Dr. Confoundo's page

My advice instead would be to have a damage 'threshold'. Say, a level 5 minion has a 15 point threshold. If they take damage less than that, they become bloodied, and any future hit kills them. If they take damage equal to their threshold or higher, the attack slays them out-right.

Not a bad idea. You'd need to do some math to get the exact threshold right... would 10+level work out, even through the epic levels? How much damage will a non-optimized 30th level character do with an at-will attack?

Another idea is to mix in Vulnerabilities in there as well - undead goons auto-killed by any radiant attack, etc.

Personally, I think that this adds unnecessary complication to minions. One of the main reasons to use minions is so that you don't need to track hp for them... by creating a stronger version of minions that have a relatively small number of hp, that advantage is completely negated.

Perhaps, instead of a numerical value for hp for these guys, just give them a bloodied state. So now, the first hit on the goon reduces it to bloodied (with all the mechanics that are included in that), and another hit kills it.

We're not porting any of the mechanics from Earthdawn into Age of Legend 4E. We feel that the Earthdawn flavor is what makes the game worth doing; 4E's mechanics already have all that's needed. But you can expect new monsters, some paragon paths, equipment, etc., though we haven't decided if anything warrants an entire new class yet or not... We're more interested in providing a solid setting and adventures (at least for the moment).

Sounds good. Toss in rules for those last couple PC races (the T'skrang and the obsidimen) or at least ways to model them (goliaths as obsidimen?), a bunch of Horrors, and plenty of info on life in the kaers... what better start for a fantasy campaign is there then "You've never been outside the protected bunker that your family has lived in for generations because there are demonic monsters outside. The door is now open - go find adventure!"

I'd like to also see you include rules to try and model how magic items were in Earthdawn (or at least how I remember them being in 1st Ed)... items that would grow in power as the characters learned more about their history. This is something that should be fairly easy to do with the magic item and ritual rules in 4E.

In another case, if the Earthdawn guys see a good reception with half decent sales for their recently released third edition Earthdawn books, I wouldn't be surprised if they shift most of their effort into producing supplements for the third edition while the 4E D&D version is placed on the backburner (perhaps indefinitely).

That's unfortunate. I would pick up the 4E Earthdawn book in a heartbeat, as it fits in perfectly with 4E's 'points of light'.

OTOH, I have almost no interest in their books if they keep the Earthdawn mechanics.

My only hope is that they keep Tom Baxa as far from the the new setting material as possible. I've always hated his art.