Recent content by Traken

To me, the only thing that makes a drow worth even thinking about is that their society (as written by Salvatore, et al.) promotes ultimate selfishness. They never think "How can I help this person?" Instead, they think "How can I help this person such that I help myself?" Everything else...

How is it not a wound penalty or death spiral? By implementing a generic bonus that applies to everyone, you change the assumption of the default saving throw. By reducing that bonus, you have instantiated a penalty against the default assumption of the saving throw. By keying this off of...

All living creatures are affected. If you don't want to heal enemies, you have to get the Selective Channeling feat.

Death spiral. Wizards has been very reluctant to add any sort of death spiral to a base game of D&D. That said, I like death spirals and I think this could be a good idea.

It seems to be left over from the January 28 packet. The Ranged Attacks sections had a rule where a creature adjacent to you and between you and your target provided your target with three-quarters cover. It was essentially a "don't do ranged in melee" drawback. I'm actually sad to see that...

Martial Damage Dice. The +2d6 (up to +6d6) fighters and all them get to add to an attack or use to do other things (parry, special abilities, etc.).

I can see the changes from MDD to Expertise Dice being a very good thing. The "action to take a moment to rest" will require some thought. It seems like there would be a fine line between "this is something fighters do" and "this is now a once-per-encounter ability." Though the reduction in...

I could see it potentially being useful for ranged characters. If you are rushed by an enemy, you can take a step back and then shoot around them with no penalty. However, it does seem like it's just a left-over feat that does not do a whole lot. If there were opportunity attacks against...

Everyone in the fight having disadvantage is boring and frustrating. As long as they are on even footing, who cares? Yes, disadvantage can be a bigger drawback depending on your attack bonus... I just can't see myself caring about that when actually rolling the dice.

Random idea: Wizards get to be Wizards. Fighters get FATE points*. Now they both have meta-gaming aspects that are both semi-believable. *: Think action points but more general. Would it be helpful to the adventure to have an old chum in the City Guards? Spend a FATE point and you suddenly...

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is a pretty decent place to start. The Forgotten Realms Wiki - Books, races, classes, and more and Candlekeep are decent free resources. Short summary (not a big fan of FR myself, so probably getting some of this wrong): In 2E, there were the Forgotten...

Specialties are optional. If you don't pick a specialty, you just pick feats. If you don't meet the prerequisites when using a specialty, you picked the wrong specialty or suck at making characters.

I'd personally like to see spell resistance be less all-or-nothing like in 3.5. Instead, there should be some horribly complicated (or not) system to determine how powerfully spells affect a creature. For example, a creature can have 1/2 spell resistance. All effects of spells against this...

A few generations might actually just be long enough. It gives time for the world to develop in meaningful ways. On the political side, it takes a couple generations to actually change things. As the old geezers from the war start to die out, there can finally be a chance for peace (boo!)...

Wait, you mean there might be additional character creation rules that we haven't seen yet? You really think Wizards would really do that to us?