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This is a consequence of "bounded accuracy" (which is something I've never liked). It was a reaction to 4E's approach of "add half level to everything". The criticism then was "Why should my character get better at skills that he does not practice?" For example, Stealth for a paladin or Arcana...

I'm a rules guy. To me, taking 20d6 damage you could have easily avoided is punishment enough. To me, the more serious underlying problem is that the player seems to want to play a fantasy supers game, and the DM wants to run one based on fantasy realism. IMO, this is the issue that needs to be...

I think that may have helped if the intent was to correct any factual errors or misunderstandings, but not if the intent was to avoid giving offense to Asian Americans. I think it's been pointed out before that the experience of being Asian in an Asian majority country is quite different from...

Cautiously raises hand Does writing a couple of Class Acts articles for Dragon magazine count?

To bring up an idea from the Dragonlance setting, one thing that Good has to be careful about is the potential pitfall that it "breeds intolerance, rigidity, a belief that because I am right, those who don't believe as I do are wrong." Where I disagree with the Dragonlance setting is that I...

I think it just highlights that the trope of using unusual weapons is more prevalent in the Chinese wuxia genre than (to use a generalization) Western fiction. Off the top of head, I can think of characters whose signature "weapons" are marbles and long sleeves. In terms of unusual weapons, I...

If I remember correctly (and I can't find my copy of OA to confirm it), it was a line on the Weapons table, like "longsword" or "mace".

If he is aware of the trope then it becomes even more mystifying because it then seems less like ignorance and more like oversensitivity, because I do not see how providing game statistics to support a trope used by Chinese creators themselves can be offensive to the Chinese.

Seriously? He did that? I am now even less impressed. Lack of knowledge of D&D is one thing, but this suggests a lack of familiarity with a relatively common trope in the wuxia genre in which two martial arts exponents engage in a contest of skills at a dining table using cups, bowls and yes...

We've kind of moved on in the conversation, but I just wanted to add that I thought the idea that there was a single, unified, monolithic Asian community that would take offense that OA, among other things, presented Asians as having a single, unified, monolithic culture to be truly amusing.

Unless you can deliberately fail your attack roll against the ground. Come to think of it, if you close your eyes, shouldn't you get Disadvantage from the Blinded Condition?

I really don't think Italian-inspired cannibal halflings are a good idea. Gives Grandma's meatballs and spaghetti a whole new meaning. :sick:

At the risk of sounding like I'm making excuses, I'd just like to say: my Italian-inspired halfling culture did have Mafia-inspired criminal organizations, but not every halfling was a member of those organizations - in the same way that not every orc is a Chaotic Evil raider.

Honestly, I think Deities and Demigods is more guilty of this than Oriental Adventures.

I should have clarified it had nothing to do with official material - it was just how I chose to portray the various races distinctively in my games by drawing on elements of real-world culture. Rightly or wrongly, my teenage self associated the halflings with strong family ties and being good...

Well, my teenage self saw a parallel between dwarven craftsmanship and German manufacturing. ;)

I'm a person of Chinese descent living in Singapore, and my view is very likely coloured by my being in a relative position of privilege in my country: upper middle class in a majority ethnic Chinese country. I was probably in my mid-teens when I got my copy of Oriental Adventures. I had...

Well, one rather obvious guideline is that action denial abilities (paralysis, stunning, sleep) are going to hit a solo character harder than a party.

I voted yes, but I think the real issue is not adding class levels. The real issue is having adventures that are epic in stakes and in scope, but which are not just another dungeon delve with bigger numbers. The PCs ought to be doing things like ruling nations (maybe even worlds), leading...

If you do that, then it still advantages characters who pump out a lot of damage in a single bout, and then play defensively to take advantage of the full heal between bouts. This way, a character can only heal after defeat or expending his own resources: spells/abilities, actions and Hit Dice.