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Each of these things you describe has been fun for me, and for my groups. First time a new player runs into a beholder, it's really quite fun, for him and for me, to watch him try to figure out how to deal with it. These types of things give the DM many tools to add puzzles and challenges to a...

4e will not fly No verisimilitude Pathfinder's for me

As for handling 3.5e Summon spells, I've never found any player who got too gung-ho with these. First, Mr. Summoner spends a whole round summoning. I ham up the visual, and describe it as standing there for a whole round, chanting and hand waving, and mystical ectoplamic fog swirls around the...

As for handling druids in 3.5, he basically has two choices for an animal companion: 1. Pick the biggest, nastiest, scariest, baddest animal he can find, but he only gets one. This animal is fairly tough in combat, and can make a difference in the outcome of a fight. 2. Pick an assortment of...

I think everyone here probably agrees that Leadership is broken. I never allowed the feat in my games. If a player asked me about it, I would tell him to take some other feat, then roleplay his character hiring or otherwise enticing NPCs to join the group. The benefit was that those NPCs could...

I tap a mountain and and island put a -2 token on the Orc Marauder until its next untap phase...

There's an interesting thought. Party encounters a few wolves in the wilderness. During the fight, those pesky wolves keep tripping the fighter, who spends half the battle on his back. Later, the party's ranger decides those wolves were cool, and goes out and gets a wolf animal companion...

This works for me, sometimes, with some cohorts. A level 10 ranger with a wolf companion, for example - nobody expects that wolf to go toe to toe with a hill giant, and it really has no chance to trip the giant, so best bet is to give some flanking to the ranger - a static +2 to attack rolls...

LOL, I won't point out the irony of this post, since others already have. I will say I'm not a publisher, and never have been a publisher. I won't sell anyone my copy of TPO since I love it too much to part with it. This wasn't an ad to buy a product I have any stake in - it was a user...

Yep, already thought of this. But I have also thought of the possibility that some monsters are just not smart enough to utilize marking to the greatest tactical advantage. Take skeletons. To start with, a skeleton is just a decayed corpse laying on the ground. It not only cannot mark...

I don't know all the "fluff" behind marking. But, given that marking is something a fighter type (i.e. not a mage) does to an enemy, I find it hard to assume the fluff describes it as some kind of telepathic or magical effect. Given that, I expect the guy doing the marking is deliberately...

This gets to the crux of it. Why not just have the PC track it? My players are rational. They are contributing to the story. I've never had one deliberately ignore things and hope I have forgotten, just so they can survive regardless of the story. I tell a player "that skeleton marked you" and...

I will tell you why not: Simply put, this doesn't need a rule. This will vary from campaign to campaign, from gaming table to gaming table, from adventuring group to adventuring group, even from one item to another item of the dead guy's gear. There is an entire sub-plottish world to explore...

I don't like ensuring that at all. I like my PCs to feel like death lurks around every corner of the dungeon. I want them to take every precaution to survive. When they do survive, I want them to feel like they were sorely tested and came out on top. I don't want them to feel like they can...

So, I can kill a guy and use his stuff. Or even, my friend who is in my group can kill a guy and I can use the dead guy's stuff. But if my friend dies, I can't use his stuff? You had me up til then. I already do that with certain kinds of magic items. I absolutely do that with rings of...

I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, so here's my plug for The Primal Order. Find it, buy it, swear by it. The short version: This book takes a look at gods and offers rules for them that can be applied to any RPG. Basically, the same power that wizards use to cast a fireball, or...

So, I have a wizard with a fighter cohort. Most of the time, my wizard gets +2 on attack rolls while his cohort is running around on autopilot swinging his sword at my enemies - but the cohort never hits them himself; he just distracts them enough to give me my +2 to hit. But, once in a...

Why? Why, why, why? An RPG needs rules to tell me how often I can hit a bugbear with my axe, and how much damage it does. An RPG needs rules to tell me what happens when I cast a fireball at a throng of orcs. An RPG needs rules to tell me how much damage I can take, how easily I can avoid...

This is what makes the Die Hard series as good as it is. John McClane is a tough, lucky SOB, but pain does hurt him, it slows him down, makes him limp. He gets bloodier and hurteder (yeah, I know) as the movie(s) go on. But he fights through the pain. Unlike many other, less realistic (yeah...

Those are DMs who don't understand the difference between their "Story teller role" and "Story teller roll". Hopefully the DMG will clarify this and help fledgling DMs understand this better.