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I'm in the camp that says that playing is its own reward, and not-playing its own punishment. I feel no need to further compound either by not awarding XP to those who are unable to make it. If someone can't make it because something more important came up, well, then it's silly to expect...

One thing I'm becoming a bit curious about: for those of you who feel that NPCs need to be statted by following a formally structured rule system, what do you do when there's a viable NPC concept you want in your game that the system is incapable of providing?

Ahh, but in a versimilatudinous medieval-esque western fantasy world, is the typical person employed in the labour he's best suited for, or is he employed in the labour that his station in society has restricted him to? If your father was a goat farmer, and his father was a goat farmer, and his...

Please don't put words in my mouth (er, on my fingers?). I never said it was "incredibly" anything, nevermind laborious or challenging, simply that it was (and here I quote myself), "more... than I'm willing to devote to it". Also, as Obryn noted, the fact that you're able to rattle off those...

Honestly? If the question of whether or not the blacksmith in this small village can forge impossibilium ever becomes in the slightest bit relevant in a campaign I'm running, chances are that the answer is "Why yes, yes he can". Why? Because the players probably don't need to know that...

I don't view "Hero" as a power level. Rather, it's a role open to anyone at any power level, and not one that all characters inevitably embrace. That said, I don't think that D&D has ever, as a system, put forward the idea that 1st level characters are just Average Joe. I'm quite certain many...

Any particular reason why? I understand that they're not a concept that works in every campaign, but then they weren't put forward as something you must use. Instead, they were put forward as one way of ensuring that the items you added to your campaign were ones that would be used rather than...

No. This dramatically over-rewards wizards for focusing on what they're already expected to focus on. Meanwhile, every other class has to step outside of their traditional stats just to play keep-up.

One thing I ended up doing (and there may even be a suggestion about it in the DMG somewhere) is recording "passive" scores for all of the PC's relevant skills, as the system already does for Perception and Insight. There usually ends up being at least one PC whose passive knowledge is enough...

To borrow your metaphor for a moment... Let's say I walk into a deli for a turkey sandwich. I look on the menu board and see that if I want to get a roast beef sandwich instead, I have a wide variety of breads, condiments, cheeses and other fixings I can choose from, ranging from the pedestrian...

Note that the file names all include a prefix that is a date. If the prefix has not changed to the latest date, the file itself has not changed. The bulk of the files in the latest package still use the 081312 prefix of the second playtest package. The Classes file and Reclaiming Blingdenstone...

I'm with the vibrant colour-changing lizard and the undead cybernetic assassin on this one. Requiring the rogue to be bad at combat is every bit as flawed as requiring the fighter to bad outside of it. They both unnecessarily leave (some*) players frustrated in a major component of the game...

:erm: So the system in which your choice of first level class is a permanent commitment in terms of what choices your character has over 30 levels of play is closer to a class-less system than the one in which your choice of first level class doesn't even shape what your choices are for your...

It seems to me that it should be entirely possible (as it certainly is in the real world) for someone to know a lot of facts and figures about animals without having any skill at the practical applications. Just because someone can tell you what breed of dog you have at a glance, doesn't mean...

Pretty much the only thing I have ever banned from my table is the sunrod. I might think most double weapons are silly. I might think spiked chains are ridiculous. I might think that the gouge is both silly and borderline broken. But the sunrod just pisses me off. Magic glowsticks as assumed...

And how, exactly, do you propose going about doing that? Do you overwhelm the optimizer with too many options to choose from? Well, no, because this is the sort of environment that optimization thrives in. 3.X, even if you don't take advantage of all of the non-WotC OGL content available...

I don't think it's possible to punish optimization. It's pretty much a contradiction in terms. If something gets you negative results, then it's clearly not optimal and something else is, and that will be chosen instead. D&D, even at its simplest, had optimization. Rolling your stats in order...

I think the poll was poorly phrased; 4E didn't put blue dragons at sea, it put them on land, primarily at the coasts, though by no means limited to them:BLUE DRAGONS BREATHE BOLTS OF LIGHTNING. They can be found anywhere but prefer to lair in coastal caves, attacking and plundering ships that...

Puff the magic dragon, lived by the sea...

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