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Yep Mike's a smart guy. I have to say his adventure work (KotS, etc) has left me underwhelmed, but anytime he writes design or gives DMing advice in general I find myself agreeing. Anyway I hope some 3rd party publisher twigs onto this 'big book of fantastic terrains' idea, cause WotC has no...

No, he's right. He's not talking about turning combats into stories. Imagine, for example, a fight with a dragon in his cave. You could decide , as a way of making the combat more interesting, that the cave is unstable and that the dragon is familiar with it, so that he has the option of...

Good stuff... I can already see my encounters improving by laying them on an intro-tension-climax skeleton! Funnily enough I have always had this as a guide when thinking out whole adventures, but it never occurred to me that the same thing could be scaled down and applied to single encounters...

I used to do this. It's a great mechanic that can improve the game a lot. You actually have to add the monster's to-hit to 12 to get it to work, not 10: Say the monsters to-hit is +5, and the character's AC is 14. The monster needs a 9 to hit the PC, which is to say he has 60% chance to hit...

Yep sounds about right to me :) why do you want to know this, are you trying to re-balance the PCs' powers? BTW I'd say really VERY few items can approach the power of a Daily PC power. Like, almost none. Which ones do you have in mind for that?

Funny, we tried the exact same solution for the exact same problem with our Settlers games and we got the exact opposite result. Why? Because it turns out the early rolls in a Settlers game are MUCH heavier and more important than the middle or later rolls. They are what set you up for the rest...

What about if a player who misses a Daily gets an Action Point to compensate.. an action point that avoids the usual limits on AP spending (I did away with those limits in my games a while ago anyway). This way at least he can compensate the drag a bit by taking a double action on his next round...

Haha, can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but yeah that's what I have in mind pretty much.. though I'd stop at three or so of those for a single encounter. So far the most memorable fights we've had (aside from an adult dragon 4 levels over the party who came 3 hp away of wiping them)...

I have encountered, again and again, the grind problem. One particularly bad session we barely got through two combats in 5 five hours of play, and at the end we were so burnt out from it we didn't even bother with treasure or XP or anything, we just stopped. It's totally true what you (OP)...

The problem with discussing Skill Challenges, as evidenced all throughout this thread, is that everybody has their own personal interpretation and their own pet mechanics that they inject into it without thinking or without even realizing it. Thus everybody says "Skill Challenge" when they're...

On Dispose: I saw the same problem in my games. In such a situation as a DM I just kill the monster. "It dies," or, "It falls unconscious from blood-loss, coup-de-gras?" Your solution might be good because it gives the player the power of the decision and that's almost always a good thing. On...

That is AWESOME and exactly the type of thing I'm looking for! :D It already gives me ideas for some cool encounters (which is another benefit of having mini-templates that I've found: They can stimulate you to get creative with game/encounter ideas). In last night's game I used the...

PHB Page 280 (rules for Cover) says "(A line isn’t blocked if it runs along the edge of an obstacle’s or an enemy’s square.)" So there's yet another messy thing which could go either way. Anyway you know what I'm gonna just save myself a whole heap of headache and go with Tony's interpretations...

What about if the wizard casts the wall of fire (or stinking cloud, or any zone-damage) on top of an enemy then? He technically 'entered' the zone: he wasn't inside a wall of fire, then he was inside. Does the enemy take damage from the entering part of the wall of fire? And what if you're...

Hm, that rules as I understand it is for when a creature is about to be pushed off a cliff with forced movement; the creature can make a saving throw that represents the creature grabbing hold of the ledge at the last minute. Shouldn't apply to Stinking Cloud. Besides, the rule is not about...

But why shouldn't it have anything to do with the letter of the rules? If the rules seemed to support taking the damage on forced movement, I would make it take the damage of forced movement. Anyway I think the point is that the rules are ambiguous enough that any DM can make whatever ruling...

Wow that is quite a list and vision of what you want in a game... not sure what you're looking for really exists or will ever exist... if you want a wholly different and original fantasy RPG, with a setting that you can sink into and be "enchanted" by, with moderate amounts of crunch, I'd fully...

Just consider the AV masterwork armors as errata to the PHB masterwork armors - just erratta without having to admit to the errata-ing... a case of "stealth-errata", if you will. And of course you can have players buy all the masterwork they want if you feel like it, don't be silly.

From the Concealment rules box in page 281 of the PHB, creatures need to be non-adjacent to each other to qualify to have total concealment from one another: This is consistent with the "trace lines from one corner of the attacke's square to all corners of the target's square" method...

If you take the PHB2, MM2, etc as part of core, then one can't deny that "core" as it stands right now is incomplete, no. What one CAN deny is that such a fact has any relevance or importance whatsoever to a real group who plays 4e. It does not. At all. This is the difference between...