Search results

The best solution I've seen is a series of tables, that indicate that a monster of level N has as an expected damage output, defenses, and the like, at as high a level as possible (possibly expressed average damage output per round and number of rounds of expected survival), akin to M&MM's power...

I greatly question this assertion. Depending on the specific monsters and specific situation, different tactics will dominate. Leaders boost the damage output of other monsters in an encounter, either directly with buffs, or indirectly by making the monsters last longer (and take more swings...

So, take a monster Foo with a Foo aura that inflicts 1d6 damage and 5 Foo damage (save ends). Take a Bar monster, with a Bar aura. Assuming that Foo and Bar are equivalent in rarity and resistability, the monsters Foo and Bar should be equivalently XP'd. However, an encounter that has a Foo...

Just add the following ability to any monsters you want to be minions: Because I Said So (Ex): This creature exists solely as a narrative construct, and interacts with the world independently of rules or rulings made previously of the rest of the world. Then run your combat as you desire...

IMC, the drow got into a war with the illithids which ended when the drow used their superior clerical mojo to start spectre-bombing illithid cities, and the illithids responded by making every lump of sickstone in the Underdark go supercritical in an instant. To this day, the Underdark is...

FTR, I agree with this. However, I find this so incredibly intuitive that I find stating that I agree with it mostly to be wear and tear on pixels, and I personally find people blithely stating otherwise to be a wonderful shibboleth for "My opinions are sufficently divergent from yours on what...

Oooh. How about this as a compromise: minions have HP equal to their Con +1, and are disabled (and bloodied) after taking a point of damage. So, a dagger thrust will drop a minion, but may not actually lethally injure him. This gets us transparency with other forms of HP generation, and lets...

We've seen epic-level minions, yes? That would tend towards the ridiculous end of the scale in terms of minions. I'll turn it around. Of course that mumak (advanced dire elephant) exists solely to smash through your lines but then be slain in a single dramatic action. Likewise, the...

Hit points are an abstract measure of toughness, luck, battle skill, and the like, but they are a concrete example of the amount of damage it takes to kill someone or break something. And if the system of D&D had a single attack and damage roll, your example would be true, and this would not be...

If something exists and is measurable in the game world, it's a game element. If the GM is attached to an NPC and will alter the rules of the world on the fly to preserve that NPCs existence and awesomeness, then that NPC's immortality / competence are game elements. Likewise, if certain...

Of course you can do that simulationistically. It's simply a matter of increasing the power of the heroes instead of decreasing the power of the antagonists. When the weakest blow of the heroes does 2n damage, where n is the maximum number of hit points of a given creature, said creatures are...

A spork in the eye is not a spork deep enough into the brain to cause instant death, and neither should be 5% of sporks flung by peasants. The fact that heroes can kill minions in one blow should be a function of how awesome the heroes are, not how crappy the minions are. And if the heroes are...

Lots of literature features characters who go through an improbable number of combats if their ability to survive was merely skill-based, even with superlative or superhuman levels of skill. However, when enough mundane force is applied in a short enough period of time, these characters can...

Characters of up to 5th level can die from falling off a horse. They just need really horrific roles for hp and their Con scores.

First, it would probably help it the spelling 'genre' were used. Next, as a first attempt, I'd say that it means that characters can't reach reasonable conclusions. For instance, they can't note that the horde of goblin runtlings go down with just a stab from the beleaguered wizard's emergency...

Point the first: elements that exist within the gameworld and are accessable and modifyable aren't metagame elements; they're game elements. HP can be used as an importance flag to the GM, but in addition to serving such a task, they also track an in-game element, which represents how hard it...

*shrugs* A complex system with the potential for synergy will have more-balanced and less-balanced options. I'd personally love to see a M&MM-style explicit power guideline built into the rules, such that you can consult a table and determine that a level 6 striker should have AC, HPs...

Given 3W abilities at first level, I'd be less worried about prisoners teleporting out of prison and more worried about then (nonmagically) tearing through every mundane restraint you put on them. Of course, this is assuming the basic paradigm of objects having hardness and HP. However, if...

Mind you, Blaster, Blaster, Blaster, Blaster and Controller (Area Damage) seems to be quite viable, too. Armored infantry are invaluable for taking and holding territory, but if you simply want to kill everything you meet before it can kill you, you want artillery and air support. Playing...

Oh, I'd personally prefer a choice between N meaningful possibilities. I'd like to avoid "How will I use my three powers to defend my comrades?" and get more into "Can I use Iron Tide to knock him into a corner and keep him there with Ensnaring Tactics, and so doing keep him pinned down and...