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The one answer I didn't like is on the first question, which asked whether rage had to be limited times per day. Yeah, I get his point that you want it to be a Big Deal to pop rage, but the other restrictions on it (max once/encounter and it ends if you don't attack on your turn) seem like...

What if they kept the current system but called them "faiths" instead of "deities"? That would open it up to all the cleric-of-an-idea folks, since even if you're a Cleric of the Platonic Concept of Serenity or whatever, you have to have faith in that idea to power your spells. It would also...

I think the rules assume that by level one you're badass enough to walk into a dungeon full of supernatural beasts with a few friends and expect to come out alive. For a wizard, this might happen after a week at magic school, Harry Potter style, or it could take decades of study - but for a...

Okay. First off, remember that all the classes in D&D (except 3e NPC classes) are ADVENTURING classes. A level 1 fighter is experienced enough at adventuring to feel confident walking into a crypt full of zombies. As such, he's probably spent a decent amount of time traversing the countryside as...

Just to be clear (since I didn't notice anyone else saying it), Mearls and co. have stated that the idea for Basic is to give each class "training" in all checks tied to one ability. So rogues add their skill die to all Dex checks, fighters to Str checks, wizards to Int, and clerics to Cha...

But calling them domains adds a new, even weirder problem: now if a cleric of Mystra and a cleric of Shar both choose the Magic domains, they're mechanically identical. This was less of an issue in 3e because you got two domains at first level, so the cleric of Shar could be "Magic" and...

This is why people say fighters can't have nice things. Your goal is a SYSTEM-WIDE mechanical preference (fewer skills per character), but you're only specifically applying that preference to the fighter, because the fighter is such a broad concept that no one skill seems "required" in the way...

See, this is one potential problem with open-ended skill systems: unless the players are fairly careful and mature about how they select and use their open-ended skills, it becomes difficult to account for them fairly. For example, some players who chose "luck" as a skill would then try to...

Seriously? This is an attitude I don't get at all. I can understand saying that NOBODY should get bonus skills, or even that only rogues should get bonus skills, but when you basically say it's justifiable for every class EXCEPT fighters and barbarians to get bonus skills, you're just penalizing...

On the types of martial effect missing from 5e: Hamstringing and blinding make sense. "Giving them a concussion" would seem to either be subdual/nonlethal damage or stunning. "Kicking them in the groin" would I guess be some kind of minor "distract" or "disorient" effect - give them some...

First off, I already solved the edition wars forever over on the WOTC boards: So that's why there's an argument over "sameness" in 4e. (The ideal for 5e, at least IMHO, would be to combine the mechanical differentiation of 4e with the resource-management variety of late-stage 3.5e.)

First off, you don't LOSE parry when you multiclass - it just stops getting better, like Channel Divinity or any other class-specific feature. (All your other maneuvers would continue to scale if you multi classed into something else with MDD, which is already more than you can say for multi...

It might be productive here to list some effects that non magical character SHOULD be able to produce, and evaluate how effective the current rules are at producing those effects. Disarm - in the core rules, seems to work fine Grapple - same, maybe a bit fiddly Decapitate - in my mind this is...

I think the power level debate is an odd one. I have no idea what kind of game you're playing with a music student, football player, and air marshall, but if that system contains 200 pages of rules for how to simulate football, including subspecialties for every different position and coaching...

I'm with you on level 1 characters - at the very least the game should have straightforward rules for creating a character below level 1, so that if I want to start out playing a teenager wielding his grandpa's rusty broadsword who can barely survive an encounter with a single kobold, or an...

Sure! Let's go back to the levels argument. To my mind, "level" is an entirely game-mechanical number that has very little to do with lore or narrative. No fiction I've ever read, even D&D-derived stuff like Dragonlance or Drizzt, ever explicitly states the character level of anyone. So if...

Good list. The only one I'd question is illusions, which I'd make wis or int (defender's choice). It's also worth noting that str, dex and wis get targeted by maneuvers, combat contents like disarm, and skill tricks, which at least ups the amount of str and wis saves out there.

Sorry, poor phrasing on my part. I meant that it's harder to balance an unbalanced system with house rules than it is to use house rules to intentionally unbalance a system that was originally balanced. So using house rules to mAke 3e fighters comparable to 3e wizards in overall power is...

Um, sure it will. 4e wizards had about the same level of narrative control, via rituals and utility spells, but their combat powers were rigidly balanced against all other classes. So whatever complaints people had about wizards' narrative control in 4e, I don't think I've ever heard the LFQW...

On the second point, there is indeed such a measurement: it's called class level. The only reason to have a level-based system is if the same level characters and monsters are supposed to correlate in overall power level. D&D is many things to many people, but it evolved from a tactical minis...