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Let's say I meet Bob the Ogre when I'm a 1st level Fighter. I'm a pushover for him, so Bob's probably statted as an Elite. Let's also say I somehow escape that encounter with my life, then 6 months later when I'm 17th level I meet Bob again (meanwhile Bob's had an uneventful life in the...

Why is 4e "trying to tell" any stories? Or any edition, for all that? Isn't the story something that each table of people comes up with on their own in whatever manner suits them?

And this always bugged me, until not so long ago when I came up with a system* for decaying class abilities after an adventurer retires. :) Given that, geriatric Conan would have slowly lost his abilities long ago once he settled down and stopped adventuring. * - finally; I'd been meaning to...

I find magic fairly easy to sim, now that I've come up with a basic underlying physics model that integrates magic with what we already know in reality. I'll give you that internal consistency can become an issue, but I'm either just used to it or I'm at least consistent with my inconsistencies. :)

Sounds good to me. And sure, there'll be things some monsters can do that PCs (almost always) cannot, because the range of playable PC species is limited and the range of monsters is not. But when a monster does something that's the same as what a PC can do - or even more important, when a...

One thing that doesn't change your statblock, however, is the foe you're currently facing. Sure, various foes might impose temporary penalties, but your underlying statblock stays put. Easy on all counts: all you have to do is extrapolate the PC rules and apply them to monsters. 3e's...

Story cohesion is why we do it also. Levelling is a trivial consideration, though the missing players' characters do get xp (and are exposed to risk) just like everyone else.

It's 1e that I'd like to see opened up.

Solid definitions. IMO statblocks should always be absolute. The PCs' statblocks are - the players would justifiably howl if their characters' stats suddenly shrank on meeting a foe way above thier pay grade ON TOP of that foe already being beyond them anyway. Mechanical symmetry (which IMO...

Until it attacks... 4e doesn't allow henchmen? And if not, why not?

The bolded is far too deep in metagame-side thinking for my liking. If memory serves (this was 17 years ago!) the trap did something like 3d6 damage to anyone caught beneath it when the rocks came down. Most 1st-level characters in our game have between 5-12 hit points; and death is at -10 (at...

So it would seem. Still doesn't make it right. But I can - and will - take a game mechanic that doesn't make any in-fiction sense and call it out on that basis. Minions are one such.

So if a 20th-level group of PCs meet a minion Ogre and one of the 20th-level PCs has a pet cat on her shoulder, what then? More relevant, perhaps: if that 20th-level group of PCs has a couple of 8th-level henchmen with it, what then?

The ASI should be tied to - and forced to go on - the prime stat for the class. A Fighter should only be able to ASI Strength (or maybe Constitution), for example, as an abstraction of the idea that she's been pumping iron and so forth in any downtime she's had while adventuring. That at least...

A creature's statblock can change over the long term as it ages and deteriorates, or learns and develops new skills, or whatever; but as most campaigns don't span all that much in-fiction time there isn't usually time for those changes to occur. Therefore, for play purposes stat blocks might as...

Sure. No problem with this. My problem is that even the spindliest Ogre is going to have considerably more than one hit point; meaning that even from a highly experienced (i.e. very high level) warrior it might take more than one or even two hits to take it down if the damage roll is poor...

Disagree. Toughness and resilience are very real things, and hit points are their abstraction. A typical horse has more toughness and resilience than I do. A typical MMA fighter has boatloads more toughness and resilience than I do, plus is trained in how to avoid taking debilitating blows...

As perceived, sure. But perception isn't what matters here. In reality that cat (let's assume the 3-year-old and the 15-year old are siblings so that we're talking about the same cat at the same point in time) has 2 hit points, period. That's what it comes with. It just takes the 3-year-old...

Characters staying in play when their player misses a session is SOP here and has been forever, mostly to keep the fiction consistent and not have characters vanishing and returning for no good reason when they'd otherwise be in mid-adventure in the field. This is also why character sheets stay...

As xp are (in theory) an abstraction of the idea of gained experience through learning and doing - i.e. memory - then this idea works fine IF on coming back to life the characters retain their memories of what they did while dead. Which can be a cool idea, but would lead to lots and lots and...