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Part II of our skill system... While overall the reduction in the number of skills is a good thing, we also wanted to be able to include more specific skills, and expertise in our campaign. Our method of doing this was to create Fields of Expertise. A Field of Expertise is a subskill of the...

We have also experimented with stacking advantage/disadvantage. Interestingly enough, while it seems like rolling 3 dice would significantly increase/reduce your chances, mathematically that's not the case. I don't have the numbers here, but it's kind of a perfect mechanic, because it feels...

Yes, but it's +/- 5 for passive scores.

These are our rules: Wild Magic Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Whether attempting to cast a spell you haven’t fully mastered, in some cases having your spell disrupted, being impaired, using substitute components, or using a damaged wand or magic item, there is a chance that the spell...

Where I see a lot of people argue that medicine is an Intelligence skill, I'd argue that in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world that it has a lot less to do with knowledge and factual things than our modern science-based medicine. As such, I prefer it as a Wisdom skill, as it's more about hunches...

Yes, and I rely on passive scores extensively which greatly simplifies the process. That is, it allows me to reward players that have higher passive scores and reinforce the fact that they do, in fact, know more.

I've made a number of changes to the skill system for our campaign. I'm not sure this is what you're looking for, since our goal is to not only make the skill system realistic and make sense, but also to not make it a "game" within the game. I'm not interested in complex mechanics and skill...

My campaign is similar, pretty much houserules. The only one on your list here that generally does apply in my campaign is no evil characters. I don't mind having evil PCs per se, but I can't stand poorly played evil characters. In addition, it has caused issues too often, and my players don't...

Save or die is fine with us, but... We handle death a little differently in our campaign. The players decide whether to follow the roll of the die, or if something else happens. For example the most common save or die circumstance in our campaign is still poison (since AD&D days...). In most...

While on the surface this sounds accurate, things have changed in the Realms over the centuries. Perhaps superficially sometimes, but they have. More importantly, though, few campaigns cover a period of "centuries." In our own world, while technology did move on, the period between the fall of...

I wouldn't say "blah" but I would say that I'm not terribly interested either. 5e (and this forum) started a bit of a renaissance in my game, and the direction it has taken is more towards AD&D. We use the 5e mechanics, but lots of house rules at this point. Many might consider it a different...

This is the very reason I love the Realms, and my DM style has grown over the years based on what I think your game is like. It's all about characters and their stories, and not only are the stories about the characters, but they are written by them (well, their actions, anyway). And they always...

In real life, some people are naturally suspicious, even when telling the truth, or they have poor social skills, whatever. So Persuasion for telling the truth, Deception for lying. Insight to detect either. Most of the time it starts with an active check against Passive Insight, with...

I do agree about that, but the problem with just saying “the old stuff is good enough” is that it’s not readily available. Yes, it’s on eBay, and digital copies from Drive Thru RPG, but that’s different. Not to mention many people won’t get it if it’s not 5e. There are some rules in most of the...

So you’ve already skipped/ignored a lot of other published material anyway. So what difference does it make if they publish/republish now? New gamers aren’t likely to search out those resources now.

But that’s not entirely true. Greyhawk went through a major timeline upgrade in the Wars/From the Ashes era, and Dragonlance has covered multiple eras too, although not always by TSR/WoTC. But updating to 5e/expanding the knowledge of the setting doesn’t have to be via timeline. Lord of the...

Well, aside from the Living Greyhawk, there was the whole Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes box sets and series of modules, while still under TSR, up through the unreleased (although previewed Ivid the Undying). Did you ever purchase those, or did you stick with the early material only. My...

Sure, you could substitute INT for any opposed initiative checks too. Or you could go with the strongest of DEX, WIS, or INT to give options, although many would complain DEX and WIS are too strong already. In ours, though, there is no declaring first or last, everybody is declaring/altering...

Sure. It bears some similarities to the Hackmaster system of old, but with less formality. The reality is, once you understand how D&D combat works, then consider how things like wrestling, boxing, (American) football, rugby, and similar sports work, then you don't really need much of a formal...

From a mass market game, I get the concern. But it doesn’t bother me unless it actually comes up in our game, and if there was a multi-caster counterspell I could see it as similar to a number of scenes in movies. So we might go with it. Mostly because the only time I could think of something...