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Interestingly, my installed version does not have the specified directory containing OGL information. The links (OGLPFWotR, PFWotRCRPGRD) to their website work, however. I didn't realize how many Necromancer Games monsters were being used. Their previous game, Kingmaker, also does not appear...

I haven't read those, but an eye was one of the first things I thought could be interesting. There are all sorts of non-martial objects, they just need a hook. For fun I whipped up a take on an eye pact, with apologies to Vecna. --- Pact of the Wandering Eye Your patron grants you a partially...

I tend to think psionics works best embracing "internal" notions of power: granting power to thought and, especially, subjective perception. Go full "there is no spoon." A wizard can influence reality, but a psionicist tells you what it really was all along. A retcon given form, at least from...

Or change it to psychic damage, e.g. a maddening itch the target can't scratch. Or leave it as poison damage, but theme the poison to be some more irritating (like itching powder) than deadly.

Yes, I considered using that as an example. In a strange way that aspect of 4e pleases neither of us, at least with respect to monster design. You see the impact of Con vanish asymptotically and think it would be better if they'd eliminated it in the first place. I see the impact of Con...

As long as you're comfortable with Con having absolutely no defined mechanical relationship to hit points you certainly could do that. However, I suspect even people who design toward a hp target will tend to prefer that Con has some sort of identifiable mechanical impact on hp. If so there is...

I think it's fair to call hit dice the glue that binds hit points and Constitution. That's useful because those two elements serve pretty different purposes in D&D. Hit points are extremely abstract but have a direct impact on how creatures endure combat, and so are an excellent target when...

With a slightly different action economy one could probably have achieved the feel of legendary actions without introducing a separate mechanic for it. For example, let bonus actions be fuel for reactions (and other out-of-turn things) and don't fix their number strictly at 1 per turn...

Some interesting updates. Based on an interview with Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian's CEO) earlier this year, it looks like a Pathfinder card game may have been on the radar. Based on this speculation, Lisa Stevens (Paizo's CEO) posted the following. So, that's a tease. :) I owe a tip of the...

My suspicion (not that it's particularly insightful) is that we're looking at another attempt at a Baldur's Gate style game using the Pillars of Eternity engine, with Paizo hoping to capitalize on Pathfinder's essential D&D-ness. Part of me really hopes, however, that we'll get a turn-based...

As far as I can tell it's ethically obligatory for a wild mage's player to come to the second session with their own list. :) Really, the main thing is that everyone is comfortable with the extremes on the list, the rough proportion of good/bad/inconsequential, and the degree to which the...

Solving the feat would be a pretty good project in an undergrad computer science course. Something like "Write an algorithm that, given a list of positive integers of arbitrary length, determines all possible output values using only addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (ignoring...

I wrote a small program about a decade ago for initiative/condition tracking. It replaced physically rolling initiative for us, and changing the turn order manually was just drag and drop anyway. The impetus to write it, however, was so our 3.5 group could roll initiative every round without...

Not that it would necessarily have made much a difference to your overall experience, but do keep in mind that you only needed to go one level deep.

Hah, awesome! I also look forward to getting on the D&D pronunciation guide. :) (Someone please XP that thaumaturgist for me.)

First step, getting a credit card out of my wallet without dropping it.

I had the same problem. Some research showed that PDFs use two maps, one for displaying the right glyphs and a second one for the logical values they represent (e.g. when you try to copy and paste text). In the normal Basic PDF the logical map is to nonsense, possibly on purpose to prevent...

All true, and I'm quite happy that there is such a smooth integration of that narrative within 5e's mechanical framework, don't get me wrong. I'm just wistful that those mechanics also conflict with the narrative of agency I much prefer for rays...they're my sentimental favorite. :) As a...

Not gonna lie: I love rays and I love treating them as attack rolls -- pointing a finger at the baddie and trying not to miss. Furthermore, critting with a ray is just about the greatest thing ever. I think 3e was where the designers settled on using ranged [touch] attacks for everything...

While it would have been nice if saves could be spread evenly around, it looks to me that the designers have mostly given up on that. I think we might simply see that all classes give save proficiencies in pairs: a "primary" one and a "secondary" one, something which is true so far for the...