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The reason they do this is that in general, the political, moral, or emotional significance of an action does not just depend on what I intend to do when I act. Suppose Jones is a sweet, lovely person who was nonetheless brought up in a racist society. Jones makes a movie--and lots of people see...

Yes. I think everything you say is absolutely right. But there's an intermediate position here. One can recognize that we should still read, appreciate, and study books with reprehensible politics, but one might also argue that we should still try to expose any political commitments latent in a...

(I really loved those Rankin/Bass movies.)

One has to separate the issues at hand. First, it's really important to leave Moorcock's abilities as a writer aside when criticizing his arguments. You don't have to be able to write good novels to say important and insightful things about literature; nor do you have to be a capable literary...

How about ability damage? I guess characters just become nonfunctional when they hit -5?

You both are right about caster level. Here's a revised version. (I've also clarified that this still retains a minimum ability score requirement for divine spells, which was what I intended but wasn't clear in the original post.) It uses arcane caster levels, too, which doesn't really change...

It was sort of intentional: I thought of it as the lesser of two evils, since I wanted a general requirement (not something quite so bad as "two levels of cleric or druid") and thought requiring second-level divine spells would be too onerous a burden (since the feat, unlike the class, doesn't...

Consider the following feat. It yields a character who is probably weaker than the mystic theurge (except for very high-level characters, who will be able to cast ninth-level arcane and divine spells), but accomplishes the same goal with a feat rather than a prestige class, so perhaps it wins...

I wonder whether the intent of the maneuver is to only allow characters to move who haven't yet taken their actions for the round--thus, if A's initiative count is 15, and the warblade's initiative count is 10, and B's initiative count is 5, the warblade could use WRT to get B to go immediately...

Sure, although I'm not sure I understand how it's fundamental. To my mind, maneuvers differ from spells in that low-level maneuvers can remain relatively useful even for much more experienced characters, because maneuvers enhance attacks (and attacks continue to improve more or less...

I tried really hard to limit the characters to fairly mainstream abilities from the Player's Handbook and the Player's Handbook II--the sorts of things I'd include in a campaign, and that represent mainstream--rather than super-optimized--characters. (The fighter/barbarian doesn't have Melee...

This qualification does a lot of work, doesn't it? High-level D&D characters--especially non-spellcasters--need magic items to inflict and avoid damage. But let's run some numbers real quick. Anyway, let's say Jane Melee is a raging fighter 12/barbarian 3 fighting an evil opponent. She's got a...

Yes, but only because it's a prerequisite for Precise Shot, which affects firing into melee. A ranged touch attack is still a ranged attack.

Although whether or not a particular rules element is overpowered indeed depends on the interests of the gaming group and the other rules involved, it's still productive to talk about balance. In fact, you go on to note that the warblade [i]isn't/i] significantly more powerful than the other...

The warblade's high base attack bonus, bonus feats, and special abilities make him a much more effective combatant when he's not using his maneuvers. This is probably sufficient for the different feel: the swordsage relies heavily on his bag of tricks, but the warblade is more of a generally...

After thinking through this on my comparable post, I've decided I really like Alceste's comment that suggests the fully swordsage-style recovery: one maneuver as a full-round action. If you used that, and removed the warblade's silly ability to trade low-level maneuvers for higher-level ones...

It's definitely cool and probably balanced--it provides neat, gritty fantasy versimilitude at the cost of some added complexity. I only worry that adamantine shields might be too good, but that's a special case. And: "Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!/spear shall be shaken, shield be...

Until the cloudkill hits, of course...

There's an interesting feat called Deadeye Shot in the PHB2 that lets you deny a target's Dexterity bonus against your ranged attack if you ready the attack until an ally hits the target. Combined with Manyshot and its Greater cousin, it can result in a flavorful and effective archer. Consider...

Consider simply ruling that anyone can charge as a standard or full-round action, but that, on any round in which a character charges, she may only take (a) free actions; (b) a swift (or immediate) actions; or (c) an action explicitly allowed as part of a charge. In practice, this preserves the...