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It doesn't help that the lists of abilities that provide SA and EA bonuses are incomplete. Aging (as in what a Ghost does to you) isn't mentioned, nor are psyonics, nor a few other important monster abilities that clearly count as special or exceptional abilities, but those things often are...

Maybe the NPC Elf was adventuring at the time... :) Sometimes as DM I'll throw in seemingly-random items for parties to (maybe) find while adventuring, unrelated to the current adventure or mission, as potential seeds for later investigation or further adventures*. A long-thought-lost book of...

And, as it's lore, can thus always be changed to suit a more simulation-based rationale. I mean sure, there's concessions that have to be made in the name of playability and-or fun, no argument there. But when it's possible to change something to better simulate an actual world without...

I learned the hard way about 43 years ago (i.e. within weeks of first starting to play) not to expect much by way of consistency in 1e material. :) No doubt. Then again, there's a strong argument that says class-level limits for demihumans were purely small-g gamist; a mechanism to both...

That's what made The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings so unusual (and so good!) - they were adventuring parties, not just single heroes.

Healing surges (or hit dice-based healing, same idea) add a new thing that every player has to track along with hit points, no matter what character they're playing. That's outright more complex than just the healer's player having to track remaining spells, which he'd still have to do anyway...

Completely agree with 1. Don't care about 2. I'm not trying to emulate "fantasy heroes"; instead I'd rather have it that even the most minor of combats is at best going to whittle down some resources and at worst could have long-lasting impacts. Boss fights are very much not the only ones...

Better idea: throw out the whole notion of CR. There's just too many variables that the designers can't account for to allow any such system to work well enough to bother with: --- party size; not every table plays with 4 or 5 character parties at exactly one character per player; some have...

Fair enough, but these big-tent conventions do serve as a pretty good bellwether for how popular a game is likely to be or become; and - like it or not - popularity leads directly to a) sales and b) a larger player base. And sales then lead to the publisher a) surviving and b) being more keen...

Parity in results (rather than creation method) is old school. You could more or less create NPCs however you liked but if it could have potentially been a PC - i.e. it was a PC-playable species - the resulting character either had to fit within PC-available parameters once it was finished or...

In the days before non-magical healing and-or ubquitous wands of CLW were a thing, the number of available healing spells-potions-devices in the party served the same function and at far lower complexity.

Indeed, it's a design flaw all the way along. Exactly, which means the designers have to either a) design as if parties will have max resources, or close, for nearly every battle because that's how the players are going to play, or b) make resource recovery much - as in, light-years - harder...

When 4e came in with its "bloodied" mechanic I had hopes that it was the start of a move within D&D design toward a (relatively speaking!) more simulative injury and healing system. Still waiting..........

To me, those seem like selling points of not-old-school games. Old-school to me is, by contrast: --- story-emergent, i.e. most if not all of the story only becomes apparent in hindsight (but note this does not equate to "mechanics first") --- GM accepts and does the bulk of the mechanical work...

Sad, but true. That said, if people like the game they're playing enough then they'll make the time - and keep on making the time - to play it.

Not necessarily. Someone chose within the run of play to make that combat happen, and then the combat gets turned over to the mechanics to sort out how it resolves. Same as if someone chooses in-game to climb a difficult wall - the player makes that choice and then it gets turned over to the...

In that case, don't mention or even allude to the roles anywhere in the final version; because you just know that if you do mention them people will take them to be straitjackets, similar to how alignment was mis-played in the TSR days or Leader was misinterpreted as "party boss" in 4e. In...

Disagree. The mechanics are bad specifically because they weren't designed to take the 5 minute adventuring day into account. Wise parties (i.e. smart players) are going to try for that five-minute day whenever they can, as it's the safest way to go, which means the designers need to recognize...

3rd level character with +3 plate isn't a problem if items can be destroyed; sure it'll keep the character safe for a while but sooner or later it'll inevitably go boom or get disenchanted somehow. And high-level characters with no magic soon enough restock themselves, as I've seen recently as...

Early returns on the irst dozen or so I can see (I have neither a reddit nor patreon account and don't really want either) look great! I've already yoinked one item outright and am scooping ideas for lots of others. A one-use magic item, I'd think, given that removing one's head tends to slay...