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There comes a point where diminishing returns have their say. If 95+% of the end use is in levels 0-12* but 40% of the work lies in designing for levels 13-20, is it worth it? Better, says I, to design rock-solidly for 0-12 and leave it open-ended after that; and at the same time warn the end...

I'm not at all sure this is the case. Arcane magic and its spells and effects are fairly easy to explain en masse provided one accepts a couple of fairly basic assumptions: --- magic is a harnessable force, or energy, and casters of all types know (to some extent anyway) how to harness and...

Fine. The Rogue can have the Fighter's niche. I'll hear no more complaints about the poor downtrodden Fighter, though, if you're so willing to give away that which makes it strong.

I'd add: The Grace path --- Class: "Swashbuckler" --- Gimmick: high-risk high-reward derring-do --- Epic Icon: Inigo Montoya, anything played by Errol Flynn

As most games in all editions tend(ed) to end by level 10, getting to that 3000 point isn't as much of a concern. Good game design spreads the fun around vaguely evenly over the course of the game. Why? The theory is that the game starts at level 1 and goes to level 20; but the practice is...

In 1e, Druid shapeshifting is hella powerful. Not necessarily for combat but for scouting, sneaking, info-gathering, long-range travel, and getting into or out of tight places.

I'm not talking about what they learn, I'm talking about how and where they learn it. If one's game has Fighters able to hit someone 20 feet away with a hand-wielded sword then that training came from somewhere, same as did the Mage's training in how to cast 7th-level spells. I should probably...

Some of us spent the entire decade of the 1980s doing just this. Guess some things never change, huh. :)

Hell, it worked for WotC. It's exactly what they've done, starting right from 3e.

If track A starts at +2 and makes its way to -2 while track B starts at -2 and over the same rough length of time gets to +2 while track C hums along at roughly 0 the whole way, that's balanced enough for me. And yes, this means different characters' roles within a party will change over the...

We've had them for ages, hiding in plain sight. Their other name is "Dwarf". :)

I thought we were talking about warriors learning their trade in mercenary guilds or martial-arts schools the same as wizards learn in academic settings and guilds and clerics learn in temples or monasteries and thieves learn in guilds or on the street. That all looks pretty much the same to...

Doesn't take long each round - just get the players to leave their init dice on the table in front of them rather than noting them all down or sorting them. Then, count down through the numbers. On a d20, +1 every round isn't that big a deal. On a d6, like we use, it's huge. Hence, my...

I don't have a 5e version but how we do it in our game is that each round everyone rolls a d6 for each attack (ties are not only allowed but expected) or just a single d6 if not in a multi-attack situation. Attacks from the same weapon cannot occur on the same segment. If you're moving, we...

Improved Initiative feat: bye bye. Ditto whatever that Monk thing is that allows modification to initiative. Haste gives you more attacks per round but shouldn't affect initiative (by the way, IMO multiple attacks per round should each have their own separate initiative). I've learned from...

To determine sequencing of events and actions. Where all the WotC editions blow it is that they assume whatever a character does starts and ends on its rolled initiative - hence stop-motion combat - rather than using rolled initiative as a segmented measure of time within the round. A move...

I don't find the 1e save system ambiguous in the least. I did, though, split out Paralyzation, Poison, and Death into their own categories to allow me to tweak the tables a bit for each one. As for which to use, I put the matrices on a chart and now all I have to do is read from left to right...

For us at low level we usually have two characters each in the party, thus if (when!) one dies there's still the other to play. :) We don't use henches as often as might make sense, largely because players often play their PCs as being too cheap to want to pay them.

Both of which were fine ideas that should not have been abandoned.

Divorce initiative from everything. Unmodified d20 (or d10, or d6) rerolled each round, allow ties, stop there.