Thomas Shey's latest activity

Not by the time of Greyhawk they didn't. And by the time I came into the hobby, I never saw someone running an OD&D game who wasn't...

And, life does go on. Our other cat was showing signs of being lonely, and my wife admitted to feeling a bit of "empty lap syndrome"...

This post brings up interesting points I was thinking about... not aimed at anyone in general, but as an aside to what makes lore matter...

Well, that's not surprising. Its easiest to control a limited play-space, which is what an array is. I personally find the price there...

Eh. I'm a big believer in generic and other broad game systems, but sometimes you're just trying to do a specific set of things, and...

I was talking about OD&D. In case that was before your time, all the main classes except for MUs had a one step smaller hit die than in...

Well, at some point you have to define, as noted, "what is balanced?" I mean, to some degree contrasting it with other options is...

Yeah, but you're still talking about a lot of characters who at second level could die by one sword swing. In fact, once you were...

This is largely an artifact of the fact most games engage with combat in fair to great detail, and usually with relatively slow...

Quite true. But at that point you could just produce the same result most of the time by not having the die range produce much range in...

You do understand I was talking about OD&D in that line, right? The game where there were some pretty huge ranges where no mechanical...

Well, vive la différence, right? For people who like the detail and crunch, it's not unnecessary. It adds to the experience. Ideally...

And here, you're doing the heavy lifting with "unnecessary". You'd find a lot of it unnecessary because you don't find engaging with it...

I should note that levels often didn't elevate in toughness all that visibly fast at the start however. Its easy to see what they...

The "if" at the start of your second sentence is doing some heavy lifting. Sometimes engaging with the mechanics in certain ways is...