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Something I'd like to add to the "codified vs freeform abilities for monsters" discussion is what I like to call the "Giant Octopus Riddle". The giant octopus monster is an iconic fantasy encounter. It goes something like this: This is the artwork for the 4E Silt Horror, a Darksun variant of...

All the (3) things characters can do. For people who feel like gameplay is same-ish, 5E is pretty anemic in terms of player options too, honestly. "All the things players can do" is a very slim list, made of extremely situational options, and won't really satisfy someone who's looking for the...

I'm one of those, and I don't play 5E. Also, I wouldn't consider 160.000 an impressive number for D&D. But there's a reason why I say I don't use my anedoctal experience as proof. I know it's not reflecting the actual situation.

I didn't comment on that because anedoctal evidence is even more fiddly. If I had to do so, then I'd be calling 5E a disaster: it's the first time none of the groups I DM or play with are playing a single game of the most recent edition of D&D (there's an active 4E game, a couple Pathfinder...

I think there's a lot of merit in your reasoning, but I wouldn't underestimate the impact that the slow and painful death of the brick and mortar bookstore had on D&D's persistance on Amazon charts. What Amazon charts tell us is that more people are buying D&D on Amazon. We have no way to know...

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but relative position on Amazon doesn't equal volume. Right now the PHB is 28th in the Teens section, and if you look at what's selling better than it (several individual editions of the same book, an expensive audiobook version of the Hobbit (!) and some...

I was checking the Cavalier in HotFK, actually, which goes: "A cavalier is a paladin who has embraced one of the heroic virtues, such as compassion, justice, sacrifice, or valor. His or her belief in this virtue is so strong that it manifests as divine magic. Although many cavaliers pledge...

I went with C because 4E leaves the "paladin of an ideal" option open. It's generally B however, yes. As for the rest, I agree with what you said above. I think the paladin's "alignement requirement" is first and foremost a roleplaying vehicle. I've never witnessed a paladin player not...

This is a common outlook, but isn't it a bit of a paradox, tho? If the crux of the paladin's dilemma is that he inevitably has to pay a price for breaking his code, the moral of the story is that paladinhood is a failure. Explaining: the paladin may be breaking the code for 2 reasons. He fails...

I think an interesting angle of the discussion that has been somewhat omitted is that divorcing paladins from alignement wasn't a one step process in D&D. We actually have 3 states of being: A) the paladin is alignement-bound, and has to be Lawful Good B) the paladin is alignement-bound, and...

I didn't mean to war or anything with my reply, but if it's considered too "aggressive" I'll gladly delete it or edit it. It doesn't contribute much to the current discussion anyways.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience with 4E. However, none of what you describe has anything to do with how the Powers system divorced the concept of "character-triggered effect" from "magics", which was the point of my post. I'm not gonna pollute the thread with a detailed response on your...

At that point I'd rather borrow the Bonus Spell slot system from 3.X. "At level 1 your Cleric can memorize 3 extra spells, as long as they're that one spell that heals people".

Urgh, that terrible, streamlined, intuitive, flexible and customizable system. I still dread the idea of being able to give classes all kinds of different abilities without calling them magic ;) .

This obviously leads to the ages-old problem of making the Fighter some sort of super-broad parent class and the other melee archetypes super-specialized ones. Which, sadly, is the reason Fighters tend to be terribly weak in most D&D editions. To use 3.X terminology, what you want is probably...

No, it wasn't. The Warlord was the mechanical representation of a battle leader rather than a combat expert. 4E enabled its existence because the introduction of Power Sources allowed to split up the "Fighting Man" archetype or parent class into various different declinations, but if we take...

The core issue with dead levels, for me, is that leveling is ultimately a necessary evil more than a boon. It's a mechanic meant to allow for character development and variety in gameplay, but it comes at the cost of many negative side effects - rationalizations aside, it leads to old material...

Honestly, I think the core issue 4E fans are having with Next (aside from the occasional vitriol thrown at them in podcasts, as in the recent "Warlords shouted lost limbs back" nonsense) is that integrating 4E with classic design IS problematic. The core problem here is that 4E's merits can...