Search results

Well, in the case of 4e, you can comfortably adjust the dragons' CR (or levels, more specifically) by up to 4 in either direction without any mechanical hindrances. Thus there are no gaps in the monster levels -- everything between 1-30 is covered, and even above. But that obviously assumes...

Don't forget that you have different dragon types to cover CR bands within the tiers. Non-hatchling whites to reds at the lowest levels could range from CR 4 to 10 for example. Mid tier dragons could cover, say, CR 12 to 20 with just the five iconic chromatics.

4 or 5 is enough. Wyrmling for the smallest, and mechanically they should be simpler than the others. Young for the lower level parties. Adult for mid-level parties. Ancient or Wyrm for high-level and/or epic characters.

The rules in DMG2 don't tell you to remove magic items completely -- it says you remove the lowest and the highest level item from the magic item parcel. Thus a standard 5-person party would still get two magic items/boons per level. It's possible to re-flavor many magic items into boons if you...

And in 3e the tubes of dynamite and explosives would be unaffected if creatures were holding them, since fireball damages creatures and unattended objects, and items creatures are carrying can only be damaged if you roll a nat 1 on the saving throw. And even then there's an order in which the...

You don't need to give your NPCs the exact amount of feats and skill points they'd receive if you followed the rules as written. Also, you don't need to have a separate "Feats" section -- just incorporate the benefits into the statblock. Ability scores can be represented as modifiers only -- you...

Right, but you said that a large city would have about 40k to buy items -- that's not how it works. The 40k of a large city is just the limit what a single item may cost -- you could have several 40k items available in the city, but none that cost, say, 50k gp. A large city could buy a thousand...

You've misunderstood the rules. That particular gold amount is the limit that a single item may cost in the settlement, ie you can't buy an item costing more than 40,000 gp in a large city, or an item worth more than 100,000 gp in a metropolis. There's another formula to determine how much cash...

See, I wouldn't even necessarily call the example changes I laid out 'homebrew'. Let's assume I say that before the first session, that this'll be a homebrewed version of the setting. The players ask, "Ok, what's changed? What should we take into account?" And due to the nature of the changes...

So what's the point of telling the players that it's not going to be a 'pure' canon game? What purpose does it serve? Doesn't a player always assume that the DM could change various aspects of canon (NPCs, locations, organizations, deities, priesthoods, monsters -- you name it), even when...

How about if you took a cleric or an invoker, and gave them the wizard's spellbook class feature, maybe calling it a prayerbook. After all, archivists are essentially just wizards but divine instead of arcane. Themes, backgrounds, and feats can cover the more mundane sage-like abilities.

I disagree. If I want to run a Forgotten Realms campaign themed around the Zhentarim and the Harpers, but I change it so that an important named Harper leader is actually a polymorphed dragon, not the human/elf/etc. that they are in the source books, I don't have to tell the players in advance...

Like it or not, the hunter ranger is a martial-primal controller whose only required primal part are the at-will stances, which are very easily switched from the primal keyword to martial (the effects are not clearly magical). You can take martial ranger utility powers instead of the default...

So let me get this straight... You consider the addition of the wizard order to the Grayhawk campaign 'poor GMing' (or 'a poor GMing call') because the game was specifically called out to be Grayhawk? If it'd been called a homebrew campaign with Grayhawk and Dragonlance as inspirations, that...

Following that logic, WotC would've re-imagined all OGL creatures for 4e since they would've wanted to have IP rights. That didn't happen of course.

The Worlds and Monsters book that explained the 4e archons was published nearly two years before Pathfinder Bestiary. Did WotC even know about Paizo's plans when the 4e archons were conceived? Did Paizo know themselves?

There's an article on an alternative multiclassing system in Dragon #421 that you may want to look at for ideas. This system is somewhat similar to 3e multiclassing in that you select a class at every level, although you don't gain all the benefits as you would in 3e. Still, it could provide...

But it's impossible to consider everything in the core books to be opt-out since there are conflicting rules in the DMG. Ergo, the rules are optional. Besides, the Dragon astrology rules are setting neutral, so following a certain logic would result in those rules being the assumed default in...

What isn't optional? Everything is optional. Races and classes from the Player's Handbook are optional.

By that logic, 3rd edition Greyhawk would have magical astrology then, wouldn't it, since the rules presented in the Dragon issue are setting neutral and completely official. There's very little mention of astrology in GH material, thus you'd use the base rules, which are given in Dragon #340.