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And what is a drama point/benny/luck point if not a narrative mechanic? You get to narrate "Aha, but something awesome to my benefit happens."

There are many different ways for a spellcaster to work. The pseudo-Vancian magic model of the 5E flavor is just one way. Mages don't need to have something like cantrips. Shadowrun has spellcasters, and they work completely different from D&D. (I wouldn't say they are not complex, though!)...

I made a Star Wars 4E-inspired game and played a campaign with it. The concern with power level can be real. Personally ,I think Jedi Knights and Masters are simply high level characters, but there are non-force-sensitive characters that can get to that power level, too. I think one of my...

If 5e is at a 6 or 7 for some, D&D 4 must be 9 or 10? Because that's the complexity I enjoyed. But where would something like Shadowrun (3e? 4e? 5e?) or Phoenix Command fit then? I'd definitely rate 5E lower. But maybe there is an important point to what Umbran says - complexity needs to exist...

Complexity should exist to faciliate making the outcome interesting and giving the players meaningful choices. If your skill challenge for a ritual or crafting is just: "Make 6 checks, don't fail too hard", it doesn't really add as much as you'd like. Combat isn't like that - sure, you might...

I don't neccessarily agree that a simple caster should act as sort of training wheels for the "real" spellcaster. It should be its own class that does what it needs to do to be a viable class among all the other others and uses magic, filling the niche of...

Hehe, the first time I played BG 3, I missed the entire underdark part of Act 1. That's lots of quests, XPs, NPCs and stories to be ignored, but still managed to get to the end. So yeah, you can miss a lot of stuff, but it's okay. The things that I liked about BG 3 was: The characters and...

A spoiler to your spoiler:

I think sometimes defini I don't think we need a fighter of the complexity of the 0e or 3e Fighter or Thief. "Simple" I think will always be measured in comparison to other examples, we don't need something that is "absolutely simple". Maybe there are players that really only want an...

The classes are still far more simpler than something like a Wizardthat already has to think about 9 spells, each with its own rules, at 1st level and only grows from there. It's not like a "simple" class must be one that can be played on auto-pilot by a dire ape.

In soviet D&D, rest takes you!

Well, not so many any more... ;( I actually wouldn't mind a Sam Witwer live action Darth Maul, but animation could be fun, too. The chances however are not that good, so we'll see. Or at least some will, and then I can decide whether to watch it. Mustrum "Too soon" Ridcully

I voted 1. We rarely have multiple combat encounters per day, and often have some overland travel. In our D&D 5 Eberron campaign, we regularly were off on lightning rail or airship and travel for a while (a lot less then if we would be on foot or horse) providing easy opportunity for resting...

Interestingly, 4E NPCs, despite being differently derived then PCs, actually usually share the race's special ability. And I think it's often what made a group of NPCs of a race (like Goblins or Kobolds) feel more uniquely that race than in any other edition I played. I am surprised they didn't...

But "once per day" is already a "cooldown", so maybe they didn't see the forest for the trees, and though they had found something new when it was already there all along, contained in every D&D edition, and stolen by WoW and other MMORPGs? Maybe WoWs influence is more that they really thought...

Alternatively, the cost of the counterspell/disruption is lowered. Losing your action and the spell slot is a pretty significant setback. Maybe instead of losing a spell slot and the action, you can choose to keep casting another turn, or switch to casting a cantrip as reaction (retaining the...

Maybe with a meta-mechanic like compels in some games I've read about on EN World? You stat with 1 "Wild Flow" point at session start. When you use something involving wild magic, the GM can say: "Hey, I'd like to give you some bad wild result. If you agree, you'll get a wild flow point." or...

I think that any negative modifier is already something that makes things more complex, because always adding stuff is easier than sometimes subtracting and sometimes adding (and subtracting is always a bit more difficult than adding). So giving a general +4 is preferable to giving a general -4.

You "need" a +4 to hit because you want something to say "you're good at hitting stuff with X". Sorcerors get +4 to hit with spells, +2 to with Daggers, +0 to hit with anything else, and Wizards get +4 to hit with spells, +2 to with Staffs and +0 with anything else. Barbarians get +4 to hit...

I like(d) the move to having all character classes use a similar resource recovery schedule in 4E, and disliked losing that in 5E, it solved so many problems in balance and pacing I used to experience in 3E, and it enabled a relatively flexible way to run my campaigns. I like Warls, e.g...