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Well, SA dice represent dealing damage to some vulnerable part of the body. Giving up some damage potential to do something else makes sense if you consider that to be simply aiming for another part--if regular SA is "I'm going to get him in the back, then when he turns I'll duck and aim for...

Since it's the actual feats that don't work, and the mechanic of "sacrifice X dice for Y effect" is sound, I'd suggest simply scaling the benefit. All ambush feats start at -1d6 and get better the more you sacrifice. Taking Disemboweling Strike as an example, you normally sacrifice 4d6 SA for...

You're right; my mistake. I was looking at the section on monster attacks and not the section on weapon attacks.

The time delay is based on your weapon, but you do in fact get all your attacks at once; everyone rolls initiative, modifies it based on weapon or spell being cast, and goes in order. Nova capability was less of a concern, since with much lower hit points across the board a single attack could...

The way I generally handle skill consolidation in my games is twofold: multiple ability associations and a Background skill. Take the Bluff/Disguise example, for instance. In my system, those are both a part of the Deception skill, along with Intimidate and Sleight of Hand, but you use your...

A restriction that, arguably, shouldn't have existed in the first place. In 1e and 2e, if and when you got multiple attacks, you could make them all and still move; there were no iterative attack penalties, no full attacks vs. standard attacks, or anything of the sort, just "you can move and...

This one's not a good idea. Wielding a rapier and taking Improved Critical would then mean you automatically hit 30% of the time, regardless of AC, and that wouldn't be balanced at all. Automatic hits should stay on natural 20s only or things get out of hand fast.

Makes sense to me--if you're really heavily armored, the only way you'd be hit at all is to be hit in a more vulnerable place, and being hit in a more vulnerable place damages you more, so a high-AC character only taking crits should be fine; they're still taking less damage than those taking...

That, and the various other abilities that mention magical aging, are most likely copy-paste artifacts from the 2e text.

The NPC classes don't get any special abilities and have much lower wealth than PCs, so yes, you should be able to just grab their numbers off a chart, add in one or two items, and go.

Not that I know of. Pretty much all the 1e/2e monsters that I remember used to cause aging now either don't do anything special or deal negative levels instead.

I posted another two methods on CharOp as well. One involved a fairly normal Mo9 progression that used bonus feats from Taint to grab the last two maneuvers at 18th via Martial Study, the second involved using bloodlines to jack up IL to let you start picking up the 9th level maneuvers around...

Keeping the RHD to make things consistent is a good goal, yes, but that could have been given instead of +2 LA, or with only +1 LA (in fact, adding a +1 LA would at least have made it consistent), but they added +2 LA on on top of that. 4 RHD suck, but it's better than that plus another +2 LA...

Yep. It's called deathless frenzy for a reason. ;) You can't actually cast it until he drops dead; when he's below -10 but still alive, he's, well, still alive and thus not a valid target.

I've worked out the numbers, and it often does come out that the less human-like races take a penalty, even if it's something as minor as getting 2 RHD instead of +1 LA. The thread where I did a bunch of comparisons has been lost to the archives, but I did find one comparison (one with more...

If LA weren't more-or-less arbitrarily assigned based on the "monstrous-ness" of races (i.e. the less humanoid/core-like/Tolkienesque a race is, the more likely it'll get a higher LA to dissuade people from playing it), I wouldn't mind LA as much; I did a comparison of several monstrous races a...

I know of the Stoneblessed PrC in Races of Stone; it's 3 levels, and the 3rd level lets you count as a goliath, gnome, or dwarf (your choice) for racial purposes. I don't think I've heard of a way to count as an elf, though.

I'm a fan of all the various subsystems, so the classes in XPH, ToB, ToM, and MoI (minus the Truenamer and Soulborn, of course) are among my favorites. Also, the duskblade and beguiler are quite nice because (A) they give you a reason to go all 20 levels and (B) they let me most easily recreate...

One thing I've tried, with moderate success, is making all DCs dependent on 1/2 level + Cha, whether spells, monster abilities, or whatever else. In addition to changing poor saves from Level/3 to Level/2 (making it good +12 at 20th, poor +10) and removing every DC booster, that means that...

The definitions I've seen most often used are thus: Optimizer = Min/Maxer = Someone who builds the best possible character within given bounds, whether those bounds are "the best tank," "the best fire mage," or whatever. Usually willing to help people optimize their characters. Powergamer =...