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Utility-based pricing and rarity-based pricing can go hand-in-hand, if the more powerful things are rarer (presumably because more a more powerful item needs a more powerful creator and more time to make than a less powerful one). To an extent, that's what I've done anyway, since my measure of...

Yeah - I just tend to think that people would only bother enchanting the top end armours, unless there's some reason why not. Presumably Efreeti Armor, for example, can - for complex magical reasons - only be made as Efreeti Chain; and while Efreeti Plate would be theoretically be better, the...

You can, if you take the p135 guidelines about how many hoards of each type a party is expected to get over the course of a campaign into account, although I do take your point. But you don't need to do that. There are also examples of items on the same treasure table whose relative frequencies...

Hey! I'm being talked about! (It's been a while since I posted here, but I remembered my password after a couple of attempts...) AC bonuses - especially higher than a +1 - are given a high level because of the way that they can be stacked. Since a Defender can give you up to a +3 AC boost, I...

Well, whatever the end result, I predict that Thanksgiving dinner in the Gygax household tonight will have some interesting conversation...

To be honest, I'm not sure what the intent is there. I put it in Dark Dungeons because it was in the RC, but I very rarely use it. When I've done battles the winners haven't normally wanted to chase the losers away from the battlefield. In the book, I say that if the winner chooses not to push...

In case you're wondering why Dark Dungeons does things differently to the RC here... The RC asks you to calculate a "Basic Force Rating" (BFR) for each army. This is based on the level and ability scores of the leader; the levels of each of the officers; the levels of each of the soldiers; the...

Don't forget that what you are calling a "round" there is a day's worth of battle - so being pushed a few miles isn't unrealistic. I'd always say that the movement is at the discretion of the winner of the fight. Just because you can force the enemy back doesn't mean you can't choose to remain...

I'm happy to announce that Blood, Guts & Glory is now finished and available for download. For those of you who don't know (i.e. most of you), the game is: Not strictly a retro-clone; as it's a mash-up of two systems rather than a strict emulation of one. Which two systems it puts together...

What else do the terms of service say?

These two paragraphs sum up the whole discussion. You seem to want WotC to simultaneously: (a) Give us what we want ("...something that we, the fans, want to pick up..."). (b) Not give us what we want ("...the product of pandering..."). That's a direct contradiction. They can't give us what...

I once described a big lizardy thing poking its head around a corner, and one of my players told me he was staring it in the eye to show he wasn't afraid (he was expecting it to be a wyvern). It was a basilisk. We all agreed (including him) that he shouldn't get the normal saving throw; and...

Well, I can only repeat that in my experience, new folk (especially children) do find it easier. I don't think one is particularly more complex (pretty much by definition they have the fundamentally the same complexity because they have fundamentally the same variables). It's more of a...

The thing to remember here is that we're all experienced players who already know how attacks and AC and things work in our edition or editions of choice. The reason I started using the "Target 20" system (although as I mentioned before - I came up with it independently and didn't know it under...

I'm a big fan of the "Target 20" mechanic. I came up with it independently when writing the second printing of my Dark Dungeons retro-clone of the BECMI/RC rules, and I use it there instead of using an attack table or THAC0. During playtesting with 7-13 year old kids, I found that they easily...

A fighter can't look a medusa in the eye with impunity any more than he can take an axe to the face with impunity. In both cases his hit points represent the fact that he's an experience combatant who can fight without doing the above. When he's worn down after many battles? That's when he is...

Many people on this thread are complaining that this proposed system means that save-or-die effects won't work on anyone unless they're already nearly dead. But I think that's a misreading of the article. Taking a Medusa for example. Her save-or-be-petrified threshold would be X hit points...

My initial thought when reading the column was to say that I was torn between the classic save-or-die mechanic and this proposed new one. However, when I started to write a post giving the pro-s and con-s of each one I realised that I can't actually think of any pro-s of the classic save-or-die...

I've known most of my players for at least 20 years, since we were at university together, and we're kind of like family; so we've all done so much for each other over the years. Two things particularly stick out though... One of my players got me a job at the software company he worked at...

All the following is Rules-as-Written for Darker Dungeons, which makes it mostly Rules-as-Written for BECMI Ability scores generation method? Standard array, arrange as desired. How are death and dying handled? Unconscious at 0, save vs Death each round with a cumulative -1 penalty per round...