Recent content by cattoy

PF features a list of artifacts and how they could be destroyed. I'm sure you can extrapolate a list of ways to destroy or cure cursed magic items, appropriately scaled to the power of the cursed item.

we're not there yet. I'll celebrate the minute we have boots on the ground.

One of my definitions of elegance in design is that it expresses much in few words. One subsystem that illustrates this well is the HERO system disadvantage system. You take one axis that defines how often the disadvantage comes into play, you take one axis that defines how severely the...

I made a tshirt for a Champions character I play at a monthly game, otherwise, no. It looks like this http://cattoy-bn.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d45xwrf

In general, I'm going to guess that on the average PF is going to have quicker fights. 4e doesn't feature SoL powers, PF does. I've seen plenty of one character, one turn kills in PF, outside of minions, I haven't seen that in 4e since 1st level (without an action point+multiple dailies).

Fundamentally, I don't think open ended sandboxes are ideal for superhero games. One of the basic problems with the sandbox is that the scope of superheroes, at least the higher end ones, is so vast that it runs the GM out of man hours to keep up with them. However, there's nothing wrong with...

I'm a big fan of Star Hero, but only if you already know the Hero System backwards and forwards. Too much of a learning curve otherwise. Trust me on that.

I don't like adding psionics to an established game system/world where it doesn't already exist. In short - you're adding a disease to an environment where nothing has evolved a defense for it. It's everything's blind spot and in order to balance it, you need to rewrite EVERYTHING. Not worth...

Pathfinder.

crossbows don't even enter into it. Remember, this thread is about fantasy RPG design and firearms, so real-life arguments hold little water. Even so, big crossbows were typically built to be cocked using a combination of body weight and leg strength. My question is: Why would you create that...

My counterpoint to that is, if guns are so expensive to create, so dangerous to operate and no more lethal than anything else you already have, then why make them?

IRL, sure. In D&D, not so much. Not once you're 10th level, anyway. Once 3.0 happened, and there weren't any vorpal swords, I've never seen a high level character killed in one blow by anything that wasn't a giant wielding a ginormous greataxe or something like that. Once you hit high levels...

It is a bad idea to compare one edition of D&D against any other directly without taking context into consideration. Gygax didn't have to compete for people's bandwidth with the internet, cable TV, fantasy football, World of Warcraft. facebook, twitter, iPhones or youTube. Gygax won the game...

Gate? What gate?

Absolutely, it's the core design feature of escalating HP that makes guns mechanically incompatible with D&D. In the modern world, we all have this knowledge that every human being, no matter what class or level, is one (un)lucky bullet away from being a collection of donor organs. This does...