Recent content by jmartkdr2

3 Weeknight weekly games (all online and two have been for years) and an every-other-weekend game that was in person before the thing happened. Plus a Pathfinder game that's so irregular I didn't count it.

Not technically D&D, but the only ranger I really enjoyed was 13th Age's take on the idea with mix-and-match elements.

Yeah, sorry, I went the wrong direction with this conversation. See my edited post above if you care to.

I guess the question I asked remains: what does a non-archer, non-two-weapon, non-beastmaster ranger need to be to be a good ranger? Can you give examples? On second thought, ignore that. It doesn't matter and is the wrong direction to take this. I really don't want to discuss how well 13th Age...

Or neither archer nor two-weapon, beastmaster is optional, you can go all-in on casting or be a non caster... I mean, rangers have always had archery, two-weapon fighting and animal companions. If that's you're criteria for them all being the same, then I don't see you would get around that and...

I have a hard time seeing this - the classes are very different. Partially because the games are very different, but mostly because the design goals for the classes are so obviously different it would have been amazing if the end results were similar.

On the other hand: 13th Age pulls it off, so we know it's doable.

Yeah - I feel the same way, mostly.

That's not fair - Mirrorball clearly wants new stuff, and seems to feel that this is just a remix.

It's a feature form the attacker's point of view, but kinda crappy if the player built their character to be really tough and the monster just sidesteps that by ignoring all the established defensive options. I'd go with dex saves myself - that's how disintegrate works already and the player...

While I've seen the same thing - it's also the class I've seen cause people stop playing a character 'because it isn't fun' the most (as in, the only one I've seen people say "this class isn't fun.")

... why did they drop Eldritch Armor? Too much variety in the Warlock class?

I think the biggest meaningful difference is the fact that 4d6 keep 3 has pretty good odds of giving you a 16 (about 50% chance of at least 1 16 or better IIRC) - which means "starting at a +3 mod" is a reasonable expectation in a rolled game regardless of character race (if you're the sort of...

The problem here is: I could argue for any ability score as being 'important to surviving in the Shadowfell' - so any particular array that is chosen is going to be debated. The solution, of course, is to find more evocative features to really tell the story "beyond +2 Con."

There's a big difference between a known unknown and rules that don't really make sense. Obviously a well-designed game avoids the later but can include the former. For myself, I'd prefer the game have clear-enough rules for all the things we might typically do, and especially clear rules for...