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You're welcome. :) Personally, I think I'd just retire the characters and start a new campaign. The end of heroic tier seems like a good time for them to settle down and become lords, guildmasters, renowned scholars, and so on.

Nah, I've got a 19-year-old Subaru. But I still wouldn't want to drive a Model T. Top speed 45 mph, no power steering, no airbags, no cupholders...

You're probably right. It depends on whether there are other "instadeath, but only if you're bloodied" effects.

Having it work on a critical, but only if the enemy is bloodied after the weapon's damage, would be reasonably fair. It's still a cool effect, but you have to get the monster halfway dead before it works.

We may have a terminology issue here. I am using mechanic to mean a rule that specifies exactly what the answer is, with minimal judgment on the DM's part. A guideline is a rule that suggests an answer, or a range of answers, but explicitly allows the DM to use his or her judgment in the result...

The elements of your post I quoted are not playstyle. They are mechanics. Dismissing those mechanics before you ever try them makes me wonder if you believe that Wizards of the Coast is entirely incompetent.

If this is true, you are entirely welcome to skip 4e and let the rest of us enjoy our badwrongfun. Or you could wait and see if you actually like it, rather than just dismissing it out of hand. Pick whichever works for you.

Points of Light is easy to define. Imagine a map of your campaign world. Color in all the parts which are civilized, where some power keeps monsters in check, in white. Color in the lawless, monster and bandit-infested areas in black. What does your map look like? If it looks like a bunch of...

I agree that those are good things, but I don't think giving the monsters specific out-of-combat abilities is the way to solve either. Your a) doesn't require that the out-of-combat abilities have any sort of rules support. All it requires is a lot of information on the monster's ecology and...

Based on the paladin smites, I think that it's more likely that the wizard will get a single ability which functions as stunning zap at low levels, and becomes a full-fledged lightning bolt as he gains levels. It would be nice if they'd give us some info on this one way or the other.

Hear, hear.

The implicit campaign setting is not static. Right now it's points of light... but in the past there have been huge empires of tieflings, of dragonborn, and most recently of humans. Those empires eventually fell and plunged the world into darkness. But the PCs are heroes, who might be able to...

In fact, I just found this quote on the 4e info page... It seems pretty clear that the DM will be able to give monsters whatever rituals are convenient for the plot.

It's not a mechanic. It's a guideline. Honestly, I find the entire discussion of how 4e is taking power away from DMs to be strange. As far as I can tell, the game is moving away from putting restrictions on DMs, and towards providing guidelines.

Looking at the various changes we know about in 4e, I've noticed some overarching design themes. Some of them the designers have talked about, and some of them they haven't. I thought I'd share what I see, since it helps to explain why some of the controversial decisions have been made the way...

The pit fiend can do any of these things if you, the DM, think that it would fit the concept and would be good for the game. Nobody has come down from on high and said "Yea, this is the Pit Fiend statblock, and ye shall only use those abilities I have set forth in it." It's your campaign. Pit...

Have you considered the possibility that low-level abilities will get better as the player advances, so that most the abilities available at a given level are roughly balanced no matter when they first became available? One of the playtest reports features a 1st level wizard throwing a...

An "off-screen" monster can do anything that you, the DM, decide it should be able to do. I can see the benefit of books that go into deeper detail about the ecology and society of various monsters, and talk about their non-combat abilities. I don't think those abilities should be given specific...

I think you're making an important mistaken assumption: that a 5th level power will be better than a 1st level power. If you look at the paladin class powers you saw, you'll see that they all do the same amount of damage, they just have different secondary effects. In other words, the...

The Model T may be more iconic than the Focus, because it was revolutionary when it first came out... but I'm pretty sure that the Focus is, objectively, a better car to drive.