Search results

Have you read any of Brandon Sanderson's work? His magic systems are "hard", in that they have defined rules or principles, but it's still magic.

Taking a step back from the various arguments about mechanics, it seems to me that all the current debates revolve around a central theme: magic. At a higher, conceptual level, magic in D&D is very nebulous. There's no sense of its limitations, or of its costs. What can magic do? Pretty much...

Don't forget that there's a whole bunch of situations where only one side has agency. For example, climbing a wall. Is the DM going to make a roll for the wall? What does that represent?

Discrete actions allow the actions to be "de-coupled" from each other. A player doesn't necessarily have to respond to a complication, she can do something else entirely. As well, the DM's complication doesn't need to respond the player's action. In my example, the DM pretty much ignored the...

Very interesting discussion. One thought I had is that it might be better if "opposition" in Skill Challenges was independent of the player's action, rather than dependent. If you look at combat, the dragon attacks the paladin even if the paladin does not attack the dragon. Right now, the...

At the same time, always having her relationships blow up in flames means that the character stagnates, gets stuck in the same place and never gets to grow.

What I've heard is that Sony has to make a new movie every few years, or the rights revert back to Marvel. So we get a new movie.

Totally understandable if a group prefers side-to-side combat. The issue here is that some combats end up side-to-side, and some combats are interleaved. The single determining factor is the surprise roll. That is not the role which surprise should be playing. I think most of us expect...

Let's say it's the 5th round of combat. If there was no surprise, you might see an initiative order like: Enemy 1 Player 1 Player 2 Enemy 2 Player 3 Enemy 3 The players and enemy actions are interleaved. However, if there was surprise in the first round, the fifth round would still look like...

You could do that. But why bother when you could just leave base system alone, have it be as broad or specific or extensible as one desires. If the abilities are chosen well, they will already make the ranger better in combat against his favored enemy, because the ranger abilities target the...

There is one subtlety that makes targeted bonuses undesirable. For the basic idea, it doesn't really matter how broad or narrow your enemy category is. For example, you could have Favored Enemy: Undead and Favored Enemy: Vampire. They would be similar, but slightly different. Like maybe the...

That's the genius of Orzel's idea. You get different bonuses depending on enemy type, but the bonuses can work for every enemy you encounter. Basically, you've trained a certain way specifically to fight certain creatures, but your training comes in handy in similar situations. I think it's...

I would exploit the leash. Have a tank engage it, have the strikers take out a cooling chamber, then retreat. Repeat until all cooling chambers are dead. Then whittle it down from range.

I think a lot of the problem comes when people try to "subvert" the trope of the evil society. Like present a member of that society who in a lot of other ways is very admirable. Or they attempt moral relativity with the society, like demonstrate that the "good" society acts very much like the...

Complexity does not come out of nowhere. We got AoOs and shifts, etc. because they were an attempt to model this kind of behavior. But those extra rules came with cost, of increased time per turn. 5e is moving backwards. It gains the time back, and is a much faster and fluid game. But the cost...

No, you just have until the end of the current turn. Once a new turn starts, morbid can't be used until a new creature dies. So if you block and a creature dies, you can't use morbid on your turn. However, you do have a second main phase after your attack phase. The phases go: 1. Main 2...

Let's look at it from another perspective. Leave aside the moral reasons (I.e. you should do this because it's the right thing to do.) What else can you offer (both positive and negative) to convince RPG makers to follow a female-friendly direction? Can you offer them higher sales? No. If you...

Yes. The thing is that the damage dealing is simultaneous. A vanilla 3/1 elf is blocked by a 1/1 goblin. You assign 3 damage to the goblin, your opponent assigns 1 damage to the elf. All damage is dealt simultaneously and the two creatures die. A 3/1 elephant with trample is blocked by a 1/1...

Heh, if you go with Barbarian background and Berserker theme, it's actually quite neat to put in different classes and see what you get. Hand of Crom = Barbarian background + Paladin class + Berserker theme Rage Mage = Barbarian background + Wizard class + Berserker theme

Monks and Barbs have 30% DR innately, in addition to a couple DR passives. Witch Doctors and Wizards have a DR passive, I believe.