Recent content by Tenbones

There is magic. It's just ritualistic and tied into being a skill more than traditional "spellcasting" from Talislanta (which normally is more powerful than D&D by scale). This is not to say there isn't any magic, in the forms of devices and gear etc. The legacy of the ancient Archaen's...

Nope, it has nothing to do with "the Dark Ages" of historical western-European designation. We mean it from the perspective of the setting. The world blew up. It's still in the process of cooling down. And the races that have emerged from the aftermath of the cataclysm are forming tribes that...

I personally am on the fence. I'll admit - the rabidness of the 4e-club (especially on this forum) has been a bit of a turn-off. I've tried to read the replies to the OP and other threads expressing their mild-concern. Personally - I'm really depending on the responses from the 4e crowd to...

There are feats that allow a PC to be a devastating grappler. One of my players had his feats so well stacked (justifiably - he was a Half-drow slave in the Underdark, having fought his way out of the slave-pits - he became a personal guard) while on a trip through the UD, he ended up fighting a...

The whole "In the zone" rationale would be fine, if the game reflected a series of events that leads the character to "get" into the aforementioned "zone" - but the idea that mechanically we're seperating the character from the gameplay - it seems silly. Or at the very least non-immersive. This...

Authorial intent... which is what? To use magic? Obviously. I think some of the responses to my post are over-analyzing what I'm getting at. I'm not saying that magic is impossible to come by. Heck if you want it peddled out of shopping carts in the streets - more power to you! I'm merely...

The whole "simulationist" vs. "gamist" civil war is definitely heating up. The abstraction of of the daily martials is fine. Ironically - they've been in D&D before (Oriental Adventures 1ed) and everyone said "neat! Chi-based abilities". Now, suddenly it's turning people ('simulationists' yay a...

/sigh Well other than the fact that you cherry picked my general point - I'll bite. You're talking a specific period in the Riftwar. What about the later years? There's Greate Path Magicians ALL OVER THE PLACE. So many that the Kingdom of the Isles fears them as an unregulated power (they police...

The "issue" is because D&D doesn't tell players HOW magic is supposed to be used. We're talking about two different things - personal vs. cultural imperatives. Magic is "everywhere" in D&D only if the GM allows it to be everywhere. The reasons you don't see it running rampant in novels (good...

Not pickin a fight - I definitely accept your point. BUT I can easily point out some 3.5 specific flaws: 1) AC System - It doesn't scale *AT ALL* with the power-progression (without even factoring in piss-poor itemization.) Not getting into the AC/DR argument - just saying, this sacred cow need...

What I find interesting about the trend towards splitting off and doing d20 "your way" in the current field of publishers - is that ultimately it's d20. Outside of Green Ronin, whose True20 is a very real (and good) step away from the 3.5 system, others are just tweaks and changes (some I find...

Do not insult other people.

Heh, you call me deluded out of nowhere - rant and rave your fanboy party-line and you criticize me for being sarcastic? Wow. You're the best player - EVER. :D

Heh well allow me to clear up some of the assumptions about my post. I'm not complaining about d20. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it. Nor am I accusing all of the "straight out of the box d20 players" baby-killers for doing so. Not at all. I'm posting my opinions based on general concensus of...

Gaining levels is an artifice. When you level - you're in essence buying a set of abilities with your xp. D&D3.x does not scale well. No group uses 3.x straight out of the box (and if you do, your GM will have to adjust the output of gear one way or another for balance) and each group has...