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As to how much of a PCs detailed class abilities need to be non-combat, I think we'll need to consider how much of the rules system itself will be non-combat oriented. Certainly, I think creating a class that primarily has social challenge related abilities will be possible. However, it may be...

I certainly think the 4e classes as you described (socially oriented without significant combat focus) will be straightforward to create. The 4e talk has included statements that there will be more guidelines as to social challenges and the like (more than just "Roll Diplomacy a bunch of...

Actually, it sounds as though the vast majority of your complaints would be solved not by giving all dragons spellcasting power, but giving all dragons Alternate Form into a humanoid form. If you feel that humanoid mastermind villains don't need to have spellcasting powers, just allow all...

Now that they've wisely removed alignment restrictions, I have to admit I don't really see much purpose in having the metallic dragons at all. As noted by ainatan, the chromatics at least have a semi-reasonable theme going with colors and elements. The metallics, not so much. What does brass...

My primary concern here is the conflation of out-of-combat abilities and spellcasting. That mundane methods of creating traps, communicating with allies and otherwise working as a villain are being roundly rejected as impotent and ineffective if they don't involve the villain having direct...

I also think that Heroic, Paragon and Epic strongly represent the powers that will be typically available to a PC party. So when he talks about jaunts to other planes, he means that planar travel options will start appearing on PCs power lists. At Heroic levels, PCs may travel to other planes...

The Spellplague and assorted changes do bug me a bit, but not nearly as much as the Avatar Trilogy at the changeover to 2nd edition did. I stopped using strict Realms canon right at the Time of Troubles and have just mined all subsequent Realms works at grist for the personal campaign mill. I...

I would agree with of those points. At high levels, the use of offensive spells was effectively nerfed by 1) Spell Resistance 2) High opponent saves and 3) various blanket opponent immunities to many "save or lose" effects. Since melee combat generally wasn't so constrained, it was a more...

They could do so as master villains throughout fantasy literature and D&D itself have done through the ages. They can have networks of highly mobile agents that spread their wishes. They can have magical items that allow for such communication. They can breed creatures that allow for rapid...

The problem that many people perceive is that in D&D, skill ranks are innately tied to level, which intimately links attack bonuses, save bonuses and many other bonuses to skill ranks. Because of this, you indeed get the phenomena as noted above that the most skilled person in any profession is...

OK, now the dragon (and apparently all master villains) needs Silent Image, Alarm, Mage Hand, Rope Trick, warding spells against scrying, warding spells against teleportation, unnamed spells to create its lair, unnamed spells to create the traps in its lair and now Sending and Message spells to...

Wow, now the dragon needs Rope Trick, too? So far, the dragon should have Silent Image, Alarm, Mage Hand, Rope Trick, warding spells against scrying, warding spells against teleportation, unnamed spells to create its lair, unnamed spells to create the traps in its lair. Do you have an...

If you don't mind that by mid-levels, PCs and NPC characters are going to be beating that Perform bonus ragged. "The Great" won't be able to win any Perform contests against even mid-level PCs or NPCs that keep Perform max ranked at all (let alone if they use feats or magic). So in Greyhawk or...

Again, as in the previous thread, you seem to be strongly implying that only spellcasters can have important roles outside of combat. The previous claim was that without the ability to create magical wards, a dragon would be utterly helpless against magical opponents and crippled without...

As I noted before I'm not worried about this aspect of monster customization at all. Just give them the powers you think appropriate. They've noted that monsters will have levels and ability scores, so you should be able to calculate any level and score dependent functions in the spells. So...

From what I'm guessing about 4e monster and NPC building, it will be considerably easier than even that. Once you've picked the level for your monster, I think you'll have guidelines in the DMG for the kind of powers are appropriate for a monster of that level (e.g., Xd6 area effect attacks...

I agree that if the DM continually subverts expectations and makes every monster an "exception", then the the players will eventually not respond strongly. if everything is a special case, you've lost the power of generalization to allow for rational planning and problem solving. However, I...

I'm of the opinion that such plot-point abilities should just be added on a per case basis. There are just far too many possible rituals that could be put in that I don't think it would be a good use of the Monster Manual pages. And for the most part, they don't really need to be detailed...

For 2e and 3e specialists, I always felt that the primary problem wasn't so much that they could what a generalist could do (although that was certainly a problem, the weak bonuses granted by specialization often didn't make up for giving up other schools, IMO). It was that a generalist could...

I can see how the ability of a breath weapon to strip away magical protections is pretty "meta-gamey". But I also think that if you're going to have elemental protections in the game, there should be some way to represent that a particularly potent attack can overcome it. And just pumping up...