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I'm not a fan of low ability scores for PCs in general. My view is that PCs are inherently Superior, and their ability scores ought to reflect this. I am a fan of point-buy systems in other games, but I took a dislike to the D&D 3.x version from the moment I first saw it. But I also didn't...

I do homebrew settings, and creating cosmologies is an essential part of that. Not so much for my players (or my readers, in the case of settings for my read-only fiction) but for my own use. So I voted "Yes, but more as something to dive into as secondary media/pleasure reading."

I was never a big fan of psi powers in D&D. The only way I'd be happy with psi powers in a game I ran or played in would be if they were deliberately nerfed, deliberately made significantly weaker than 'regular' magic of either the divine or arcane variety. Also, I'd consider it critical that...

I want rules that deal with the issue of character ability being different from player ability. This sometimes produces conflicts between the character being able to Do Stuff, and the character being under the Direction and Control of the player. But leaving e.g. the social skills of the...

I go for small, lair-like dungeons that are part of the surface ecosystem, rather than dungeons that are deep and isolated enough to form their own ecosystems. But if I did do a mega-dungeon, it would probably feature: Perpetual motion photosynthesis, with glowing moss producing its own light...

True. I've seen both sorts of advancement in the same game, especially in the Old Days. A pattern I often saw was rapid leveling up (often 1 level per session) until the characters reached the Levels That Didn't Suck, followed by much slower advancement and a focus on other things. "Now that...

Or tone down the rapid advancement.

I have a TableSmith table that produces gem results that look like the following: A large yellow faceted stone (citrine) of superior quality worth 250 gp A medium yellow cat’s-eye, of superior quality worth 150 gp A packet of 10 diminutive gems, each a clear faceted stone (rock crystal) of...

Rich by the standard of most people in the settings you prefer. Those settings are not the only possible ones. People living at the poverty line in the US are rich as hell by the standards of third- and fourth-world nations, or by 19th century standards. That doesn't make them rich in an...

No, it's a house-rule thing. 3e RAW implicitly assumes much lower incomes for NPCs.

Sure, a PC can always choose to spend only enough to live a modest or even an ascetic life. What they can't do is live that modest life while simultaneously claiming "I am living the life of a well-off member of the gentry; I am living the life of someone who is rich." At best, they can live a...

But I don't accept that as given: See below. The assumptions I'm making are: 1. The median income for characters of Nth level is N-squared gp per day. That applies to NPCs and NPC-class NPCs as well as to PCs and retired PCs. I drop the conceit that "1 gp is big money! Enough for an average 1st...

It depends on what standards one considers 'reasonable.' There's a tricky non-intuitive difference between "wealth" and "income" and I figure "rich" for a fifth level character to be accumulated wealth of close to half a million gold pieces, or close to two million for a tenth level character...

An assumption here is that the PC failed to bribe the guard because the guard wasn't corrupt. But that's not the only way to interpret a poor result on a bribery skill check. Maybe the PC misjudged how corruptible the guard was and offered a bribe that was turned down Maybe the PC misjudged...

Another fine line is between magic that's expensive enough to rule out common mundane use and magic that's cheap enough to completely displace the mundane. An illustrative ;) example would be light sources. At what point does it become "pound wise and penny-foolish" to keep buying torches or...

That's a point of difference between us. For me, a major reason to have fantastic elements is to cater to the escapist fantasy of a more glamorous world, one with less of the grit and "dung age realism" that I find depressing. Also, as an aesthetic preference, I want to avoid the feel of a...

I believe this is a false dichotomy. A fantasy world can be weirdly different from the real world and yet still feel like a real place. That said, I prefer to build settings and worlds where magic and the supernatural is something baked in, rather than bolted on. And despite - or because - of...

I play out every combat. The only reason I wouldn't would be if the players say or otherwise make it clear that they want to just handwave the foregone conclusion. That's been very very very rare - I only have a vague memory of it ever happening even once. On the flip side, if I decided not to...

I didn't like the 3.0 version of Haste, but I don't like the 3.5 version either. As noted, the ability to cast two spells in a round is a huge deal, and something I'll discourage, put stoppers on various tricks to allow it, and even blanket-ban (with the possible exception of Time Stop, but even...

Now there's a twisted thought: What strange ways are used by the cultures in your game world to execute criminals? Now I have a world that features the bad guys performing human sacrifices - and executions resemble those sacrifices too closely for either psychological or magical comfort. (You...