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For this class, I'd outright ban any spell with the following descriptors: acid, death, force.

Strictly speaking, I'm not sure that is possible. Visual art is a Craft skill, whereas bards rely on Performance. Unless you mean something like performance art?

Weapon mastery is introduced in BECMI Fighters get high level "prestige classes" to choose from. Mass combat, dominion, artifact, and immortality quest rules are introduced in BECMI. Thieves get their abilities weakened Elves have a different spell progression (B?X ends up with more 1st...

A typical expert NPC smith will probably have Skill Focus (Craft/whatever his speciality is) for +3, Intelligence 13 for +1, and 4 ranks for +4 = +8 total. Yeah, by RAW, about 95% and up of NPCs are 1st level. Chances of Joe Random Blacksmith being exceptional in this regard are fairly low...

Poor starting assumption. +8 would be about right for an established professional smithy in his workshop. Much higher than that, and by realistic analysis standards, you are looking at dedicated master craftsmen famous throughout the province, if not the nation. Frankly, if a professional smithy...

For my homebrew, I've rationalised Craft into the following set of skills: C/Wood C/Metal C/Stone (and bone) C/Cloth (and leather) For more modern settings, I add the following: C/Guns (including general explosives) C/Mechanic (including clockworks, steam, and internal combustion)...

The crunchy difference between "Mayan birdmen", "Hawaiian birdmen", and "Aboriginal birdmen" should be exactly the same as the crunchy differences between "Mayans", "Hawaiians", and "Aborigines" -- little or none. They'll have a different choice of feats, some prestige classes may be more or...

Rather than different languages, I have decided that each "language" represents a distinctive regional dialect or accent. Consider English. Under this system, "American Deep South", "California Valley Speak", "Urban Ghetto", "Cockney", "Welsh Valley", "Newcastle" and so on are all different...

From BECMI: The War Machine mass combat rules (or possibly take those from Birthright). BECMI also had dominion rules, but they sucked; maybe Birthright had better ones. From 1e: A decent system for recruiting hordes of cannon fodder mooks on the fly.

If you don't want something in your game, it is usually better to just outright ban it for players (and tell them if you are reserving it for NPC use or not). Don't punish them for a choice you don't want.

Some doors have spell resistance that works against smash but not against knock.

Don't keep me in suspense :yawn:

My approach... If they take 20 on the Search, roll a d20. Most of the time, that d20 roll means nothing. However, strictly speaking it represents the results of the first (of 20) Search checks. If there is a trap in that space and they fail to find the trap, there is a chance (depending on how...

I wasn't assuming a natural 1 is a critical failure. I was assuming it was a simple failure (very likely unless you are level 25 or so). Searching an area certainly involves touching various surfaces in that space. And a great many magical traps are triggered by touch. Hence, there is a real...

You were doing it wrong. If you take 20, it is assumed you rolled at least one "20", but also rolled at least one "1". You can't take 20 if there is a risk of failure having a bad effect, which certainly applies if there is a trap present. DMs should always roll if a character Searches, just so...

What would you have done if a player had said "I'm not taking 20. Just roll that d20 twenty times for me please."?

Agreed. Move action to enter the square, then a full-round action to search it. Or two minutes when taking 20. Just realised you could take a 5-foot step to move into the next square when doing standard searches, instead of move actions. Which brings your speed up to 3000 feet per hour. So...

Horseshoes were developed alongside paved roads. In the wild, the terrain that hoofed animals travel on is typically quite soft, at least in comparison to bare rock. Just about every man-made road since Roman times was at least equal to bare rock in terms of hardness, which would potentially...

If a typical party is not searching at all, they can cover (30 x 600 rounds) = 18,000 feet per hour — about 3 mph. If they do basic searches (d20 roll or take 10), than speed halves. If they take 20 on each hex, they are spending 21 rounds on each square (1 to move, 20 to search), which means...

Something I'm considering... DR ##/whatever becomes DR ##/-. Where a specific item or items would have bypassed DR, attacks with that type instead inflict an additional 1d6 per 5 points of DR that the creature originally had. Exception: DR that is bypassed by magic does not grant any...