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Frankly, "hit the goblin with my sword" doesn't cut the mustard if you're particularly sensitive to narrative or simulation. A lot of the "damage" in terms of HP in sword fights involve people avoiding getting skewered or gutted at the expense of being bludgeoned, put off-balance, and...

Likewise, I agree whole-heartedly. It makes no sense AND its mechanically poor in general. The problem begins with a faulty assumption: "I swing my sword at the goblin" is not an accurate description of what happens in an attack roll. "I attempt to defeat the goblin in melee. I'm wielding a...

Exactly. Rolling a trap / environment check vs. Passive Perception was the first and most obvious solution that came to my head too. Then I realized about a minute later that it made only the highest passive perception in the party matter, and then I concluded that such a thing was incredibly...

The one problem with passive scores is that the second-rank character never one-ups the first-rank character. That's the beauty of a volatile random element, sometimes people get to be the lucky one instead of the redundant one. Generating all those rolls, though, can bog down the flow of the...

This is the key, indeed. If you are worried about things getting a little unbalanced at times, feel free to play director and invoke Nastier Specials on monsters and whatnot to keep things interesting. The real key, though, is to make sure the flow of your game provides incentive for players to...

Frankly, I don't think being a low-level Cleric has anything to do with rank in the hierarchy. The idea that being able to drop spells, sling a war-hammer, and wear heavy armor has anything to do with qualification to shepherd a congregation or maintain orthodoxy among various cities and nations...

Sedgwick Surefoot is haunted by the spirits of his ancestors - Halfling barbarians who conquered and settled what is now called Old Town. They are a tad disappointed in their doughy descendants and demand Sedgwick restore the Old Ways. Nathaniel, aka "The Gnat," was the Imperial Matchmaker...

I love 4E. If I want to run a very tactical, skirmish-based game focused on teamwork I'll run 4E with various steals from 13th Age bolted on. I also love 4E for the game evolution elements that 13th Age has inherited from it. - Marty Lund

One thing that I've come to appreciate is that a good adventure or adventure path should have an easy sliding scale of detail levels where they are still useful. I love deeply involved adventurers / paths with colorful NPCs, Byzantine schemes, and lots of balls in the air that respect cause and...

The term missing here is "depraved indifference." Someone who pursues their own interests with depraved indifference to the direct and indirect harm his or her actions (or inaction) causes to other people is, even in the absence of malice, qualified as villainous. - Marty Lund

I just want consistent rationale. If HP are meat then you eat the death spiral. Losing meat means being crippled as you head down to 0. Legend of the Five Rings RPG handles this. It's way more deadly than D&D, though, and I don't think it would sell. Healing would need to be purely magical in...

I think it usually boils down more to. "Player 4: 'Hey, Player 1 shouldn't be able to do that! He's a muggle! If I wanted to put up with that I'd play a Supers game! It's ruining my simulation (of being more special and powerful than everyone else).'" I think it also runs afoul of trying to...

To be financially successful (as opposed to a short-term, brand-name cash-in), the game needs to do several things: 1.) Be distinct mechanically from the OGL SRD That content is free, been done to death, and it can be innovated on much more efficiently by smaller-press publishers. 5E can't...

In the end, I think that's one of the things that sold me so strongly on 13th Age. The classes are not symmetrical, but they are balanced enough and nobody gets left caddying for anyone else just because of the class they picked, regardless of the game pillar. I think they surgically removed...

While Symmetry will give you Balance, not everything that is Balanced is Symmetrical. Most people don't object to Balance in a game. Sure, you'll always have someone here or there that wants to role-play "this guy is the best because [Insert Feature Here]" and might try to justify it as an...

The Open Gaming License was as terrible for Dungeons and Dragons as it was good for Hobby Gaming overall. The OGL allowed for the massive fragmentation of the d20 market while eliminating the core change-over incentive that made it possible to cleanly sunset one edition of D&D while releasing...

They'd probaby do a much better job merely supporting an existing D&D edition. Their ability to manage so large a brand or actually roll out a new edition they didn't borrow directly from another company that already paid all the overhead for development? That remains to be seen. Frankly...

I fail to see how "it's magic" answers the question, "is that an unacceptable limitation on narrative space?" Especially considering there are non-magical explosive effects that, likewise, automatically deal damage even on a missed attack roll, and if we're being sticklers for simulation it is...

That's probably where it should be, a player option in the core. If you don't like it you don't give it to your character. If, however, someone is really that upset over the prospect of someone else's character using it because it "ruins the simulation" they can put forward a gentleman's...

What chance? His combat style is such that if you're unfortunate to be the focus of attention while he's locked into close combat with you for 6 seconds worth of crashing-bashing-slicing-and-dicing you come away with less hit points (maybe from fatigue, maybe from injury, maybe using up your...