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Okay, I just don't follow this logic. What do you mean by implying that races need a reason to exist? Truth be told, there is no real reason for the presence of Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings in D&D, other than tradition. None of them exist for a specific reason except to create a specific flavor...

Kraydak, while your observations are for the most part correct, should we really be looking at the firearms of the 17th and 18th centuries as a model for the guns of D&D. The technology and societies of D&D are primarily modeled on the on the Late Middle Ages, particularly around the time of the...

I guess there have been a series of miscommunications taking place in this thread. I am not trying to say that the technological innovations of the West that occured as the result of the Industrial Revolution were meaningless. I am not trying to argue that there was no gap in knowledge and...

Of course the samurai would have been annihilated if the Japanese attempted to take on an industrialized Western power in the year that Commodore Perry arrived in Japan. I would be an idiot to claim otherwise. That has no bearing on your original claim that Japan was "culturally and...

I'm not sure. I am not an expert on ancient Egypt, having never studied it. I would not presume to make any sweeping claims. It would help if you were a bit more specific about what you are talking about. So many major changes happened in Europe in the Early Modern period that I am having a...

I know. That doesn't mean I can't jump in though.;)

Contrary to what claims? So far in this line of discussion, I have been arguing against one claim and one claim alone: that Asian societies were static or stagnant in cultural and technological development for hundreds or thousands of years. I was at first responding to Ydars's claim that Japan...

Okay then, which kind of technology is superior: agricultural technology that produces an extremely high yield, but requires a large amount of fossil fuels to support its production, or agricultural technology that produces lower yields, but is extremely energy efficient. As another example...

First off, there are plenty of historical sources other than Commodore Perry's from the time. It is not like the Japanese didn't have a written language. Here is the funny thing though, you are using the example of the steam engine as the prominent example of the more advanced technology of...

Now that I got the East Asia stuff out of the way, it is time for the Medieval European Historian in me to get to work. While an incredible amount of knowledge was lost due to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is completely wrong to assume that the Middle Ages was a time of technological...

The History major in me wants to reach through my monitor and strangle you.:) The amount of cultural development that occured in Japan during the two hundred or so years of the Edo period (17th and 18th century Japan) is staggering. Bunraku theater, Kabuki theater, Ukiyo-e art, and many other...

The reason you can figure out so easily how to use those monsters by reading their powers is because the monsters were designed with a specific role in mind. Role is not just a descriptor to tell a DM how to use a monster, it is a guideline that a designer uses when creating the monster in the...

Is this really a problem with roles though? It sounds to me that you are simply not enjoying the Wizard class. If you want to play the Wizard like a Striker, why don't you play a class that is a Striker? The Warlock isn't that different from the Wizard in concept, particularly if you tweak the...

It is probably due to the fact that your opening sentences discussed the mechanical and story problems of having gunpowder in a campaign. Gunpowder in D&D is just one of those topics that draws a lot of controversy and heated discussion, mostly because it has rarely been addressed by official...

These elements seem to be the heart of your design, so I will comment on them. I still don't understand the trend of people giving guns the ability to ignore armor when historically there was armor capable of stopping bullets. Your particular implementation of it isn't bad per se, since you gave...

I voted Rome, since it is a much broader world in scope and in diversity. A strict Ancient Greek setting is more limited to Greece, Persia, and a few other areas. The Roman world contains Rome proper, the barbarian frontier of Gaul, the distant untamed land of Britain, the flourishing capital of...

:confused: The who? Goes to show how little I know about Planescape. I don't even recognize who those characters are. In response to the question, there is no mention of any Wind Dukes or of a Queen of Chaos in the 4E Manual of the Planes. For that matter, I don't remember any mention of them...

In 3E, my highest level character was a level 17 Paladin that I leveled up from level 1. Though we did use faster advancement than standard. In 4E, my highest level character is a level 2 Wizard. What can I say? We just started the campaign barely a month ago.

I think it is better if the players get some kind of warning signal. For example, an exploding monster might swell up like a balloon and glow the round before it explodes. Even if the player's don't know what that means, it can give them the forewarning they need to prepare for a big attack.

I don't think that turning the Feywild and Shadowfell into campaign settings in their own right would really work. They are parallel planes after all, which means that they mirror the geography of the material world. So, you can't make any kind of specific map for them without creating a...