Zombies that need to stay dead. DEAD.

[Lord Mhoram]

Detect alignment spells mean I can never create a Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine. Unless of course I use alignment cloaking spells/items, but why create an ability you are just going to circumvent it in every campaign that has a paladin in it?

Definately a zombie that needs to stay dead. Everything else about alignments can come back, but detect alignment spells must be kept in the ground.

Good point.

I tend to use alignment as prescriptive as much as descriptive and the powers of Evil and Good are palpable forces in my worlds. I tend to run heavily in the "Good is good and evil is evil" kind of things - so that particular plot wouldn't have even occurred to me.

I personally like the idea of Paladins being a right hand of a God able to smite evil when it is found, with or social repercussions, because they KNEW it was evil, and people respect that from a paladin - and screwing that up means losing paladinhood.

Of course I want that element, but I didn't want the paladin going around lopping of heads of thieves or murderer's in the town, and for me to be able to run mysteries - and the thing I described was very much my way to get both elements (Paladins are holy warriors who, when active as an agent of their God, cannot be wrong) and (want to have mystery and people sneaking about, and not having the paladin turn Lawful Arrogant and chopping up normal evil)

I tend to drop alingment spells, but leave the variation I talk about for Paladins.


But then back in the days of earlier editions one of my stipulations is that every PC had to have a Good alignment of some time - no Evil, and
no Neutral (in general - I'd allow a Neutral with a talk with a player) - so Good having a "this is right" card is something that fits my preconceptions.

So I think that would be a good place for a dial - from no alignment magical effect to full bore on everything.

 

[Lanefan]

But one thing I'm not sure I'd want is for bonuses to creep back up to the highest levels of a stat like in the 1e/2e days in which you needed a 16 Strength to get a bonus. I really like bringing the bonuses down like 3e did so that you start getting them with even moderately decent scores. People may be saying there's a huge difference between optimized and merely decent, but there was an even bigger difference in 1e/2e between a character with a 14 in a stat and an 18 than there is in 3e/PF/4e.

One thing to consider here is that having bonuses on mid-range stats gives the optimizers lots more to play with, and I don't see this as a good thing. Most of the time you're only going to have one - maybe two - really good stats; those are logically going to go into whatever the main requisite is for your class, and that's where your bonuses are. The rest go wherever, but for characterization reasons rather than mathematical.

Yes there's a bigger difference in 1e between a 14 and an 18 than there is in 3e; unless you've got cheaters who are "rolling" all 18's this isn't a problem.

But there's a bigger difference between 10 and 14 in 3e than in 1e; and the same applies going down into the low numbers. This is where optimization takes over from characterization all too often. Say I've got a 7 and a 13 left to assign and one of them has to go to Wisdom. My premise is "I want my character to be unwise and sometimes do foolish things, and be a free spirit who takes orders from nobody." In 1e the 7 goes straight in; there's no mechanical bonus so I can play it unwise in reflection of the stat. But in 3e I have to consider the 3-point bonus swing on Will saves vs. various things that'll make me obey orders; so I'm forced to set aside either the "unwise" characterization and drop the 13 in there, or the "takes orders from nobody" element and throw in the 7. Either way, mechanics trump characterization. I'd rather it be the other way around.

Lanefan

 

[Ainamacar]

Does that mean my assassin can never sneak attack a paladin? 'Cause that's a problem too.

I don't understand why the assassin couldn't do that. Is the paladin detecting evil 24/7? At least in 3.5 the spell requires concentration, so even as an at-will ability it's hardly an automatic assassin alarm. I certainly wouldn't want to design the spell in 5e so it functioned as one. I feel like I must be missing something really obvious.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I liked challenge rating. Although I would have liked that CR4 meant equal challenge for ONE character of 4th level, not FOUR Chracters of 4th level...

I used it as intended and it yielded usually balanced combats... also automatically allowed lower level chars to "catch up" after the revision in the FRCS...

 

[avin]

In my opinion things must stay dead and never ever return are:

- Thac0
- Negative AC
- Racial limitations in the sake of "tradition"... I never knew there was a tradition here, every DM I know houseruled silly racial limitations (adding in: if there is a racial limitation make it optional and make it based on fluff, not on tradition).