Search results

Star Trek is science fantasy. It has gods, space elves, space orcs, psychic powers and lots and lots of technobabble. But fundamentally, it's science fantasy. Babylon 5 is science fantasy. It's literally a fight between angels and demons where the space elves and the humans join forces. It...

Most of D&D is actually set in the 19th century just without guns - clothing, cities, ships, professions, governments, legal frameworks, social dynamics, understanding of natural rights, currency, etc - all has more to do with the 19th century than it does with the 13th century. The 19th...

Strawman. There is literally absolutely no one that thinks like that. This is why it is so frustrating to talk about this topic.

D&D is not married to medievalism. Most people couldn't understand or relate to people from the medieval era, or even imagine it. D&D is like most popular media married to heroism. And it's not coincidental that quasi-medieval trappings are popular when you are wanting to tell a heroic...

I'm not familiar with it, but honestly I think that focus on the metagame to create flavor is dysfunctional. Flavor should be an artifact of things within the game fiction and not an artifact of things that don't exist in the game fiction. There is a lot of this that is the Harry Potter...

Sure but we are talking about some hypothetical perfect new edition which could incorporate new ideas like Monte Cook's built in metamagic where each spell had a powered up and powered down version that could be spontaneously metamagiked as one of three spell levels. Surely that would give us...

In my game, Sorcerers have been given the Psionic niche. They are spontaneous casters. Spells that are particularly traditional "psychic" powers have been given the Psychic descriptor, and there are certain sorcerous heritages like Mentalist and certain feats that enhance your ability with...

No, because the wizard classes in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed supplement had that sort of fine and deliberate control over magic and it was a cool mechanic and I could very much see it inspiring a new edition where you build in that sort of thing into wizards right from the design stage. But...

D&D Wizards are less inspired by magic than psions are. Of the two, the psion is the more traditional spellcaster. This stuff has an actual history pertinent to the 1960s and 1970s when D&D was written. Beginning in the late 19th century, traditional magic was falling out of favor as more...

In a very complicated manner. I use 1d20 per 10' fallen, capping at 20d20 for medium creatures, but damage is divided by the result of a 1d6. But then additionally, whatever you fall onto attacks you and potentially does additional damage to you. A smooth stone floor for example attacks you...

The bigger problem is always how other classes multi-class with a priest. As for Paladin, the concept of the class has always been fundamentally flawed.

So if I want to play a gladiator or a duelist, is that a knight, a skirmisher, or a warlord? Fundamentally, I don't feel fighter is such an overwhelmingly strong class that you need to silo out capabilities that all fighters might have to some extent to keep them from dominating over the...

Definitely a lot of truth to this. The division between the rogue and fighter is as I indicated before, completely arbitrary, as you could think of a rogue as just a smart dexterous fighter and you'd probably avoid incoherence in doing so. Likewise, you could separate cleric from wizard solely...

No. You can perfectly well have a priest of the god of rational thought. The difference between a priest and a wizard is what the source of the spells are - external power or internal power. The priest is acting as a servant to some external power that grants them spells to use in furtherance...

Psions absolutely are spellcasters. In fact, pretty close examination of them finds they have exactly the same lore as wizards with just some very minor variations in the costuming. This is hardly surprising since in the real world "psychic" was just traditional wizard-y magic redressed in a...

I get where you are going here, but there is no need to silo things off in separate classes. Just give every class a certain number of picks for what they want to be good at. That pick then encourages you to follow your thematic choice because spells that fit your thematic choice are now more...

I am not really sure how that is a rebuttal. "Leader of men in battle" is entirely within the province of the fighter. If you think Conan the Barbarian is a barbarian and not a fighter, then you neither have a clear understanding of "barbarian" or "fighter". Neither Warlord nor Fighter have...

You'll have to explain that for me. "Infusions" are just enchant item spells. They have a long history in D&D. There is nothing particularly complex about the idea or which is particularly difficult for a spell to accomplish. There have been spells that turned mundane items into magical...

Secondary magic systems unnecessarily increase the complexity of the system design. You end up documenting the same things twice. That doesn't make running the system easier in the GM; it makes it harder. You want GMs looking up things in the documentation because the fiction is complicated...

A warlord is just a smart and charismatic fighter. If you can't build a warlord from a fighter, then you've implemented fighter wrong. Likewise, a psion is just a type of magic-user. If your existing magic-user classes can't cover a psion, then you've implemented them wrong. Alternatively...