Recent content by jmartkdr2

I think for a CoS game in particular it might go over fairly well - the kind if player who will balk hard will overlap with the kind of player who wouldn’t enjoy CoS very much in the first place.

My own experience has been that higher ability scores lead to more diverse parties and fewer cookie-cutter builds. When you raise the floor, players seem more open to unusual concepts and risky ideas. So I suspect lowering base scores will push players towards safer, more reliable (more...

DnD 5e doesn’t really do “cost of power” well - even warlocks officially give up nothing for their pacts - any price paid is just rp. But divine casters overall have no meaningful restrictions that aren’t self-imposed. Druids can wear whatever armor, paladin oaths are so vague as to be...

If one wanted to make really strong use of feat paths, it might be good to offer subclasses of nothing but feats: ie your fighter subclass is Warrior, and all of your subclass features are either feats of extra Fighting Styles (maybe some masteries) - this makes is a lot easier to dive into a...

Can anyone think of an example of a female Death Knight from popular-ish media? Anyways, as to the "why is this charisma-based?" question, I think there are two workarounds: 1. Make it player's choice as suggested 2. If they plan on releasing many feat-chain options (if the player base doesn't...

On the other hand - Hell Knight to Death Knight is a really obvious progression, and the subclass certainly qualifies as making a deal with an evil entity.

I don't know if CaT favors dice-light gaming more than CaW - after all, in CaW you're trying to get around the random elements. But diceless CaS would be a really tough sell, I would think.

Even in CaT fudging isn't recommended for getting "good" results, just to avoid the whole thing falling apart. The dice are supposed to provide surprises, after all.

I feel like we're re-inventing the older "Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist" idea but framing it slightly differently - and carrying the same issues. The "Combat as X" framework seems to be written by CaW/Simulationist gamers and so slightly advantages their own ideas while not quite...

I'm not sure this captures the way damage plays out well - rogues having big spike damage despite having low-ish average damage is important to note. That's on top of the fact that this obviously doesn't account for non-combat features (not that that's missing information) But within narrower...

Depends on the class: For fighters, Superior Technique - more toys to play with. Even good with the Battlemaster subclass (although you run out of worthwhile maneuvers quickly, more dice is better.) For paladins, Defense, though next time I might take Intercept. 2014 Protection is just too...

I think one can argue that5e, at least, doesn't really push you toward any of CaW, CaS, or CaT - other editions certainly did, but 5e manages to split the difference. Early editions definitely favored Combat as War, by making actual fighting something you didn't want to do. It was brutal...

That's very true of older editions, but I think the newer versions are a lot more forgiving - ie you wouldn't re-roll stats and very powerful monsters aren't on the list. (you always come back as a pc species). It can make it much less of a risk - there's basically no chance of getting screwed...

In addition to any implications, there's also the fact that TES takes place in a single, well-defined setting. DnD is meant to work in many different settings including innumerable homebrew settings. Defining specific cultures well enough to have clear mechanical impacts limits settings much...

Space dragonborn are basically just Klingons, I think.