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  1. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    A long-ago Dwarf of mine would very much beg to differ. He had a broom, and a 2-handed sword. Occasionally, if attacking from the air, he'd put the 2-hander under his arm like a lance and swoop in in a high-speed power-dive, intending to both skewer the target with the sword and (depending on...
  2. Lanefan

    D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

    No idea. So far I've managed to stay off the subscription-streamer bandwagon. It comes up on Starz on cable every now and then, which makes sense as they made the show in the first place.
  3. Lanefan

    D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

    Four season show, in fact; and yes, it's excellent. It's out on DVD but be warned, the DVDs are not great quality and seem to deteriorate fast (says he, who has gone through two sets now),
  4. Lanefan

    AD&D 1E XP Value for Monsters?

    Nice list. Aging and Psionic Use are the only things I don't see. What do the numbers represent in the 4th column?
  5. Lanefan

    D&D General What's your view on a pirate-driven campaign?

    It can be made to work if NPC combatants are batched a little. Say there's a group of five pirates fighting seven defenders on the foredeck while the PCs storm the helm. For that foredeck combat, at the end of each round I'd probably just do one d20 for the pirates as a group, and another for...
  6. Lanefan

    D&D General Combat Against Player Engagement: A Systemic Challenge

    I'm a bit harsher - if someone's humming and hawing for too long I'll jump to the next player, knock the indecisive player's character a few notches down the initiative order, and come back to that player then; on the basis that if the player is indecisive that means the character is also...
  7. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    I had a character once do something almost just like this: she rigged up a harness that in effect tied her to the broom and also built in some cushioning. Why? Because she was about to go on a two-day-long flight across a small ocean and didn't want to fall off if she fell asleep in the air...
  8. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    I see it as similar to riding a bike - yes it's a good idea to keep your hands on the handlebars but some people are good enough (or daring enough) to successfully ride "no hands".
  9. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    Which is fine until the PCs try to assign values within their own treasury while dividing it. We used to use a system like this - we called it "high-low value" as each item had a high value (to buy) and a low value (to sell) - and it caused no end of headaches in treasury division because every...
  10. Lanefan

    AD&D 1E XP Value for Monsters?

    Quite a few of the later 1e modules also give xp values right in the monster stats, and I also use those when they're given. I'll math it out if I have to but if someone else has done the work for me, I'm fine with that too. :)
  11. Lanefan

    AD&D 1E XP Value for Monsters?

    For that, for the 100 regulars I'd just take a rough average of their hit points (let's say it's 8 each and they're 2 HD) and calculate their base xp 100 x (20 + 16) then if 40 of them had missile weapons I'd add 40 x the SA bonus. Quick and easy. The leaders, witch doctors, etc. probably have...
  12. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    Harry Potter and various other Quidditch players would beg to disagree.
  13. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    IME the immediate and obvious risk of having variable pricing on magic items is that the players, in character as their PCs, will see and exploit the opportunity to buy low here and sell high there; and when it comes to making a very good living, trading in magic items that way is far less...
  14. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    I disagree. The point of a healer is to mete out those healing resources wisely. For healing purposes, you're going from Cleric player tracks: hit points, spells remaining Everyone else tracks: hit points Total things tracked = number of characters plus one To Cleric player tracks: hit...
  15. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    Though you probably intend this as sarcasm, it's also quite true. Just make it... Encounter balance? Figure it out yourself. Here's some basic tips and pointers. Treasure distribution? Figure it out yourself. See our published adventures for examples if needed. World building? Figure it out...
  16. Lanefan

    D&D General Weapons should break left and right

    Looks good. The only thing that seems really counterintuitive is that the base price doesn't apply to "standard", i.e. new out of a shop, but instead to "poor-worn", i.e. secondhand.
  17. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    Conceptually, the idea seems sound though the numbers could use some tweaking. If the goal-length for an encounter is 3 rounds then most abilities should only be usable twice before temporary shutdown (also maybe only 2 or 3 rounds), so as to force those do-I-use-it-or-not decisions to occur...
  18. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    You're conflating role-playing complexity with mechanical complexity. They are not the same. Forcing them to strategize - i.e. adding complexity to their role-playing - is great; as is pretty much anything else that encourages or forces more in-character interaction. Adding more bookkeeping...
  19. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    I think it's not so much that they intrinsically want to play the game that way as they've been conditioned to play the game that way through a) marketing and b) lack of highly-visible well-marketed alternatives. Again, this is a result of conditioning. Had those players' first-and-foremost...
  20. Lanefan

    D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

    Trial and error is the answer, yes. Beyond that, all it needs a bit of perhaps-intentionally vague guidance suggesting the DM compare the total party levels vs the total HD of the foes they're facing with advisement that things might get messy if Foes HD > Party Level Total. And provided the...
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