Recent content by Maxperson

In 1e Spiritual Hammer was a field of force. Unseen Servant was made of force. Bigby's Forceful Hand. Leomund's Tiny Hut was a sphere of force. And so on. Then there were Cubes of Force as a magic item. There were a number of force spells/effects.

Or, and work with me here, don't pick the soldier background and then tank strength. If you create the problem, it's YOUR problem, not the game's.

Old war injury keeping you from lifting, pushing, dragging, hitting as much as you used to. Or you're a paper pusher army clerk. Or... Just takes a bit of imagination.

In 3e Orcs invaded Rashamen or Thesk(can't remember which) with the Zhentil Keep army. The Zhents abandoned the orcs when they left and the orcs were absorbed into the society of the country they invaded. They became farmers, merchants, workers and some even rose to positions of authority such...

My theory is that Gygax wanted force fields in the game.

If you don't need to go very high, the Rising Phoenix stance from the Tome of Battle might work.

It makes perfect sense. I'm just not assuming bad faith on the part of the players. Minimums should not be a part of the game. If someone wants a bonus in the same stat he puts a low stat, that's on him.

Virtually all of that is negligible as well. The bonus to saves means 1 extra save out of 20 will succeed. 1 more hit point per level will very occasionally be useful. Most of the time it just means that the 23 points of damage takes you from 12 to 0 instead of 11 to 0. AC will mean being...

You need to change the title to "including D&D" if you're going to start the extra games at 2. :)

You seem to be conflating what @mearls seems to be saying, aka Xanathar's, Tasha's, etc. with 5.5e which are the new changes to the core books, some of which seem to have been changed for the sake of changing enough to get people to buy the new books.

I could do 3 +1s like that, but I think I'd rather pick from two options each, rather than three.

I think background does influence stats, but not to the extent 5.5e does it. They should have +2 for race and +1 for background. So a soldier probably has +1 to str, and an elf would have +2 dex. So an elven soldier would be +2 dex, +1 str.

Even that thinking is a trap. The difference between +2 and +3 is just +1. That means that on average you will succeed one single additional time out of every 20 rolls using that bonus. Given the number of rolls and random chance, you will never notice that success. It generally won't have...

Where we differ is in caring about which stats get a bonus. I understand how very little a +1 bonus is in 5e. 5e is not the editions of yesteryear where high stats made a lot of difference.

Power levels. There were a lot of male channelers who were close to Rand in ability, and he was a strong as a man could be. The Atha'an Miere routinely use control weather without the need for devices. That's an 8th level spell. Earthquake is used a few times I believe. Also an 8th level...