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A 1st-level goliath can still have a 20 Strength and can be frighteningly effective with 2-handed weapons. Works for me. As an alternative, I'd let a player use the DMG2 companion rules to play . . . just about anything, I guess. But I wouldn't kid myself into thinking I could really balance...

"Witch" ends up covering a lot of ground, conceptually . . . I'd tend to associate them with warlocks (i.e., forms pacts with strange powers), but there's a decent argument for more of a nature-oriented druidish character . . . maybe a controller build, for the various charms? These are the...

Today's "In The Works" appears to confirm that pixies will be tiny (although I guess "tiny" doesn't necessarily mean "Tiny") and retain some invisibility powers, plus flight. I'm pretty confident at this point in WotC's ability to balance out seemingly game-breaking stuff . . . I hope pixies...

Heh. You never can tell. Had an idea for a half-elf swarm druid that could turn into a cloud of miniature pixies --- nasty little guys, a la the toothfairies in Hellboy II. As with the badger-elf idea, the question is whether he's a guy who turns into a mess of pixies, or a mess of pixies...

I'm fine with any of the proposed solutions. I just plain don't want to deal with 3-dimensional combat, at least not as the default in every single encounter. I sorta like the alternate forms idea --- a Small "fight" mode (with minimal flight capability) and a Tiny "flight" mode (with minimal...

Seriously, you ever watch those new Tinkerbell movies? I'd want to butch it up slightly, but that's basically a D&D campaign right there, with Tink as a sort of MacGyver twigpunk artificer. The mechanics will be interesting --- I assume the PC strain of pixie will be around 2 to 2 1/2 feet, on...

In retrospect, it is now clear that my 25 years of RPG experience have all been leading up to the release of "Heroes of the Feywild" and the introduction of pixies as a PC class. I will not insist up a strictly all-pixie PC group from here on out. Possible exceptions would be a gnome (who...

Maybe not 10 feet, but I think of reach weapons as anything that can poke an enemy effectively from more than 5 feet away --- just enough to reach through that adjacent square into the next one.

Perhaps because the classic jousting lance is such a lengthy weapon? Still, I understand that the lances used in real combat would have been more manageable in size, sometime throwable.

No, but I also wouldn't joust without a shield. Is there a rule covering this? Or should this be a tweak to the Mounted Combat feat?

Isn't a longspear two-handed? So how is our jouster holding his shield?

Again, just going off the trailers and online spoilers, it's a great example of how an adventuring party operates on a different scale up around 25th level. Your tavern is a floating city in extradimensional space. The minions you plow through are 15 foot tall frost giants. Your dungeon is...

Y'know, I pulled out the old 2nd Edition FR Netheril books and was reminded that they in no way lived up to the promise of the setting --- high magic operating on a truly epic scale. Nope, it's mostly just a bunch of names and places and some fiddly rules options for "demi-magic" items. Almost...

All I know is that +2 Dex, +2 Int = gnome stealthy rogues are all kinds of awesome. Maybe give him a short bow and get into some alchemical applications for a classic "pixie dart" kind of vibe.

While we're on the subject . . . I actually have no problem with certain feats being phased out because the new ones are better --- not necessarily more powerful, just better written, more flavorful, whatever. I totally understand the need to say, over and over, THIS IS NOT 4.5. NOTHING IS...

I wish they'd get on with Essentializing the other races. It's an easy yet fundamental fix. C'mon, guys.

Actually, I sort of like the idea of "racial classes" as a throwback to the days when you didn't play an elf fighter or an elf ranger . . . you just played an elf. I think this idea might be better implemented by stuff like the eladrin knight article from last week, though: a custom list of...

I'll add another thought to that --- many, if not all, the D&D cultures could have their own take on this runic magic . . . what it means, where it comes from, what sort of vision quest is necessary, etc. Gnomes might see it as a matter of learning the answers to cosmic riddles (or the...

I'd just like to see something, flavor-wise, that ties in to the larger cosmology in a distinictive way. That's one of my favorite things about 4th Edition --- each power source has its own flavor, and each relates to the larger cosmology. So following up on the excellent suggestion that...

Great article. And that elf cavalier article they reference was in the first issue of Dragon I ever read, over twenty years ago.