Recent content by Brother MacLaren

Yes, that is true. I don't worry for myself that I will be unable to find games I enjoy. I do worry for Paizo that this will not be as successful as they hope. They are a great company with good customer engagement and some fantastic products. For the overall success of the hobby, I think...

My first knee-jerk reaction is that this was written by a programmer. Keywords, icons, and so on. But then again I know Mark Seifter is a programmer. Old RPGs were written by humanities types (history and lit). Or social sciences; Tom Moldvay (one of my favorite creators) had a Master's...

I love fighters, and I love maneuvers, but I generally dislike limited-use martial abilities. Always-on is far, far more appealing conceptually, even if in an actual game it isn't as potent. I like the idea of the character thinking he can keep this up all day, instead of the character...

Just ran my first game in 7 years over the weekend. Was camping with my wife, her brother, their cousin, and several of their friends. My brother-in-law had previously expressed an interest in having me run a D&D game. Of the seven players, only one had prior TTRPG experience, and one had...

Lots of interesting ideas here. I like using the existing Exhaustion mechanic, maybe with faster recovery of Exhaustion for fighters. It's simple, not too punitive, but prevents just spamming special abilities over and over by adding a cost. You could do back-to-back Action Surges and then...

Will there be options in the PHB or DMG for substituting "at-will" or "always-on" abilities for the fighter in place of his "short/long rest recharge" abilities? I generally dislike the idea of non-magical abilities being limited in such a way, with a few exceptions. It feels too gamist. I am...

I find it hard to express just how strongly I disagree with this idea. I said a lot of my arguments against this mindset when 4e came out. WotC used to act as if the *business* needed edition churn to be profitable. Splatbook power creep leading to system collapse and reboot. The *hobby*...

I've played since the Red Box set, and really like old Basic D&D. Enjoyed 3E, avoided 4E, and rather liked Pathfinder. The local PFS group is great. But the power creep in the system is annoying, as is the fighter getting outclassed at his own schtick by the barbarian (a problem of late 3.5...

I was torn between the two versions of B/X-BECMI. I really like the Moldvay Basic book better, and I think that the Mentzer version got off track with the overpowered weapon mastery system, but in the end I went with BECMI due to the work done in fleshing out the campaign setting, such as in...

I think it's a fantastic idea. I would like to start doing this incrementally, beginning with the concepts that, in my mind, should not be understandable to the PCs. I was in a long debate over on giantitp a while ago where the RAW-as-physics literalists were arguing that characters could...

True for 3E, certainly, barring crits and various optional WP/VP systems. But what in the game rules reflects the in-world situation of a hero actually taking a greatsword through his gut? That's when the 2d6 comes up against a remaining HP within that range, after the hero has been worn down...

Well, they've learned that no non-magical weapon in the hand of a seemingly ordinary soldier has *yet* been fatal. In most movies that I think of, the heroes act as if the enemy weapons (even from mooks) are at least potentially lethal, no matter how many times they have been shot at and...

I have no problem with the players knowing that most attacks have no chance of being lethal, but I would prefer that in most cases they keep that knowledge from their characters. That is, to the degree that HP are partly luck and plot protection, I don't want the characters acting like they...

Kill humans in one shot, yes, but monsters, not necessarily. It's just as much a trope of action movies that certain creatures are so tough that it requires a huge amount of firepower to bring them down. One bullet shouldn't be able to kill a Tremors graboid, a Farscape Scarran, a B5 Shadow...

I'd agree with this, and I'd also agree with pming's suggestion to try BECMI or a retro-clone. Or, at the very least, 3E heavily house-ruled to be more in the spirit of earlier editions. It sounds like the OP's first 3E game was much more in the vein of earlier editions as I remember them...