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It should inflict damage, perhaps even enough to kill a large powerful creature that hits the barrier head-first. Why? Because if it worked in Tremors, it should work in D&D. Weird monster? Knowledge check to figure out attributes of weird monster? Straightforward massive application of...

Mage Armor is +4 AC, and Barkskin at this level is +3 AC. Both last a fairly long time. Not too hard to find another +2 or so for the duration of combat (Prot. Evil, Shield of Faith, Cat's Grace, or even just fighting defensively).

I'll admit I'm biased against the knight. I just don't see the need for stripping that archetype away from the things the Fighter class is meant to represent. The FIRST THREE WORDS of the description of the Fighter class in the 3.5 PHB: "The questing knight" Can anybody explain why it was...

Another situation might be timed adventures -- where, for one reason or another, the party doesn't have the luxury of resting. They have to get to the widget before the bad guys do. That means the casters *can't* throw a spell every round of every combat, they may have to conserve their...

I'll go against the grain here and say that your feat choices aren't that bad. Iron Will is a decent feat for fighters as it shores up a commonly-exploited weak point. With Iron Will, your Will save is just 1 behind that of a class with a good Will save. What's your bonus? +2 base, +0 Wis...

"Hey Bloodstorm, why is it that of all the crazy monsters in the world, we almost always run into the ones that we can beat after a tough fight, no matter how much more skilled we've gotten? I mean, what happened to all the goblin raiders that used to attack us when we were riding somewhere?"...

I also can't conceive of the distinction "PC" and "NPC" being in any way an aspect of underlying reality of a world. Once you get into that realm, you're talking game rules that exist to make the game fun, not world rules that exist to make a consistent reality.

I expect very different things from reality than I do from fiction. I'm annoyingly over-educated with a background in physics and a skeptical attitude. I do generally expect that there is a rational explanation for things. I've never seen or experienced anything that can't be explained by our...

Just to clarify, what I mean by "on-camera" is what happens during the game sessions to the PCs or the beings they are interacting with. A tiny and typically extraordinarily anomalous subset of "All events that happen in this reality." I'll give this a shot. Bear with me if I misinterpret the...

[My attempt at a good response -- may or may not be one. RC, is your house rule document available? I'm curious, and I know you're a creative genius with the Faerie Realm work.] See, the first part of your proposition changes the conclusion. You've specifically stated that we are...

A lot of the advice along the lines of "heavily trapped and warded lair" will make ANY foe a vastly superior threat. For dragons, it too often makes them into simpering cowards, hiding in their heavily fortified lairs in fear of those nasty humans coming to kill them.

Bows have a significant disadvantage in their vulnerability to sundering. Many DMs are loathe to use Sunder too often (myself included) and so this drawback really doesn't come into play all that often. Thrown weapons would be great for a scout, I would think. When moving enough to get...

Of the chromatic dragons in the core rules, less than half have an Int of 16 or higher and less than 1/3 have an Int of 18 or higher. A 16 Int doesn't even appear until CR 13. Best casting for a CR 13 chromatic dragon is 5th-level sorcerer. In other words, for most of the levels at which the...

Is this necessarily true? Or do NPCs have whatever XP and levels the DM wants them to have, regardless of how many things they've killed in the past? What if "XP comes from killing things" ONLY applies in a rigorously measured manner for PCs, and it is erratic and unpredictable for NPCs? What...

There is one reason to be cautious about letting people use both for a total penalty exceeding BAB. It's the "only hit a 20" case. Let's say you're going really defensive against a high-AC opponent. You're only going to hit on a 20 anyway, so you may as well Power Attack for full. In this...

Well, it has to be based on some sort of principles. Yes, it can just be the whim of the gods, but then I have to figure out which god wants things which way and why. And I have to determine if laws of nature are predictable enough for society to operate by. If I don't have a clever and...

I think the point is no rivers that actually cut a continent clean through. The Mississippi doesn't do that. The Krandai/Streel in Mystara seem to come close (beginning just 24 miles from a fjord in Vestland in the northeast and going about 1000 miles southwest to Darokin) but in fact what...

What is the source of the wishes? A ring? A benevolent source (e.g. a god for whom you've done a favor) will grant you what you want even if you word your request poorly, within the limits of the spell's power. A neutral source (e.g. a ring) will be relatively literal but not abusively so...

It takes an action, it can be beat by SR (unlikely, but possible for summoned creatures), it can be bypassed by ranged attacks or spell-like abilities (especially for the new outsiders introduced in MMII-IV and FF), the enemy doesn't always have that spell ready, the enemy doesn't always know...

No, the Movanic Deva is SM VII. Available at Sor/Wiz 13. And while a free Raise Dead is not a big deal for PCs -- it's 5% of the wealth at that level -- this is more like 15% of the wealth for an NPC. There's a lot of world-changing impacts when you remove economic constraints on Raise Dead...