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What Obryn said. Shamans aren't bad, but if you have characters with good basic attacks (and it looks like you do), a warlord would perform very well.

I'm sure others will know better than I do, although they might not answer this one. The organization of the rules is a dramatic advantage: the ability to find all the rules you might be looking for, if you don't know them, is what makes a game an actually playable game. Also, a lot of the...

So, I can leave my hat on? ;) I mean this in the politest possible way: this feels like a cop-out of an answer. I wholly agree with the goals, but if that means ignoring the time-space continuum, then why make a zoomed-out square equal to 30 squares? And why quantify anything? Just roll a few...

I like this very much and am looking forward to seeing developments. Hat's off to ya, Manbearcat! So one round of zoomed-out action is the same unit of time as one round of zoomed-in action? That's strange, since a zoomed-out unit can move, on average, 30 squares (if I have this correctly)...

The avenger would appear to fit this concept perfectly. You could multiclass to cleric to access some of the healing powers, and/or take the ritual caster feat to use rituals. Agreed.

Yes, but it would remain somewhat laborious. I am in favor of companion characters, but in this situation, I would consider just using one companion character (a sidekick), and making encounters less heavy. Maybe if your son's PC could be an assassin (sell it to him as a ninja), you could give...

I can't say I have an edition that I think is head-and-shoulders above others. I realize this is a cop-out post, apologies for that. 1e the nostalgia (I played 1e for longer than any other edition, I can't but love it) 2e making the parts of the game function as a whole, I don't know quite how...

I agree that giving team monster a strong initiative helps create panic and drama among players. I think this can easily be achieved by also giving monsters good powers ("Whaddayamean he has a power that lets him remove my mark" is particularly good against swordmages) and adding more monsters...

I like the notion of initiative as a skill check.

I agree that everyone benefits from winning initiative, but I think that losing it sometimes often it more difficult to actually do what you're supposed to do. If a striker loses initiative, they can usually still do a lot of damage to an enemy. A leader can still buff and heal pretty...

As Li Shenron suggests, the rolls should indicate the kind of information provided to the players. The players can decide to gamble on the fact that the information might be wrong, and that's their freedom. In the third case, a good diplomacy check for the NPC would yield something like the PC...

If this is a real design goal, it would be the only instance in 4e where this occurred (at least that I can think of). And, if it were the case, it should probably apply to monsters as well. Monsters generally just gain advantages as they go up in level. While it's true that some vulnerabilities...

It's true that there are plenty of ways for PCs to gain ground on initiative, but what I'm highlighting is that (a) these character-building choices (even where slotted items are used, such as the Casque of Tactics) displace other choices and (b) they don't grant most PCs an advantage, but...

This is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the "bounded accuracy" of Next. The window of levels during which monsters pose a threat to player characters should be much wider. And it makes throwing that many more of them at the party so much fun.

Really? You think that, as characters gain levels, they should get worse at doing stuff when compared to a monster of equal level?

They were off (I had eyeballed the monster numbers in the unedited post), but not by much. Here is my original post's numbers (and the explanatory text): And here are the correct numbers (currently in the edited OP)

I love that the basis of your argument is simply putting a couple of words in quotes: it's to highlight that you disagree with the establishment-based meaning of those words, right? Contextually, I can tell that the meaning you disagree with is the one I propose, but it's funny to me because one...

I think it's smart to just use fixed numbers for monster initiatives, but I think it's just personal preference. I like the fact that the DM doesn't have to roll the die to determine it, and that a lucky player will beat monster initiative, instead of being outdone by the occasional luckier DM...

I intentionally did not account for items or other buffs, because my point was to explore what the default scores were. In the last column from the left (first from the right) I note the relevant character building resources that are most often invested in, i.e. Superior Initiative, Improved...

It's in the DMG. Ability scores, or something. Scores start at around 13 (but primary attack score is 16), and then gain a half level. Perhaps it's in the chapter on NPCs, immediately after Customizing Monsters.