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  1. J

    Gygax on Realism in Game Design

    There have been several comments, such as this one, insinuating that this thread is somehow inflammatory (never pointing to anything specific about it, so presumably its very existence is what is being questioned here). Ironically, those comments themselves have been easily the most inflammatory...
  2. J

    Taking Actions to make Saving Throws, or: Reality vs. RAW

    Bear in mind that in giving you a saving throw, such things are already assuming you are making reasonable efforts to undo the effect in some way. If you're taking ongoing fire damage, for example, you get a save because you're assumed to be actively trying to put yourself out. The same is true...
  3. J

    Do you like spell and effect durations?

    I am all for 4th-Editionizing these, and in fact mostly do so in my Pathfinder-based game. This is one thing 4E did right that is directly applicable to versions of D&D that otherwise resemble 3E or even earlier editions, and as such I hope to see it adopted wholesale for 5E. The great majority...
  4. J

    WotBS How would you rate ZEITGEIST and WotBS?

    It sounds like a lot of these may be issues with the 4E translation that don't apply to the original. Every time I hear about the 4E version the complaints seem to revolve around things that don't exist in the 3.5 version, whether it's broken monster stats or goofy plot elements. EDIT...
  5. J

    Is the cleric's "Channeling" ability a mistake?

    So, your main complaints about Channel seem to be that (1) while it may be useful at low levels, it is much less so at high levels, and (2) it requires feat support before it's good outside certain very narrow circumstances. Am I understanding correctly? My response is that, even if these...
  6. J

    Scourges of Lolth

    Way to get it wrong in the very first sentence. The Drow are a mainly Chaotic Evil bunch more likely to twist said word to rationalize their deeds than to view following it as an end in itself, and their very first appearance revolved around a faction that had turned away from Lolth in favour of...
  7. J

    Examples of good sandbox campaigns

    The original Dark Sun boxed set struck me as very sandboxy. Not just in that it was a box and involved lots of literal sand, but in that the books were full of little adventure ideas and potential encounter areas, with just enough details to get a good GM's imagination going. EDIT: Lamentations...
  8. J

    Should there be special rules for subduing dragons?

    Dragon subdual was the second thing - after alignment languages - to fall to my sense of "this is frickin' stupid". I'm not nostalgic for it in the least. Gygax and the other early D&D designers got a lot more right than they're sometimes given credit for, but that doesn't mean every element of...
  9. J

    Frog God Games buys Necromancer Games

    Frog God has already been Necro's successor in all respects save the strictly legal for some time. This move makes a lot of sense.
  10. J

    In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?

    Ignoring the ongoing discussion, which I don't have the context for, and just looking at the original question, a hit has to indicate some injury or at least physical contact, doesn't it? Think of how, for example, poisonous snakes work - if you take 10 hits from them, you need to make 10 saves...
  11. J

    "Hit Points" Discussion Flowchart

    Wouldn't it be funnier if it accurately described the debate? I'm not aware of anyone who thinks hit points are entirely physical unless they mean something by "physical" that is, as Ahnehnois says, itself quite abstract. No-one thinks it's literally the case that a high-level fighter can soak...
  12. J

    Lists of what I am not allowing will be passed around the room.

    This is a fairly pointless thread starter without some information on WHAT you're considering not allowing and more importantly, WHY. (As others have pointed out, how you feel this is different from past editions wouldn't hurt either.) That could be the foundation for a very useful discussion...
  13. J

    Review of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games

    Um... no. I haven't gotten into the substance of the review yet, it could be great for all I currently know. However, essentially proclaiming wholesale ignorance of the entire OSR, which significantly predates the 5E announcement and has numerous websites, blogs, heck even small-press companies...
  14. J

    Early Versions of D&D Next Character Sheets

    Would it be too much trouble to put the images in an SBLOCK and/or reduce the default size they display at? They're forcing a horizontal scroll bar on my monitor at 1440 x 900 - hardly an obsolete resolution. This is especially annoying on the front page.
  15. J

    Is this WotC's pipe dream?

    I like what I've seen so far and would strongly consider this system for future games. However, I picked the special snowflake answer because I've had such uniformly bad experiences with attempting major shifts of rules system in mid-campaign that I would not even CONSIDER switching either of my...
  16. J

    Anyone tried swapping themes?

    I'd allow it if one of the standard five died and someone was looking for a little more choice in creating a replacement PC. Set up the standard ability score array however you like, pick any combination of the four and a half races, four and a half classes, five themes and five backgrounds...
  17. J

    The playtest reports really demonstrate ...

    Er... have you actually read it? This specific version does exactly what you're asking why it doesn't do in the first sentence, and the original version does, in effect, exactly what you say it should be doing in the second (hint: it's even in the title).
  18. J

    Just how bad is the playtest fighter? (Trigger warning: math.)

    As demonstrated by such paragons of flexibility as 3E's Bard and Factotum, or by the might of 4E feats like Linguist... Flexibility may be power, but you know what else is power? Power, in as focused a form as possible. And at least in the context of D&D, time and again, the latter has shown...
  19. J

    Combat issues: slayer + at-will magic missile.

    For those that at least partially agree with BT (more people seem to agree on the fighter than on the wizard), would you mind saying why this is a flaw? So far, I don't see that anyone in this thread has done that. It certainly isn't self-evident, at least to me - I'm fine with both of these on...
  20. J

    Please take the whole "Hit Points and Regaining Hit points" back to the drawing board

    Your conclusion is correct, but it doesn't follow from your premise. For all Gygax says, it could just as easily be that some hits affect one and some affect the other. The reasons your conclusion is correct are found in things like how poison works - any hit from a giant centipede involves a...
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