Recent content by slobo777

7th Sea has 5 major stats, and manages to make them all equally useful in combat - such that you always enjoy using your best stat, and wish you had higher score in the worst one. I'd love to see D&D pull off the same trick.

That does presuppose that pretty much every action by a wizard character is going to be a spell. It doesn't have to be that way. Although I would agree that falling back to dagger, staff or crossbow in combat doesn't feel particularly wizardly . . . out of combat a wizard isn't a bag-o-spells...

I'd like a system with a low number of slots, where the slots were level (or below) and school. E.g. a 5th-level wizard might choose; 1 3rd-level; Evocation 2 2nd-level; Transmutation, Abjuration 2 1st-level; Abjuration, Illusion . . . and then be able to choose at the time of casting within...

I think this is more that the game wants iconic dangerous animals to appear in heroic fantasy combats, and not all at low level. Like many pieces of the gme (e.g. spells, economy), the animals have been ordered into a separate relative power structure, and placed into the game with only a rough...

It's because those options are attached to something that the player can do something about, and players are constantly striving to solve and overcome problems that the DM presents in the plot. Presenting a problem attached to a minor piece of discovered equipment will resolve effectively as...

Generally as a player if I had a *minor* magic item that a DM used like this, it would get thrown away or destroyed as cursed pretty quickly. It would have to be pretty impressive to keep and put up with having "endless DM options" attached to my character, especially considering that two out of...

IME, the DM has a bit of Underpants Gnomes' thinking going on; a) a "cool idea" for an NPC (for some value of "cool") b) ???? c) fun The "tag along" part of this NPC has worn thin quickly for your group, as it probably is only a half-formed idea, and the DM is looking for some player...

According to the SRD, you can voluntarily dismiss a familiar, but that still incurs an XP penalty: Sorcerers & Wizards :: d20srd.org What exactly is the problem with the hawk, and what is the DM doing to make you consider dropping the benefit? Is it purely a mechanical constraint you are...

NPCs are built differently in 4E, and this has not happened in that system. Don't know if has not happened at all, but for any reasonable take on "many", definitely not. For 4E, that is because NPCs are built to fit around the PC system, as game constructs that the players get their PCs to...

In terms of process - how you go about deciding your backgrounds - I recommend talking it out one small idea at a time. You'll fill the blank canvas in a more satisfying way if you get to bounce ideas off each other, than if one of you tries to present a completed background to the group...

It's also only a problem with game mechanics if you have both: 1) Low-level play and 2) Either player-v-player or monsters using the same auto-damage effects Meaning you can fix the wizard-kills-wizard situations by having them occur from about level 3 onwards. Besides which, this is still...

I'll try: In craps, making a 10 the "hard way" 5+5 is only half as likely as rolling a 6+4, because there are more ways of making that. Remember once you sort the array, you have hidden the 6! (=120) ways of arranging the results. In an all 10's listing, there are still those combinations to...

Pulled out these quotes, because they point to something interesting - every archetype can have positive and negative traits (or more generally an "angle" which provides more of a story). You can build an interesting pantheon by taking a number of bland archetypes relevent to a world, and then...

It's not challenging, but it is generally wasted time. Even those stats are irrelevent 90% of the time if the PCs are just trying to buy supplies. Probably the NPC's name and perhaps something memorable about them in personality, mannerisms or appearance is the most usefully relevent thing...

Isn't that an anti-specialisation sentiment? Because Barry is much better served here if he can equip the bardiche as his signature weapon, but not be penalised when he inevitably needs to swap it out indoors, at range etc. So perhaps give him a fancy reach spinning cleave signature move along...