Recent content by jasin

I don't think at all that we can take any sort of claim about the essence of RPGs as a given. I think there's a non-negligible amount of players that like the gamey, rulesy bits, enjoy choosing character options and combining them, like feeling like they're putting in work to earn their bonuses...

I was expecting dice-rollers to be mapped to active (want to make things happen), and roleplayers directed by the DM as passive (want to watch things happen). But that might just be because my current tastes lean more to the former. So I wonder if the majority of the players might self-identify...

I wasn't surprised that WotC could use the trademark, I was surprised that anyone else could.

https://www.pr.com/press-release/838425 E. Gary Gygax Jr. and others are heading a new company called TSR Games, and I'm surprised to see them using the old TSR logos. I vaguely understand there is something in US trademark law about losing a trademark through disuse, but Wizards of the Coast...

Well that was educational! Playing around with this, it seems that, very roughly, sum of monster CRs = party level makes for a medium encounter for a 4 PC party, which seems an intuitive enough to keep in mind a baseline.

Thanks, for some reason I thought the Basic Rules only covered the player side. I double posted this.

Thanks, for some reason I thought the Basic Rules only covered the player side.

No, those are exactly what confused me, in that they seem to be saying "for a party of level N, you almost never want to be using CR N monster".

Ah so simply the XP sum is what I'm looking for? "Y XP is a decent fight for a level N party", regardless of whether that's one guy worth Y XP or 5 guys worth Y/5 XP each? (With the understanding that using CRs a higher or a lot lower than party level makes things even less reliable than usual.)...

I don't have the books, and I think the encounter guidelines I've been looking at might have been from Xanathar's Guide rather than the DMG/MM, so maybe this is covered. If so, just point me at the right section. Otherwise, help me understand what the CR numbers represent in 5E. In 3E, it was...

It makes me think the point of the design was more the mechanical exercise of creating a one size fits all adventurer class, than the thematic concern of catering to the masked vigilante character type. Apparently, Jason Bulmahn, who designed the vigilante, also designed the factotum in 3E's...

Near the end of 3.5, someone said that the precise CRs for all WotC Monster Manuals can easily be obtained by 1) taking the listed CR; 2) adding 1d4-2; 3) adding the number of the Monster Manual where the monster is listed. :)

It's precision damage, but it's a non-action, just a bonus as long as you have at least 1 panache.

Well, I wouldn't say every class, but the general trend seems to be in that direction, yes. What makes it more noticeable in ACG is how close many of the classes are in concept to some of the previous ones. The inquisitor seems about as powerful as the warpriest, but I liked it a lot more...

But of course. If you think damage isn't something to base a melee character around, than your conception of the game is different enough from mine that your opinion not very useful to me, especially if it comes with condescension as above.