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If every dwarf gets the same abilities and levels, then you don’t have a species, and you certainly don’t have coherent society or fiction. Every elf is a cookie-cutter fighter mage, with no Druids, or bards or clerics.

I think this would be fine, if the proponents of the playstyle didn’t denigrate anything they perceived as outside the playstyle “changing the world” or “quantum cooks”.

I would argue that what you describe isn’t what is happening. Instead, what you get is more akin to “Trad DMs would never add setting details. Adding setting details is inconsistent with trad DMing” “But what about Jim. He describes himself as a trad DM and all other posters recognize him as...

I mean, this is clearly better advice than suggesting that you limit the Fear within the scene. Recently, I ran a fight where the players were rolling on fire. 0 Fear generation and I had to use existing Fear to interrupt to attack, Following the book advice, the combat would have just been...

I felt that the “How Much Fear per Scene” was the weakest part of the guidelines. Because the strength of individual Fear moves varies so much, it’s meaningless to classify difficulty based on Fear expended.

It kind of makes your response irrelevant though. The thread is arguing in favour of bioessentialism, ie bonuses and penalties to various stats. This creates problems. Among others, the problem that certain races are penalized from taking certain classes, even when the principal stat for that...

From the DM side, it’s really important to learn to pace your Fear usage.Don’t think that just because you are using enemies that generate Fear that you need to use all the Fear this fight.

I don’t recall Dwarfs being barred from the Sorcerer class in 3e.

Just building on this point. Klingons are great at taking punishment, with redundant physiology, and resistance to strong alcohols compared to humans, which could be represented with a +2 bonus to Con. But humans are descended from persistance predators, used to running and walking extreme...

I would add that Age of Umbra has 7 player characters, so that definitely impacts balance concerns in a meaningful way compared to tables with 3 or 4 PCs.

My personal experience on this has been inconsistent. In situations where I am DMing, combats either tend to go faster or simply “feel” faster (I’m not there with a stopwatch evaluating the respective durations). However, my son ran a couple of “by-the-book” combats, and they tended to go...

It’s not only that, it’s also that some class choices are extremely disconnected from their main attributes. Dwarves are supposed to be gruff and unfriendly, that is why they get a penalty to Cha. But why the heck does this mean there are fewer Dwarf sorcerers and Dwarf sorcerers are less...

Because no one ever argues that bonuses and penalties should be limited to physical traits, and when you bring in mental traits, it opens a whole can of worms.

One of the problems with bioessentialism in the game is that it draws attention to how poorly defined the attributes are. Your species gets a +2 to Wisdom. What does that mean? Are they particularly spiritual? Do the have a particular connection to nature? Or are they just particularly...

Either at ENworlds, or at all other RPG forums, I have never seen anyone defending a player fudging die rolls as something positive. Other people have pointed to DM guides indicating that fudging is acceptable. Several GMs here and in other forums have indicated the circumstances they...

If a character puts themselves between a charging boss and another character even if there is a chance that the boss’ attack will kill them, it negates their awesome moment if the DM changes the die roll so they survive regardless.

I would say “it’s different”. Throw a single solo against a party. That combat will probably be (I) faster than a throw-away combat in 5e; and (ii) feel more impactful for the resources it expends. It also isn’t necessary to throw a bunch of combats against the party to expend their resources...

It seems that a lot of people agree with @hawkeyefan because the game is changing in ways he prefers, if probably too slowly for his taste. Fail forward was in the 2014 and 2024 DMG, the 2024 emphasizes collaboration between DM and players rather than DM Fiat, and the DMG sections are no longer...

The example this discussion refers to was provided by @Maxperson : it was a player who declared that their character picked their nose and the DM declared that the action did not happen. To be fair, @Maxperson did specify that this was an example of bad DMing, but his position, as I understand...

Much like the rumours of the full Orcs removal from the MM. I received my MM after that discussion and was surprised to note at least 4 orcs in the MM.