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"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." ~ Clarke's First Law of Prediction

Sure, but if magic items that grant Wishes have the potential to wreck one's game (imagine that!), you can just...not have them show up as treasure?

Speaking of the rule for raising ability scores with Wishes, I've always wanted to know how that came to be. Was there really such a preponderance of Wishes in Gary's game that required such a rule, or did he wake up from a nightmare in which Rob Kuntz figured out a way to get infinite Wishes?

I think the 3e approach to level drain ("negative levels") solved a lot of issues- you didn't forget your abilities, they simply became weaker. You could lose spell slots, but you didn't forget what spells you could cast, and so on. I don't have a problem with effects that reduce one's...

Because our understanding of things is always changing. History is full of people who thought this or that thing was "impossible" only to be eventually proven wrong. We can say that things are impossible according to the laws of physics, for example, but we do not know everything there is to...

But that specialness only extends so far- for example, being a half-elf makes you easier to bring back than a full elf. But being a half-orc does not. You know it just occurred to me that I don't think the 2e Rod (which has nearly the same text) was ever updated to reflect new classes (like...

I didn't vote, but mostly because, while I have no evidence to suggest ghosts are real, I can't deny that they could be- it may be highly improbable, but I believe it's wrong-minded to say that something is flat-out impossible.

It wasn't even universal for all 1e adventures, as they eventually started including suggested party sizes, for example:

I mean, yeah, that also makes sense (orcs have no souls, lol). But it doesn't quite explain why it's harder to revive a Halfling than a Human.

Here's the thing with party size- the more people there are in a combat round, the longer the combat round takes. This becomes problematic as characters gain more attacks and more abilities to sift through. Even in AD&D, having 2 attacks per turn wasn't impossible with things like bows, spell...

Well if we're talking about "weird things about powerful AD&D magic items", here's a fun one: The logic behind the charge costs is puzzling. At first, you think "well, the closer a class is to being considered "good", the easier it is to raise them. No wait, Clerics can be evil! Ok, so the...

The accuracy isn't the problem, it's the hit points. Somebody upthread talked about starting new characters at level 2-3 to hang with level 6 characters. A level 3 Fighter in 5e might have, say 31 hit points. They'd better be a ranged build and stay far away from melee, because a CR 4 able to...

I don't mind a minor level difference here and there, I'm more concerned if the players are roughly on the same power level. It's like those old "random PC's" pre-rolled in old school adventures- the ones with the good stats and gear (remember "Ogre the Fighter", armed with an 18/00 Strength...

I did get reminded the other day of Council of Wyrms, which has a similar scenario- you play as Wyrmling Dragons struggling to build a hoard and grow stronger, all while being told horror stories of "Dragonslayers", ie, humanoids from across the sea who were armed to the teeth with enough power...

It really, really depends. There are lots of ways to gain levels from magic items- the Deck of Many Things, The Book of Exalted Deeds, the Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms, etc. etc.. One of my earliest memories of AD&D was a discussion about whether or not the gems and money produced by a...

Ok, my experiment started with this session, where they found a "flawed" blue rhomboid Ioun Stone- it provides +2 Strength, but it can only be attuned to a few more times before it burns out and becomes a dull grey stone (thus reducing it's sale price). It got snapped up quickly despite it's...

Back in 3e, I tried to run a Savage Species game. The resulting characters were extremely lopsided, with massive strong points and weak points. This might sound balanced, but generally what happened in most encounters was that the character whose weak points were hit just imploded, and the...

Kirk in a serious relationship of course being highly amusing to long-time fans. As for Spock, he really was a sex symbol back during the ToS era, something a lot of modern fans might not know- the ladies found him very fascinating! And it's not like we haven't seen alternate relationships...