Recent content by stonehead

Car accidents are the leading cause of "preventable" (whatever that means) deaths for ages 5-22. If that doesn't count as the PC's health, wealth, or equipment being at risk, I don't know what does. :LOL: Jokes aside, the disagreement might be because there's no consensus on what a "standard...

Maybe I was misinformed. I was using "roleplaying" to mean "making decisions as if you were your character, instead of as yourself." That is more or less the same as "I know the best strategy, but my character wouldn't do that." To me, if you look at two people, and one of them says describes...

I know the books say 12 is what most people realistically have, but that always struck me as a bit low. Even after the +4 for mundane tasks, that would mean the average person fails to drive their car every other month. An untrained character with 11 IQ or DX has a 50-50 chance of doing the same...

I didn't explain it well, but and important part of my example was the way that 5E movement costs either nothing, or an entire turn, with a bright line in between. If the Ogre is 25 feet away, it can charge you, then attack as if it started its turn adjacent to you. If it's 35 ft away though...

I mean, it does a little, right? Imagine a D&D party is fighting an Ogre, and the Swordmaster fighter decides to switch to a ranged weapon, shoot, then step backwards a bit, because then the Ogre would need to waste a turn approaching, but the Barbarian says "I'm a barbarian, I charge in right...

Do you think I'm missing out on something by not roleplaying in my board games? Maybe it does vary, and I play mostly technical games. Even in the Risk example though, stockpiling your units on a territory haphazardly in the midddle seems like a really bad strategy. More generally, if you're...

If roleplaying is making decisions as if you were a different character, then I don't rp in board games basically at all. To me, board/card games are most fun when everyone is trying their hardest to win. Roleplaying kind of gets in the way of that. In ttrpgs, the goals are more open, and...

To get the tapping thing, just take Cannot Speak (Mute) and full proficiency in a tapping language like morse code. If it's a logistical nightmare, it isn't more of a nightmare than your average GURPS character. Which, to be fair, takes a lot more logistics than your average 5e character

IMO, the big advantage of point-buy systems is the greater level of flexibility you get. Not just because you don't have to adhere to one of a finite list of character archetypes, but because you can freely determine their strengths and weaknesses. It's basically impossible to build a modern DnD...

Man, I know it has its flaws, but I love GURPS. What's so great about it is that you can make the game as deep and complex as you want. You can build a simple character with good stats, and maybe a basic advantage like damage reduction or flight. Or you could build an incredibly complicated...

I think this is a much better implementation of incapacitation than RAW. I wonder if it would be better without Powering Through though. The damage is going to be very small, less than 5% of the creature's health. A level 10 caster still isn't going to want to cast an incapacitation spell on a...

Classes don't all get power level spikes at the same time. Monks and Guardians only get proficiency increases from their class at level 9. More importantly, if your party doesn't have a bard, or frequent access to Heroism, +2 to hit is very strong, because it also increases both your hit, and...

The only thing I think that you would need is a list of what deities are associated with which domains, and even that is only necessary if the party has a cleric or champion. A cleric's deity determines which domain spells they can learn, and so the list of deities determines which domains a...

No one's mentioned Fragged Kingdom yet. Part of the premise is that your party sets out into the unexplored wilderness to found a new town. There are rules for aquiring materials, and using them to craft buildings in your city, although there's nothing as complex as complex as a tech tree or...

That's why the sweet spot for feats is "theoretically possible, but most people can't." Wall Jump is a perfect example, and IMO the platonic ideal of a feat. Real people can't jump off walls, and if your character tried to, most GMs would just rule that you fail. A character with Wall Jump, and...