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On the contrary, performing math is just like casting a protection spell against certain segments of the population. :)

(Apologies if my sarcasm meter is broken.) Mr. Scruffy has at least a few extra HD since he is apparently Belkar's animal companion. The party is, what, about 16th level right now? Belkar's probably about ranger 8, or equivalent to a 4th level Druid for animal companion purposes.

The entire structure of 4e could use a bit of a reboot, in my opinion. The essentials classes (love 'em or hate 'em) did move beyond the original AEDU structure, but as we've seen with themes it makes developing mechanics useful for both classic and e-classes a bit problematic. There is a...

You know, you're probably right about that. Some racial things would still be better served as feats, but they do tend to be more behind the scenes than powers. I would maybe object to the idea that every character necessarily becomes more "[race]y" (hah!) as it gains levels. Not every elf...

I favor parsimonious prerequisites, with no prerequisites preferred over some, and general prerequisites preferred over very specific ones. These are the questions I ask about prerequisites when designing abilities, in order of priority. 1) Does this ability mechanically rely on some...

Ha, so it would seem! In my campaign, and across the various PCs I played in 3.5, my observation was that most PCs found it worthwhile to use items to boost two ability scores, one primary and one secondary. Additional bonuses would be gravy, but not expected or particularly pursued. By way...

Sure thing! Overall, I hewed very closely to what ability score items would give. I simply let them increase two different ability scores at 4, 8, 12, etc. as well as a single one at 2, 6, 10, etc. This replaced the original rules for improving ability scores. Items that improved ability...

Thanks. The idea of wealth as a level modifier is probably the right first approach in 3.5. Trying to completely untangle items from the WbL table would be a pretty big undertaking, especially since the expectations are a bit looser than in 4e. I think for that method to work well the party...

Glad to see it got your neurons firing! In 4e the fact that items already have levels should help a lot. Big 3 items clearly have the strongest impact. For argument's sake let's say they are weighted equally. Other items should only count if they are actually worn or otherwise consistently...

(Long post ahead. The TL;DR version is that I think we should decouple character power from item power and use their total to determine "level." Doing this right would have some pretty big effects on a system, some of which I discuss below.) The "automagic" part is critical for making it...

One world in a campaign I ran had a lycanthrope apocalypse, where in the end all that remained were shifters, full lycanthropes, and the previously servant class warforged society that suddenly found itself alone and immune to the scourge, but with almost no idea what to do with itself. (In my...

One of my best friends introduced me to PnP RPGs in graduate school, not longer after we had met. We eventually lived together for a few years, and I think of him as a brother. Plus, I still have the original email he sent me that kicked it all off: Turns out the answer was "yes."

Well, the earth fairy business is from way back in strip 51. Her soft defenseless flesh evidently had some significant DR.

If we're rolling then clearly it's random, but it's not like randomness is some monolithic thing. For example, "swinginess" influences the feeling for many people: going from hale and healthy to dead with a single roll can feel a lot different than being worn down over the course of combat...

Different species absolutely could and frequently will have those profound psychological differences, and having different cultural "packages" can and should support that at least as well as existing schemes. As I see it, the problem with race=culture isn't that it fails to make different...

I want different races in a fictional setting to have a reason for being. If it works with the specific setting and subgenre, then pursue it. For RPG systems, especially those that are designed as systems first and settings second, I strongly prefer lots of races to be available, with the...

This, pretty much. I don't have time to worry about the purported pretext when the actual ideas make for interesting reading.

The math is not complicated if we make some reasonable assumptions, and based on your second quote you appear to have misunderstood the original poster in the first place. The original post states that the odds of winning the Oregon state lottery in a year are about 1 in 8000 if you spend $20...

He was saying a 1 in 8000 chance if you spent $20 a week for the entire year...not those odds per $1 ticket or anything like that. That's roughly $1000 dollars, and if the odds are as stated, one would expect needing to pay that 8000 times in order to win once...expending 8 million dollars in...

A few years after 3.5 was released the group I played with experimented with several different initiative systems within the general 3.5 framework. (I think most of that group cut their tooth with 2e, but 3.5 was my first pnp RPG.) Eventually I wrote a small software tool that handled...