Recent content by Lanefan

I've seen scry-and-fry happen numerous times in 1e, never mind 3e where it was far easier to pull off. It's a thing, IME.

Whenever I design a table for almost anything I always make the table's range either open-ended (meaning I might have to roll a d57 or something because right now the table only has 57 options) or bigger than the number of options with a gap included to allow for future expansion as ideas come...

2-5 is the same average as d6 only with the ends filed off. Easy enough to do as d4+1.

I think no matter how finely we try to tune this, there's still going to be situations where it just comes down to eyeballing it at the time. My head. I made those numbers up as examples to show what I was talking about with damage thresholds. Draining blood miiiiiight be covered by the...

GenCon comps their more prolific GMs (or used to, anyway, no idea if that's still the case) and turning in the players' tickets to the organizers was proof you actually ran the game you said you were going to run.

Blinding spittle is just another form of missile discharge, only with an effect other than damage. That said, blindness maps to an offensive spell effect and thus could count as EAXPB. Tough call. For squirt acid and low-end breath weapons the easiest answer is a maximum-damage cutoff: if it...

Turning into a long day, so not going to get too in-depth here... You've been talking about engagement, which participation is just part of. Yes, you're not participating; that lack of participation does not have to equate to complete disengagement unless you actively choose such. I'm not so...

For the bolded to happen the overall design would need to be a whole lot more modular than it is. Modular design is antithetical to unified design, and unified design has (other than a brief glimmer of hope during 5e playtest) been a stated intent of every WotC edition.

Unfortunately, I don't think the latter part of that can be designed. The entertainment piece has to come from the people at the table, and will or won't do so pretty much regardless of the system design. Agreed. Again agreed. I'm not after anticlimax all the time; I just want it to be able...

If I'm out of action for an uncertain length of time, I have several options. In rough order of best to worst in terms of what I could do next: --- continue paying attention (quietly!) to see what happens next, i.e. seamlessly slip from participant to audience --- find something game-related...

The people who made the Indy movies are trying to entertain an audience. I'm just trying to keep my character alive. Here, the "That was it?" would be immediately followed by "YEEESSS!!!" and a cheer.

If you become completely disengaged when your character isn't or can't be involved, as opposed to staying engaged and entertained by what's happening even though you're not actively participating, that's entirely your choice. It's not the fault of the game designers. TV shows are randomly...

Perhaps and understandably unclear in my post to which you refer, I was speaking about the game (both at-table and in-character) rather than the real world. @billd91 seems to have read me bang-on. "You don't get to play any more" is Chick-level hyperbole. This isn't Black Leaf dying and her...

I disagree with the bolded, in that a player can decide going in whether or not it's going to be fun no matter what the game or system or situation may be. It often depends on the players out-of-game mood at the time. A player in a good mood who decides before the session "I'm going to make...

That's our fundamental disagreement, as I say that when the game state denies your involvement for however long then so be it. And periodically-denied involvement is a built-in fact of the game state, sometimes inflicted by the opposition (usually as an effect that takes you out of combat), and...