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Serious question for the "no cover = no Hide, even with HiPS" folks. Assume a long corridor of some sort (oriented north-south) with a doorway at the north end. There is a guard in the doorway, facing north (away from the corridor) and not looking behind him at all because he's not expecting...

In general, as covered in the Magic Overview section of the PHB, if a spell's area/volume is expressed as a number of fixed areas/volumes (like "X 10-foot cubes, for example) it can be manipulated by the caster if it has the Shapeable quality (a little "(S)" in the area line). Otherwise, the...

Again, just hammer home the point that flat-footed simply means "you can't react immediately" while surprise means "your enemy gets a whole action on you." A rogue sneaks up on a guard from behind. The guard is flat-footed and surprised. The rogue sneak attacks him with his surprise round...

Dandu has covered the mechanical side of things well, as he usually does, so let me address the flavor side of things and some of the finer mechanical details to help allay your concerns on that front. Whisper gnomes aren't really broken per se, just very good for specialized stealth types...

Huh, seems you're right; I misread the "abandoned spells" part.

Actually, that's not the case. Arcane casters can leave slots open, but divine casters have to prepare their spells at the same time every day: If you want to "leave slots open" as a divine caster, that's fine...but you can't prepare anything else in them until your prayer time comes up the...

The system is an interesting one, and not too esoteric; "make an attack as a swift action" is probably the second most common fix aspect I've seen, after "all iteratives are at -5 instead of -5/-10/-15." However, it doesn't fix one of the major problems with melee past 6th level, namely that...

Apologies in advance for the wall o' text. This, I think, is where you and I differ. When I DM, I'm not "telling a story," which implies I have more of a right to dictate the narrative than the players do. I'm providing a setting for my players, and they're free to do what they want with...

The problem isn't RAW vs. RAI, the problem is the added rolls, the cascade of rulings, and the arbitrariness. If every time you describe an axe attack as smacking the defender's knuckles with the haft you add a Dex and Con check into the mix, combat slows to a crawl. If you already use plenty...

From a mechanical perspective, the alienist can't summon non-pseudonatural creatures, which means no non-templated outsiders on the SM lists, which means you don't get all the outsiders' SLAs, which drastically cuts down on your utility. From a flavor perspective, a summoner of Far Realms...

Mostly because the sorcerer's main advantages over the wizard are number of spells per day and repeatability of tricks. If you're already a duskblade, who gets ridiculous numbers of 5th-and-below spells for channeling already and is a spontaneous caster, it's much more useful to go wizard...

In general, beguiler >> lurk. The first build makes you a dual-casting metamagic-using powerhouse, the second one makes you a rogue/wizard with a few minor perks. It really depends on what you want to do, though; both beguiler and lurk do sneaking and skill-monkeying well, but if you're...

It seems to me that the main things you wanted from those two classes were (A) channeling spells through melee weapons and (B) teleporting and dealing damage at the same time, correct? If that's the case, I'd suggest taking a look at two things: the duskblade class and the lightning leap spell...

I'd suggest linking the Cataclysm in DL to the Mourning in Eberron--in both cases, an entire region is wiped off the map with disastrous consequences for its respective world, so having this trauma create some sort of link between the worlds would work nicely. Maybe the meteor strike in DL...

On page 62 of Dragon #280 there's a feat called Extra Familiar which, surprise surprise, gives you another familiar. It can even be taken multiple times if you really want.

In fact, there's a Colossal+ size category, so Colossal isn't the upper limit. Though it isn't RAW, given that size categories follow a logical pattern, it wouldn't be unreasonable to rule that mountains, moons, etc. fit into ever-larger Colossal+++, Colossal +++++, etc. categories, with...

Both of those objections are solved by greater teleport. I'd say "231,000 miles straight up," "that particular crater on the moon," and similar would be considered reliable descriptions. EDIT: Ninja'd by Dandu.

I allow everything, setting, non-setting, and Dragon. If you want to play it, I'll find a way to make it work. Players only have one character to work with (possibly multiple if I'm in a killer DM mood ;)) while DMs have a whole world, so I feel that making small changes to the world to...

There's a site out there called Delta's D&D whose author still plays OD&D and writes lots of articles comparing "old school" D&D with 3e/4e, such as a comparison of OD&D spell levels. You might want to check that out to save yourself some work.

It depends on what you view as being the spirit of the rules. While you may interpret the spirit of the rules to be "The designers intended for the mystic theurge to be entered only after level 6, so I will enforce an arcane 3/divine 3 entry," I interpret the spirit of the rules to be "The...