Recent content by GMMichael

Assuming this has been thoroughly analyzed (torn apart?) in the last 200 or so posts. Have they announced official adoption of the X card yet?

There's a scribe sitting in one of the lower halls of Olympus. His job is to write down everything (!) on a never-ending scroll. A truename is how one is identified on that scroll.

The adventurers, after having heard some weird discussions in the common room, go into the cellar, wondering why the innkeeper called it the "dungeon." Turns out he/she has a sizable group of bound concubines down there, making the rats a secondary concern of the PCs. Morality questions ensue...

And unfortunately, @LordEntrails didn't give us a specific example. That would also be interesting to see. My favorite source doesn't mention grid squares, which fits well with D&D 5's (non) branding as D&D Lite: https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/combat/Cover.htm

Hmm. If you grew up on Sesame Street you want to kill monsters. If you grew up on Daniel Tiger you want to be a monster. Maybe it's related to kids' TV. I'm playing a centuries-old, WAY over the hill, blue dragon. I don't care about dragonborn bonuses (my cantrips are better than the breath...

This is why I can't see "shelving" my preferences; if I ditch what I want out of the game, then I won't want to play! Luckily, my campaign concept is usually flexible enough to allow PCs to get what they want, as long as we all met eye-to-eye at the start of the thing. Lord of the land knows...

Ah - I'm seeing helmet-use as a tactical decision, not action. Also, the thread is partially about the rules of the gear, so why do f20, PF2, and BRP treat shields differently...and do they have helmet rules as well, or are helmets just specialized clothing? Darn commanders and their...

Good point about hiding the opponent. But as a south paw, I feel slightly left out of this analysis. Which is why Zarion got an XP. . . I'm suggesting (now, if not earlier) that using a helmet is just as tactically interesting as using a shield. Not that they're the same type of armor. And...

Ah. The above quote is the context I was looking for. The thing is, daggers-attacking-before-polearms isn't . . . (wait, is this thread totally derailed yet?) . . . the opposite of reality. Put your evenly-matched Dagger Fighter weapon-to-weapon against the Spear Fighter. If the DF lunges...

Good question! But...who's adding what complexity in the opposite direction of reality?

So TRPGs are trying to emulate TV shows and plays? I'm not so sure, since in a TRPG, a helmet (usually) doesn't conceal someone's identity. It's fair for rules to assume that a helm is included in a suit of armor, but I was more interested in the "appropriate" part - does full plate assume a...

Initiative house rule: initiative rolls determine whose actions happen first, but there are no turns. Each character gets his allotment for the round - what he would normally get to do on his turn - but other characters can react with their own actions. When characters want to act at the same...

I was always enchanted by the Psionics Handbook of AD&D 2e, with its own psionics rules, but I never got to use them. Then I was excited when they came back in 3e, using the same rules as the magic rules, if I recall correctly. The Soul Knife was cool, but yeah, it was "magic/spell caster...

So true. I mean, haven't we all seen Gerard Butler in 300? You're right: the shield-or-no-shield trade-off is pretty obvious. Being less obvious doesn't reduce the importance of the helmet-choice, though. I suspect that many designers who can see the clear shield-choice just haven't been hit...

Tell that to Robert Baratheon.