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That's an interesting point of view. I'll admit that I don't run 3.x by RAW, but I do run and play 4E by RAW, Dresden Files by RAW, and L5R by RAW and haven't really experienced any problems. Moreover, having had the pleasure of talking to playtesters and (in one case) designers for L5R and...

It would be cool to see a "sanity" rules module, a la Call of Cthulu. Works in any horror campaign, or you could add it to a normal campaign for more of a gritty, hopeless feel. Dark Sun or Ravenloft would be natural places to use it, as would any game involving the Far Realm. I've always been...

Agreed, and leave the door open for later expansion tables to offer more choices to the obsessive tiefling player. Maybe offer a racial feat that lets you choose twice from the table instead of just the once. Tieflings work best for me when they are an odd grab-bag of racial features inherited...

I'll take a crack at one of my favorite newcomers, the warlord. Warlords aren't necessarily inspirational leaders, though many are. They aren't always in positions of ultimate authority either; the general of an army could be a warlord, but so could his strategic adviser or his battle standard...

I agree with your thread title. D&D to me means homebrewing, and lots of it. It's very heartening to see so many people already having fun with what is really a partial alpha build of the rules. Makes me optimistic about what is to come. We don't need to bring contentious comparisons to...

To be charitable, a playtest that only covers a few levels is a difficult place to debut the banner beasties of DDN. If they did include a dragon that was an appropriate challenge for the playtest PCs, people would be complaining that dragons in DDN are wusses that can be beat up by half a dozen...

I like keeping spell levels and deriving spell point costs from them, largely to keep the spells compatible with other casting classes (and the alternate/standard wizard which gets discrete spell slots of each level). So a fireball might be cast for 5 willpower by a sorcerer spontaneously...

It also swings the other way. Somebody who has absolutely no interest in analyzing the optimal loadout just picks the coolest sounding spells and loads up on them. That isn't an option with the traditional D&D vancian caster, because he has to sort through so many levels of spell options instead...

Stupid xp button not responding to my demands! I agree 100%. Internal logic and consistency should always (weeeell almost always; gag rpgs channeling warner bros cartoons or something might be an exception, but let's assume we can ignore those corner cases for the purposes of this D&D-specific...

Pretty much, although the tradeoff might not be 1 for 1 per spell level like you suggest. For instance, when I used it in 3.5 we just took the psionic power cost progression and used it for the wizard and his spells. So a level 1 cost 1 spell point, level 2 cost 3, and it went up by 2 spell...

How so, and what kind of problems do you mean?

It's also possible that the difference between 24 and 26 strength is meant to represent a bigger in-game power gap than the difference between 10 and 12 strength. Even a mid-sized dragon could probably be said to be twice as strong as an ogre, but if we applied that literally to their strength...

Ok, that kind of stuff is completely suited to different dice. If you have between 1 and 4 monsters coming out from a spell, I don't think anyone is seriously proposing that you roll a d20 and divide by 5 rather than just rolling the durn d4! In trying to come up with places where I might be ok...

I guess I'd need to see some examples to know whether I agree with you or not. I like the unified mechanic, but I also have a high tolerance for quirky, so I might end up liking a few artfully executed exceptions as well.

The multiple dice that can be used for damage is more complex than, strictly speaking, it needs to be. You could, for instance, decide that all weapons and attacks deal d6. Damage rolls are different than action resolutions, though. For one, different damage dice makes some amount of sense. It...

I've always liked more flexible casters, and that's a rule that I've used in 3.x campaigns before. Replacing spell slots with a "mana pool" like that has a lot to recommend it, in my experience. A big benefit is that there are fewer "filler" spots. A lot of wizards in my games have long lists...

Sorry, I didn't mean to nitpick at your precise wording. I know that you were speaking in randomly chosen examples, I was just using simplified examples in response to make my point. I think it still stands. It's impossibly complicated to adjust xp values based on minor differences, and rather...

In addition to what other posters have already said, Starcraft is also unlike D&D because it has a very strict and obvious metric by which to judge whether the sides are balanced (namely, how likely they are to win a skirmish). In D&D it's not at all clear that there is a similar metric. Are...

That level of granularity isn't necessary. Having two level X monsters that are identical except for +/-3 hp should be avoided in general (different can of worms). It's even more important that the system not try to award different amounts of experience for overcoming them. All level X enemies...

I'm curious about anything you've heard on monster design. Anything at all really, but especially thoughts on whether roles will see any reprise (brute, soldier etc.), whether and how solo creatures might stick around, and thoughts about the accuracy/durability of monsters we've seen so far in...