Recent content by AbdulAlhazred

Yeah, I have to say that we were all pretty blown away. When I HEARD about the idea of D&D (I think I was 11 or 12, but I loved wargames already back then) it was like a bolt of lightning struck. THIS IS IT! It actually took a couple years to get hold of enough of the rules and people to play...

So, this is where we get to my perspective on 5e (other games fall into the same basket, I'm not really picking on 5e). What is the point of these checks? Someone makes up some arbitrary numbers, "6 weeks" and "800g", there's very little to support that they have any special meaning, that 6 is...

Well, I don't have a lot of original ones, but I do throw a lot of stuff in the pot, stir vigorously, and then throw out most of the results, lol. Now and then something 'brews up' into a really useful result.

Right, so I would generally cast a situation like this as "OK, as part of achieving some goal, you ask for this favor." Then you check to see if you get the favor, which is part of the challenge mechanics. The consequences part, that gets a bit tricky. I mean, I can see "Yeah, I did this favor...

I look at it this way, if a player starts picking up dice and rolling them and doing whatever and using that to decide how they drive their part of the fiction, that's perfectly fine. When I say "no dice are rolled" I'm saying that there's no mechanical dice rolling framework which is applied in...

Yeah, though I never found a really convincing argument for why there needed to be distinctions. I like to erase distinctions instead of creating them. So, for instance, there are 'interludes' in HoML, and they all follow the simple rule that you are not allowed to touch dice. Its a talky time...

Rules compendium is just a lot more concise than either of the DMGs. They are all good books. MM3, MV, and MV:ttNV are the 3 fully updated MMs, MM1 and MM2 are pretty solid, but the later 3 books revisited a lot of monsters and made improvements that are pretty noticeable. MV is the ONE that I...

All the errata was collected in one PDF at one point. I don't know that I can share it, but the PDF I have is 139 pages and titled "UpdateCompiled.pdf" It is organized by book, and page, so its easy enough to check any specific game element for an errata. There is also a 4e database at this link...

He objected to my post on the basis of an argument which only works if you want to talk about nothing but 5e. If he wants to complain because I use a 4e example or comparison then that's fine, in a thread tagged for '5e', but it is a general thread, so it seems my post was perfectly in line with...

Yeah, I don't really think it would be THAT hard to create a set of say, 12 or so, really cool EDs. Thief of Legend and one or two others could be included, and then maybe just sauce up a few of the other really thematic ones. Archmage for instance is pretty cool, the 'Arcane Spirit' thing is...

Yeah, I think I got off the track of my thought on that post. She built the E-Paladin because it was simple, and it kinda was simple to build. It worked OK OOTB. OTOH 4e just always calls to you to get into the swamp. so she eventually summoned up the Build Guru (a player who had DDI and liked...

I think if you go through the EDs you will find that some of these exist, at least THEMATICALLY, though I agree that the descriptions are considerably less "over the Moon." So, you have for instance the 'Archspell'. The actual implementation on that one is fairly uninspiring, you get some...

This speaks to my big complaint with 4e, the 'gardening of build'. For some players it is a feature, and for others it is a bug. I've had both types in my games. OTOH even the less 'hardcore' player who mostly just wanted an interesting character was pretty happy with the result. IIRC there was...

Yeah, the whole 'Dissociative Mechanics' thing was always a real head scratcher for me. 4e's QUITE 'associative'. Stuff generally happens RIGHT NOW and you can see exactly what it is related to! I mean, I don't think 5e (for example) really DOESN'T do that, but I don't really see a difference...

Eh, yeah, frankly I figure there's real world explanations for all the things that are going on, like being able to use CS and CC. While not every monster may know the details as if they were a player, they surely know they're under threat! However, a lot of monsters are dumb and hungry, and...