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Abilities meant for use outside of combat can either be used at will or have some built-in limitation. For example, a Void Elementalist always has the ability A Beyonding Of Vision, which lets them see invisible things, detect illusions, and see and understand magic auras. That's just a thing...

I don't know, it seems to be working fine in Draw Steel. The only attrition there is to your recoveries, while your offensive power actually increases over the course of the day (because every previous Victory gives you one extra starting resource to work with, which can often be the difference...

Yeah but what I'm talking about is that you have one and only one fireball available at a time, but you'll have it in each room. Smaller tank, so you don't get this situation, but free refills.

That's not the read I'm getting. One group wants attrition of offensive power throughout the day*. You use a fireball on those 8 orcs – great, that made that encounter easy, but now you're down one fireball. You need to carefully ration when and how you use your magic (because it's mostly spells...

Wands of cure light wounds are on the random treasure tables in the 3.0 DMG. Further, once you become able to put any non-personal spell into a wand, its use becomes obvious (much like the wand of mage armor which lets the wizard and possibly even monk enjoy the fruits of that spell without...

No, because they are opposite experiences. One wants recovery to be difficult, with multiple encounters wearing the party down over the course of some time frame. The other wants recovery to be easy with PCs being at full offensive power in each encounter. I suppose you could get an Expert to...

Depends on what you mean by bloat. They don't, as a concept, contribute to the hp you have available within one encounter (except with Second Wind which for most people is an action to use). There's nothing that says you couldn't include healing surges in 3e except the work you'd need to rework...

I'd be careful about that kind of talk around Ms Weatherwax.

What I'm detecting in this thread is really two different schools of thought: Attrition is bad and we should refocus balance around one encounter and make it easier to restore full power (with the possible exception of attrition through hp reserve á la healing surges). Attrition is good and we...

I think Healing Surges are a genius bit of design as they allow for rapid post-battle recovery of hit points, although with a limit, while still limiting the hp available in any given encounter providing for at least potential sense of danger. One of the things I'm a little wary of in Draw...

You sort of need to have something along those lines to discourage excessive long resting (as discussed in another recent thread). Pathfinder can really mean two things, with both being created in response to things happening at Wizards. First, there was the Pathfinder Adventure Path. This was...

I think one of the culprits is that much of the playtest was done with the Caves of Chaos dungeon, which feature almost no interesting tactical situations (e.g. archers on balconies, fire pits into which to push foes) or monsters with interesting abilities. It's all pretty much just "charge in...

That is not true. The 3.5e DMG had about two pages about both ad hoc XP rewards and story-based awards, both for non-combat encounters and for achieving mission goals, and also discussed the need to adjust treasure rewards accordingly to make sure a big XP boost doesn't come without the...

It could explain things better, but there is actually a definition in the 5.0 DMG: Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

Update: it is an Asimov novel: The Currents of Space. Credit to u/Commissar_Tarkin over on Reddit - The heart of the internet.

I've long been a proponent of blast spells having various side effects, and those side effects should ideally be tied to the damage type: ice/cold slowing you down, electricity impairing your ability to act, fire and acid applying DoT-type effects, and so on. 5e has some of this among cantrips...

I think a contributing factor is the lack of a middle ground when it comes to PC resources. 4e has powers that can be used at-will, per encounter (or technically recharged on a 5-minute short rest), or per day (recharging on an 8-hour long rest). This means you have some bread-and-butter stuff...

Not so much different versions of D&D no, but probably by doing different RPGs – e.g. a modern, paranormal, and/or sci-fi game. That would almost certainly bring more sales in absolute terms, but likely not enough to justify the expense. I'd be very proud of 5.0 as a whole, but there would...

Given Wizards' history of layoffs, I'd be very hesitant about uprooting my life in order to apply for a job there – particularly on the D&D side (MtG seems to offer more stability). If you're already in that general area it's probably a great job, but I wouldn't leave a current job for it, or...

Because long-term, satisfied customers lead to more customers. The questions then become: how many more customers? And how much effort (=money) does it take to provide said satisfaction? And is the result worth the effort? There's also the matter of personal pride on part of the designers...