Search results

I sort of have a huge problem with minion rules. It's an ugly hack with a lot of unintended consequences, it makes very little in-world sense and leads to some of the more egregious metagaming I've seen at a table. I have the same problem with extant reskinning-- it shows just how broken the...

So I took this system out for a test run last night, and it worked marvelously. The PCs faced off against a 6 HD ghost as six 2nd level characters as well as 12 1HD flaming zombies. Both fights were tense affairs, and I didn't have to inflate to-hit bonuses or damage to make them a challenge...

Oh, I just noticed something else. If you treat level as rarity as well as power, you end up with a kind of expertise curve. This is based heavily (by which I mean stolen outright) on this blog post. 1st: 1 in 12 – The best in an extended family 2nd: 1 in 40 – The best in an estate or hamlet...

I came up with a two part solution to this: Slower BAB advancement and increasing damage output. I have characters advance with a +1 to BAB every 3 levels, with a +1 damage die every 5 levels. This has two major effects: it makes higher level monsters incredibly deadly against lower level...

A woman in the same job with the same experience typically makes 20% less than a man. I'd say that's pretty relevant to your argument that we live in a genderless society. But hey, I just have 40 years of statistical 'feelings'. Here's what I don't get: why does anyone even care in D&D unless...

Nonsense. Absolute, unbearable nonsense. Check the pay discrepancies between men and women, the rates of sexual assault and then please, make your case then. The fact is, we have no idea what a 'genderless' Western Society looks like, because we've never seen one. Hypothesizing that this...

Sexism is clown shoes: to be laughed at as such.

Well, let's take it to the narrative space. A 1st level party sees the group of orcs as a deadly, possibly overwhelming threat. With their light HPs and moderate damage options, a frontal charge would be suicide. One on one they are almost equals, so the party has to use hit and run attacks...

Nnnn, I'm not sure about that. It borks up all the math for the rest of the game to make one small section work. Attack scaling, damage scaling-- it doesn't work. 1/2 of stat-10 works pretty well for most things. Unless they drop the bonus entirely for skills. The bonus just gives you an...

So here's where I am. I'm on a big 'simple is better' kick with my game group, and I'm trying to figure out how Wizards is handling their attribute check DCs. Rumor has it that they're letting certain stat levels auto-succeed on tasks. I like this, and want to incorporate it into my game. The...

When I've used the Vitality/Wounds option, I've found it to be a bit of a pain in the tuchus, especially when dealing with creatures without a CON score to key off of.

You know, he's probably never even read the books. I bet he can't even read. And he punched kittens. Most humorous when a previous blog post triggered waves of Monte hate... only to later learn it was written by Rob Schwabe. Cue the confused backpedaling. See, here's what I don't get. I don't...

Point the First: Hit Points scale faster than damage does. Especially for a fighter. By 3rd or 4th level, a nasty crit can hurt, but likely won't kill you. This is a feature, not a bug. Point the Second: To paraphrase Patton, the goal of combat is not to get hit for your team, its to make the...

I was thinking of it as a 'block' mechanism. Could have been worded better. And it should probably be based on your Melee attack with a bonus for the shield used, to make it different from just your AC. I'm a fan of informal definitions. I just realized that it also makes shield walls...

Okay, so let me put it this way: Narrativism and Simulationism (or Gamism or what have you) will live quite happily together until the needs of the theme conflict with the needs of the character. So for instance look at Vampire. A GM says to the players, "This is a game about your slow descent...

With thousands of hours of training, many tasks become unconscious. And even then, performance, as a rule, falls when multitasking. There's been a few papers published about multitasking, and a few about elite athletes. While not about soldiers, it's pretty close. And narrativism isn't just...

Okay, then they're class features. Problem solved. I R DESIGNER!

What if we attach feats to the weapons, and make the Fighter the only character that gets to take advantage of them? Axes Terrible Force The power and ferocity of an axe assault forces enemies to yield. When you attack with an axe, the enemy must pass a Charisma save or fall back a step. If...

For the third question, my gut makes me think that it has a lot to do with the complexity and intuitive sense of a system. Edwards makes a big to-do about the Storyteller System, which is not a purely "Narrative" system. However it does have narrative elements (Humanity, Rage, etc.). The system...

Quite true. Also it helps to have low bar to pass when you're playing in the different modes. Which is why AD&D's weird design worked well for this, and why 4e's very refined design does not. (I could just as easily say "why Apocalypse World design does not".) I actually had a complete GNS...