Recent content by tetrasodium

Mostly agree. Trouble is that the oversimplification broke a bunch of safeguards and outright removed most of the safety valves previously under gm control in the name of simplicity for the sake of simplicity

Not quite accurate when we had fort/reflex/will+SR. Firstly and most obvious is the fact that intelligence was not one of those saves even if there were probably feat/prc boons to use it for wis saves. What you are describing is a symptom that is the result of 5e breaking an objectively...

Even worse is players building scout and tank as out types then playing that way to the point that squishies or uncoordinated drum set PC's wind up needing to take point for the group. I saw it shockingly often in My AL games.

See this is where you are getting lost in the weeds expecting one monster to do every. Yim almost posit you linked to the ivory tower game design thing if 3.x and are familiar with the way it sets up everything to have a situation where it is great even if it's bad in other situations. Your...

No we were talking about how good bad and medium saves worked on monsters in 3.5 when the monster manual literally had an entry about adding SR to monsters. I liter linked to it and you quoted ihe link, all 3 saves are positive at +12/+3/+4 even with no template or class levels modifying them...

A hill giant had 16/6/10 An ogre had 6/0/1 or 12/2/2 The base skeleton had 0/1/2 or lots of other options depending on which skeleton you picked A kobold had 2/1/-1 On and on and on. Good save bad save medium save was very much the norm and the trend continued as cr scaled to a higher...

No it's not the issue because monsters had sr ac and sometimes hp. Take the dragon as an example . It ranged from sr- ac 15 5/4/4 saves & 30 hp then scaled up to sr25 ac42 28/20/25 saves and 536 hp. The difference between knowing what to target if you can and if you must is huge. All of...

I can see a reason why players might want that in order to avoid an opportunity cost for choosing not to invest in intelligence but having a cost to guessing wrong against SR meant there was objective value to being able to make a skill check to remember if this kind of monster has SR or not...

No,you are looking too narrowly at how it all fit together. 3.x had three depending on class and prc choices. Wiz/sorc maxed out at +6/6/12 while cleric had +12/6/12. It was extremely common for a prc to bump a bad save to a medium one or a good save into a great one

That's largely how it was in 3.5 with an occasional 4th weakness of many good saves but horrible ac and vice versa. There's literally no reason to involve 4e https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Saving_Throw#Saving_Throw_Types

No he's right. 3 saves with base good iffy awful before gear and possible feats was a far better dynamic, especially when paired with the limitations and opportunity costs of vancian casting. It was ok that most monsters were weak against something. Special monsters also had SR & SR itself...

There are no easy solutions and trying for those should be expected to cause new problems. I love that the time travel one is even accounted for before players might consider wish retcon. Instead of avoiding the whole thing it just created a new power with new problems to puzzle out. Makes...

Don't believe I've ever used the phrase about a character I was playing. If my choice of action has reason enough that it required justification, the reason itself could stand loud and proud without hiding behind an unassailable wall that no other player can interact with like "no offense...

Some of us remember the last couple of times that moral entrepreneurs launched a moral panic about d&d. Don't repeat those dark bits of ttrpg history

I can't help but notice that through all of this concern over player desires to play something not in athas that you didn't even hint at the idea that the gm might even have the slightest of say over exceptions they choose to allow players in the game they are gming. All of those maybe's and...