Recent content by UngainlyTitan

Reading this, a thought occurs, with respect to showing something like the inate physical strength of a specied in a game like D&D. Setting a floor might better than a stat boost. Thus for goliath, the ability " +STR mod/long rest minimum 1, the goliath can convert a die roll less than 10 into...

Do not add the selected traits in as additional things one can do. Build them into the base actions. If you take the martial manoeuvres from the battlemaster as an example; do not bother with the superiority dice pool. Just incorporate a selection of manoeuvres into the basic attacks, actions or...

I often think that the reason that all those elven kingdoms are in the distant past was because elven societies tend to ossify in ways that have trouble adapting to change if the same people are in charge over very long time periods.

I think, the biggest issue with metaplot, is that overtime, it becomes intractable, difficult to impossible to avoid paradoxes and contradictions. It is both a barrier to entry for the new fan or writer and difficult to keep it all straight, I think making it soft and the delivered narrative...

53 years to reproduction is very expensive and an aggressive faster breeding neighbour could attrit an elven community into oblivion in 2 generations. I think that elves would have to be able to reproduce at about 20 and be able to switch their reproduction on or off depending on circumstances...

I do not have a good solution but I think that viewing elves lifespans as stretched out human lifespans, makes them ecologically unviable. A elven town could be wiped out twice before it produces a single child?

There are limits and their limits. Limits that apply across the board are a lot less onerous then ones that apply to character concepts. An 18 ability cap is setting a limit that applies to all. It is demarking the scope of the playing field. The -2 strength bonus on a species is shutting down...

This to me is a really weird take. I see the rules as a framework to make it a game.

Same here, though when and where I grew there were few tractors but lots of bailers, combines and silage harvesters.

Yes, problems arise from mapping game traits onto real world concerns or use game traits to pigeonhole a species as an underclass. However, some traits are bad design (or at best boring design) and the worst offenders here are ones that predispose toward a particular class. If you want the elves...

Pretty much this, the colloquial definition of ghost is good enough to attempt some science, it is the lack of a reliable observation that is the show stopper.

Phlogiston, was a valid scientific theory, one that was proven false. Not all scientific endeavours are Popperian falsifying experiments. Many are a process of continuing observations to collect more data before any hypothesis can be proposed. It was long observed that things fell down and even...

I initially read that as Snarf going Full Monty on AD&D

Er.... em.... Yes.

They can, actually, but to get the name to stick it has to have some utility. If you can come up with some methodology that demonstrates a phenomenon that walks like a ghost and quacks like a ghost, and any would be ghost studier can use it reliably then we can agree that it is probably ghost...