Search results

A previous edition - 3e? - had "NPC classes". PCs were Fighters, NPCs were Warriors; PC were Rogues, NPCs were Experts; PC were Clerics and Wizards, NPCs were Adepts. And so on. (Actually, that about covers it.) PCs were just straight up better than NPCs in the same "profession." Anyway...

That's an interesting limitation, Thor, one that I was wondering about reading the synopses. Facing down a demon and Barrow Wight and a possessed bandit lord, and no one died was a surprise. I can definitely see "grind down more, don't kill" as a theme - and the PCs can (mostly) choose to...

Yeah, I Iike the adrenaline rush of Hardcore in Diablo / Path of Exile / etc.... right up until the character dies unexpectedly and I have a punch-in-the-gut feeling about all the time now lost. And then I don't play the game any more for a long time. So I'm not the intended audience of this...

I have enjoyed reading all the synopses of play sessions, but man, I do not want to play Torchbearer! And I'm sure that most of my players would hate it; I tried just getting them to track generic "wounds" gained from Critical Hits in 5e, which minorly impacted HP recovery, and that was a...

I know there are systems - but do they play well and quickly? [Sadly, I know that while I love the complexity, my gaming crew might have one other person in it that would enjoy it.]

This recent conversation - and another I read recently, very similar - is more about combat than world, but still on the topic of "model the physics, not the story". What was I saying? Oh, right: I love this level of thought and detail; damn, modeling down to the number of grains of powder in...

Had a thought, reading this thread and the numerous similar threads. Two simple fixes that require no new rules, but are endlessly tweakable to your (or your DM's) taste: 1) Full casters do not get HP or HD after 5th class level. 2) There are no "spells" beyond 4th spell level. (You still...

I like the idea of systems that model the world rather than the story. When I understand conceptually how things work, then I can better decide how my story will interact with the model, and how I want to change or tweak things (because I can't stop myself from doing that). If the world model...

(complete side note, but False Life becomes a lot more interesting to cast when you can ... oh, upon further research, I just discovered my DM had houseruled Find Familiar to share spells like Find Steed. Well, anyway, your 1hp familiar has a lot more survivability when it's got 8 tempHP too!)

I think "GM Agency" is the GM choosing to break rules / change results. And is 75% a Bad Thing (tm). [I know some people disagree, I've seen the "I decide when it is most dramatic for the monster to die" reddit threads...] Example 1: The party faces a Red Dragon. They prepare ahead of time...

So, back to the OP's question/suggestion, I'd be totally okay with the Bladesinger casting shillelagh for "Attack #1", then walloping someone with the newly enchanted staff as "Attack #2". My Paladin/Tomelock would love that ability, as he walks around "unarmed" and starts every combat by...

"Howitts Hollows game alpha" doesn't pop up anything in Google. Can you give me a better description, or a link? I'd love to check it out.

HAckmaster did exploding dice, but had teh bigger weapons do multiple d4s instead of single big dice. So the greataxe was doing like 3d4 (actually I feel like it did 4d4?), and any individual die could explode - or all of them could! So your 7pt hit might be 1, 2, 4, and the single 4 explodes...

Agreed. Right now in 5e, that means the BBEg gets like a +15 to hit... which is still a lot of misses against an optimized 5e tank PC. But if it's "autohit, +7 if defended against"... then the monster gets a momentum and heft to it, which is counterable with player choice.

See, I have a player at my table that does this for me, too. Any time I need a statistical analysis, I hand it to Jon, and he quickly explains the math and actual consequences/impacts of the numbers/rules. So, pemerton, thank you for the analysis. My gut said the prodigy was generally the...

(Thank you for discussing the rule mechanics and the game contents again, after two pages filled with... not.) While I instinctively like the elegance of "roll exactly your skill for a critical hit"... I'm not a fan of roll low to succeed. I like it in certain very specific circumstances, I'll...

Y'all have diverged a lot from the discussion idea of "removing the to-hit roll". I feel like basing melee off the combatants' comparative skill level makes sense, while ranged combat is based almost entirely on the shooter's skill level (with maybe a little modifier for the target's dodging...

What I was originally going to say (unrelated to my calculators example) was this: [Disclaimer: "maybe", "for the purposes of worldbuilding", etc. etc.] Sleep or Ice Knife and "spells", "first level" at that. These are carefully crafted and honed "scientific" constructs that always work, every...

Reading this, my brain popped out this analogy: Doing math by hand, pencil and paper, gets faster and easier the more you do it. You learn your own shortcuts and tricks, and lean into the kind of math your brain works best with. [cantrip] Doing math with a calculator is vastly easier...

Off topic: Champions ruleset: A Disadvantage that isn't disadvantageous, isn't a disadvantage; it's a Quirk. "I can't see... but I can perceive the world around me as well as a sighted person" = Not Blind. On topic: So the end result of 7 pages seems to be: "Leave logic out, this is MAGIC...