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Now that we're full into the death-save realm, I would like to coin another physics-based term to facilitate discussion. I offer to you the first draft of the Healsenberg Uncertainty Principle: For all characters, D&D can measure either the speed at which a character moves towards the point...

Out of curiosity, has anyone here tried adding SWSE's damage threshold/condition track concept to 4E? I rarely see 'what is a HP?' arguments in SWSE boards because the condition track makes it more clear. If you just take HP damage, it's morale, fatigue or cosmetic injury. A condition track...

Fair enough. I am agreeable to this in the same context that you don't get a to-hit bonus in D&D by simply describing a unique or colorful combat technique. You DO, however, in Feng Shui. This hearkens back to earlier discussions of character as stand-alone entity or simply a vehicle for the...

Mort - The term 'in theory' was supposed to cover the concept of a player acting out the character's action, not actually moving a couch. My apologies if I was too brief in my statement. The point has been made several times in other threads that much of the fun or difference between later...

No, but this isn't a bad idea in theory. A simple addition to the 4E Skill Challenge that helps 'correct' their use (besides the now-vaunted mathematical issues) are FTW (For the Win)! and FTL (For the Loss)! conditions. These are automatic failures or victories that are completely based on...

*waves hand* Ok, maybe not blind - this isn't GURPS. ;) However, there are plenty of ways to mechanically introduce the toll of a physical wound without resorting to 'you can't use your right arm.' The core rules already mention loss of healing surges. The inability to use an action point...

To be honest, no, there weren't a lot of wandering monsters. DM's or dice's decision? Not sure. I just remember a lot of 1E and 2E games coming down to 'guess what the DM is thinking' which is a lot of fun when there are people and toys in the room to play with. :) Not so much fun when you...

Perhaps the 'nostalgia' goes back not to the actual edition of D&D, but the things that subsystems like Skills neatly account for. I, like many of you, have played all four major iterations of D&D. 4E, for instance, bothers me significantly with the 'prepackaged' aspect. It seems to...

It would have been darn near impossible to just tweak 3.5E again. Look at Pathfinder, for instance - they're doing a darn good job streamlining and taking player input for their new flagship RPG, but backwards compatability is a constant bite on the ankle. There are just too many splatbooks to...

Perhaps, pukunui, something that worked for me will work for you as well. I completely deskinned all of the powers. At-will, encounter, daily, everything. No flavor whatsoever, just raw effect. On my turn, I choose the effect I want, not the power. Tide of Iron, for instance, has been a...

AFAIC, the main problem with the powers system is the fact that they're pre-packaged. The brilliant part, on the other hand, is that the designers did an excellent job working out tiers of increased damage and effects that are easy to copy and reverse-engineer. The mechanics should have stopped...

Takasi, I'd be curious to know how many different classes of power each PC dipped into? My instinct tells me that mutual attribute dependency gave you a lot of ranger-rogues, wizard-warlocks and fighter-rangers, but not a lot of cleric/rogue/wizard/fighters. I like the concept, but not...

good to see you're still at it, ff6shadow. :) Consider putting these in the wiki, too, in case the thread gets lost or dropped off the front page of the forums. Also, if you ever decide to run a game over MapTool or OpenRPG, please let me know. I'd love to test run this stuff.

Wonky Healing (I'm not too hot with HTML, so mods - I apologize for the same post across two threads. Feel free to kill the first one if you like. Anyway...) Depending on how your group feels about healing and simulationism, you may want to consider what I call 'environmental healing' or...

Depending on how your group feels about healing and simulationism, you may want to consider what I call 'environmental healing' or morale boosts. Now that a warlord can 'heal' you with a hearty slap on the back and a cliched line, it opens up a whole world of other things that might 'heal' you...

My wife and I just got back from seeing Saw V and it got me thinking - were I to run a 'Saw'-like campaign, with the PCs in the 'game,' what system would I use? Maybe World of Darkness or Burning Wheel? Curious as to what you all might choose.

Risk is very important in an RPG, no doubt. But let's not limit 'risk' to character death. Loss of items or experience levels, failing to complete the mission - just a few ways to create risk or drama in a game. Heck, in our rotating DMs game (which were homebrewed cyberpunk-types), we used...

Pemerton - No snark intended here - I guess what I'm not following is, in my example, why do you say the players aren't challenged? (" ..disliked by those who favour the 'challenge the players' approach") There was a problem, they invented a solution, roundabout as it is. Having been a...

Part of the issue, I believe, lies in the way statistics are defined. Strength, Dexterity, Health, Body, whatever – this is never a roleplaying problem. The player’s physical body does not interact with the in-game portcullis, and so we don’t have a problem adjudicating this with a die roll. It...

Stacking temporary hit points sounded like a real problem until it occurred to me that any temporary HP you already have would lowered first anyway. So if you 15 temporary HP and you take 13 HP damage you could just subtract your Con modifier from the 13 and keep moving. It sounds complicated...