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It depends on where one considers the sweet spot to be. E6 is too low-level for my tastes. I'm considering running a "2E6" or "E6 x 2" game, with character levels up to 12, most classes limited to 6th, and spells thus limited to 3rd. Multiclassing is expected, and rules that hamper...

Part of the 'fun' of Old School D&D was playing the ability score lottery. Which is why 3.5e pushed point buy so hard; the Rebellion Against the Old School didn't find that lottery to be fun. Now I'm good with point-buy systems in general, but I took an immediate dislike to the 3.5e version. So...

I'd say it depends. If the random table roll produces a result having a big enough effect on the game world such that the characters ought to have picked up warning signs before they started out, then it denies player agency to have that result take the players by surprise due to being rolled...

TFT fans are rare enough here that we seldom encounter each other. I was about to (belatedly) nail you for your claim when I saw that you had already corrected yourself.

Two of my big do-not-wants are: 1. Critical hit and fumble rules. 2. PCs other than the old-school human, dwarf, elf, halfling, gnome, half-orc, and half-elf.

One campaign idea I've been toying with for some time now is a "Dawn of Creation," aka "There were beings of might in those days - and you are them" game where the PCs are the Eldest Deities at their start and the World Tree is just a sapling. Standard (old school or 3.5) races and classes...

There are a few different ways magic items can be for sale. All the usual and many of the unusual magic items may be freely available "off the shelf." Magic items might be available by commission; you can "special order" an item and have it made for you, personally. You can pray and make...

As someone who has been a TFT GM for a looooong time, I'll practice thread necromancy and throw in my two cents. TFT at heart is a grim and gritty, anyone can die, low fantasy sort of system. In some ways it's more like RuneQuest than D&D, and it appeals to the sort of player (and particularly...

I didn't answer the poll because it doesn't apply to my "Brotherhood of Rangers" game, which is the only D&D I've run in years. It's 3.5e instead of 5th edition, and the players are all gestalt-rangers and thus blessed/tainted with those class abilities. That said, the two fighter-ranger...

And this is the sort of thing rules are useful for: When the ridiculous (breaking an anvil by hitting it with a sword) collides with the absurd (magical adamantine sword of absurd sharpness). Because those are the cases where common sense says "Pass!"

I'll play using rule sets that use the metric system. That doesn't mean I won't prefer to keep feet and pounds in my D&D games. The Fantasy Trip used metric, and so does my homebrew based on it. There are ways to handwave the use of metric in pseudo-medieval settings. For example: A...

The big issue, in the game, is the character needing to stay on the surface to breathe. That's where I'd apply the full penalties for trying to swim while wearing armor. For a character who can breathe underwater, I'd greatly reduce the penalties for swimming in armor, possibly even to zero...

I'd require waterskins having a total encumbrance, when filled with water, to equal the weight of the armor. That should be quick and close enough. So if the armor weighs 40 lb, and the standard waterskins weigh 4 lb each when filled with water, then my answer is 10 air-blown waterskins.

In practice, Charisma is used as the "make friends and influence people" ability score. So while Dwarves, Half-Orcs, and Orcs might have strong and forceful personalities, those personalities are also off-putting. Their penalty to Charisma can be attributed to their strong personalities rubbing...

A "Mallet of Luck" really ought to work on Constructs too ("Percussive maintenance!") If introducing it into one of my games: Spells required: Both magic weapon and magic fang Cost: 4,000 gp

I use my own house-rule hybrid system: Roll 3d6 for each ability score, in order, to set the minimum scores. Characters can then increase those scores until the total of the six reach a campaign-specific value (85 for my Brotherhood of Rangers game), with 18 being the maximum for any score...

In settings where I use D&D, I'll either use the standard generic 3.5e elves, orcs, etc. or I'll model them on the elves, orcs, etc. of the D&D Cyclopedia/Mystara Gazetteers. For my old, now-non-D&D Etan campaign, the "humankin" races are cosmopolitan to the point where even the barbarian clans...

Yes and no, in my case. Many of those other systems have elements that I absolutely detest, so it can be less work to hack D&D than to hack one of those other systems. (I dislike "critical hit" systems and utterly detest "fumbles," so if I ever ran Rolemaster (after hell froze over, thawed out...

OK thoughts: Your "loony" side is showing. (see "Real Men, Thespians, Brains, Loonies, & Munchkins") Why the 2.5 day (an odd time period) saturation requirement? Does saturating the arrow consume the (un)holy water the arrow soaks in? Does the archer have to make a regular ranged attack or a...

Rules for weapons breaking is something I house-rule removed from my TFT game. My view is that game and house-rule designers tend to set the breakage probabilities too high, and that weapon-breaking rules should be limited to cases where a figure is using a weapon that's noteworthy for being...