Search results

Except they literally haven't done what I'm talking about. They literally don't do actual, statistical testing. If they had, the "ghoul surprise" could not happen, because they would have already known, from doing simulations, that saving throws fail far too often and need to be bolstered...

And yet....

I really don't think it's wise to be blithe about this. This is a common and thorny design trap in all sorts of game design--the problem of having an action that has the risk of being either so overwhelmingly optimal there's no reason ever to not take it, or so pointless that there's never a...

Wonderful news: we can! Less wonderful news: It requires starting with clear and specific design goals, creating designs which attempt to implement those goals, and then doing rigorous and specifically statistical testing to ensure that those goals are met. To the best of my knowledge, neither...

But that's precisely my point. You are calling it out as bad. I am not interested in arguing with you about that. My interest, here, is simply that you know what you believe is good design; you know that these designers did not practice that idea; you know that they could have, but chose not...

You absolutely can. It just requires actual playtesting, not the performative nonsense that WotC (and Paizo!) have been billing as "playtesting". I'm not doing that, so...not a concern. That is far, far from the best designers can do. That's straight-up pretending designers are somehow utterly...

I think it's perfectly possible to design a game where both concerns can work. It just has to be an active, and rigorously tested, design goal from the beginning that both attrition-focused gameplay and tactics-focused gameplay provide rich, rewarding experiences, with tools for either side to...

It's a perfectly good idea. The system just needs to be designed to actually make doing that have three important characteristics: 1) Being fun to engage in that many combats; 2) Being reasonable (e.g. not tiring or tedious) to engage in that many combats at a regular pace; and 3) Not...

I'd like to introduce you to the (claimed) life story of one Quintus Horatius Flaccus, aka Horace, one of the great poets of ancient Rome. He came from a good family. His father was a freedman, a colonus, someone who had a farm that produced enough money to give the family a comfortable life...

While I can definitely see that having value, there's also the converse that if defense is truly super important...it functionally becomes a two-action game where one action is always reserved for defending yourself. That's sort of the issue with a lot of ideas like this, you have to be super...

Yeah. If you absolutely have to, you could even go for something like giving feats a score-boost prerequisite. "Some Feats have an associated ability score. For example, Resilient is associated with any single ability score, while Magic Initiate is associated with any one of the three mental...

If I might make an alternative suggestion for FoB? FoB: If one of your Moves was used for a Monk action, you can make 2 Unarmed Strikes as a single Move. (Becomes 3 at level 11.)

It has, yes. Had a TPK* because of one, for example, because the GM jumped us with a bandit attack while we were taking a short rest to recover from the absolute butt-whoopin' we'd gotten from the first combat of the day. *Well, all-but-one PK. But it killed the campaign nonetheless.

I've seen it. But not in 5e.

Happily for you, maybe. But this is much more useful.

Frankly, I find this silly at best, and it looks pretty dang disingenuous from where I'm sitting. That is, it seems quite obvious to me that spells are very different things from augmentable powers. Yes, 3e (uniquely) did put psionic powers on a 1-to-9 level system like spells, but psionics...

That you are, indeed. I've had a few. Not bad people, but closed-minded about what is or isn't possible. I've seen it enough personally, and heard of it enough from others, that it's one of the biggest concerns I have WRT how GMing is done.

Are you familiar with Dreamscarred Press? They did their own PF1e update to psionics which built on this principle.

This is ranked by how I think the game's rules directly tell you they operate, not how I think GMs should run things, nor how I have seen 5e GMs (with the exception of my current GM) run it, which to be clear isn't better than the rules as written. Perception Persuasion Insight Stealth...

Given the "ghoul surprise", I think it's about 50/50 either way. Neither speaks well of the design process that went into 5e, though. Seeing a problem is there, knowing it is a design issue, and then just flat choosing to do nothing about it...I mean, that sounds pretty blatantly like...