Recent content by Gansk

That's true, someone did a fascinating analysis of Holmes' adaptation of OD&D rules - it might have been the guy who wrote the Holmes retro-clone, as I think he got access to some rare document that would have expanded on Holmes Basic to go past level 3.

When my group played 1E, we played by the book as much as humanly possible. Gygax's rules were sometimes a challenge to interpret, but it was like meandering down a maze. If you review the initiative rules, you'll know what I mean. Everytime we rolled a d6 for initiative, I was the designated...

In the 1e days I calculated the maximum treasure value given to the Demon and Devil Lords and a few other BBEG's in the Monster Manual, based on the treasure types that were assigned to them. Then I divided by the XP for these monsters. The ratio was approximately 3 GP per XP. When I would run...

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Good job at extrapolating, thanks! I never noticed that a full caster's spell slots stay constant at levels 12, 14, and 16.

I would love to see your house rules if you posted them in the house rules forum!

IMO your description justifies the Strength ability check, not the proficiency bonus gained from the Athletics skill. Athletics should be related to events in the Olympic decathlon, but not wrestling and swimming - those are completely different techniques and don't belong in the same category.

Use these rules in place of the gestalt rules: Allow the PC an extra attack per round which automatically hits if the enemy's CR is less than the PC's level. The damage (using the rules above) is fixed based on class: Fighter-types - 1d8 Wizard-types - 1d4 but ignores enemy's CR and has range...

Not everything, these two things. Why? Because they are basic mechanics. Every edition of D&D had to devise a system to determine how often a class feature would be used and how it would give a "bonus" if a die was rolled to determine success. 5e adopted a basic design philosophy to address...

Yeah, I don't play past 15th level either, but if I did it would be pretty annoying to make 20 scratch marks on a piece of paper every session... Just something to consider in the future - you could use proficiency bonus + ability modifier # of uses and still basically achieve your design goal...

The 2nd level class feature of the alt ranger is based on level and the dwarven defender stance in this document is based on level. For dwarven defender, I think you can follow WotC's precedent used in Tunnel Fighter, which forces a bonus action to maintain the "stance" each round. Also keep...

This pdf and the alt ranger pdf that you made are giving me lots of ideas for house rules, thank you for your work! I am curious if you have found a precedent in the PHB where a class feature (other than spell casting) has uses based on level. It seems to me that more than 6 to 8 times a day...

OK, it sounds to me like the difference between a fumble table and a lingering wounds table is the duration, not necessarily the deadliness of the effect. Having complications occur in the middle of combat is fun, but the complication should not nag at the players for the entire day. So maybe if...

Coming from an AD&D background myself, I can understand your feelings. It is important that the DM also get a sense of satisfaction by challenging the players - there is too much work involved if that feeling is not there. I think the standard rules are working against you here, forcing you into...

I don't quite understand why you are locked into the encounter math as the solution to your problem. It seems to me that satisfaction for a deadly encounter boils down to the following: Players - they were fearful that at least one of them could potentially die, but they escaped by being...