Recent content by James Gasik

Animated crossbow. Loads itself, fires itself, never complains or gets tired. Sounds great!

I would daresay most DM's would balk at the idea of being able to mass produce magic items because they see such things as "rare and special" and might not even allow PC's to make them in the first place. However, if anyone with proficiency in Alchemist's Tools can just mix together some random...

Modern firearms, yes. But I was talking about earlier firearms- my specific example was a Napoleonic era rifle, and the benchmark of being to reload and fire it "quickly" in battle to get 3 shots per minute. These sorts of discussions never seem to want to specify what era of weapons they want...

I guess the question that needs to be answered is twofold for any innovation. "How would someone create it?" and "Would it be worth the effort?". Some have speculated that Rome, at it's height, had all the things it needed to start the Industrial Revolution. The Greeks had figured out how to...

I thought that was Clarke's Third Law.

But with science like that, you could cure cancer!

As someone interested in game mechanics and theory, it's nice to have data to support or debunk assertations about what is or what is not bad/mediocre/good/busted in games- it helps to set expectations for me as a DM and knows what I should strive for, and where I should draw the line as a...

Page 27 of the PHB says "twice normal for the weapon used per four levels of the Thief", but I agree that's vague. I started playing 1e not long before the 2e books came out, and there, they specified "the weapon's standard damage is multiplied....then strength and magical weapon bonuses are...

I never really understood the hate for ranged sneak attack- it's called being a sniper and people have done it historically for a very long time. I was happy when they changed it for 5e, though I still run into people who seem to think that ranged sneak attack is hard to pull off for some reason.

The arguments I've gotten into with people who claim that their Thieves were unstoppable backstabbing machines when I drag out all the ways the rules basically say you might as well cross the ability off your character sheet if the DM is a stickler about the rules. And really, it's way safer to...

Something I just remembered, and I don't recall if it was mentioned (I'm too lazy to go back through the whole thread) is what happens if a multi-classed character comes back as a human.

I remember a chance encounter with a group of ancient powergamers back in the day where all of their characters were dual-classed humans who started as Monks and then became Magic-Users, which they believed "fixed" the weaknesses of being a Magic-User. Don't ask me how that worked in practice...

For a long time, I used 4d6 drop lowest, rerolling any 1's, just to get the scores of 3-6 (pre-racial modifiers) off the table. It seemed to work out just fine, though I did once have a guy from a "power gaming" group make a character at my table and stare at an array with a 17, a 16, and...

I believe the only exception to Wands being spell storage devices were the Eternal Wands from the Magic Item Compendium, which functioned a set number of times per day instead of being charged. Every other unusual Wand pre-3e became a Rod, so the Wand of Wonder was a Rod of Wonder in 3e.

Ah, thank you!