Recent content by patrick y.

A sweeping wilderness vista that encompasses both the front and back cover. There should be a crumbling ruin reclaimed by nature in the near distance, and a crooked tower high atop a mountain in the background. An adventuring party of four or five should be making their way towards the ruins...

0_o ...right.

I don't particularly care about the blog, but I'd like to point out that it's not a him, or a "Mr. blog man". A woman wrote this. She points out she's a wife and a mother right in the second paragraph. It doesn't make a difference for the contents of the blog, or for people's reactions to it...

Hit point management for a wizard, however, is less important than it is for a fighter, or other front line character. A fighter's ability to absorb punishment - in the form of high hit points - is much more important to his effectiveness in play than it is for a wizard. Slowing down hit point...

Given there has never been a point in the history of D&D this has ever been an issue, and given the DDN playtest already includes multiple examples of destructive magic for both clerics and wizards... why would you think there was even a tiny possibility something like this would happen?

You know, when then standard justification for removing the paladin is "The cleric already does all that," then the best solution isn't to get rid of the paladin, it's to scale back the cleric. If the cleric class has really gobbled up so much conceptual space that it has fully eaten another's...

I've been musing on the idea of having MM scale if you memorize it as a 1st level spell. So, the wizard retains it as an at will cantrip that does d4+1, but he could also choose to memorize it as a 1st level spell that scales up by 1 missile every 2 caster levels, to a maximum of 5 missiles.

Kobolds have been cannon fodder for decades. The whole reason DM's got into trying to wipe out parties using only fiendishly cunning kobolds was because they've always been pathetic.

With respect, the vast majority of adventuring magic - whether it be spells or items - is just another tool in the toolbox, and has been from the beginning. Whether from a player's standpoint, or from a character's standpoint in the average campaign setting, there's nothing particularly...

Ugh. No thanks. The fighter gets a penalty to Charisma for what reason? The rogue gets a penalty to Constitution, but the wizard doesn't. So the stereo typically cerebral class is on average healthier than the acrobatic skirmisher? What, is a mandatory 1st level rogue power Pack a Day Habit...

That's a pretty good list of stuff, with two caveats. 1) "Realistic" is a good goal, particularly when it continues to be acknowledged that realistic is meant in the context of a world defined by the non-realistic elements. That said, reality is not brown. He mentions hyper-saturated color...

I think this one tells us less than either the cleric or fighter writeup, but there are a couple interesting possibilities suggested from points 3 and 4. Point 3 is mostly interesting because it reinforces the idea touched on in the fighter writeup, that mundane skill in a fantasy world is not...

This bit right here is the absolute key point they've got to keep in mind. Mundane is fine, so long as it's recognized that mundane in a world of dragons, giants, demi-gods, and demons is not the same as mundane here on planet reality. From mid levels on up, a fighter needs to be a ridiculous...

Anybody know what that monster on the old box is even supposed to be? I'd call it a manticore, if the manticore were equal parts scorpion, moldy bat, and Dr. Zoidberg.

Conversely, I think putting races like tieflings, dragonborn, and the like sends the message that D&D isn't just a poor man's Tolkien (and Tolkien-knockoff) simulator. Which I think is the right message to send in a modern system. The boundaries of what is considered generic fantasy have...