This week Mike continues his look at the D&D Next core classes with some thoughts on the design of the Fighter. Mike’s first four points (The Fighter Is Best At Fighting, The Fighter Draws on Training, The Fighter Exists in a World of Myth) all seem pretty predictable to me. These are core elements of the Fighter. The other three made me pause a bit. First up, #4: The Fighter Is Versatile. This is tough because I can totally argue both sides. Let’s start with the positive: the fighter should be versatile because it fits into the game better. Assuming some kind of proficiency rules (where, say, Wizards can’t use swords...

I’m more than a little late getting around to talking about Mike’s post about Cleric design goals. It’s been a busy week! I gave a talk on software testing at my alma mater, saw some old friends, and Dungeon World has gotten a fresh round of buzz. The up side to posting so late is that, having seen this week’s post, I know that we’re going to be covering more classes in future articles, so I can set a bit of precedent here on how I’ll post about each class. The nature of Mike’s posts themselves are interesting, given that they recently announced a release date for the public Beta. He’s kind of...

This week Greg Bilsland fills in with a post about monsters, in particular where they fit into a product. There’s not a whole lot of design stuff here. Really it’s mostly about what monsters you need and what product they fit into. I don’t know much about productizing on WotC’s scale, so I really have no clue what’s best for them. Personally I’d like to see fewer books needed to play D&D and make those books available in a smaller format. Something like one Essentials-style “D&D” book that contains everything you need to get started. When I bought my first D&D book it was the 3E...