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It should be as long as it needs to be, and not one page more or less than that. How long is that? I don't have the slightest clue. Without seeing how the system works, assigning page counts to any given mechanical system seems quite pointless, never mind assigning a page limit to the overall...

Not to pick on you, but coup de gras would be "blow of fat". I think you're looking for coup de grâce ("blow of mercy"). ;)

The article you link to was one of my references. :) "Repeated tests in the 1960s confirmed this basic picture. A chimpanzee had, pound for pound, as much as twice the strength of a human when it came to pulling weights. The apes beat us in leg strength, too, despite our reliance on our legs...

The defining archetype of the assassin is not simply "they murder things", it's "they murder things that they catch unaware". Walking up to someone who is in the middle of a fight for their life is not assassination. It's combat, and the assassin should be playing by the same combat rules...

I agree. If I manage to stick a sword through your brain, you are dead. It doesn't matter whether my character sheet says assassin, rogue, wizard, fighter, or rat-catcher. Sword+brain=death. Assassins come in two varieties: disposable and career. Disposable assassins are great story devices...

I think rules for gaining followers (anything from a single loyal lackey, up to an entire empire) and obtaining bases of operation (anything from a ramshackle lean-to all the way to a castle in the sky and beyond) are a great idea. I don't think either should ever be a default class feature...

Weapon proficiency: Kazoo

One can have flaws and weaknesses without having penalties. Yes, race should influence your character concept. I agree. However, in 4E, with no racial ability score penalties: Halflings do make better rogues than barbarians. Dwarves do make better fighters than sorcerers. Gnomes do make better...

I disagree most emphatically. Opportunity costs are great. You can't be the best at A, because you opted to be the best at B. However, you can be decent at A. Brilliant. Lovely. Penalties suck. You can't be the best at A. You can't be decent at A. Because you liked something about the race...

Each class should, by default, be at least competent in each pillar. No class should be, through any selection of options, be completely dominant in any pillar. "As good in combat" is so vague as to be quite meaningless. A 4E fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard are all competent in combat, but...

I voted other, as none of the choices quite fit my views on the matter. Must have Racial ability bonuses, but NO ability penalties I'm sympathetic to this position, as I strongly dislike ability penalties. I prefer to play with point-buy rather than rolled stats, and ability penalties can...

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Three Hearts and Three Lions, an entertaining fantasy story by Poul Anderson that Gary Gygax listed as one of the inspirations for D&D Holger Carlsen was a champion of Law, yes. Good is never mentioned in the story, it's a purely Law/Chaos divide. He only sides with...

With all of the talk about what paladins are, or should be, or must be that's been bouncing around, I'd been curious as to the background of what paladins were meant to represent in the game. It is my understanding, and feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, that the primary inspiration for...

More important than system? No. I don't care if it's the best story or sandbox ever created, if the system doesn't work it doesn't work. If the system works well, but the published adventures are sub-par, I can come up with my own adventures. If the adventures are great, but the system is...

While I honestly don't care what they say about HP, and what they represent, as long as they work (and so voted "Who cares?"), it can have an impact on the design of the game in ways I do care about. I like Warlords. I like that I don't need divine magic or potions to recover from the depletion...

When I talk about wanting balance, and I think this holds true for many others on these boards, I'm not saying I want "everybody can contribute to any situation equally". I'm saying I want "everybody can contribute to any situation meaningfully". Should bards have advantages over fighters in a...

Yeah, I think in many ways, for the fighter at least, the Defender Aura (though it could stand to have a better name), is a better mechanic than what the PHB fighter gets. The fact that the punishment is an opportunity action (once per turn) means it's more effective at handling crowds than the...

You make a couple of assumptions there that may be unfounded. You assume that people who played 3E before switching to 4E were "pretty happy" with it, rather than making do with what they had. You also assume that they bothered playing fighters in 3E. I put forward the suggestion that if said...

In the vast majority of fantasy literature, fairy tales, and mythology that I'm aware of, this simply isn't true. Magic almost always has costs and limits. The nature of those costs, and where those limits fall, varies from story to story. Sometimes these costs and limits aren't stated within...

The thing is that HP always have been and always will be a very poor model of physical damage and injuries. With occasional racial or class exceptions across various editions, your character doesn't function differently at 1 HP (on the verge of death or unconsciousness) than it does at 82...