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I also use a variant magic system, so this may depart from the norm in some ways: I start with a simple, unoriginal premise: the cosmos exists at a point of balance between the forces of life and death. Life creates, death devours. Life hopes, death destroys. Life is about learning and...

My students always point out one thing about the epics we read: they are long. I think this is an indispensable part of the Epic Feel: you have to know that you have worked for this a long time. While some people can generate the required emotions without the build up, most people need to have...

Unfortunately, in the NIT, playing DePaul. :mad:

As Umbran pointed out, a world without alignments is not a world without consequences. If I were the DM, I would probably be creating some moral dilemmas. If your behavior is normal for the city you're in, it must be a really horrible place to live. What if others treated your family the way...

Although I do use a variant magic system, I also have several flavor elements that aren't particularly tied to mechanics. In my world (fairly magic-rare), a group of magicians had a massive spell go awry (or not, depending on your historical interpretation) during a war against some dragons...

Since I was one of the people bringing up +10 bonus as a baseline, I suppose I should be one to back off of it. . . One factor to consider is the dynamic that cooperation brings. If several people working together can grant a +2 circumstance bonus to your most skilled person, then you could...

I have found this thread to be very interesting, but don't have much to add to it. I've always started with where I wanted basic competence. Assuming a +10 to a skill allows the character to accomplish most mundane tasks with ease, and that 6 skill ranks, skill focus (I use the variant +3 to...

I have one free city that runs along communal anarchist lines. Any group of at least one thousand persons can form a "faction" and gain a seat on the City Council. For every thousand residents you enroll in your faction, you gain another seat. Most of the factions are mercantile in nature (being...

Based on a cursory skim, this campaign world looks interesting. I've always appreciated your posts on these boards. I'll check in every so often and read when I have the time. Thanks for taking the time to do all this.

If you think a spell roll is too penalizing, you might consider making the save against it harder if the roll succeeds well, like +1 to save DC for every +5 over the roll.

The story so far: Part of the point of this thread has been not to look at "balance of combat" issues but rather the ability of various abilities to wreak havoc in the quasi-sorta-literary-medievalish setting that is conventional D&D. If every wide spot in the road has someone who can make...

Limiting the social effects of magic Returning to the point of the original post, what are some of the rationales people have used to make magic more restricted than "anyone with an above average intelligence"? So far, I've seen bloodlines as one rationale. The necessity for higher education...

From Joshua Dyal I'm on the third revision of my house rule system, which is (loosely) a Star Wars d20 adaptation. I've been working on it with the player of the wizard in my campaign, so most of it is on loose sheets of paper as we need to create it. If you're interested, I'll post the basic...

It seems that some here get their fun out of gaming the system, and others get their fun out of a good story of a hard challenge met successfully and a narrow escape. Both are valid sources of fun (and need not be mutually exclusive), but give me the good story first. Good job, RW and co...

Best wishes to all concerned, Old One. Your son looks wonderful. (As a parent, I find that I have developed a very high tolerance for baby pictures--seeing that I inflicted them on others, I suppose it's the least I can do). Rel is absolutely correct. If you haven't already figured it out...

Let me just say that I, for one, love this kind of discussion. Like Joshua Dyal, I prefer changing the system to suit the world to changing the world to fit the system. Just to further complicate the discussion, you might think about how all of these high-powered monsters might have altered...

I have several homosexual NPCs, but sexual relationships don't figure very highly in my campaign--at least yet. One twist I do put on one campaign religion: the temples to the goddess of sexuality and fertility in one regional polytheistic culture go the whole nine yards in terms of sexual...

I upped skill points by +2 across the board a while back in my campaign. Then I gave the bards some extra feats (I think one per five levels or so) that they could use for skill focus (+3 or +2/+2 IMC), contacts, or other socially-oriented feats. I haven't found the bard to be too underpowered...

Plane Sailing and I seem to have a similar history. . . I began Ladros in 1981 using my brand spankin' new Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books. Over the next five years or so, our group played every Sunday afternoon almost without fail. I filled three spiral notebooks (the thick kind) plus...

I try to develop the economics as part of the fleshing out of society (as a good materialist, I think how people make a living is central to what kind of lives they live). I have economic centers, countries with varying attitudes toward trade, differing material resources, and places that are so...