Recent content by strumbleduck

I second the idea that any cleric PC's should be involved in the design of their own deity. This is one of the best ways to get a player to really care about a deity and his/her goals. By the way, one mistake to avoid when making a custom pantheon: make sure that there are at least some...

The basic way to discourage min/maxing is to arrange the incentives in your system so that characters can more easily become powerful by being well-rounded. In particular, it needs to be easier to improve at something you're bad at than at something you're good at. I don't know the system that...

Double post. See below.

Yeah, the "short rest" is just the new name for the thing that happens after combat when the players loot the corpses and heal their wounds. It needs to be a mechanic now because of the encounter powers. The default assumption is that PC's take a short rest at the end of every encounter...

It might help if you described the fate point system from SOTC.

Reasons to destroy the world: 1. You hate existence and want to end it completely. 2. You were against the original creation of the world, and would like to see it unmade. 3. You prefer the undead. 4. You want to own the world, but first you need to implement a few changes (e.g. putting out...

You lean over a bit, crane your neck, poke your head out, or move slightly inside your square. This happens a lot during gunfights in movies, and the idea is that it's the kind of movement that doesn't require an action.

(A) seems fine, but I'm not sure about (B). Some characters have more uses for minor actions than others, so allowing stunned characters to take minor actions might be a little unfair. Also, it would be a reasonable house rule to let any character use an action point during their turn to...

Looks right. They ought to level in roughly the same spots, too. For the most part, a DM can use the same formulas for building encounters (5 monsters of equal level, 4 monsters of level +1, 3 monsters of level +3, 2 monsters of level +5, etc.). I would recommend adjusting treasure so that...

Here are the results of rolling a single ability score using "4d6, drop the lowest": 17.5% of the time, you roll a score that is less than 10. The remaining 82.5% of the time, you roll a score of 10 or higher. In this case, the average number of point-buy points required to purchase the same...

Why not just change long jumps so that you clear a vertical distance equal to one-fifth of the distance you jumped horizontally? It may not simulate actual jumping as well as your proposal, but it eliminates the contradiction and keeps the rules simple.

Two observations: 1. The trap activates whenever a character moves into the trigger square or starts their turn in a trigger square. Assuming the trap surprises the first PC, the trap will get to attack twice (once as a surprise and once on during the first round of combat at the start of the...

The rolling method actually gives slightly lower scores on average than point buy. In particular, a player who uses the rolling method only has about a 1 in 10 chance of getting an 18. The chance of rolling three 18's is only 1 in 12,000. So either: Your player was amazingly lucky, or Your...

In my campaign, the players captured a kobold during one of the early ambushes and interrogated him. By passing a skill challenge, they managed to learn about Irontooth and the location of the kobold lair. Knowing what to expect beforehand really helps with the big Irontooth battle.

If you want to play without magic items, the simplest thing to do is to give the PC's a bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, AC, and defenses based on level: Levels 1-5: +1 Levels 6-10: +2 Levels 11-15: +3 Levels 16-20: +4 Levels 21-25: +5 Levels 26-30 : +6 You might also...