Search results

I expect the PCs will have an edge in that their players are more familiar with them than the DM is with the NPCs du jour, and the fact that five heads think better than one. It's a slight advantage only, I'll allow, but then again failure =/= TPK; I expect PCs will see the better part of...

If you ruun a game with a lot of combat encounters, like one set in an enormous dungeon filled mostly with mindless undead, it would be tantamount to ask a player whose character is weak in the combat department to sit out of the game, as well. If your game is heavily slanted towards social...

Quite true. I expect that there should be a specific monster role for "Boss encounter", which would challenge by itself a party of 5 PCs. The numbers, etc. can be fine-tuned that way for the actual use the monster will see -- rather than picking one up which was designed to challenge a single...

If the player is really outgoing but has chosen to play a barbarian use CHA for a dump stat, they should sit by during any social interaction, just as the player who chose to play a wizard use STR for a dump stat should sit by when the characters are trying to bash doors open. Or, hey, they...

So it is. Well, the 2e boxed set sure had them. Anuirean: +1 WIS, -1 DEX Brecht: +1 DEX, -1 WIS Khinasi: +1 INT, -1 CON Rjurik: +1 CON, -1 CHA Vos: +1 STR, -1 INT Hmm, I remember them, perhaps not quite as clearly as I'd like...

Ooh! Ooh! Can I sig this? This's pure gold!

http://www.birthright.net/ Oh, and the 2e Dragonlance campaign setting had different modifiers for different barbarian human tribes and civilized humans, as well...

Yes, but why do Druids get to have special treatment? Why don't Flamines have a class for themselves, as well? Inasmuch as Druids worship nature, Flamines are guardians of civic order in Roman society (not really, but close enough). Truth is, EGG or someone else at TSR thought Druids were...

Monte has a RPG called World of Darkness? Won't White Wolf complain? (Sorry about going off on a tangent, but this surprised me)

Allow me to clarify: I meant using a number for the specific purpose of recalling history and properties of magic items found, rather than the more catch-all Bardic class ability, although it is the facet of that ability that sees something like 85% of the use in the campaigns I play on and run.

That'd be Bardic Knowledge, right? Hmm. We may have a problem, here. :p Alternately, we could do like Baldur's Gate and give Bardic Knowledge %s to every class, with Bards getting the highest progression.

That's true for some weapons, but untrue for others. Lots of specialised weapons introduced in splatbooks wind up in the Exotic category because they're weird and usually a hallmark of some kind of society, but aren't particularly good from a mechanics standpoint. For example, for double...

The problem is mostly that the choice of "simple" vs. "martial" vs. "exotic" was made implying a standard human medieval european culture, and that assumption breaks down when you go for more exotic locales (like, say, Athas). It would have been better if there was a straight-up list of weapons...

Actually, real-life druids were very much priests... of Belenus, Dea Matrona, and a host of other Gaulish divinities whose worship was subsumed into the great Roman divine free-for-all. From what I've heard, they as a priestly caste were suppressed by the Romans because they had a penchant for...

In our games, we usually go with point buy, but I've no beef with people who roll their attributes with dice. In fact, I half expected this next edition to do away with the 3-18 range altogether, although at this point in time it doesn't seem terribly likely.

Classes, definitely. To be frank, I thought this new edition would do away with the old 3-18 scores and keep the modifiers as the attributes themselves -- it's the sensible thing to do to do away with the "odd attribute" problem. Although, now that it's been announced, I feel that they'd have...

The Arcane/Divine split is definitely not going away. In fact, I'd bet it'll become more like an Arcane/Divine/Martial split, if spells become sufficiently similar to maneuvers. It probably won't come to that, of course, but if anything, the difference between divine and arcane magic will...

Bwahahaha! You, sir, get a cookie! Nothing like starting the day with a laugh.

Yeah, how much is that in Nippur talents? :p Campaign worlds could do with making up their own weights and measures, but the core rules should preferentially keep to better-known units. Ideally, metric, but I'm definitely not holding my breath. If I bothered with encumbrance at all, I'd...

Speaking of Spelljammer, I almost bought the boxed set in a garage (actually a school) sale back in '93, but someone told me it was bad, and tried to shoehorn science fiction into D&D, so I didn't. I've regretted it ever since, as I was never able to find another Spelljammer boxed set, and...