David Noonan on D&D Complexity

[Ridley's Cohort]

The net effect of a pile of low level buffs can be adequately emulated by a flat across the board increase in stats or something similar. Then the DM only has to juggle the higher level abilities.

That is how I would do it if I were DMing a powerful dragon.

If you insist on giving your Dragon things like Mirror Image and Blur that will annoy the bejesus out of particular PCs, you are really begging for a Dispel Magic war. YMMV.

 

[Psion]

After reading this I have the impression that either I am pretty smart or a lot of people are extremly lazy. I mean, iterative attack progression and grapple rules are hard to learn?
(...)
I really hope that David has nothing to do with the 4th Edition, because I really dislike his dumbed down D&D.

I agree with you on the general gist. But I happen to disagree about iterative attacks. I think grapple is really not as bad as people make out.

I think it's rude to call people "stupid or lazy" for not "getting" iterative attacks. I do think that some people just don't organize numbers as well as others, and at higher level, I see it as one of the most authentic and universal problems bogging down the game. I work around this, but I think if there was a simpler solution, I'd prefer it.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The net effect of a pile of low level buffs can be adequately emulated by a flat across the board increase in stats or something similar. Then the DM only has to juggle the higher level abilities.

That is how I would do it if I were DMing a powerful dragon.

If you insist on giving your Dragon things like Mirror Image and Blur that will annoy the bejesus out of particular PCs, you are really begging for a Dispel Magic war. YMMV.

I agree with that, but this is why I'd rather get rid of the "casts like an x-level sorcerer" ability in favor of something more streamlined.