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Depends. I want some dirt on my heros. They can't always win otherwise there's no sense of accomplishment. Little things like encumbrance affecting initiative or getting hit for damage affecting your combat effectiveness goes a long way.

I can't believe no one mentioned the biggest trope that D&D gets totally wrong - a magical 100% combat-effective PC or NPC until the magical hit point counter drops to zero, and regardless of encumbrance levels. People exert themselves during an attack. They tire at a rate based upon exertion...

Let's see: That somehow everyone in a city is living in a decent building with relatively good access to clean water. That all villages can get by without being tied to a manorhouse. That most wounds don't end up as festering gangrenous sewers if bacteria because magic - most people are...

A real alternative would be to use a system using ticks. Weapons would have a variable tick cost. Bulkiness of gear would have a tick cost to activate/deactivate. Spells would have a variable tick cost. You'd have breaks between rounds and just because one person attacks doesn't mean you are...

I prefer using a tick system where actions cost different ticks. You still roll initiative, but in that turn, you do your action, subtract the ticks and then go again if you still have ticks left. So - you roll a 12. Moving is 1 tick per foot of movement. You move 5 feet. You wait until...

I always roll individual initiative for all of the NPCs and have them go on their turn rather than do group initiative to avoid any possibility of either a TPK or a total NPC kill. That having been said, even if you use group initiative for the NPCs, every NPC will have a different reaction...

I love "pink-eye" campaigns where everything can potentially kill you. 0-level commoner can easily kill their 20th level king by accidentally serving him the wrong mushrooms in the stew. Those undercooked pork tacos your 5th level wizard bought from the street vendor? Surely they're safe to...

Official canon is always important to me, if it is something that fundamentally changes the setting. Local thieves guild leader is replaced? Not that big a deal. Entire nations and associated maps completely changed? I have a problem with that.

There are some decent guesstimates, based upon some statistical modeling that put the number of folks in the US with covid-19 right around 87,000 or so. Based upon what we are currently seeing, it looks like between 10-100 people out of every million develop observable symptoms. We'll see...

And that would be no different than any other coronavirus (or rhinovirus, for that matter). The rate of genetic mutation is why we lose immunity to any of the typical cold viruses.

No, but accurate numbers of those who you do know are infected allows more accurate modeling, which results in more accurate predictions of how many may be infected, what the R0 numbers look like, and what the comorbidity factors may be, which gets you to a more accurate fatality rate. Look at...

Only if you believe the numbers out of China to start with, which drives the accuracy of subsequent world-wide modeling. Based upon past experience, the numbers coming out of China are not accurate; coupled with their refusal to allow WHO and CDC experts in at the first signs, I doubt the...

140k or so? The true number of infected is likely in the order of tens of millions. This thing has been in the wild since mid-November. Given the quantity of air travel before China locked down, it's already spread across the planet. Any numbers coming out of China are a lie - guaranteed the...

Not necessarily. The average number of PCs was around 4-6 and their henchmen, with the rest being combat support (bearer/porters, teamsters, physicians, bards, jesters, etc.) - so really only about 12 PCs/NPCs of concern - and not all of the available henchmen usually traveled as part of the...

I don't want a camp mechanic. I want the ability to have as large a party as I desire with the game scaling the challenge to fit. A 10 - 20 person party consisting of PCs/companions, henchman, hirelings and a mule train was not uncommon in OD&D or 1e AD&D.

That's the problem with DOS2 - if I'm playing a PC, I want it to have my origin story, not the developer's vision for that particular character that gets lost in translation if I change the race or class... For companions, no problem. For the main PC I want to be in control of every aspect...

Across the years, James Bond Call of Cthulhu Top Secret, Top Secret/S.I. Gamma World Twilight: 2000 v1/v2/v2.2 Rolemaster Runequest Ghostbusters Star Frontiers Star Wars d6 TORG Spycraft HARP Pathfinder Twilight:2013

I don't like this poll - there was no option for "all of them." Actually, the poll would have been better if one of the options was "99% of all 3.x prestige classes."

The only thing I didn't like about DOS2 was the somewhat bizarre chargen. I'd have preferred being able to build an entire party completely from scratch rather than customize existing builds. The chargen in the gold box games, wasteland 2, etc. Is near-perfect in that regard.

Thank God for that. Nothing worse than having to have "pretend-turn-based" in games that are primarily continuous combat by having to hit the pause button after what you think might be about a round. Having the ability to let combat go continuously would be nice, but totally unnecessary...