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Here's the thing, though - WHICH abilities the villains have that the PCs don't depends on which source you're going by. Within the range of fantasy media, you'll find 'player character equivalents' include, just off the top of my head: Angels Anthropomorphic animals Centaurs Death Knights*...

:lol: Um... no? EQ2 has fewer players than EQ1, about a quarter the players of FF XI, and approximately 2% as many as World of Warcraft. It barely even rates.

It is the question that drives us. Because 3e looks like a game that was designed prior to most of the ten busiest years of RPG innovation ever. Because 3e is especially embarrassing in comparison to closely related and streamlined systems like Star Wars Saga Edition. Because 3e already...

As opposed to the not-at-all-cliched Legolas and Gimili clones? Give me a break. Every D&D race except gnomes and humans is ALL ABOUT playing up a cliche. If this is even close to a popular enough type of cliche to justify the amount of indigestion it appears to cause those who want their...

Not only WOULD I allow it, I HAVE allowed it, once with the default LA (which was absurd), once with the LA knocked down a bit by feel (which worked better but was still kind of boring for the player), and finally with a homebrew LA +3 version found on these very boards (which worked great)...

Yes. With that said, I wish they would just bite the bullet and make them full-on tinker gnomes, be they effective (Warcraft) or bumbling (Dragonlance). As they currently exist, I don't really see a core role for them, but I do like the race in the tinker/techie role. I wouldn't mind more...

Absolutely, to both this and your earlier question. Why the heck would I possibly care what the player decided to play? :confused: If he was enjoying himself, what possible benefit would it be to the game for me to metaphorically swat him on the nose with a rolled-up magazine and say his fun...

I would prefer the name 'cambion' for the demon-descended as well. Tiefling is too Planescapey for me to ever actually want to play one.

1. From a reality simulation perspective, facing is really, really stupid. Sorry, but it's true - "look over your shoulder?" More like duck, weave, get behind light cover, constantly switch places with your opponent, etc. A dragon or a centipede have an even EASIER time turning around, btw...

Actually, yes. The ONLY reason I didn't have drow listed in my theoretical PHB is because they're technically an elven subrace. In retrospect, I think that may be a bit of bias creeping into my selections, so I'll formally add them to my list. Drow, specifically good drow with two scimitars...

Game Balance in general means that the game provides each player with either the same opportunities, chances and options, or with equivalent ones. Chess provides the players with many of the same options (the pieces) and theoretically equivalent opportunities (going first or second), although...

Sure. ANY non-Tolkienesque race in the PHB is a plus in my book, even gnomes (ESPECIALLY gnomes if they were more explicitly Dragonlance- or Warcraft-style mechanic-gnomes). Unusual ones like tieflings are doubly valuable. They all demonstrate that the game is, or at least can be, bigger than...

Players may have, although IMX it was about 50/50 in terms of actually doing otherwise, but characters certainly did not. Why was the wizard the guy who could read the arcane runes? And what if the runes were simply in another language? Why couldn't the cleric comprehend the sorcerer (who...

At least after 3.5, I'd say the crunch put out by 3rd party d20 publishers was FAR less prone to outright broken exploits than WotC's own. I've actually walked from D&D games over a '3rd party ban,' and in every case in which the GM relented, he discovering that what I wanted was invariably...

I'll continue to PUBLISH for both 3.5 and 4e when it comes to any .pdf product, because why limit the market? I'd be very surprised if it wasn't worth the time to do this. Frankly, I can't understand why 99% of .pdf releases are dual- or tri-statted into 3.5, RuneQuest and FATE right now. In...

When Ryan Dancey launched the OGL, one of his main points was that Wizards would take what they considered the 'best of' back in-house and update D&D using it. So far, a lot of what we're seeing, with what appear to be nods to Saga, Iron Heroes, Spycraft and others, seems to be doing exactly...

Er... I'm not going to address the rest of your issues, since they're pretty standard, but this one just blows my mind. :confused: Speaking as another freelance author, albeit not one who was 'jerked around by' 3.0, I'm really at a loss to see how a new edition can be anything but a massive...

I would rank them: Character classes Dragons Hit points I would add 'levels' at a rank below classes but above dragons, but frankly I can't imagine any of these three going away. Classes (and levels) are one of the main things that set D&D apart from other tabletop RPGs and tie it to their...

Spycraft is a bit of an odd fish in this, because of its unusual method of handling time; all of the Dramatic Conflicts are sterling examples of what I would expect from a sophisticated encounter-based design, but the fact they (rightly) don't occur on a unified timescale makes things more...

I've played quite a few (including Spycraft 2.0 which is, IIRC, the game to which you're referring). My experience with session length is that it varies considerably from session to session - if your experience is one of consistency, that explains a great deal. Similarly, I've had sessions...