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I also make a distinction between mortal and legendary wishes. Wish spell--its main, consequence-free use is as a joker to duplicate any spell in the game, and it can produce other effects in line with mortal spells. Demon lord, noble genie, archangel: as above, and could go a bit farther...

Thanks for the update! I'm interested in hearing more about the string theory version of a multiverse. As I recall, another possible multiverse model was 'eternal inflation', which only requires a vacuum field and not string theory. (Aside for the benefit of others) Inflation was a very...

The Greyhawk heavy-hitters are explicitly neutral/selfish. The Circle of Eight is a group of archmages that mainly care about protecting their own prerogatives and occasionally manipulating politics to prevent a superpower from emerging. This is very much in the Dying Earth style--the archmages...

Ok. Quick question for you: One of the big problems with the dark energy/cosmological constant component of the universe is explaining its value-- when I was in grad school the best models from particle physics proposing a nonzero vacuum energy were still 30 orders of magnitude off from the...

Interestingly, though, Bohr himself did not favor this interpretation. He considered the wavefunction to describe an inseparable relationship between the system being measured and the experimental apparatus. He never took steps to try to formalize that idea with mathematics, but he expressed...

Doesn't that just push the problems of QM down a level? Instead of matter particles having a wave nature, this postulates a new field in nature that can supply the waves, and then you have to think about what this field is made of and how it interacts with different kinds of matter...

When I read the beholder entry, I took the random rays as an abstraction of facing in a fluid combat situation. Of course they can be non-random out of combat. To mitigate the randomness, I might let the beholder spend its move action to "reface" then pick whatever rays I wanted, or a bonus...

That's why I'm thinking that Guardians of the Galaxy is a good model. The situations are serious but the heroes are funny as hell.

I had several long conversations with one such author about general relativity and cosmology. The man had a law degree but no science degree. Eventually I realized that he was fixated on an antique cosmological theory (I forget which one--a deSitter variant, I think) as the basis of his new...

I agree with DEFCON--it would be better to start small. The reason being that most D&D campaign settings are VERY rich in detail compared to what a single movie can express. So pick a world, then zoom in to one interesting location, and tell a typical story for that world. Don't try to show...

Cool idea, but it doesn't sound like something a PC would likely choose. It makes a good story element for an adventure, though! Maybe something that an alienist sorcerer would have.

I don't need any double weapons in the game for sure, but I've already presented my players with the option of picking up a kuo-toa mancatcher and learning to use it through the same rules as gaining a tool proficiency. They didn't take me up on it. I think it's fair in general to say that "All...

Thanks. I just did a quick check in the MM, and large creatures typically have 5' reach. Monsters good at grappling don't make initial athletics checks to do it--the grapple just triggers on a hit. They also aren't proficient in Athletics. The half-ogre is large and has 17 Str, 14 Con, Int 7...

Well, one could look at the benefit as having the Enlarge spell "always on", or with a number of uses per day equal to the typical number of combat encounters. It's powerful, but a race with Enlarge 3/day is certainly in the scope of what a basic race can provide. Is a hypothetical race that...

Fair enough, my language was sloppy. What I was trying to say is: it would be interesting if the choice of favored terrain granted an ability that was useful in all terrains, in addition to expanded utility limited to the chosen terrain. For example, Favored Terrain: Mountain granting a climb...

Not insightful enough. Try again. :-)

Yes, with nuances. The Ranger currently gets several unique advantages for exploring which could be opened up to everyone as high-DC uses of the Survival skill. In the current rules, Natural Explorer is better for the Ranger. But I would be fine with expanding the scope of Survival to include...

Soldier vs scout again. By the same token, the fighter could use more abilities/maneuvers/feats to enhance their abilities when part of an organized unit. Another literary ranger that hasn't been mentioned yet is the "Lone Ranger"--operates alone, self-sufficient, feared by baddies, etc. A...

The same reason a fighter with Survival doesn't make a good ranger, or a fighter with stealth doesn't make a good rogue... when people are saying they want a class, with powers that go above and beyond skills and support the archetype they want to play, what's the point of telling them that...

At the risk of derailing the thread into something other than literary deconstruction... Personally, I prefer D&D when the majority of PCs are not spellcasters. I prefer fantasy in general when magic and the use thereof are rare events in the character's lives. I have no problem with a party...