Recent content by Doc Eldritch

I think, instead of an ability that lets the dragon ignore being knocked prone, giving it a reaction type ability to being knocked prone is more interesting. Don't make it too damaging or annoying, just enough to make it worthwhile for the PCs to think about using the prone status. Something...

Wow..this almost sounds like they are pulling back from an RPG market slowly, and wanting to focus more effort on related areas, such as boardgames tied to an RPG "name". Perhaps a bit early to tell, but NOT a good sign and the article does not inspire hope. Feels like WotC is seriously...

My own little house rule, that I've started using, is that poisons do not always have a "save ends" effect. Some of them require a Heal check as a standard action (to provide aid and antitoxins), with a DC of 10+ the poison's level. The idea of doing some nastier or plot type poisons using the...

The idea of themes as presented in Dark Sun is a great one. Some good flavor, and nice ideas, and I'm hoping we'll see it extended into more generic themes for other worlds as well. Something I had thought of when reading over them, was that the concept of themes could also work very well...

That sounds like a pretty good idea, and kind of the way my brain was headed too. I'm thinking for multiclass feats, I might just rewrite them from the ground up, see what I come up with. I like the idea of spending surges/action points to access a class feature which has no counterpart in...

Yup, some do get features that might sub out, but it seems like half do not, which is the big issue for me. Luckily not something I have to figure out right this second, so I have time to work on it.

These are two things that have come up for me in reading over the Essentials books I got for xmas. Great version of 4e, love it so far (it 'grabbed' me more than the original PHB did), but there are a couple small points that jumped out when I was plotting a game. First, do you think that an...

About 4 months after 4e started up, I gave up on it, not satisfied with it at the time. I've since developed a new appreciation for it, and received pretty much the full Essentials line as Xmas presents, and am planning on running an Essentials "only" game soon (only meaning I plan to pull in...

I'm looking at it as an excuse to pick up copies of the PHB1 and DMG1 and 2 again. While I plan to run an "Essentials only" game as far as classes go, I also plan to introduce some options, such as Rituals, from 'core' 4e. Knowing me, I'll likely fiddle around and "Essentialize" the Warlord...

I am pretty picky about the old 3.X stuff, cause, to me, a lot of it was pretty overpowered and simply did not fit what I wanted to see in a game. So for my PF games, I am mostly limited to the core, with a list of around 75 feats from the various Complete books that I am allowing, either as...

You could also customize an NPC's diplomacy modifier. Add the NPC's will save mod to the Diplomacy DC. Some NPCs are not so difficult to influence, more important ones can be quite strong willed and not willing to be easily influenced. This makes bonuses from roleplaying even MORE important...

Action types are still limited to Standard, Full Round, Move, Free, Swift, Immediate, Not an Action, and Restricted actions (see PFRPG pp 181-182). That said, as I mentioned, attacks are a "subtype" of Standard action. Not an action type on their own. And since throwing a pellet is a Standard...

Pawsplay, there is no such thing as an "attack action". There are Standard actions, one of which is to attack. Throwing the pellet would be a standard action. Thus no, you could not also attack, as you only have 1 standard action in a round. Now, back on topic, this is one of those toughie...

That was my first thought with the Novice to Grandmaster progression, though it does lack some of the simplicity my second re-write has. In both cases, I tried to design it so that no fighter will be able to have ALL the stances, even at 20th. In the first version, he could, but would not have...

As far as action point type mechanics go, I have found that if they are a resource to be saved up, players hoard them, even when they might be better of using them. However, when they are something that does not save up (ie you get X many Action Points each session, full amount at the start of...