Search results

I am still running D&D 3.0, core books only (well, was; the campaign finished a few months back.) I looked at 3.5 and Pathfinder, and didn't find (most of) the changes to actually improve the game. 3.5 in particular seems to have made many changes for changes' sake (tons of minor changes which...

Never really cared for OD&D, but I started with Frank's Red Box, and subsequent boxed sets, up to the inimitable Immortal Set, which still see play at my table. I see "Classic" D&D as the "natural evolution" of OD&D, it just hits the right "mix" of elements I like in a game. When I am in the...

Thanks for the comment; this is very interesting. The 13A disengage rules work as a saving throw (as a Move action), with a penalty of +1 for each enemy beyond the first with which a character is engaged. They allow more than a simple shift (as in principle you could move anywhere Nearby) so I...

Ah yes, now that I looked at it, I recall we tried to use it back in the day. We found out it was somewhat too fiddly; we much prefer the more abstract nature of 13th Age.

Thanks for the comment! I don't know about Wrecan's system; any pointers? I know the WotC boards don't exist anymore. The conversion is indeed somewhat "mathy" but the rules are simple, and I designed them so I can do the conversions on the fly (I DON'T rewrite stat blocks.) I considered flat...

Similar to the above. 13th Age worked very well for us (including forced movement and teleportation, which DO exist in 13th Age). You should address the fool's errand comment to Heinsoo and Tweet; I simply ported their system to 4e.

I had asked explicitly for constructive comments. Anyway, just to better explain my choice: - I like 4e monster and NPC mechanics more than in 13th Age and 5e. - I like the wider selection of monsters - I like the wider selection of powers - I like skills - I like the wider level range - I...

Hi all, so I recently acquired a full set of 4e books, and I wanted to give it a(nother) try. I had already bought and DMed it back in 2008, and although I loved many aspects of it, I never warmed to the idea of minis and maps (both for the time it takes to play out encounters, and as a...

I bought the 4e books when they came out, played some, but the strong ties to the grid made me drop the game and sell it. I don't like grid combat, I don't own and don't particularly like minis, and I have limited space to play. I saw 4e as a big improvement over 3e, w.r.t. simpler rules and...

I agree with the OP. GUMSHOE games have become my "go to" games when I run scenarios that involve some kind of clue-gathering process. I am currently running an hybrid Fear Itself/Ashen Stars scenario set in the Alien "universe", strongly inspired by the Alien: Isolation game; it's working like...

I told my players in advance that the campaign style includes mostly "status quo" encounters. That's by the book, and I don't think they need to know more than that. Learning to flee, scouting, and gathering intelligence can be rewarding in and of itself. So if someone tells them "there's a...

Actually, both Silvanesti and Qualinesti are High Elves. The Kagonesti are Wild Elves (according to the original modules.) The later Dragonlance Adventures hardback had some confusing stats regarding these races, and in general it makes them too powerful offering unlimited advancement in most of...

There are reaction checks, which are a quite important part of the game, too. Charisma is definitely not a dump stat when you see the importance of reaction checks to interaction with NPCs, morale of hirelings/followers etc.

This is a very important point which must be stressed. The "feel" of the game as intended by Gygax was strongly humanocentric. And the multiclass combinations allowed to the demihumans are powerful indeed; just have a look at half-elves and half-orcs, which are the only nonhuman PC races who can...

Does anyone know if different printings were issued of the DMG and MM core 3.0 books? If so, how to distinguish them? (e.g. ISBN) I own the PHB 2nd printing, which contains all the errata. For the other books, I have the errata, and it is mentioned that 2nd printings would contain them. Oh...

Yes, that was the cumulative. What we want is the survival function 1-P(X). See my previous post.

Yes sorry, that's the correct form; I wrote it incorrectly. The probability of failing the skill challenge would be: P(X>=2)=P(X>1)=1-P(X<=1)=.84 What this means for the game, I have no idea at all. I just made a comment on the solution of the supposed problem (X failures before r successes)...

LOL thanks for the humour :D So, which would be "pure math"? Statistics is just an application of mathematics. :)

Ehy, Mr. Funny, I am a mathematician. But since you are smarter than me, you can explain this: 1) We're interested in the number of failures before reaching a fixed number of successes. 2) The experiment consists of a sequence of independent trials. 3) The probability of success, p, is constant...

It is a distribution of waiting times, quite different from a binomial distribution. It is the distribution of waiting times in a Bernoulli process.