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As others have suggested, the best way to deal with this is before the players have made characters. You tell the players (or the players tell you) why the party is adventuring together. Then, the players generate characters that meet this criteria. If a player wants to make up a character that...

We make up the party as a group of players. So, we are choosing PCs as a group. However, we are not usually focused on what class specific PCs are, or even whether or not particular classes are present in the party. We are usually focused on a rationale for why these PCs are together as a...

It seems a bit problematic to describe the effect of 20 damage on a 60hp creature significantly different to the effect of 50 damage to a 150hp creature? What you want the players to know in both cases is that the damage was about 1/3 of the creature's hit points, so that the players can make...

Melee, because that means you are at the heart of the encounter. Also, in a campaign that involves a lot of confined-dungeon adventuring ranged combat often isn't viable.

Yes, absolutely. Both series also post-date D&D. So, potentially the authors were influenced in some way by the kinds of stories and scenarios that arise from game play.

Although I think that is a function of literature compared to a game, rather than a consequence of a specific genre. Literature (whether Epic, S&S, Heroic, whatever) hardly ever features generic, mass-produced magic items. That's more an artefact of gaming.

While I do get what you are saying, I don't think that scale is genre defining either. Take, for example, Moorcock's Eternal Champion. That is S&S, but characters range across the entire multiverse, and entire civilisations can be destroyed in a kind-of-off-hand way, in a few paragraphs. I...

That doesn't seem right to me. Elric of Melnibone is a pretty genre defining work of Sword & Sorcery and both Elric and numerous other characters have access to lots of magic. Likewise Lord of the Rings is a genre defining work of Epic Fantasy. However, while there is a lot of magic in the...

First, I've never understood the idea that some seem to have that the "Sword & Sorcery" genre has less magic in it. "Sorcery" is even in the name. I think that there is a continuum along which lies "Heroic" and "Sword & Sorcery" (and "Epic" and "Mythic"). I don't think that there needs to be...

But the consequences depend not (only) on the amount of damage but on how many hit points the target has relative to the damage. If the target has 20 hit points and makes the saving throw, 30 damage is still a fatal problem for the target. If a target has 150 hit points, and fails the saving...

Historical (and fictional) "inspirational military leaders" are hardly anything like a D&D 4E Warlord though. Also, the idea that a warlord is an "inspirational leader" is very much a D&D invention anyway. Outside of D&D, the connotation of "warlord" is not "inspiring leader" it is more...

I agree Law vs Chaos is from Moorcock et al. I was thinking about the inspiration for the Good-Evil axis, which as you say was a later addition. While the second axis was purportedly introduced by Gygax due to a perceived confusion about the earlier Law-Chaos axis (and there seems no reason not...

I'm not sure that it does predate Tolkien? The idea that a race could have an alignment, and be an inherently evil (or good) race, seems quite unusual to me. Especially for "humanoid" races. Pre-Tolkien fantasy literature obviously has inherently evil individual creatures (dragons, for example)...

That is probably true. Tolkien's work has a pretty definite "these are good characters/races and these are evil ones" in a way that actually seems pretty unusual in fantasy literature, at least prior to him. Of course, the Chaotic-Lawful alignment axis seems certainly inspired by Moorcock...

I think of it as like concentrating while playing a video game. If it hasn't loaded, you are not going to concentrate on the game.

Rather than messing with these rules I think a better solution is to make some magic items available that help. For example, a magic item which allows you to ignore a failed Constitution Saving Throw to maintain concentration (and has charges, I guess). Or a have a familiar power that gives...

A character who attempts a Dexterity Save but fails is still ducking and rolling, etc. --- just not very effectively. Crucially, a character who makes the Dexterity Save still takes damage. So, he still ends up charred. So, in the split second that a fireball engulfs the target I think that it...

I agree with FrogReaver, Suggestion has Concentration duration, so the caster will know whether she is concentrating or not. Possibly, it might not be too clear to the caster whether the spell has fizzled because she lost concentration almost straight away or because the target made his save...

That's just a consequence of players wanting PCs to be good at combat. The only way around it is to make "winning" in combat: either generally easy, and/or unimportant. In the current campaign I am DMing the PCs do not have stats focused around their combat abilities. Which is wonderful...

The species-engineering elves did it to them? (hence the stereotypical antagonism) "Mayflies" came from somewhere else and the era of the species-engineering ancestor elves predates the arrival of the "mayfly" races. Or the species-engineering ancestor elves didn't care enough about the...