Recent content by Lanefan

"Nothing happens" is always an acceptable (if maybe unwanted) outcome of any attempted action IMO. Skipping your turn means you don't even get to roll to hit - you're paralyzed, or frozen in ice, or dead. Rolling to hit, plus whatever else you might be doing (reaction, bonus action, etc.) is...

In D&D, however, that hidden "sniper" could be dropping a fireball on the targets; and those can hurt. Some of us try to push back against this trend... On this, I agree. But there's a very large middle ground between "a 200-yard killshot and a clean escape" and "the ambusher might not even...

Is there a way to achieve the same result by bending the rules to suit the fiction rather than bending the fiction (as narrated) to suit the rules?

IME adventures have almost always been about achieving a specific end, even if that end is merely to strip a site of anything worth more than a few pence. Sometimes, sure. Other times not so much e.g. when the Orcs hold and guard the only approach to the BBEG's lair. That, and I'm more than...

Even if your neck is tingling and your spidey senses are on full alert, how can you effectively dodge something you don't see coming?

Sure, if there's loads of opponents I'll batch them together somewhat, like you say. The batches still re-roll each round, however. But it's a thing on the player side as well: one of my players loves summoning monsters, sometmes repeatedly, into any significant fight. Once they join the fray...

The post I was replying to when I first brought this up had as its main point somethng to the effect that trivialized combats aren't fun and so the game has moved to make it much harder to trivialize them, part of said movement being the softening of surprise benefits. To me, this sounded like...

To me, "cinematic" means what it says: the combat you see in a movie, whether it's Errol Flynn striking dashing poses during swordfights or a Marvel hero (any of 'em!) holding the "hero's landing" pose for a second or two or whatever. And why does it work in conema but not in the game, you ask...

I would have thought the bolded was a non-negotiable fact of life. You declare it, you do it. No take-backs. Even more so in older editions with longer rounds. That said, even if you see the leopard coming as it pounces you're still not going to have time to get a weapon out, a shield up...

When something can be done to move that needle without slowing things down, do it - even if it goes against RAW. And sometimes if moving the needle does slow things down a bit, it's more than worth it. Individual initiatives rerolled each round on an unmodified d6 allowing ties is one such fix.

There's a surprisingly short distance between the two bolded bits here, at least in my eyes. The very term"cinematic combat" brings to mind images of the characters striking dramatic poses and spouting badly-written lines as they wade through their foes. Fine for cinema. Not what I want to...

Like it or not, though, the rules to a large extent determine the types of decisions the PCs (and by extension, their players) are allowed and-or expected to make. Until and unless the DM turns that around and ambushes the PCs; and IMO anything the PCs can do is fair game to do against them...

Thing is, you weren't just speaking about your own game play in the post to which I replied, you were speaking of modern gaming trends - some of which I find very sad indeed - as a whole. And while I've no right to criticize your own game play, I think (or at least bloody well hope) I'm free to...

No matter what the form of fiction, that fiction forms the reality in which that fiction's characters live; and it's up to the game to try its best to simulate that reality. If that simulation is at least somewhat grounded in our own Earth-based reality then so much the better for purposes of...

Seems like a good idea in principle but in the D&D-sphere I can't offhand see any way of it not adding a whole bunch of new complexity to a) character generation and b) ongoing play; both of which are already more than complex enough.