Recent content by Bolongo

You mean "Arden". C&S has a very different vibe from Arduin. Though bizarrely enough, the dinosaur thing is true. "Saurians" was a sourcebook featuring dinosaur-riding lizardfolk (did GW nick the idea from here?). How that was supposed to integrate with the assumed realistic-apart-from-magic...

Ummm, my definition of a "solo" monster is just that it's by itself in a specific combat encounter. Not that it's necessarily a hermit living all by itself in the wilderness. Most of the solo encounters I've seen in published form have been inside dungeons.

Again, I was just going by the situation described by the poster who thought (correctly) that a single Vampire Spawn was too weak. Now, if I was designing a location with a Mind Flayer in it, there would be layers of defenses, patrols, alarms and whatnot. If your rogue could sneak by all that...

I was assuming the scenario the OP described: 3 characters walk into a dark room. In this situation, the Mind Flayer of course knows they're coming, it has good scores in both Perception and Stealth, so it's hovering up in the darkness out of melee reach and will Mind Blast them before they can...

CR has never been as straightforward as that. I have no idea why they chose to do it this way, but CR has always been something that requires byzantine calculation, with no obvious correlation to PC power. But Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) does have a relatively simple guideline that you can...

OK, so it's all about the extremes then. My first thought when someone says "dramatic coherence" is not "strict adherence to a plot", but rather "this character's behaviour makes sense, given previously established facts." I guess your interpretation depends on the state of the debate around you...

Dramatic coherence is decadent? As is realism? What does this Grognardia character consider the peak of game design then? The funhouse dungeon?

Not directly, but perhaps through mutation. The imps in this issue are fiends (of variable alignment so they can be either demonic or devilish), not elementals, and the varieties are: fire, steam, smoke and molten.

Even more than that, the Githyanki, Grell and Hook Horror have become such iconic D&D monsters that many might not realize they're from Fiend Folio and not Gygax originals.

Q1. Re: pedantry among gamers. ;)

I've backed a lot more than that, and my failure rate is only 2.5%. Of course, part of that is drawing the right conclusions when a project flakes out, and learning to spot warning signs in the future.

Maybe they couldn't source a copy of #8?

Bronze armor, weird riding animal - it's giving me Gloranthan vibes.

... yes? Five steps of what? Don't leave us hanging like that.

That's wild, because it comes to either 4d6 or 8d6 for 10 feet, depending on how you read that sentence.