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Well I think that is where you are diverging most from other posters. Plausibility is up to you to accept or reject. Any poster with a reasonable knowledge of physics and history could pick almost any game mechanic in D&D, deconstruct it, and show that it is "not plausible at all." Want to...

I can buy that. However, I don't think it's "symmetry". I think instead it shows the foundations in D&D Next are weak in places, there isn't much room for rules with a "feel" of difference, except the extended mechanics baked into class features. In short, the game components allowed to add...

I might be able to answer this one. I am not "old school", but I am old. "Old School" is not directly about the mechanics. The mechanics are only important in that they should not get in the way. I think 5E spell descriptions so far are a good example of that. They inspire creative thinking...

Wikipedia is not bad on academic subjects such as philospophy, maths, etymology: Ad hominem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or...

Played with rolling stats for many years, and dislike it now. When I DM'd I forced rolling in the open, and granted "catch-up" bonuses to unlucky players, via a point system (you must have more than X bonuses, otherwise add +2 to stat of choice etc). Lucky players were just plain lucky though...

Agreed, check you know what you're letting yourself in for. Those are disruptive abilities for adventures and encounters set underground or in places with stone-walled buildings. Forward-thinking pech could also use such powers very effectively for things like making campsites, crossing ravines...

I'm taking a lot of the forum comments here as posturing and/or pushing for "it needs to be moar like my version" (usually in some important-to-poster aspect). I'd agree that we've got some good balance in 5E in that regard, so it's probably treading a reasonable line. I think from what I have...

In fact in AD&D, the longsword did increase its damage die versus the dragon (against large creatures in general). Edit: Not that I condone that particular design, as it tended to hand out advantages and disadvantages to weapon types arbitrarily, and longsword ended up a clear "best" weapon to...

It's how 4E generally solved this (e.g. Dwarven Weapon Training feat). Where it didn't (e.g. rcial built-in weapon proficiencies) it was criticised. I think the current problem there for the design team is that the backgrounds and specialities are quite cut down, simplified on purpose, and...

Now that is a reasonable objection, in my world, to the race bonus. Unless there is some way around it for other TWF character concepts, it creates a world where only Halfling PCs run around using fantasy TWF styles. Which is silly, because it is visible in the game world - in a way that hit...

I think they are trading off ideas about how often someone gets advantage. I expect we may see Rogues getting something much more like the Fighter's CS dice if that proves a popular mechanic (they are just airing it for the fighter at the moment, but its getting good press). Rogues will be...

The two words do have a subtle distinction. You can have dragons that have a self-consistent "verisimilitude" that varies widely from game to game (or book to book), but there are very few attempts at "realism" regarding dragons. The Halfling ability here that appears in the story...

I suppose in the debate about multiple intelligence versus general intelligence you come out as an uncompromising supporter of the latter? I would say I have a good ability to pick up "lore" - I can learn a computer programming language fairly quickly for example. However, I have a low...

I feel like a rust monster in a plastic factory. The interesting bit tis the machinery around the product (i.e the game design theorising), but the thing itself isn't to my taste.

These two paragraphs don't necessarily follow logically. The numbers chosen matter. My feeling is that the human PC race design is giving away too much numerical advantage over the other races (i.e. compared to what they get). I would also prefer that the 6 core stats of D&D were not moved...

My bad, I mis-remembered the starting array (probably already added in the class bonus and counting it twice!)

I think that's a different topic to your OP. I definitely wouldn't support the +1 to all, +2 to choice in the playtest material as either well-designed or balanced (in terms of race choices being equal). I'm surprised it passed through early stages of QA. However, I'm fine with halflings being...

Obviously not possible for a published adventure starting at a high level. But the adventure designers could include a note about expected gear for the adventure (perhaps with suggested adjustments to the adventure, not to the gear, if PC resources are far away from the adventure design). Of...

The only problem I have with take 10 mechanics is that there's a big jump between "Auto success" and "Fail more often than succeed" that this generates. There's no "Slight risk of failure" that might make the players consider their options, or at least make trade-off decisions about risk versus...

There are plenty of us that see damage system as inherently illogical from 1E. But let's not re-open the hit points debate. It's definitely highly abstract, and I have no problem with "character X is better at using weapon Y" translating into a either a bonus to hit or a damage boost completely...