Recent content by Ridley's Cohort

IMO Protection is valuable if your PC has a teammate that also has Protection, so you can stand side-by-side and gain a consistent benefit. Otherwise, just take the +1 AC.

Generally speaking, items function independent of who is using the item (as long as they function at all). The effect generated is precisely defined by the item description. From this point of view, your wizard does not quite cast a spell from a scroll, but rather helps unleash the power of a...

Celebrim, I do not really disagree with any of your points. I am coming at the issue from an orthogonal direction: I am trying to give fairly easy to execute practical advice on how to run a successful campaign using 3.5 rules, to address the OP's concerns. So rather than delve into a laundry...

Lots of astute observations in this thread. I have a slightly different take... In 3e, the boosts are paced out over a much longer time frame, and that distorts the power curve in some important ways... In a 1e campaign, 10ish level was Name Level and it was implied that the top tier magic...

That is a very good point, and it is worth remembering that the first Harry Potter novel/movie was extremely sparse in terms of important plot action, built on a protagonist who happened to be as incompetent at understanding the weird new magical world as the audience. Such gave us a lot of...

Which is a pretty good reason to go with Forgotten Realms -- anything, anything, anything other than Dungeons & Dragons. To belabor the point, a "dungeon" as commonly used in modern English literally means a prison under a castle. To those who have not played the game, "Dungeons & Dragons"...

I think the most likely reason a D&D movie will fail is the same reason the first D&D movie failed: Trying to do too much. Where did it go wrong? (1a) "This is a D&D movie right? So let's have dragons and dungeons and dungeons and lotsa dragons when we save the princess (queen) at the end!"...

That can work, but it goes against the D&D grain. Do we really want another generic "coming of age" tale with a young underdog and a lot of gumption, set in a weirder than normal world? Did it work for you when I (Snails) died to keep Ridley in the spotlight.

This. I would remake the Seven Samurai to launch the franchise. A menagerie of heroes learn to work together to save a simple village in a larger setting. The survivors move onto to bigger things in later movies. This approach allows the writer a lot of leeway to bring in the fantastic...

I am deeply offended. Snails (my icon) was the least sucky thing in that whole movie. But, seriously, the actors were fine. The script tried to jam too much into one movie. "Let's start with dragons, and dungeons, and more dungeons, and lots of dragons when the princes is saved at the...

We, yes, there is that. But the genre does not require it. Regarding the first movie, you can see they felt trapped into sitting dragons and dungeons front and center, and save the princess with lots more dragons at the climax. In spite of a talented enough cast and a decent budget, the...

It all comes down to choosing the writer and director. IMNSHO in this day and age, the D&D brand offers nothing compelling to the movie going audience, and WoW has the edge in buzz. It does offer Hasbro a running start to make a cash cow out of a movie success. But the genre is broad enough...

4d6 by cards, no replacement A dice technique that seems to hit a sweet spot between dice and point buy is "4d6 by cards, no replacement". (1) Out of a deck of playing cards, pull out the 24 cars Ace(1) thru 6 (2) Shuffle and deal into 6 piles (3) In order, reveal the piles, choosing 3 (you...

If we accept the common pro-rolling argument that it benefits chargen by helping PCs to be "special", then we have to also accept that the dice will force some players to play "not special" PCs some of the time. Of course, any competent player can make someone "useful" from almost any stats. A...

I know what you mean. "Shire!" "Baggins!" That is the best I have been able to do with getting apologies from crazy people, no matter how reasonable I try to be.