Search results

That's really the heart of the challenge, isn't it? Is there a sufficiently wide range of coherent but malleable mechanics, structure, and flavor in a product that stays near the heart of D&D to pull fans from multiple preferences into its orbit? And even if there such a set, can they find it...

Yes. The problem there is that they are only a magical fatigue system. Which means the only trade-off is do you use your points for this spell now or some other spell later. And then you run into the math problem that with scaling, where if you use a simple system you tend to favor lots of...

Even in the abstract, there are at least two different meanings of "living, breathing world," that I know of. There might be more: The illusion that the world is living by having things occur outside the agency or reaction to the players. Having the world react in plausible ways to changes or...

Even the 3E Diplomacy rules aren't that bad, unless the group has completely failed to engage their brains before driving. Heck, even the 3E Insight and Use Rope skills aren't that bad, giving any kind of effort--and if ever there was a roll to discourage participation, it was Use Rope as a...

Sure, but spell points have even more serious nova issues, which is why something like Vancian slots were used in the first place. Before I'd use spell points, I'd go all the way to a fatigure or endurance or similar system for magic, which would at least pick up some extra benefits to go...

I elaborated in the other topic before I saw this one, but the basic idea is: Make higher level spells have sharply diminishing returns while still retaining their strong power when used. (This is directly opposite the thinking behind the normal D&D casting bit where as the caster's level goes...

Yep. The best part there, IMO, is that is leaves "theme" free to develop something more like the prestige class/paragon path or 4E theme in Next. There's an awful lot of design space between "feat" and "class" if you think of "feat" as a discrete, specific ability and "class" as almost...

Here's another mechanical option that I'm going to throw out there more because of the thinking behind it than necessarily the option itself: Assuming spells starts with a model something like a hybrid of AD&D and 3E (i.e. spells by levels increasing, but toned down compared to top-end 3E...

If every character and monster just had a "power" stat (or several such stats that all worked the same but never crossed), then you'd be onto something. But in D&D, they don't. Hit points are somewhat independent of AC. Damage is somewhat independent of attack bonus. Thus given the bounded...

I think things like the Deck of Many Things are ultimately more fun for the DM than the players, especially when playing in the style where the Deck is tempting but strategically a bad risk. You get a vibe going sometimes where the players have been constantly pushing the DM's buttons, wrecking...

Make the scope of the mechanics as wide as you want. I still join the chorus wanting to know who is calling for the die roll to serve as a substitute for actual interaction. Point where that has been advocated.

Or if you use something like I discussed in the last post, then stack the difficulty numbers on the sustains. The more spells you have going, the more likely you are to lose them when you need them most. I like mechanics like this rather than hard limits, because even though there are still...

In real world activities, you can often be a very capable generalist, because lots of applications don't require 100% dedication. You can get by with 80% in this, 75% in that, and 70% in the other thing. It's precisely when you really need as close to 100% as you can get--or that it's affordable...

One thing I haven't seen D&D do too much of, at least not systematically, is event-based durations that aren't all or nothing. There have been a handful of such effects in various editions. For example, there could be a mage armor spell where every time you got hit, you made a saving throw to...

It was a thought creeping up on me as 3E launched that the divisions ran deep. Those that thought 2E settings were the cat's meow didn't like all kinds of stuff that I liked in 3E. As the started talking about Next, all doubt was removed. I even said as much in the other thread you referenced. :D

Or maybe not all the artists played D&D? No, that couldn't possibly be it, seeing how faithful the novelizations were later. :D

You wouldn't even need to get that hard-core on specialization to get most of the benefits. For example, make swapping out the "prepared" spells take one day per spell per spell level. And maybe have that be when you need the material components, not when you cast, but then enforce them.. So...

Yes. My rule of thumb when DMing is that the NPCs motivations don't really change, their goals rarely do, but their means and plans change as the situation warrants. So then as soon as the players do something unexpected, I only have to ask, "Well, what would NPC X do about that?" You do...

There is very little that I want from D&D that it has never at least touched upon. The problem is, no single edition has every hit the target dead center. A decade or more ago, had someone asked me this question, I'd have wanted D&D to be more like RuneQuest or Fantasy Hero or GURPs or...

I ran a variant campaign along those lines that got around that problem. The cultists in question had been in the process of completing their ritual for a couple of hundred years, after they had recovered from whipping they took 6 or 7 centuries before that. They were on schedule to "succeed"...