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I agree. Not only can one grapple effectively while prone, it's easier to grapple while prone, since being already down means that you are no longer restricted to grappling with no more than 3 limbs at a time: You can't fall, because you've already done that. However, in order to effectively...

Well, if the weapon is being wielded in 3 hands, the rules for multiweapon fighting is that the primary hand gives you a 1.0 strength bonus, and all other hands are 0.5 strength bonus. Therefore, a three-handed sword grants a bonus of 2.0 (1.0 + 0.5 + 0.5), when wielded in three hands. As for a...

I don't see what difference it makes. In a computer game, the spell saving throws are in the hands of nobody. That doesn't make them any less interesting: The interesting part of a spell is not rolling a die for saving throws or damage, but the part where you cut loose with a dramatic shout of...

Firstly, it was 260 years ago, which puts it into the realm of archaeology, not tomb raiding, and secondly, it's not a tomb anyway, so it's not tomb raiding at all, it's a salvage operation. If a ship sinks, and I decide to dredge it up and loot it several years later, this is a perfectly legal...

Double weapons, when wielded in a double-attack, get 1.0 and 0.5 strength bonusses, for primary and secondary attacks, respectively. When wielded for AoOs, or for the single "attack" action, you get 1.5 strength for it, as a two-handed weapon, because you're using it in both hands for that.

As a side note, the marketting on the BoVD, rather like the entire "D&D is Satanic" thing, was a perfect example of what I call "Shock and Aww" marketting. You hear about how shocked some people are, you rush out to get this thing with the expectation that it would somehow be shocking, and go...

Are you kidding? I miss those days when D&D was supposed to be Satanic. That had to be the best marketting device ever. What could possibly sell a game faster than to say that playing it was worshipping Satan? It's like those people who crusade against violent video games now: They're doing more...

You haven't convinced him that the sky is actually green. You HAVE perhaps convinced him that something is wrong with his eyes and he might want to get that checked out. Alternatively, you've convinced him that something is wrong with your head, and you might want to get that checked out.

Or you can just disappear suddenly, courtesy of Guido and Shorty. Everyone will figure you developed a bad case of cementfoot.

I think that the tall aspect of northern European stock is not so much derived from living in cold climates, so much as it is derived from our tendency to kill each other in violent local conflicts. Being taller gave one an impressive muscular advantage when trying to smash, stab, and skewer...

I think you're trying to scientificize magic. That's a lot harder to do effectively than it sounds, due to the fact that a lot of magical spells, and, indeed, perhaps the entire point of magic, is to generate effects which are blatantly in violation of physical principles and create effects...

Cosmopolitan isn't a skill increasing feat, per-se, it's primarily a crossclassing feat. The +2 bonus is simply icing on the cake: You'd take it even without that.

For the first favored enemy, I'd go with "Dragon", if the campaign had dragons in it at all: They're one of the toughest, meanest things out there, so you want as large a bonus as you can get. Then I start running down the list player and NPC races in the campaign, starting with the most common...

Oh, yes, that's a great trick for injecting a bit of realism into adventures. Tends to work better on other people, than me, though. Are tarantulas edible?

I did that. That was my "sniper" stunt: I conspired with another player, and an accomplice, to make it seem like that player had been suddenly shot by a sniper, right during the "sniper" arc of the adventure. At the exact moment I described the sudden sniping of a hapless player, the non-playing...

I liked the ecology thing. That was one of the more useful sections of the manual, since it told you what the hell the monster was doing there in the first place. The 3E Monster Manual rather presents monsters in a very unflattering light, as things to be killed for XP and loot. Half of the...

Well, it depends on how you view "knockback". In a "realistic" scenario where a critter is struck by another critter of his own size, a "knockback" typically occurs because the struck victim is unbalanced by the hit and staggers backwards to avoid falling on his ass. He's not actually sent...

Well, I've always noticed how surprisingly similar in concept that D&D "feats" are to Fallout (SPECIAL) "perks". One edition of Fallout, I forget exactly which, had perks "Bend the Rules" and "Break the Rules", which allowed characters to ignore stat and racial requirements for future perk...

Well, there's always the "monster" campaign, where the tables are turned, and instead of the players being characters out to pillage the lairs of monsters and steal their treasure, the players are monsters trying to stop adventurers from pillaging their homes and stealing their treasure, all...

Hitpoints are too abstractified to make for a good combat description, and frankly, when people start beating each other repeatedly when both parties have large quantities of hitpoints, even trying to justify this with a description starts to become silly. Now when you bring in the specific...