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The odds of getting an impactful kill is low so escape should be job #1. I vote "Misty step (bonus action) & double move, behind cover/concealment if possible". That should be 90ft, meaning the fighter can't catch you to melee. The rogue loses sneak attack from an ally in combat and if you...

This is how Earthdawn did it in 1993.

Same thoughts went through my head. From a form-factor standpoint, I don't know if it should be a stand-up "card", a flat "pog" or maybe a multi-sided or round pillar. (I know there are some e-paper products that are flexible or at least not brittle) The pog has limited display area, but is...

Waves as other people have noted are good. I also suggest foes that are willing to flee to become recurring foes. If they can fall back into trees that block line of sight and give cover or head down a cave with a dead fall or a collapsible bridge you get several things. First, smarter foes...

The flip side is in a game with casualties (or late-addition players) is that adding a leveled PC mid-story requires them to have achieved things akin to the party's current accomplishments. I will say that IMO even a tier 2 or tier 3 backstory should fit on one sheet of paper and then get...

Not long ago our group of 13th level PCs got attacked by 6th level bandits who had no idea who we were and thought their numbers (3x the party) attacking with ranged weapons from cover outweighed the party's visible weapons & armor. That was perfectly good fiction and felt appropriate. (Our...

Smoke doesn't have to suffocate or choke people. As long as it doesn't consume/displace oxygen you aren't suffocating. Choking comes down to if it impacts breathing. Smoke is just floating bits of stuff that isn't water. What if it's essentially an industrial smoke machine? Or it's nicely...

In 5e if they spend the short rest (1hr) or cast Identify (1 rnd or 10m) they get the command word. BTW, giving a tabaxi monk an Eversmoking Bottle is comedy as they can outrun the explosion of smoke.

I think you misunderstand the poster. If you dislike something, often its just a growing sense of "ugh, this sucks." When someone asks why you feel the thing sucks, you have to come up with an explanation (aka reason) for why you think it sucks. Maybe at the time you were aware of what bothered...

The mechanics were usually point based, rather than slot based. Powers often scaled: spend more points, get more oomph. I felt 2e psionics were less powerful than casters but psi powers had no V/S/M components so they could be subtle, though there were sensory effects that could still give a...

I once had a group of 13th-ish level PCs in a 3e game nearly get wiped out by 1hd herbivores. They were in a savanna near a water hole at dusk. The rogue sees a large ox-thing & throws a thunder stone. The ox takes off at a lumbering trot away from the water. For some reason the explosion...

That's an illusion. Those aren't PC odds, those are "typical" people odds for checks performed under "typical" circumstances able to take a "typical" amount of time. PCs are atypical people in atypical circumstances trying to do atypical things where modifiers abound (improvised tools, rushed...

As someone who loves earthdawn, roll under sets a finite bounding box on the level of success. ED rejects the notion of impossibility and allows a toddler to poke a dragon's eye out with a well-thrown pacifier. It's a game with success levels & rerolling dice that max, meaning I have a...

I think a question is a class exclusive? I.e. a Fighter is not the only ones who fights. Barbarians, Paladins and Rangers all fight, so how specific do the classes need to be? Is a Farmer the only one who farms? Should it be? How tight is Class to role? E.g. in 3e terms, the Commoner...

In our games, the most notable moments aren't in combat. We have entire sessions without attack rolls. (And then we attack a series of fortifications that takes 7 sessions of combat so in all things there is balance.) Do those sessions count for nothing in your games? How does the Peace...

The big NPC change in 3e, IMO, was not giving classes to NPCs (as the 1e/2e modules were full of that) it was that they added less-special NPC classes. It was a way of differentiating an "average" person from an "elite" one, even if if they have similar experiences. Imagine a young lordling...

Pretty sure I had a ton of official 1e and 2e modules full of level X Fighters and Yth level Rogues. There is an advantage to that as it is also a shorthand to the GM. If the adventure is for PCs level 6-8 and there is a 2nd level Wizard, the wizard isn't expected to be impressive, but a...

Back in the 90s I was in a "blue book" champions game (3e?) and having to apply FOIL math rules to generate a character felt way too much like my engineering classes to be fun. The slimmed down fuzion champions had the multi-powers and secret identities and all those champions-ish superhero...

I was fond of 3e where everyone had a class. Not just because of that but because they also had demographics. Pick up any classless/point buy system and you almost always have archetypes or skill thresholds that show various levels of competency. A police officer with +3 firearms vs a sniper...

D&d evolved from miniature warfare (napoleon, iirc). They named the characters, added magic, hirelings, followers, crafting and even some level of investing. Then they published it as D&D. Each edition has had varying levels of non-combat. Over the last 3 decades, 3e had hyper-granular...