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Meh. It's superfluous. Either I have an Assassin at the table, in which case I need to care about the class as DM. Or I don't, in which case the class is completely irrelevant. And whether a class is common or uncommon for NPCs depends on the game world, the region and the campaign. If NPCs use...

No no no no no. Bad Monte. This is NOT how Wizard vs. Fighter should work. ... The fighter hits someone for 12 damage and then the wizard hits someone for 4, and the wizard wishes he had rolled better. Then fighter hits someone for 4 damage and then the wizard hits someone for 12, and the...

WotC wants you to buy their products, rather than those of another company. Pope still Catholic. If the Paizo competition forces WotC to make better(-selling) products, I'm all for it. If WotC is really smart, they'll make 5E open enough so that Paizo can publish material that works with both...

I read the announcement as "if you could build it with Edition X PHB, you can build it with whatever the 5E basic book will be". Still, I'm pretty sure we'll see either Sorcerer or Warlock. One has the magic "in him", the other taps an external higher power, but apart from that they are were...

These are all nice ideas but I don't think they will work well at the table. The advantage of having powers for combat and rituals / skills for non-combat is that players know where to look for what. Don't forget that there are many casual players out there who like if stuff is clearly labeled...

Just to get that out of the way: Did any 4E GM ever hand out "wish lists" to players? I sure didn't. If something like that is suggested in the PHB I never noticed. One thing 5E has to do is give the DM the tools to adjust the encounters to the amount of stuff the PCs carry. Some groups like...

I get it - we geeks don't watch sports, so we don't get to root for "our team" every Sunday. We're sitting around a dinner table pretending to be elves and wizards. Still, there seems to be a deep-rooted human need to identify with one side and show support for it. In RPG, this tends to be...

But really, I think the big hangup is Old School. As Tome of Battle showed, there is a fluent transition between 3E and 4E. But I don't see how they can reconcile with editions that are not based on the d20 + modifier mechanic. </snark> There is only one solution - gamers need to stop rooting...

You may want to look into a small RPG called Over The Edge. This system works with just four custom stats for each PC. I did these kind of very reductionist systems, but I don't think they fit what most people would expect a D&D to be. It's the same reason D&D will never be class-less, or fully...

I disagree. A damage-focused fighter should dish out similar damage to a rogue. The fighter should be better at tanking, the rogue better at damage avoidance and mobility. In the same way, Fighters should be useful out of combat too, be it in swimming, climbing, jumping, logistics, smithing...

I remember playing with the AD&D Complete Thief's Handbook a lot, and back then there was a lot of variety to the class. You could play your Thief as a cat burglar, an acrobat, a pick pocket... This stuff is older than 3E. It's fine if you have your interpretation of the class, but that's just...

I think it's still a lot easier than hybrids, 3E multiclassing, or dual classing. (The jury is still out whether it's easier than AD&D multiclass)... All you need is a table: Level - what you get 1 - ability A 2 - ability B 4 - ability C 6 - ability D For the secondary path, you just get...

Every class is core. If you don't think a class is unique and interesting enough that it deserves full support, improve it until it is. That said, I think that 5E should be able to reproduce all 3E and 4E characters eventually, after enough splatbooks (there is some pretty wild stuff in late 3E...

True, for some players 4E went too far in making every class equal. However, 4E was right that every class should have the same BAB, and that the class features and powers you get on top of that should be balanced with each other. ("Balanced" is more flexible than "exactly the same") Of course...

Feng Shui (Note that Robin D. Laws did some work on DMG II (IIRC)) * Initiative system (a gliding system where everyone acts several times per round, with different actions taking different time) * Stunts (the game encourages heroic combat actions without a complicated framework, better than...

I am appaled at this mundane attempt to make the game easier for muggles. If anything, the game needs to use a prime number as base, so the game is a proper exercise for our advanced brains. I suggest Base 17, just to confuse the peasants with Computer Science degrees. I also suggest to use an...

I'd experiment with multiclass as the default. Split classes into paths (archer ranger, melee ranger, beastmaster ranger; illusionist wizard, necromancer wizard, conjurer wizard...) and let everyone pick two paths, one from your main class and one from a second class. If you don't want to...

It's not like you need permission from WotC to create your own races. All you need is pen & paper. But yes, it would be nice to have a book like Unearthed Arcana later that gives guidance on making your own races and classes. For the 5E DDI (or whatever the online rules database is called) it...

I think it's a good idea to have some flexible "super-class" that players can mix and match to build their dream character. However, such a super-flexible system is not for the PHB. The PHB should allow me to have a character up and running in 10 minutes, and that means nicely pre-packaged...

It's an option. But let's see the first rules draft before thinking about these things.