Recent content by Aethelstan

My son has high functioning autism so initially I felt some sympathy toward Ken. But as this thread progressed and Ken's post grew increasing egoistically and self-deluded, sympathy turned to something boardering on rage. Every day my son struggles to engage in basic human inteaction. He...

Psionics just feel all wrong in the quasi-medieval setting of D&D. Player #1: I draw my sword. Player #2: I ready my wand. Player #3: I use Psycholuminesence. I'm sorry, but that's a real mood-killer for me.

I have thi shouse rule for rolling hit points: ½ class Hit Die + halved class Hit Die rolled (d8 = 1d4, d6 = 1d3, etc) + Con modifier. Aka: the “get half, roll half” rule.

Pointless, badly worded poll. Why bother?

Errant, a few comments on your system. The rapid natural healing rules combined with "cure-all" magical healing really take the sting out of HP damage. Every low level PCs will be able to easily bound back from fights. Cure light wounds is now nearly as effective as the high level spell Heal...

I'm retaining criticals because they cut both ways. In fact, because PCs generally score more hits than opponents, PCs benefit more from a critical system. I disagree that criticals are not "naturalistic." A knife thrust to the leg that just happens to hit a major artery is a real life...

Actually my system gives players more of a buffer between death (total HP = wound points + vitality points, neegtive hp = Con). As a mentioned in my post, my system seeks to address some of the unbelieveable aspects of the standard system. I goal is to add a bit of grit and realism. Wounded...

Scroll down on this page and you'll find my variant V/W system which addresses many of your issues, Aethelstan

Thanks for the feedback. This system is intended for a "quasi-Victorian adventures explore a dangerous lost continent" campaign. I've made up a Phyisician class that do limited healing but their is no magic healing to speak of. I created this system to retain the high action aspect of hit...

I'm planning to use this new system in my campaign, I would be interested in some feedback, thanks Variant Hit Point System All characters with class levels have both Wound Points (WP) and Vitality Points (VP): Wound Points: These points represent a character’s ability to withstand direct...

Once only. The circumstances where counterspelling can be used effectively come up so rarely as to many the rules all but useless. Great concept but the RAW don't make it useful.

Easy to prepare for!? Stating out a bunch of high level NPCs (particularly spellcasters) is far more tedious and time-consuming that for low level. Time I could be using to develop background material or plot threads gets eaten up making long lists of spells and magic items and generating stat...

All alignments are equally stupid. In fact, whole alignment system is the most persistantly useless of D&D's sacred cows.

Enkhidus post sums up everything that bugs me about high level play. The spell prep and bookkeeping slow things to a crawl.

My problem with epic levels is the sheer volume of work it takes as a DM to prep a 20+ level adventure. A stat block on a 22nd level wizard can take forever to do. Also issues of encounter balance become ever more difficult.