Recent content by SWAT

Well would you look at that... being prone only grants combat advantage with regards to melee attacks :o. I'm sure I knew that once... Oh well...

I can't find anything that would prevent this, but I'd like to make sure... Can I use a free action between the primary and secondary attacks of an attack power? For example, take the Psion daily Shred Reality (area attack, followed by a secondary attack on one of the targets hit) and the...

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Now, to answer some of the questions and comments I remember reading... We've been applying the death saving throw rules correctly, so it was never that that was affecting the danger. While I play a dedicated healer when someone else DMs, that hasn't been...

To varying degrees, the players in the 4e game I co-run feel that combat doesn't feel dangerous enough, mainly due to the death and dying rules. One even wrote an analysis of the situation, which I've included below. Indeed, over 16 levels (from 1 to 16), no PC has ever died, and only once has...

It bothered me as well for a while until I sorted it out for myself as such: 'Magic' really only means 'special effect.' It's a result, not a source. And how can magic be done? Well, by a connection to primal spirits, or worshiping the divine, or a series of words and gestures of power, or with...

I think neither one, as stated, is in any way likely. If we're going to be guessing at what the designers' intentions might have been, I'd say they never meant for Stealth checks to be made while receiving superior cover from allies. After all, they wrote that you can't stay hidden using allies...

I'm not doubting whether or not the Protector Spirit bonus applies. Like you said, it's printed. I'm just wondering if the spirit boon applies because it seems like weird design to have a double-up without the text "and this is in addition to your spirit boon power."

As far as I can tell, a Bear Shaman hitting with Spring Renewal Strike can let an ally adjacent to their spirit companion use a healing surge, and adds twice their Con mod to the HP healed (once from the power's Protector Spirit bonus, and once from the spirit boon). It seems strange to me that...

I used the system for the first time last night, and plan to keep doing so, but I ran into a situation where I was unsure as to the intent of the system. The skill challenge was an interrogation. The PCs had a cleric of Bane tied up and hanging upside down high up in a tree, while they were at...

Kobolds are excellent trapmakers, and in one 3.0 campaign my DM played them as the greatest trapmakers in the world. So they kept beating us in humiliating ways over and over and over... Like the one-way exit portal they had discovered deep within some cave. Realizing that a reasonable amount...

The numbers aren't the problem, it's knowing where someone is I'm worried about. I admit this can happen in other cirucmstances, but I suspect that fighting in a completely lightly obscured area will produce a lot of cases where one PC can see an enemy, so the enemy's fig is on the table, but...

What's the deal with the extra rule for lightly obscured terrain on the bottom right of p.61 in the DMG? Am I the only one who doesn't get why it's there, and only there? Let's see, the rule itself, about how creatures 5 or more lightly obscured squares away from you have total concealment...

The section on Skill Challenge group skill checks in the DMG mentions that a group skill check should be used when every PC must perform a given action, such as climbing a wall. I had concluded from this that if the PCs were chasing someone, then whenever someone decided to just use Athletics to...

Yes, yes I am. Since 2002, actually.

The Perception skill description says an active Perception check is a standard action, while the text on targetting what you can't see (p. 281) states that it's a minor action. Am I missing something, or are these indeed contradictory statements? Thanks.