Search results

I think y'all are on to some important issues here. If your group is willing, my inclination would be to approach them by houseruling 4E to bring it more in line with the old-school rules that gave rise to the megadungeon style of play. In particular: - Experience points are awarded primarily...

I got introduced to the awesomeness of JG with Necromancer's Wilderlands boxed set. I find the sci-fi backstory, with its multiple alien invasions, the War of the Pious and the Philosophers, etc. totally inspiring and true to a lot of the looks-like-fantasy-but-is-SF-under-the-surface nature of...

Hmm, you're right! Hats off to Greg, for updating his bard to match the standard the PHB finally settled on, and boo to the rest of us for not catching that cloth should be listed as an armor proficiency even that's arguably redundant. Pregenerated characters from the tournament, as well as the...

I wrote the Forgotten Heroes monk, so my comparison to Ari's martial artist has the benefit of being informed at the cost of being biased! That said, I think both books are must-haves for 4E players who want to include any of these classic archetypes in their game. The approaches taken by the...

Thanks for a characteristically thoughtful review, Joe! One of the trickier parts of doing this book was working with a set of rules that was changing as we wrote! Although playtesters are forever forbidden from talking about the details of their experience, let's imagine that since the...

Wikipedia's article on Hasbro's HeroScape says: It'd be interesting to see how Hasbro "expressed disapproval" and what effect it had.

I'm digging the statistical analysis, but here's some stuff I'm able to contribute: - The table of "Skill Check Difficulty Class" on DMG p. 61 repeats the table of DCs from p. 42, but adds 5 because this is explicitly for skills. That supports the footnote on p. 42 in showing that the base DCs...

If that's a feature, there should be guidelines telling you to use it. Is there something in the DMG that talks about how you should adjust the difficulty of encounters that happen under extreme time pressure so that the PCs are assumed not to take short rests between fights? (Or, for that...

Note that this is different from 3.5: where the definition of encounter is entirely up to the DM. Personally, I'd find that less problematic. The way that 4e mechanics push players to have their PCs sit down and sharpen their swords for five minutes after every fight introduces a jarring...

Law/Neutral/Chaos makes sense and, like you say, harkens back to the tradition OD&D inherited from Anderson and Moorcock. A five-alignment system - lawful good, chaotic good, lawful evil, chaotic evil, and neutral - was also used in some early iterations of D&D; it makes sense and sets up...

Checking the main page of the WotC D&D site, I noticed Your Non-Disclosure Agreement: The FAQ: Who else was a playtester (whether or not you got listed as such in the PHB)?

I'm going to be helping run a 4e adventure at NYC's Complete Strategist tomorrow, and wanted to get some premade character sheets. I remember seeing threads about fixing the KotS ones, but am not finding them. I'd also appreciate any other pregens that may be out there.

I'm looking to get together a group of D&D players to explore the promised glories of the new school! Ultimately we'll be looking to meet 3-4 times a month, most likely on weeknights at a friend's apartment in Washington Heights, and collectively run a 4e campaign. I'll kick things off with...

Gamers often ask “Is this for real?” when they hear about Otherworld Excursions' roleplaying adventure tourism. Now we have proof! Check out a review & pictures of the first Occult Architecture of Chicago Day Trip, or hear tour guide Kenneth Hite interviewed at Have Games, Will Travel about why...

I wrote to Andy Smith at Wizards for permission to mention the jermlaine in the planned revision of the Masters & Minions stirge book (which is what prompted my interest in critters small enough to ride a stirge), and perhaps to include 3.5 stats for jermlaines and/or create some variant races...

Col. Playdoh just answered some questions about these creatures in this post, which raises the enticing prospect of looking into the original myths behind the booka and killmoulis!

Yet another incentive to build a time machine big enough to fit your campaign notes - or perhaps even a younger version of yourself! It'd be worth any amount of paradoxes and ruptures in the space-time continuum.

O venerated Col., I was dipping into the AD&D Fiend Folio recently and noted three tiny races of your creation -- the jermlaine I'd long been a fan of (Descent into the Depths of the Earth having been one of the first books I bought with my own hoarded allowance), but the booka and the...

Here are some classic Gygaxian fey that never got their due IMHO: the booka appears in Greyhawk (MC5) and 1E Fiend Folio; the killmoulis has a 3E conversion in Tome of Horrors 1, and also appears in the 1E Fiend Folio, Monstrous Compendium Volume 2, and Monstrous Manual; and the jermlaine, which...

Last night I was dipping into the Fiend Folio and noticed a bunch of one-foot-tall or smaller creatures Gygax had designed but which haven't gotten nearly as much attention as other races he created around the same time (the drow, certainly, but even the snirfeblin get used more often)...