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If they reduce PC death, but also reduce PC resurrection I'll be pretty happy. Nothing is more ridiculous, IMO, than people talking about how death is always a present danger in their campaigns, then talk about how the affected characters were just carted off to the church to be raised. If you...

Yes, I think they were referring to "save or die" going away, not all forms of death attacks and death spells. They just want to greatly reduce the situations in D&D where a character can go from perfectly fine to stone-cold dead with a single die roll in a single round. So a bodak's death...

There has definitely been a beefing up of dragons going from 1e to 2e, then 2e to 3e. Many people felt that dragons in the first edition of AD&D were underpowered. In that editions, dragons were often subordinate to the mastermind villains. Heck, there were specific rules in 1e for subduing...

Since the context of this thread is the Forgotten Realms and the Spellplague, it seems like it is more than a decade too late for this. Gods starting dying off and slain by mortals (albeit with other god's help) back in the Time of Troubles. Unless we're going to retroactively rewrite the...

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but if dragons need all this magic to be effective mastermind villain, than all mastermind villains need this magic. In which case we should assemble the list of necessary spells for all mastermind villains and create a template to give to all of them. It...

I agree that it happens in modern fantasy literature fairly often. I'm not convinced at all about in real world mythology. Gods die, but almost never at the hands of human mortals. I can't think of any good examples from the most commonly used pantheons: Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Norse, Chinese...

I myself don't like gods that can be slain by mortals (I also think that people invoking real world mythology grossly overestimate the times that mortals were able to threaten the gods). However, the gods have certainly been "in limits" since the conception of the game. Zagyg in Gygax's own...

Definitely Al Qadim. The Arabian Nights fantasy genre is nice chunk of conceptual space and the original 2e works were absolutely wonderful. Only Oriental Adventures competes for it in terms of the genre space it covers and OA had a full 3e release.

As noted before, this is the way the gods have been portrayed for the Realms in 2e and 3e. This is in no way new to 4e. As you may recall, the 3e deity detailing supplements used the Deities and Demigods rules for detailing the Realms deities, which definitely resulted in them being "high...

As noted on other threads, I disagree with your assertion that dragons need spells or spell-like abilities to be mastermind villains. However, if a DM, such as yourself, wants dragons to have non-combat spell-like abilities for plot reasons, they should certainly feel free to do so. Since they...

Deities in the Realms definitely behave like high-level NPCs. With a few exceptions here and there, they've done so ever since the Time of Troubles. The deities of the Realms have long been established as a bickering group of semi-competent powers. Heck, if the deities of the Realms started...

What I still haven't seen answered is: where is this claim (that the Weave is necessary for life in the Realms to exist) made in Realms canon? Was it made at all? Is it from a completely reliable source? If true, wasn't it contradicted almost immediately by dead magic zones and antimagic...

Yes, statements from 4e designers have stated that monsters (including dragons) can take class levels. Further, from what I suspect about monster customization, I think they will encourage simply giving the dragon the magical abilities that are appropriate for the encounters and not to add...

I think Greenwood really shines in spontaneous details and histories which really give a sense of verisimilitude and depth to his RPG work. Looking back to even his earliest articles in Dragon magazine way back when, his magical item descriptions, spells and ecology articles really seems to...

I suspect that the answer in all cases will be once every five minutes, in or out of combat. I do agree that this does not well jive with one of the explanations of why you can't just reuse some maneuvers, so I think that explanation will have to wither away and die. Once every five minutes is...

I definitely think that 4e will support Lord Grim and similar NPCs, although I suspect that NPC classes won't be present. The team has noted that monsters and NPCs, while having the same final mechanical modifier types, won't be generated in the same way as PCs. What I think will happen is...

I think that when the 4e team talks about the DM creating non-combat encounters, I think they will definitely be looking to avoid one-on-one encounters. Just as a significant combat encounter that involved a one-on-one duel wouldn't be considered good encounter planning for party (with the rare...

I suspect that there's plenty of room between useless and overpowered. I also suspect that there will be plentiful complaining that feats aren't as powerful as the best feats at the end of 3.5e. But if the feats' primary purpose is to customize a character, then they simply can't be as...

Haven't talked about it too much. I've got quite a bit of 3.5e material to work through, as the DM of the group. I'm personally very optimistic about 4e, but don't have any plans to change over immediately upon release. A couple of the players disliked it immediately post announcement, but...

To start, I'll just say that I do think the 3e fighter *does* have significantly more diverse options than the 1e and 2e fighter. It's just that's not saying much when comparing to the magic wielding classes. I agree that in any system that allow a significant amount of character...