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    Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

    It's 1 hp/day, right? Maybe 2 or 3 or something with complete bedrest. Remember the example of the 95 hp character? Your not sharing your math here. Take a 100th level character with 300 hitpoints and how long does he take to heal? Well, I've heard it again and it still sounds ridiculous...
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    Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

    Modern?! We're talking the 1970s at the earliest. And does this really make any sense at all? So a fighter with 95 hitpoints lays in bed for 40 or 50 days because he's feeling unlucky? And apparently hitpoints 46-95 actually do represent some part of physical damage, which then strangely...
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    Magic deadly to the caster and allies

    I think originally the risks were supposed to balance the benefits. Fireballs could kill a lot of creatures, for example. As far as fun, that's subjective. Why is it fun that monsters are trying to kill the PCs all of the time? Why is losing hitpoints fun? Why is getting killed fun? Why...
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    Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

    Really? Because no prior edition of DnD has had that explanation. When does a PC have broken bones? He never suffers a movement penalty, he never takes a penalty to attack rolls. In fact someone with a broken arm swinging a sword would probably take further damage. There's a risk of...
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    What's Wrong with the Railroad?

    Yes, if you refuse to DM unless the PCs do certain things then, yes, I would expect the players to go along with that. However (obviously) I don't consider this ideal. Or necessary. First of all, it's arguable that anyone has "totally" broken your plot. Or that you'd "competely" have to...
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    Hit Points & Healing Surges Finally Explained!

    When I started playing DnD, it took my a while to get used to hitpoints. For one, I was used to fantasy/folklore stories where the "king was felled by a single arrow". This couldn't happen in DnD. But then I figured that in that situation, the king had been "hit" several times, just not...
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    GMing: Transparency and Immersion

    Yea, there are many games that rely on this "fog" to provide an extra element of interest. I remember a time in DnD where we experimented with a "declare your action before you roll initiative" way of doing things. Other editions of DnD (based on your "protection from arrows" example, I would...
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    What's Wrong with the Railroad?

    Dausuul, I really like your post and I think it contains some great examples that could be given names so that they can be referred to in shorthand. But as the post with the archmage/keys shows, I think players (at least on the internets) can be a little too quick to call "railroading" in...
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    Conflicted About MoTP

    Yea, if it's essentially a "bullet point" list of facts about things then I think that's pretty cool- otherwise I think the descriptions can get unecessarily wordy. But I'm not a fan of 4E's implementation of knowledge skills. Magic items, for example - I would think that recognizing the...
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    What's Wrong with the Railroad?

    Yea - if the "zeit" your talking about is any time that includes me playing DnD. This isn't a fad, and railroading is something I've seen since I've started playing - even if the terminology is recent. IMO you basically answered the question that you asked. You mean *besides all that*...
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    GMing: Transparency and Immersion

    Based on the way the game is run according to the books. I can't account for every possible subsystem used by DMs in what I'm saying - which is that there is no mandate for hiding this information. Right, well what basis do they have for guessing this range? A giant head hovering over the...
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    GMing: Transparency and Immersion

    Yes, obviously the game needs to define what information you can have, and what you can't, when you play it. Warhammer works like it does because that's one of the agreements of the game. Think about it though - the person coming up with the tactics is some giant head hovering over the...
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    GMing: Transparency and Immersion

    I understand DMs not wanting to tell players how many hitpoints the monsters have left. And in general, I understand not wanting to give players more information that their characters would have. But the first issue to settle is whether or not a 4E Shield spell, for example, was balanced with...
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    The Tomb of Myth

    You're saying that like it's a bad thing. AFAICT your particular cultural perspective does not value survival, sex, or excellence in warfare (you obviously don't worship a goddess of sex or warfare, but your PCs might). That's cool - but if you wanted to define "heroic" in more direct terms...
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    Digital Insider 21

    Mother Nature is keeping them from getting internet connections? I'm a big fan of time off and all of that - but I would think that a bulk of the work could be done remotely.
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    Surprise or tactics

    It is an advantage for social creatures. As a monster, your relatives (who also carry your genes) would technically stand a greater chance of surviving since the PCs would be killed in the explosion. I'm not a biologist but I would think there are plenty of examples of creatures who...
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    Minions and the Iliad

    How about a new rule: "I am the fodder to your cannon. I throw myself head-first into one more desperate attack." Insta-Minion: You drop yourself to 1 hitpoint, gaining +4 to attack and damage rolls. You cannot take damage from a missed attack.
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    GMing: Transparency and Immersion

    I think the recommended course here is already established in the 4E DMG (I don't have the book right now). IIRC it says that the players should be aware of the numbers. I would assume that the powers that use this concept (like Shield) were balanced with the others. If you, as a DM, change...
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    [High level monsters and powers] What can Graz'zt actually do?

    It might seem like excessive hyperbole if you read it as a description of someone's game. The featureless gray room was intended to be a thought experiment that goes along with the rest of what I was saying. There *are* DMs that appear to be afraid of losing control over their PCs. It's pretty...
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    [High level monsters and powers] What can Graz'zt actually do?

    I don't see this as just being about simulationism. It's about not really taking into account the contributions of the players to the plot in other than superficial ways ("do you want to win the battle using your axe, or using your sword?"). If you know the mechanics of Orcus' gate spell...
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