Search results

One of the issues in any species discussion is that we quickly enter a world where if we're trying to be very biological about things (which is a problem in itself) there's just not balance between the species in the game, and that leads to issues in gameplay. Our super-educated elves become...

There's a method to this. Passive abilities that are always on tend to be easy to forget about. But abilities that you have to choose to switch on are more memorable, and can be more impactful. Not that this is always a good idea or that they needed to go so hard with it, but I imagine the...

If we were to list out the more intrinsic traits, we'd have something like... Size. Size should have a meaningful impact on the capabilities of the character (this is Difficult for Reasons, but this is a wish list). Locomotion. Walk speed (which should be more than 5' different if we want an...

Happy to chat about that if you wanna start the thread. ;)

There's almost no light between a design that encapsulates "anything that can be done" and a design that encapsulates "anything magical that can be done." They share nearly identical problems and benefits in a fantasy TTRPG. Heck, given the inherent exceptionality of a D&D PC, there's a case to...

Eh, quality of design and financial success aren't super closely correlated, IMXP. Players don't value pristine design all that much. Folks still play Monopoly. A game can be real janky and still get a lot of popularity. And, FWIW, I still don't like most of what's going on with the species...

Okay, cook on that... I think there's some nuance here that you're missing. 4e shoved nearly everything into a spells (er, POWERS) category. Much more than 5e does! And for a similar reason to the reason for spell-ifying things: there's benefits to a standardized approach that heavily benefit...

One topic to tease out, here: there is a fundamental issue with size in D&D that is very difficult to resolve. We want itty bitty fey folk and great big giant folk in our game. We want halflings and humans. We want size to matter. The rules do not want size to matter. Size is part of power...

Looking forward to that advice on how to bring 2014 things to 2024 rules specifically because of this species foolishness. 2014 design could've used some updates, but it seems better than this.

Yeah, we're kind of at the point where we're to the question of what kind of complexity are they talking about here? I think it's totally possible to have a class with few options, few builds, and few levers, and still be reasonably complex in terms of the mental load required to play one at...

I expect some of what's playing into different evaluations of Barb complexity is different players at different tables being comfortable with different levels of complexity. Like, if you don't mind complexity, you won't think the Barb is too bad. And ENWorld in general is a place that does not...

I agree with Barb as Medium complexity, due mostly to how fiddly the modifiers for Rage can be. Remembering exactly what your passive buff does on and off your turn is a pretty big mental load. Also, knowing how to optimize things like Reckless Attack plays into the complexity. A Fighter's...

I'm curious on the measurement. Complexity to me is sort of a way to get at "number of decision points," but that's different in character creation vs. on a battlefield. You can have a class that's straightforward to build, but that gives you a LOT of options in a fight (not many decision...

Whenever we started letting influential failures continue to be influential despite their failures because we didn't have the societal intelligence to course-correct and had this assumption that people in positions of leadership must be there because of some intrinsic value of their ability and...

When you think about it, Chris Cocks was just a product of his time. In that era, every CEO was basically an idiot who refused to listen to the experienced experts around them. We can't judge him based on the standards of our time. He was just doing what everyone else was doing.

I think we do. Riggs's thread here is predicated on the fact that people reacted to the inclusion of a content warning as if it was some horrible slander. It's also very easy to see sexism in regular practice in so many areas in modern life. Too many people don't know that these are bad...

I have a hypothesis. The unstated logic of some of these reactions is something like "I like this. If they're right - if this has sexism in it, and I like it, what's that say about me?" Growing up, most of us just played this fun game because our friends did or because we liked Lord of the...

This is an oversimplification. When we say someone was a "product of their time," it's comparable to saying "he didn't know any better" or appealing to their ignorance. And if someone's ignorant, well, that's not their fault, right? Yeah, maybe it sucked, but can't blame the medieval princeling...

I appreciate a game without front-loaded chargen options. I want to play D&D. It takes a lot of time to make characters already. Spacing out that growth is smart. And in a class-based game, the archetypes do the job of different "builds" on the class. Not that there aren't alternatives...

D&D has never had satisfying companion rules, so this doesn't sound like a good idea. And by "companion rules," I would extend this to npc companions a la 3e's Leadership, summoning spells (including fiend-summoning), paladin horses, mounts in general, wild shape, and basically any feature or...