Recent content by I'm A Banana

I liked a lot of 13th Age's ideas. Some felt a little too "immersion breaking" for me, since I am pretty strong Actor Stance in my D&D, but they were cooking. Escalating power was also a good idea. But, yeah, I think the "wizard problem" is mostly solved if you move the high-level play into an...

I have seen: Dodge action Disengage action Using actions to use potions (2014 rules) Using actions to cast healing spells PC's investing in heavier armor Which I'm pretty happy with. I don't necessarily need dedicated "defensive powers" a la 4e's utility powers. There's room for a more...

The biggest impact at my table has been in hitting PC's so hard that if they DON'T choose to spend some resources on defense, they WILL be dealing with downed characters. Focus fire, use several monsters, and my groups, at least, have responded. No one wants to deal with a downed character.

The conflict is mostly for WotC's designers: do you include the moral conflict angle in your new version of Dark Sun or not? Core D&D is pretty explicit that it's only interested in non-Evil characters. The idea of a Dark Side-style "temptation" isn't really a conflict that standard D&D is...

These two things are in tension with each other. If Dark Sun is really about embodying a heroic character who doesn't do the Clearly Evil Villain Stuff, then we don't need player-facing rules for defiling. PC's are exceptional, every PC spellcaster is a preserver, because defiling is Clearly...

Bogeyman. The Fun Police aren't coming for your game, and this doesn't change the fact that WotC's design choices do set expectations for millions of tables. "Weak" or not, the expectation set by that language is very clear. The Fun Police aren't coming for your game, and the rules encourage...

My copy says this: If that logic extends to Dark Sun, it would be consistent if they just excluded defilers and slave-built Bastions as PC options and left defilers and slavers you could fight, but none you could play as. Dark Sun without PC defiling isn't the same thing as Dark Sun without...

Kind of a problem for WotC in designing and publishing, because over millions of tables, it will definitely be a problem at some of them. Do they ignore it? Deal with it? Design around it? These are all choices with consequences. Not a problem for my home game, but I'm not the publisher of the...

I think that the slavery is inherently a problem, but it's not a problem that can't be handled. One of the key play experiences for Dark Sun to me is the temptation to do the easy thing that makes the world a worse place. Defiling is the vanguard example: cast a spell, kill the world. You can...

Semantic quibbling is an endless source of clean energy for the world, if only we could harness it...

I'm saying a ribbon effect is fine. We don't need a whole defiling subclass. The ribbon is meaningful, because it produces an effect in the narrative that other characters can react to, which produces the effect of making defiling something that only the powerful or the secretive can get away...

Personally, I don't need to know how much hp a blade of grass or a nearby ant or mycelium has in order to get the gist of "I suck life from nearby to power my magic." I don't need to add decision points or tactical positioning or strategic resource management. I just need to know that when I use...

I think that developing a system would be over-complicating it. Could be viable! "Defile within 5 feet of you/spell level when you cast a spell unless you use a Bonus Action"...kind of aesthetic, but I'm OK with this happening more in the story than in deep mechanics. "Defile" here means...

What @Remathilis suggests would work just fine: It would probably also be fine to just to 10 + Dex + Con bonus, to simplify it even further (which gives your front-line characters a higher AC than your more back-row characters, which reflects the heavy armor system pretty nicely). This can...

I played in a 4e Dark Sun game. I'm not a huge expert on Dark Sun lore, but my experience was generally fine. A little disappointed by the exploration/survival aspect being so small in scope, and a little disappointed by the defiler mechanic being not super enticing, mostly. With the survival...