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That seems plausible. With a heavily armored opponent, it would be tough to actually cut them so blunt force would be the only way to go. Plus, the heavy armor would mean you could risk throwing a heavy swing. On the other hand, I suspect the medieval knight was an anomaly in history. I note...

I wonder how practical such hard swings are in real combat. It seems like if it were to be dodged then the person swinging the weapon might be seriously unbalanced (or else it would suggest a very limited number of angles of attack). I do note that blunt weapons tend to be unpopular as melee...

How would you suggest this being done? Strikes on the unarmored parts are lethal?

Point taken; I suspect that you are correct that games need to compromise on a series of axes (which is likely why some well done system are not to everyone's taste). I should have said something more like "4E moves away from 3/3/5/Pathfinder (as an example) in making sacrifices on some...

I agree. But looking at the system from the point of view of the DM (how do we make things easier for Dungeon Masters) tends to lead to a different set of solutions than focusing on the best system. While I am generally not a 4E fan, I think that this is one area that it has done well...

I more suspect five was picked so that Customer Service would not have to deal with people who had some trouble with an operating system (and wanted it on their laptop as well). A couple of bad installs could hit a lower cap rather easily; more than five stretches credibility for OS...

Star Fleet Battles. Pre-internet the errata had to be hunted down in monthly magazines resulting in a fair degree of difficulty in making sure everyone had all of the errata.

On the upside, the sluggish performance issues I have the with character builder on my PC will go away. On the downside, I do hope that they can keep the server up. I do not know about the rest of you, but i get a non-trivial number of "the site is closed for maintence" issues with the main...

Keep on the Borderlands was better than what you describe. It was derided for having way too many different creatures living too close together. But it did have rules for opponents interacting with each other to rally, bribing creatures, many forks to choose between, and actual intrigue back...

I agree. White Wolf really did bring a bold and different vision to role-playing games (and had a very fascninating world). But perhaps the MMORPG will give them a cash flow that amkes it easier to focus on fewer and higher quality Table-top products?

I agree it looks pretty interesting and I will be fascinated to see how the Online game works out. That being said, it si obvious to me that you can have parallel paths for an intellectual property. After all, AD&D did not stop Table Top publishing despite the great success of Baldur's Gate...

While the idea of having a range of classes dates back to the earliest versions of the game, I founbd a lot of BECMI and 1E AD&D games would work remarkably well with a limited set of archetypes represented in the party. In particular, I was used to a lot of fighter heavy parties, especially at...

I think that this isn't a bad thing -- using a feature of a character (like a spellbook) to drive an adventure is a time-honored tradition. The key is that you can get the missing item (the book) back. It's less cool if the starship that was a major feature of the smuggler character is...

Yeah, that can be an issue for Traveller as well. The virtue of some classes is that they have the possiblity of getting cool things like starships; classic adventure concepts that remove all gear are really hard to execute fairly. On the other hand, it might actually be worse in a high level...

Hey, I learned something new today. I'd never read about the battle of Patay before but it seems that these battles were less one sided than I had previously realized. Battle of Patay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Thanks for the pointer!!! :) I am not sure when I got the idea of French...

I am happy to admit to absolutely no expertise on the subject. :) I just have an impression that Western military expertise, especially in the post-Roman territories, was somewhat underwhelming. It's not based on a careful checking of data but rather an unfocused impression. But you see a...

I compare this battle: Battle of Legnica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to these battles: Mongol invasions of Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and I speculate that people are confusing the much higher level of training with the quality of the weapons being used. It seems to be...

I think that this will be a highly positive thing. :) Pathfinder is a nice product (and the adventures are pure genius) but I must admit that I would make many mistakes at the gaming table (just due to te volume of rules) if I did not have such sharp players!

I think that this is a system design issue. In BECMI or AD&D, good ability scores were nice but not necessary. A fighter with a 13 strength in BECMI is not wildly disadvantaged compared to a fighter with a 17 strength (total of +1 to hit and damage difference). Most of the power comes from...

One does have to worry about removing all mechanical features from a stat or it will be dumped (very, very low). Battle fortitude plus a good fort save and WIS for death/dying plus hit points would make the cost of 6 CON very, very low.