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I find, if one goes back to the oldest editions, that wizards are less of an issue. It's a lot harder to build up hit points and AC. They have a lot fewer spells. The spells that they do have are less potent (notice the lack of a teleport without error) and many problem spells don't exist...

In Star Trek movies, every even movie was extremely good (wrath of khan, the voyage home, etc) and the odd movies seem to lack the same zest. My theory with D&D editions is that I (personally) am more inspired by the odd editions so 5E is fine by me . . . :)

Perhaps, but there are a lot of ways to make magic useful (in a plot sense) without it being overbearing. Fred Saberhagen had a version of magic where steel and blood made it extremely hard to cast spells. Only the greatest of wizards could possibly cast spells during an actual fight (and...

By 3rd edition, a stat in the 1 to 7 ranger was often a crippling penalty. For the most obvious case, consider a 3 Con (what class will you be playing). I found it a lot less of a concern in the original (pre-AD&D) games as the bonues or penalties for an ability score were a lot less broad...

I find many things about monsters to be better in 4E D&D except for one critical thing: the feeling of risk. In 1E/2E/BECMI D&D, there was always the sense that any battle could be the last. If a snake bit a 10th level wizard, she could die from a single botched saving throw. The world felt...

Hmmmm... We should try that sometime . . .

Good guy? Palpatine? Do tell . . . While I do see points where Palpatine was right, on the whole he seems to be the classic patient evil plotter out for power (and not all that much else).

Most villians do poorly when people try too hard to make them sympathetic; but the Darth Vader of Star Wars IV and V made a classic decisive and tough villian. He loses a lot in VI, I, II and III though. Similarly, Magneto makes a very good villian with sympathetic motives. It makes it easy...

For gaming it has been Golarian (using Pathfinder Adventure paths). For reading/thinking it has been a combination of World of Darkness, Star Wars (sadly ended) and the 4E planes books (which describe a really cool setting, in my opinion). Things like the astral sea and the 4E divinities are...

In general I find RPG rules are more helpful than harmful. They help create a common basis for a creative activity. I see a specific rules set as no more constraining than any literary device that has rules (think about poetry for example). It is true that different editions of D&D tend...

I disliked it (greatly) at the time and the idea looks even worse in hindsight. In some ways 1E is a lot more eccentric than 2E but that can make it charming. It's also more balanced in a few interesting ways (like fewer truly abusive spells).

I kind of go the opposite way; 4E was rapidly feeling like it was too complicated in character construction for me (feats, powers, classes). Options are good but they can be overwhelming when you try to apply them all. So I liked the essentials approach to classes. I was also favorably...

Finally bought Essentials and I was surprised (in a good sense) by the quality of the books. Very well done. It looks quite compatible with 4E (in general) but the classes themselves are a joy to read. I was especially interested by the "Slayer" sub-class of the Fighter. Seems to have a...

Which version is your preference? If the Rules Cyclopedia was not such a pain to obtain, I wonder if I would do BECMI at some point.

Add me to the "has six months left and have turned auto-renew off". I will give it a candid reassessment in six months but I have had some really mixed results with the tool. I tried to build a character to show the rest of my 4E group and it froze my entire computer! [twice] From another...

I can see that you have not noticed the recent change to the character builder, yet. :) {of course, in practice, I am a major RPG book junkie so shelling out money was true either way . . . }

I suspect the actual concern was a lawsuit after the dream fantasy novel is published from WotC. I don't think that naybody is worried, per se, about WotC stealing names for human slayers with dark pasts fromn the character builder. While I agree that the risks are microscopic, it is a small...

I have long hypothesized that "rules bloat" is a tricky process. Each individual new option is, in and of itself, better. But there is a cost to keeping track of all of these options. This means, as the editions grows, that the marginal new rules need to be really good indeed. In real...

Agreed. I really think the realization that you can't stat a character from level 1 to 30 was a bit of a tipping point in my thinking. Now, an export/import function would help (a lot) but isn't available at start-up. Now I like the online app. I compute from a lot of places and many of these...

Yikes. There is no way that is safe , , ,