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Duelist: One-handed melee weapons deal +2 damage. Two-weapon fighting adds your attribute bonus to damage. If you have a hand not holding a weapon, you gain +1 AC. Great Weapon Fighting: When using a melee weapon held in two hands, odd rolls on weapon damage dice are maximized. So a 1 on...

1. No enhancement bonus to hit. 2. Light armor does not give enhancemnt bonus to AC. Heavy keeps it. 3. All armor gives an encounter power to gain +Enhancement against an attack that hit by less than that on AC and (Reflex) light (Fortitude) Heavy. 4. Feat bonuses to hit limited to +1. 5. No...

In 4E, with baseline 60% PC hit rate and monster 40% hit rate, a +1 level on a monster (with no other stat changes - same HP, damage, etc) makes it 60%/55% tougher and 45%/40% deadlier, or about 23% more dangerous. Every 4 levels this is enough to scale monster danger by 2.3x - basically, the...

Ya, I'm thinking of how I can make the basic game loop for each class diverge a bit more than in 5e. While still feeling like 5e. Leave fighters with extra attack, maybe with a bit extra spice. Rogue with sneak attack is already distinct; just want to avoid other classes stepping on them...

I mean, if I wanted to retool extra attack, I'd start a bit lower. Barbarians get Power Blow. They deal +[W] damage with their weapon, and can make an unarmed or improvised weapon attack as well. (damage increases by another +[W] at 9, 13 and 17). Paladins get Holy Sword. Their weapon deals...

Preq: Combat Style, 11th level, 16 strength, 16 dexterity, proficiency with a martial weapon, heavy armor proficiency, shield proficiency, proficiency with strength saving throws. Still a top notch feat with all of that.

Sure. But level 6/7/8/9 spells are restricted highly, and in the designed 6-9 encounter day you get to use at most 1 per encounter on average. Forcecage works on creatures up to a certain size, and slightly larger if they have no ranged abilities, and doesn't work on certain types of foes...

I mean, name the class? Fighters aren't it. They gain accuracy (bounded to linear), attribute points and number of attacks. They are explicitly quadratic, not linear. Paladins aren't it. They gain accuracy (bounded to linear), and smite damage that scales with level (plus increasingly good...

A creature that acts twice and deals 10 damage per action isn't substantially different than a creature that acts once, and does 20 damage on that action. "Action Economy" matters when actions don't deal damage, and various forms of action nullification that scales better on fewer targets...

Bounded accuracy means there is a reasonable chance to hit or miss a foe, even if they are extremely weak or strong. It means that the d20 is a large component of if you hit or miss. In comparison to 3e and 4e where to hit and AC modifiers went into the stratosphere, ranging from +5 to +45...

Sure, but make the look-up table simple. Don't make it a 3 dimensional lookup based on monster CR, number of PCs and PC level to produce a difficulty. My point is that you can get really close to the precision of that by doing the work on the design side. If you follow through the math above...

I mean, I spoke about it? It is like the difference between having the weight of the stuff in your room and a cargo van capacity, and having a program that lets you tag items and tells you if they fit in the cargo van. Sure, you can go around tagging items until the cargo van is full. You can...

Sure. But 4e's system was a fixed XP rating (that grew exponentially with level, and had level-bands, due to +1 ATK/DEF per level). A level 15 solo was for almost all purposes just 4 times the XP of a level 15 normal. You could balance encounters by just adding up XP. You could also balance...

I really don't like the 2 dimensional matrix mearls is using here. [PC level, Monster CR] -> CPs It enforces table lookups by the user (either automated or not) and by design encourages tiny tweaks in the values. We should resist lookup tables with all of our might, even at the cost of...

Here a set of rules I don't think you can really abuse: Two Weapon Fighting is part of the attack action. Polearm Mastery, Double Scimitars and Monk Martial Arts count as forms of Two Weapon Fighting. Only Monk Marital Arts lets you deal your attribute bonus to damage by default. All other...

My toy simplified 5e makes classes have weapon damage. Simple, Thrown and Ranged weapons do d4 damage. Wizards, Rogues and similar do d4 with everything. Rogues get sneak attack, which adds cinditional d6s, and finesse, which adds 1d4 unconditional. Rangers do d6 with one handed weapons, and...

I have gone over the rules to do this once. Martial Arts deserves a similar treatment to TWF: then downgrade flurry to 1 extra attack. As it stands, twf monk gets twf, attack, flurry x2 at level 2 for 4 attacks, or 3 attack twf ma at level 1. Dual wielding spears with twf feat is 3 attacks at...

Alchemists - they can put bonus action and action spells into elixers. Anyone can use them. DCs and effects are determined by Alchemist, targets and concentration are by the user of the liquid. Beneficial Elixers with one target are potions, and must be drunk by the target. Detrimental...

Sure, and like anything else where a player has their character have a goal, this is an adventure hook. They don't know how it happens, but maybe they can get a clue with an arcana check. If they want to go down that route as a party, you can do it. There is nothing super unbalancing about...