Recent content by Staffan

The problem with wealth-by-level in 3e and 4e was that this wealth directly correlated with personal power by way of magic items. 13k gp (level 6 WBL) gets you a +2 stat booster (4k), +1 armor (1k), +1 saves (1k), +1 weapon (2k), and +1 deflection (2k) plus assorted bits and bobs like a wand of...

I'm not saying 3e was anywhere near perfect, but at least it was consistent in its complexity. (And don't forget how that mass bull's strength could give people anywhere from +0 to +3 to damage, depending on whether they already had an enhancement bonus to Strength as well as what sort of weapon...

10 minutes for a combat seems extremely fast for anything that (a) uses a battle map and (b) is more interesting than "there's an orc in the room and he's guarding a pie." But I understand that that's about the level of sophistication the design of 5e was based around – that's why 5e usually...

Yes, it's subjective, but considering the number of people who aren't playing it with 20 rounds of fighting per day I think I have some support for my thesis. I think part of the issue is also that the default starting level for 5.0 was 1, and at level 1 you absolutely can't handle 20 rounds of...

True. That doesn't make it a good choice, though. Attrition-based adventuring was an issue back in 3e (which had a similar set of assumptions, though based on a 4-encounter adventuring day), and was less of an issue during 4e due to short rests allowing partial refills (so you could bounce back...

It's not an issue in the same way that a hole in the floor in your home isn't an issue. I mean, you know it's there, and you can easily maneuver around it, even in the dark because you've been living in the place for a few years. But for someone who's new to the place and might be distracted by...

Things like Battlemaster maneuvers and whatever equivalent limited resource other subclasses have.

There's also the issue that attrition-based adventuring is boring. I want encounters to be (somewhat) dangerous in and of themselves, not just speed bumps where the challenge is to see how few resources I can spend dealing with them. While I haven't had the opportunity to actually play it yet...

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The big hint is the back copy on the original Exalted book, which starts "Before there was a World of Darkness, there was an age of savage adventure." But that said, you have to squint pretty hard to see the connections. The strongest thematic connections are probably the shape-shifting Lunars...

For the record, I think it's worth it to separate "actual sequels" where the game and/or setting is fundamentally different from "advancing metaplot". For example, Shadowrun just advances its metaplot, more or less in synch with real-world time, but it's still more or less the same thing with...

That is correct.

I'm not opposed to the concept, but I'd make the split between combat and non-combat. So for example there could be a "guard" class for combat, which has great defense abilities, some taunt-like mechanic (either direct or consequence-based), moderate melee offense, and bad ranged offense and...

Originally, yes. I believe they've removed those tie-ins since they are now owned by different companies. TORG: Eternity is a sequel to TORG. In TORG, the Multiverse (an infinite number of realities) is transformed into the Infiniverse (an infinite number of multiverses), and there are people...