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Per session mechanics usually don't work very well unless the game is set up very differently than D&D - if then. How does an adventure designer, or a GM, design encounters around the 'per session' mechanics? A GM *may* be able to estimate the average amount of kibbitzing and fooling around in...

Because if a new player picks up the PHB, he is not going to think "Oh, 1st level - that sucks, I'll start at 3rd, obviously, since that's where you start to approach the sweet spot." He's going to start at 1st, and if 1st is not entertaining, there's a good chance he won't play till 2nd...

Quite often. For example, I'm currently playing a character with Devoted Defender levels (from Sword and Fist). It's a fairly narrow PrC that never got updated to the best of my knowledge, and I decided to use it rather than d20 Modern's Bodyguard for this character because firearms...

Looks very cool from what I've seen so far! One question, though: at a glance, barbarians, horse lords and sea people all look to be rather screwed over on the stat mods, whereas high men and easterlings get a big edge. High men don't get many other benefits (common men actually look like a...

Oops, sorry! :o My most sincere apologies. Yes. It's one possibility. At my table, and the tables of everyone I've personally played with, the 3.5 Monster Manual has been a book of races as well as antagonists. I'm actually not a big WoD fan, either setting or mechanics, although both...

Here's the thing. I'm COMPLETELY fine with THIS. I LOVE Spycraft 2.0's NPC generation table and use it often for other games, even though it's not an exact match. It's wonderfully simple and easy to use. BUT, if the Monster Manual takes this route, and neither it nor the Player's Handbook...

Per Rest Period mechanics. I'm not going to call them 'per day,' because the typical PC's workday is about 10 minutes long. It's not the Vancian magic I mind, so much, it's the fight-rest-fight cycle and the assumption of attrition. Vance's spellcasters needed have time to re-memorize their...

Unless you assume that a wide variety of creatures are suitable as PCs. If you're playing Lord of Something Other Than the Rings, Honest, Unless You Squint, v. 201,834.5, then yes, you don't need rules for monstrous PCs (although treant/ent PCs would not be out of the question - and I doubt the...

Fortunately, in the game I'm using for d20, the max "skill bonus" for 2 hd characters is +11 before stats are applied. So your kangaroo need not worry. Of course, they could always just give the 'roo a racial bonus... Oh. The racial bonus text usually appears AFTER the stat block, in my...

I wasn't playing many tabletop RPGs at the time, and wasn't playing D&D at all. I didn't actually get back into the game until I got interested in writing for Dragon, which is when I discovered how much better I liked 3e than I had its predecessors. :D

Here's the thing I strongly dislike - the same thing I strongly dislike about Sean K. Reynolds's 'err as far on the side of caution as can be reasonably construed as playable, than add 1' LA assignment theory: I want monstrous PCs of the races I consider PC-appropriate, not those Andy (or any...

Couldn't disagree more. While I think the Delve format has some growing to do, particularly in how it relates to the overall layout of the books, it is the first thing I've encountered that makes me actually consider running published modules. The Delve format seems to be designed to make...

Oh, I absolutely don't want to go through a laborious hit die calculation! I want to pick a monster whose hit dice equal the level I want the encounter to be - in this sense, even simpler! The thing about your example is, as a Mutants and Masterminds player, I'd be doing the exact same thing...

OK, cool. I wasn't sure, because you *usually* seemed to only talk about the D&D-derived games. Maybe because ENWorld is primarily a D&D board? If so, that's very understandable. In light of that, I'm surprised you can't see how someone would get burned out on a particular set of mechanics...

I also totally disagree with Mearls on this one. Ironically, his actual monster redesigns? I *loved* those. They really got to the core of the monsters' schticks and made them play better, and fixed ridiculous, punitive stuff like the screw the fighter monster... er, rust monster. The THEORY...

I don't think you need to have played every module, character concept, etc. to get burned out at the system level. Treebore, I get the impression C&C/pre-3e D&D is pretty much the only tabletop RPG you really like or have cared to play extensively (I don't recall off hand if you've said you...

As someone who has compared 3e favorably to C&C in the past, specifically butting heads with Treebore on this issue: My criticisms of C&C were never contingent on 3e being my favorite game (although it is my favorite version of D&D to date) or a great game or even necessarily a GOOD game - they...

For everyone who DOESN'T think the three-book model is a problem, let me know the last time you bought a game that WASN'T an RPG that REQUIRED: 1. A person with 'more experience' or 'more stuff' than you to participate in the game. 2. Material you are not given in the package you purchased (in...

Yes, because it takes REAL cojones to brave the danger of being removed from play and spending an evening reading/watching other people play/kibitzing/playing a Game Boy because you rolled bad in the first encounter. I mean, wow. Anybody with the cojones to handle that, he could probably take...

I think it's a huge, possibly crippling, barrier to entry. There's a reason D&D's largest cultural footprint and playerbase coincided with the availability of the Red Box basic set, which included everything needed to play in a single, reasonably priced package. The basic game was sold like...