Search results

You know, I looked at my post, thought about it and decided not to edit, because hey, it's not like people are going to pick apart my word choice. Ever the optimist. To address your actual argument, 5e introduces one mechanic that is actually more efficient - advantage and disadvantage. And it...

Form and function, my friend. WotC is obsessed with the former while they should be focusing on the latter. 5e could have taken the D&D franchise in a new direction, accomplishing what it's always been known for with more efficient, yet still familiar mechanics. Instead, the designers spent the...

I'm aware that they're only metagame constructs, although to be honest, I think in that case the designers should have gone a step further and let go of D&D's legacy classes. At any rate, I'm looking at the rogue right now, and it might work too, except for the sneak attack feature. I'd rather...

Hmm, so a Ranger would work as a quick-and-dirty swords(wo)man who isn't a meathead. Unfortunately, multi-classing isn't an option for me, as I don't have any non-SRD material. Druids also don't seem to be in the SRD. Perhaps I could try to cobble together a variant Fighter class for nimble...

5e will sell, no doubt. Whether or not it'll meet Hasbro's inflated expectations I don't know, and I honestly don't give a toss - not my problem. But what it won't do is change the industry in any way, certainly not for the better. It's simply too reactionary, too desperate to play it safe and...

That really depends. "Power" is a nebulous term. But in terms of options, interesting interactions with the system or empowerment - the balance is more or less as it has always been in every edition apart from 4e. Casters get access to huge spell lists, whereas those who don't cast spells will...

Having read the first two books of the series, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have a low-level feeling to me. They're competent swordsmen and thieves, but not larger than life like, say, Conan. Of course it's subjective, and I imagine I might think differently if I'd read the later books. Mind you...

Gray Mouser is certainly a rogue, but high-level? Hardly. He and Fafhrd would stay firmly on low levels in any edition of D&D.

I don't really want all the baggage that comes with the Ranger class - particularly since it looks like I'd have to either use two weapons or have an animal companion if I wanted to be a melee warrior. I want a swordsman and martial artist who uses dexterity rather than strength.

Yeah, but if you ask me, a nimble and skilled warrior really shouldn't be an exotic option you need to wait to use. It's some unfortunate D&D baggage in a system that otherwise seems refreshingly willing to ditch it. Anyway, I thought I might be able to just swap the attribute bonuses to...

If I wanted to make a Fighter who uses Dexterity as his primary melee attribute in combat and relies on light armour rather than heavy, how should I go about it? It looks like it would require house-rules.

I see. I generally think that it's probably better to differentiate weapons through what you can do with them, than just numbers, although some number-crunching is probably unavoidable. It's easier to make sure they're all interesting choices this way.

While "illusion of choice" describes the 5e weapons table perfectly, I wouldn't really call any weapons superior or inferior, simply because there's so little difference between different weapons in the same category. Some will be slightly better or worse, technically, but it doesn't matter that...

The situation the OP describes is why I think non-magical heroic efforts should rely more on discrete abilities than just numbers.

Vampire: the Requiem just saw a fairly successful rules revision, as did the core nWoD - updates for Werewolf and Mage are being worked on. Two new gamelines came out in the last year, and a new one is in the works. There are several other supplements down the pipeline. I don't really have any...

Here's the thing: the weapons table is more or less a relic, and pretends small differences in dice size and damage type actually matter. Those oddities are a sort of by-product of that. They could have boiled it down to a couple lines of text for simplicity's sake in the Basic Set, and retained...