe that's one way to do a martial controller, a lead-from-the-rear type with minion(s) to tie up multiple opponents?) In the case of...

What if Phelps calmly strolls into the shallow end to save a drowning 5-year old? Is it only heroism if chances of success aren't very good? Or is it heroism if it's the right thing? I think the important part is that it's the right thing. You can do the right thing with +2 just the same as...

I was trying to highlight the irony of your criticizing reliance on "many, many, many words", "and titles, with fancy and clever phrases of nomenclature", in a post that is predominately many, many, many words, with fancy and clever phrases of nomenclature. I don't think that has anything to do...

Indeed.

I was thinking either Cha primary, Con secondary, or the inverse, but I suppose you're right, a more careful selection of powers might leave the other attack stat almost irrelevant.

The improvement from stats is 4 over 30 levels, exactly like the advantage of heavy masterwork armour over light masterwork armour. Which means that light armour + raising Dex/Int improves at about the same rate as heavy armour. So everyone starts at different places (just Int for wizards, Dex +...

Do melee rangers and warlocks suffer a significant lag in AC at later levels? Every other class/build either has heavy armour, or has reason to increase a stat that applies to AC. Obviously, the AC of a tactical warlord with starting Int 16 will still be behind that of the rogue with starting...

This... this is beautiful. :.-(

In my, still limited, experience: the setting can range from silly grotesquerie to depressing grimness, but there's a lot of room in between for something really engaging. Character creation is really interesting. Once you let go of the need to create just what you want to be and look at it as...

This reminds me of another example: I don't like dragonborn. Not so much that I would ban them for a generic anything goes D&D game, but I have a strong bias against playing a monstrous race. But what it comes down to is having a dragon-like head. Strip that out, and you have a nation of proud...

Exalted has special abilities (charms, Exalted calls them) that are as crunchy and interesting for non-combat skills as they are for combat skills. You might be so good with a sword than you can make it shoot bolts of energy, or so good with a dagger that you can throw one and make it split...

Shouldn't all these be accounted for in a balanced encounter? Game balance isn't about monsters rolling d20+10 and you rolling d20+15 and seeing who rolls higher. It's about monsters outnumbering you 5 to 1, but only having half of your hit points, but then again you have better powers, and yet...

And I'm saying there's a fundamental difference between the mindset of a hero, and the mindset of a designer of a framework which is to rely on randomization and expected to produce stories which we characterize as heroic. I don't think that adage is true in the sense in which you think it's...

So you have 5 Nth-level PCs fighting five 5 (N+2)th-level villains and think "wow, these guys are really outclassed!" and they still manage to win. But this is because 4E, using different notations for PCs and monsters, can nicely camouflage what the numbers really mean. And what they really...

To do what? To consistently roll better than 10.5 on a d20? As much as it's a central conceit of the game to pretend otherwise, D&D is rigged in the PCs' favour, either through statistics or through fudging. It's not something you want on the surface of the players minds because it detracts...

Ha! That's exactly the idea I've had, and the thing that finally let me make peace with the idea of the laser cleric. :)

So in the actual game, how do you run #2? If you use monsters that are genuinely stronger than the PCs, like the criminal in your story, how often does it end like your story, and how often does it end with the heroes making a valiant effort, but in vain? In a story, the author chooses...

So in fact it doesn't go in the order it appears in the book, but backtracks to recheck previous steps after each next step? :) How is being a human relevant for this, actually? If taking a multiclass feat gives you access to the second class's list for the purposes of picking a human extra...

One of the things I disliked in 4E at first was a significant disconnect between the flavour and the mechanics. Many more elements went the way of hit points and stopped representing any one specific element of the game world, and started being primarily game pieces, with descriptions to be...