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The more save penalties you impose, the better a -2 on all saves is compared to -4 to just the first save. So -4 to just the first save isn't as prone to abuse in combination. This change to Cunning Weapons also fits well with the other changes made to AV (they've gone with the "first save"...

Having a duration of (save ends) would be less of a nerf than the above and would be a smaller change than "repeat the attack" type effects. Still, my proposed change to In Defense of Order is an increase in power that happens at the same level, so nerfing Certain Justice seems reasonable...

Player’s Handbook: Class Powers/Features: Seal of Binding (Cleric Daily 25): You can sustain this power no more than three times. (This combos with a Demigod’s Divine Regeneration to kill almost anything, and taking an opponent out of the fight for many rounds can be too good on its own)...

I think Improved Armor of Faith was the problem with Avenger AC in the first place. The feat was changed to only work in cloth armor or no armor, and that solves Avenger AC problems without needing to change the class feature itself (which WotC also did). Things that might get hit next time...

Glad WotC got around to this. The Quicksilver Stance errata is backwards. It makes no sense to say "you can shift your speed (or 1/2 your speed if you aren't wearing heavy armor)." This should be the other way around.

Monsters don't have nearly as much time to use those special abilities, though, since they die so much faster. Are you saying that as a result of switching to this system, you have more combats before an extended rest? If so, this means you're effectively using more monsters than before. I...

1/2 HP, +1/2 damage per level isn't going to work well if you use the same number/levels of monsters as before. Monsters are much too weak at low levels. At level 2, monsters lose 1/2 of their HP for a +1 damage bonus. At level 30, normal damage expression is around 24, so +15 damage is over...

One house rule I've seen: every character has the option of getting a +2 they can apply to any ability score, besides the ability scores their racial bonuses apply to, at the cost of lowering their point buy from 22 points to 20 points. Except 18/14/11 builds with racial +2s to the 18/14...

Here's a graph of the chance to succeed on a skill challenge as a whole (the y-axis) when you have a constant chance of success on each of the rolls in a skill challenge (the x-axis), calculated for skill challenges of complexity 1-5 (the different colors of data points). Note that a Complexity...

Average number of trials (rounds) needed to succeed a total of N times, when you have a p chance to succeed each trial= N/p. To get the average number of failures, just subtract off the N successes in this sequence. Average number of failures before succeeding those N times= N/p - N =...

You don't need to condition on the exact sequence of rolls for skill challenges. The key is that a skill challenge of S successes before F failures can only last S+F-1 rolls. E.g., 4 successes before 3 failures. After 6 rolls, you'll either have 4+ successes (and 0-2 failures), or you'll have...

When characters have different chances of success on skill challenges, these probabilities become more complex. On the WotC boards, Elder Basilisk used an approximation based on the geometric average of each party member's chance to succeed on a roll (Skill challenges). I'm pretty convinced...

That example illustrates the general point that absolute damage is what counts, not how much you change the relative damage from a particular opponent or sets of opponents. If you're going to be attacked equally often on different FRWs (for equal damage per hit), the average damage reduction...

This is true in general, but as I said before I don't think it's that relevant as a reason why the following claim is wrong: Assume that Defense - Attack bonus>=2 before an FRW bonus, and after the bonus, Defense-Attack bonus <=20. The former isn't a given at high levels if you haven't taken...

I don't like using 1d10+3 (8.5) damage for a first level monster. First, using the same damage total for every group of 3 levels (as is true in the DMG) doesn't make sense. I see why they didn't write a different expression for every level, but when doing analysis you should make this measure...

This is a low for the monster's attack bonus. Even a typical Brute would have +4 to hit vs. AC at level 1 (going by the 'high damage expression' table in the DMG, it would do about 9.5 damage on a hit). If the monster is intended to represent a soldier on offense as well as defense, it...

This may be the case when working with simple examples, but as you hint at below, it's not going to hold when comparing, say, crit-centric builds to builds that deal miss damage. The miss damage builds look worse in dpr than they do in average rounds to kill an opponent. Also, the average...

As you say, that you can "overkill" the monster is the reason why HP/DPR doesn't equal average rounds to kill the monster. Average rounds to kill the monster must be weakly higher than this figure. You can see a lot more discussion of this here

Unfortunately, there's no way to derive a "basic scenario" for D&D combat given the range of characters that could be played and tactics that could be employed. There's enough variation in characters that the choices here will drive the conclusion. Monsters have some variation as well. The...

This is a narrow reading of what qualifies as "defense", though. A power that causes an enemy to lose its actions for a round should be "defense" as well. "Unkillable but pointless Guy" isn't good. By the same token, if monsters can select who they attack, and prioritize targets in an...