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Ok hear me out I just had an idea. The "problem" with 5e's concentration mechanic is really that it does discourage using concentration spells. The thinking was: Let's make buff stacking difficult. This thinking is good, but I think the method used to reach that goal wasn't that well chosen...

Notes. Excessive notes. I manage everything in Emacs, using something called org-mode. Emacs is probably a bit too hardcore to get into if you're not really enthusiastic about it, but I think for this use case it is unbeatable. It allows me to write notes in plain text and then to have sections...

My ideal paladin class design has paladin as a spell-less martial character surrounded by a divine aura that, as you level up, provides increasingly better effects. Initially the effects apply only to yourself, but you can spend some resource to extend the aura to boost your allies.

I think he's implying with "social scenes" that the class has nothing going for it outside of combat in general. I don't think he's talking about combat vs social interactions specifically, because D&D is about combat, exploration and talking to people. I saw nothing in what he said that...

After having thought some more about 3.0 and 3.5 (and also PF1) I think their greatest weakness is how difficult they are to run as a GM. So much of their design is really difficult to work with as a GM unless you have a premade adventure to run. Stat blocks, for example, require on-the-fly...

D&D and PF1 both had skill points, except PF1 streamlined skill points by making them independent of class. In PF1 it did not matter which level you got skill points at, only how many you got mattered. If you make a high level character in PF1 all you need to do is sum up how many skill points...

It was hideous. Pathfinder improved it quite a lot by getting rid of skill points, removing skill synergies, removing redundant skills and downplaying prestige classes (ewww). Too bad it made the system fiddly in other ways instead (backgrounds were not a good idea imo). Edit: Positives...

But this restricts martial classes such that none of them have any options, and casters such that only they have options. This is bad design.

Any cool details you can share?

Yeah I really like what I hear about the new monk. My chief issue isn't with PVP, though. It's more about how gameplay compares between classes with magic and classes without.

Agreed. It is something I really dislike with the system. You need magic to be cool. If you don't have magic you need to rely on class abilities. If you don't have cool class abilities (champion cough) then you can't do anything but do standard attacks.

Superheroes are impossible to emulate accurately in D&D because their skills transcend ability scores. There's no way Catwoman would fail a climb check, so climbing for her isn't a climb check. It's an ability that grants her a climb speed. Coincidentally this is why non-magical characters in...

Possibly because the system has, since 1e, been increasingly generous with spell casters. Since every spell is a power it means that characters with less powers feel worse relative to those with many.

This is pretty cool tbqh. Paradoxically it might actually end up increasing lethality, though. In any system where you get knocked unconscious at 0 HP it makes sense for monsters to ignore you, since you are no threat... But if characters can still act even at 0 HP then that changes things...

Sounds like it might be time to buff the monk then.

I think Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine might also qualify depending on which genre you pick for the campaign and as long as the players stick to it. The system links experience gain to your quests, and quests are things that you pick yourself when you make a character. If you pick only...

It's doubly frustrating with stuff like crits. Hoorah you rolled a crit, but you also rolled the lowest result on your dice thereby dealing the like 2 damage instead of 24 damage and wohoo it turns out the monster you attacked as a damage reduction of 5 so you deal no damage. That certainly did...

Nobilis has a mildly weird setting and only slightly unusual mechanics, but the gameplay that emerges is typically absolutely insane. Player characters are so powerful (in a way that would shame D&D level 20 wizards) that it becomes impossible to predict the direction of anything. As a game...

You can typically find these comments I'm referring to pop up in every balance discussion. Nobody has been talking about 4E they've just been saying, like, 5E is kinda imbalanced (feel free to disagree with this statement) can we do something about that, and then out of nowhere this guy comes in...

It is highly GM dependent, and I say that from experience. For example whether or not the echo can "fly" is not something all GMs will agree on.