Search results

What, you've never heard of molecular gastronomy?

In fairness to Lanefan and Micah, I've seen their point in action. AD&D is rife with rules that simply got ignored or scaled back because people didn't care for them. More favorable character generation, death at -10 hit points, max hit points at first level, softening demihuman level limits...

I was just saying, in a system that allows you to focus on having high skill checks, you can trivialize checks that don't inherently scale. Heck, with how easy it is to get Expertise in 2024, it's not hard to get insane skill checks, where anything lower than DC 20 isn't even worth talking...

Sure, but in a party without a Thieves' Tool user, you'd be making just as much noise and taking a lot longer to bash down the locked door!

Well maybe. I mean, Skill Focus for +3, the various +2/+2 Feats, +2 synergy bonuses for related skills- you could get pretty impressive checks early on if you cared to. I remember playing a Druid in a game where the DM really wanted to stress exploration challenges, and thanks to the built-in...

Just one thing about the Dex/AC thing- don't forget that while Dex does kick in faster in 3e, the bonus to AC was limited by armor worn, which wasn't an issue in AD&D. So a character in plate with 18 Dex in AD&D has an AC of -2 (equivalent to 22) and the same character in 3e has an AC of 19...

It's interesting that a lot of settings have wizard academies out there (like Mathghamna from College of Wizardry), some settings have magocratic nations (Glantri, Halruua, Thay), but you only occasionally get advanced magical civilizations like Netheril, ancient Suel or Baklun, with magical...

Same! There's so much about the magic system that should have an impact on D&D settings and just...doesn't. Like, many settings have had adventurers for hundreds, even thousands of years. You'd expect, therefore, to be a brisk trade in not just Continual Light objects being made, but all the...

Or say, Fabricate.

A question about this one. Ever since most buffs became concentration in 5e, I've noticed very little buff casting from my casters, as they always have better things to do with concentration. Which means that the non-spellcasters receive very few buffs, which used to be a big deal in older...

Oh derp, sorry. Somehow I thought the problem was simply having the spell as a Bard. Carry on! EDIT: I'm still playing 2014 D&D, so the idea I can't use a reaction spell on my turn isn't something I'm used to yet.

I don't really think that spells themselves are the problem- it becomes quite a chore to justify why a spellcaster can do X but not Y. Personally, the big problem is being able to swap out your spell list easily. Look at the Sorcerer class. They get very few spells that have to be carefully...

RE: Silvery Barbs Level 10 Bard Level 10: Magical Secrets You’ve learned secrets from various magical traditions. Whenever you reach a Bard level (including this level) and the Prepared Spells number in the Bard Features table increases, you can choose any of your new prepared spells from the...

That's a fair point, but it's already hard enough to figure out how to use a Wish properly and avoid the DM playing the role of jackass genie. Adding additional uncertainty just makes people not to want to mess with it. Something I've often found almost paradoxical is that DM's live for...

and Vader is Dutch for Father- supposedly unintentional (I think George was going for inVader, similar to how Palpatine was inSidious), but it really ties into the plot twist of Empire Strikes Back).

I stopped using ToM myself when 3e came out. My AD&D days were full of debates about "wait, where was that wolf? How many wolves did you say there were? No, my character was by the door, not the treasure chest!" that stopped being a thing once I started using maps and minis. It also let me...

It's not just pursuit though. Rules for how far you can move before you must turn and the like really make it hard to use flying monsters, for example. I remember in 3e, where (going off memory), it was very hard to hover, and staying in the air required you to be able to move. This left a...

Ah, something I should have mentioned in my first post, and this isn't an attack on people who have mentioned or like these, but: NO PSIONIC COMBAT (Attack/Defense Modes): these were the thing I disliked the most about early Psionics. So you could enter this special "mind combat" with another...

One game where this sort of thing worked really well was Star Wars Saga. Upon being attacked by a combat droid, I asked the GM if my engineer could reach in and pull out a part, something Iron Man and Spider-Man (gotta have the hyphen!) tend to do. He frowned, then said "aha, you can try if...

Riffing off that last point, good aerial combat rules. These seem to fall into two categories in D&D. 1) complex rules that make any DM regret moving into the third dimension about as much as they do grappling. 2) rules that mostly ignore the 3D space (which gets really amusing with spell...