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Errr ... I can't see how changing your personal facing in any way changes the definition of "horizontal", which literally means "parallel to the horizon", and seems pretty clearly expressed as "in the plane which lies perpendicular to the vector of gravity." ;)

We've skirted that one a couple times, too - I've got a convoluted, Japanese-manga-inspired plotline going where at any given moment, most conflicts have three, four, or even five sides in them. I'm certain that the question of who is an "ally" and who is an "enemy" is going to come up in a...

Love the cutting edge graphics, Gruns! Dr., I'd argue not - "pull", "push", and "slide" are all keywords referring to horizontal movement, not vertical movement. If you gave Mr. Red the ability to "pull" four squares into the air, and drop 20' onto the rocks for +2d10 damage, then any other...

The best hack we'd managed for attack totals was using a weapon of the wrong magical +, and re-naming it .. but that affects both to-hit and damage. Alternately, you can simply hide all weapons from the attack power cards, and write things in yourself. (Gosh how I wish Character Builder had...

Rachel, I thought I was clear about that - the quoted section I had grabbed and cut-and-pasted from our own house rules document, which included results on both double-20 and double-1. The bit about "fumbling to victory" was pure directive for our DM's about making sure to limit the "1"...

Well, our premise was, neither she nor anybody else knew she was a paladin until the proverbial orcs attacked the village. :) I tried putting her family's cabin directly between her and the orcs, but she skipped right past it and charged into combat without sword or armor. Heroic? Certainly...

Find one of the "Monster Builder" utilities - I think there's one on D&D Insider, but I've been using "Monster Maker" ... and I kid you not, I started down the same slippery slope and now I pretty much make up my own monsters for every encounter .. my players are actually kinda surprised when...

Heh - you and I seem to be on the same page, Rachel, for so many things. Started the party paladin without any armor at all for our first session .. (though, to be fair, her dad had a suit of chain and a sword under the bed, she didn't know those were there and did fight without either before...

We actually use something similar to this, but instead of the quickness and ease of your "Deathblow", the second 20 gives a secondary critical effect of the DM's discretion according to environmental factors. (Same on 1's, actually - with a double-1 being a critical failure.) Our canonical...

:) I was really annoyed when one of my characters showed up with a min-maxed ranger who was going to totally outshine the rest of the role-play-party in combat ... ... and quite pleased when the player, after the first session, realized that my campaign was going to require a lot of finesse in...

Wow, erik, that's pretty radical. I can see where you're going with it, though, and I think its perfectly workable as a house rule. If your general problem is "All characters look the same", you can still take some other approaches in Character Builder. Its certainly got the ability to support...

:) True enough - there has been quite a bit of debate on that subject; I've seen very good arguments on both sides. So as not to overwhelm our new player with that debate, I'm quite content to agree to disagree, and simply point it out as something that your group should agree upon ahead of...

Yeah - for a new player understanding this, it might be easier to read this as Attack: Strength vs AC, using main weapon Target: one creature Damage: 1[W] Effect: Make a Secondary Attack using your off-hand weapon Secondary Attack: Strength vs AC, using off-hand weapon Secondary Target: one...

Not that I know of. From the player's perspective, if the old power is compelling enough to keep, its compelling enough to keep. If not, swap it out. It does make for an interesting decision at times, though - I've certainly had times where I've ditched a power that wasn't the lowest level...

Agreed. I typically write myself a "morale" section as part of the "Tactics" section when I'm writing an encounter, describing specific conditions in the battle which may cause somebody's morale to break. For example, I had some wolfrider archers paired with their wolf, and decided that the...

Yeah, I know - but if we're looking at a one-on-one fight, the fact that the THP don't stack only comes into play when the monster misses .. so the fighter still winds up ahead.

Yeah, this is my thinking, too. If I have three PCs who deal plenty of Radiant damage, then throwing a bunch of "Resist 5 Radiant" creatures at them is going to really up the difficulty of those encounters. On the other hand, I can use some individual vulnerabilities and resistances to add some...

Agreed, Dredly - we went with that at 4 players and it made a huge difference. We use a white board and dry-erase markers, where we keep track of pretty much everything: initiative, bonuses, penalties, status effects, etc - it gives you a single place to look to remember all of those "oh I have...

You're welcome! Trying to read between the lines, it feels like you're focused on this because you really want to DM a one-on-one situation. If you want some practical advice, I've DM'ed exactly that - and ironically, as orc-vs-ranger. The first thing to consider is, "What is the rest of the...

I think discounting the surges sent her way by her companions does a disservice to the game designers. To quote the assumptions in your post - "It is assumed that both will have teammates assisting them and factoring what help they may or not be is beyond the scope of this theory." "Assuming...