Recent content by fiddlerjones

I have a veritable plethora of converted MK and Dreamblade minis that I use for D&D on a regular basis. A lot of the MK sculpts are far and away better than the newer DDM stuff (though the paintjobs are awful). If you don't mind rebasing and sometimes repainting, it's definitely the way to go...

I never understood the school of thought that balance is bad. In my ideal RPG, players won't have to give up character utility in order to pursue a character concept they like.

I do not limit alignment for the same reason I don't limit most of the other choices players make. If players want to make evil characters, more power to them. My last campaign was one of the best I've ever run, and the party consisted of a NE fighter, a CN warlock who later became CE, and a N...

Speaking personally, my last 3.5e campaign was all but 4e. I had a warlock, a couple of custom-designed encounter powers for the fighter based off his legendary sword, and the druid had a reserve feat. My monster design had already converted over to 4e (including recharge powers), but this was...

I am almost entirely pleased with the new cosmology. There's a nice parallelism that makes a lot of sense - Astral Sea (order) vs. Elemental Chaos (um. chaos); Feywild (life) vs. Shadowfell (death). Of course it's "poorly detailed," but that leaves them open-ended, which I believe was a...

This is very clearly the case in D&D. My friends and I don't have infinite time to play the game, and any given session is usually 2-4 hours long, including intermittent off-topic digressions and time to look up the occasional rule. The point is that a D&D needs editing just as a TV show or...

Good point. Still a lame name though -flameharrow.

That's fair enough, but I think IanB hit the proverbial nail on the head. Using names like "minotaur" and "chimaera" works for me because in my mind they are mythical beasts. The name dinosaur, however, does kind of break the immersion for me. I agree with the criticisms of the phoenix...

Of course the inhabitants of [Insert Fantasy World Here] probably wouldn't speak English. Of course they wouldn't know common words like "sword" or "dragon" any more than they would "dinosaur." The idea here is that we're using English as a substitute for their Common language. Thus the...

Kudos on the skill challenge idea. It's a brilliant thought and probably the way I'll adjudicate mass battles in my campaigns should they arise. I also agree that the Skill Challenge mechanic will be the defining trait of this edition.

If I'm not mistaken though, at least at one point on M:tG Online you could exchange your virtual cards for real cards that would be mailed to you and removed from your online collection (not sure if this is still true, as I've never played M:tGO). If I could exchange my vBeholder for a real...

I'd say you're pretty much right on that one. Remember that 4E damage is more abstract - think of it as running out of second chances. Least that's one way to view it, and also the reason healing surges even begin to make sense. The real injuries only happen when you're bloodied.

Of course they are. WotC has taken the terrible course of the "word+word" nomenclature. Examples: Shadowfell, Feywild, Bloodspike, Deathjump (spider), Deathrattle (viper), I can go on.... The name change from "dinosaur" to "behemoth" was a wise one though, because inhabitants of a fantasy...

It looks really good. The only thing I'm insisting on in my gaming worlds is that they have tails. Any lizard-ish humanoid looks weird to me without a tail.

Star Pact, a thousand times.