Recent content by GSHamster

The thing is that you lose a lot of the conflict or motivations which drive scenarios set in that era, especially romantic ones. Consider Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. What drives Mrs. Bennett in her match-making zeal for her daughters? The fact that her daughters cannot inherit, and her...

In my opinion, 3.5 was an experiment to see if WotC could upgrade some of the rules in place without "forcing" all the players to buy new books and invalidating the old books. Sort of like what Magic: the Gathering does. Magic has upgraded and changed its rules several times in its history...

Marriages at that level are very often "negotiated" rather than simple law. It's closer to a merger of two corporations, rather than just a wedding. The second wife's family will have negotiated exactly what will happen with the bride's lands. It's possible that some lands will get added to the...

One thing is that a lot of these combinations or scenarios are actually really cool the first time it happens. But these are repeatable games, and it is far less fun the 10th time it is done. It does feel like the game is made less interesting when we go around systematically eliminating the...

Strength: Warrior Dexterity: Rogue Constitution: Soldier Intelligence: Mage Wisdom: Priest Charisma: Chosen I like Minigiant's Chosen, so I will steal it. I will split Fighter into Warrior and Soldier. Warrior is more of an individual fighter, one-on-one, wilder fighter. Barbarians would...

I like alignment that's like Good, Mortal, Evil. I like games with supernatural Good/Evil, and when that's actually reflected in mechanics like circles of protection or paladin sensing/smiting evil. Maybe even add supernatural Order and Chaos to the mix. I like the 3x3 for rough guidelines of...

I am a little confused about what exactly people mean by resource management. Several people have given examples of what I would consider resource-management, only within an encounter, rather than over multiple encounters. To me, no resource management means you can attempt to cast your...

Another forum I read is playing around with ChatGPT, the newest text-generation AI. One of the posters asked it to rank D&D editions, and I thought this forum would be interested in the results. Prompt: Write a top five list of the best editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Include common...

About the term "Mother May I" I think it's a little pejorative, but it's also a really good descriptor. Pretty much everyone grasps the point immediately. It would be nice if there was a less pejorative descriptor, but I don't think anyone has given a good one. I think one of the problems with...

I think the phrase "awesomeness aversion" is biased, and putting a thumb on the scale. No one wants to be averse to awesome. But I kind of think that all you "awesome-friendly" DMs would still just say No if the fighter asked to do a kamehameha (iconic energy blast attack from Dragon Ball) out...

I wonder what the game would look like if we added more "Mother, May I" elements to spell-casting. For example, if Knock had the following restriction: "Gnomish locksmiths have a secret method of making locks which makes them resilient to magic. A lock made by a Gnome cannot be opened with Knock."

Lilliana is the type of hero who looks like a villain, but she's clearly on the good guys side at this point. I think she would be a great named character for the Undead book.

I think this is a very good example, because it illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches. Since @payn has gone over the strengths of (2), let's go over the weaknesses. (2) implies that attractiveness is universal. That someone who is unusually attractive is attractive across...

In the War of the Lance,wasn't Lord Soth working for the Blue Dragonlord? Maybe she put him in command of the army involved in this particular section of Solamnia.

I think you could do it with a rule like: "Every time a creature is attacked by an enemy, affected by an enemy spell, or forced to make a saving throw from enemy, she gains 5 points of damage reduction for future attacks. These points stack, but expire when it is the creature's turn to act."...