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If the answer to "The bluff worked; how will the guards react to it?" is anything other than "pretty much how the rogue wants them to," or at least "exactly as the rules define on page X," then the party would be better off ditching the rogue and letting the wizard cast a nice reliable Charm spell.

I think this is an easy fix, then: don't give monsters Taunt or Charm! That way the only characters getting taunted are the NPCs, and nobody cares whether the DM gets to make choices. ;) On another note: why is everyone so in favor of the MDD change he talks about? It makes weapon selection...

I don't think you're out in left field, but I do disagree a bit. First, on the practical side: forced movement is just a lot easier to keep track of than short-term buffs or debuffs like 4e Mark or the Taunt you describe. And designing an "incentive" that actually works as intended is even...

I like reducing it to two skills (Spot and Sneak). But unlike the second playtest, I'd keep search/track separate from Spot. Manbearcat and others have expressed concern about how items like Boots of Elvenkind work with unified sneak/spot mechanics, but I think that quick DM guidelines could...

Favorite edition: 4th, I guess? Stuff I don't want: 45-minute-IRL combat rounds.

It seems likely the "basic" product will be limited horizontally (probably simple versions of the four core classes and races). That doesn't make it a "sampler" - you can still make a character just as powerful and complete as anything from the PHB, albeit maybe less complex. You want an extra...

Isn't that the big advantage of this model? The new/"casual" players can plop down $10-20 for the "Dungeons and Dragons" box, which will give them all the dice, rules, and character sheets they'll need to play a "basic" character. If they want to play a more advanced class or race, they can...

I'd say that medium armor is in kind of a tricky place right now - if you give a class only medium armor prof and not heavy, you're basically requiring them to have 14 dex. Higher and they'd be better off with light, less and they should wear heavy.

Oh, one more point: rename Sneak Attack, since it doesn't necessarily involve sneaking. Plenty of rogues could get it from skill tricks involving feinting, frightening enemies, hitting them while they're down, or studying their defenses. Deadly Strike would be pretty innocuous, I'd think.

As the title suggests, this is an idea for differentiating rogues a bit more from fighters. One of my favorite things from the 2nd packet was how a fighter and rogue could wear the same armor and wield the same weapon and still play differently but about equally effectively in combat. A bit of...

I think you pretty much nailed it. My biggest complaint about the current system is that from a flavor perspective it seems like a compromise that doesn't please anyone: if you're thinking of spells as something that drains your willpower, a spellpoint system makes a lot more sense, whereas if...

Yeah, I saw that too. Sigh.

I disagree. Refreshing at the end of the turn means that there is almost never a tactical decision to be made: since nullifying damage is generally more powerful than dealing the same amount of damage, the best choice will almost always be to Parry if you get attacked and then deal damage with...

I edited the op to reflect Trevor's latest tweet, which clarifies that the intent is definitely for the dice only to refresh once per round at the start of your turn. His feed is here: https://www.twitter.com/Trevor_WotC Sorry for the crappy linking, I'm on my phone.

I agree, and think there's some evidence of this in the playtest - notably the arcanist channeling that gives you advantage on a spell. But time will tell whether this system is indeed superior to just giving each divinity exclusive spells.

Reading the latest playtest packet, it looks like they've made some changes to the way expertise dice (XD) work. Now, instead of them refreshing every ROUND at the end of your turn, they refresh every TURN. (At least I think? Mike Mearls and Trevor "clarified" it on Twitter, and after Mike said...

Ability scores are important because they provide a way to prevent cherry-picking of classes, feats, etc. WITHOUT super-strict rules on multiclassing. They're a somewhat organic and intuitive way to define your character's relative strengths and weaknesses: if I make a dumb fighter, he'll never...

I've never been big one premade adventures, but for my money the 4e default campaign world - with the Feywild and Elemental Chaos and so on - is actually more interesting and involving than the other major pre-4e campaign settings (Greyhawk and especially FR). Dragonlance is a great series of...

For better or for worse, it sounds to me like they're putting a bit more of character creation in the hands of the DM than was the case for a lot of groups in 4e. They say in this very Q&A that there will be DM guidelines for deity/domain creation, so if you want to play a martial cleric of a...

I agree, and I think they need to find a better way to boost 5e humans. An extra trained skill and/or feat might not be bad.