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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agent Oracle" data-source="post: 2853341" data-attributes="member: 40076">Hey it's not perfect, but name a game that is.  In chess you can turtle behind a castling gambit and win because it's impossible for your opponent to even approach your kind without loosing a mess of pieces. checkers is always open to the "multi-jump abuse".  If a player rolls badly in the first go-round of Monopoly they could wind up so deeply in debit that morgaging all their property wouldn't pay back what they owe in rent.  Games are never perfect, because they are like real life, survival of the most skilled and luckiest.And just as frequently, I see threads for "Alternative initiatives" and "Advanced statkeeping".  frankly, I've gone through entire campaigns with Substats to all my six core abilities (DEX devided into Manual dexterity and physical agility, CON devided into toughness and health, etc.)I disagree.  The multiclass initative allows for any character to display a wide variety of talents and abilities, giving rise to various different interesting concepts and advancement.  As for prestiege classes being imbalanced, they stand up remarkably well in campaigns i have run.  ThLadies and Gentlemen, please open your books to page 0, and join me in the reading of rule zero...  Rule zero, that which allows GM's to each craft their own individual world, Rule Zero, that which gives every campaign a dash of extra flavor.  Rule Zero, the keeper of order at the game table.  Let us think of rule zero fondly.Remember, the point of any game is just to have fun... if you, as a player, want to be the penultimate badass in a role playing game, go play Feng Shui, and be a ninja assasin who can run along a stream of bullets in your first encounter...  or Vampire the Masquerade, and be an insane vampire with access to all the knowledge in the universe.  And now we come to a crippling block... you see, I have had experience with the most Evil of All DM's (my EvilDM: a new comedy this season on G4), who assigned levels arbitrarily.  he also assigned templates arbitrarily, and killed characters arbitrarily.  Overall, the only good thing i could say about his campaign was that he allways showed up on time.  Arbitrary assignment of experience points breeds player / DM hostility.  I am currently leading a campaign with arbitrary experience points, and I have told the players exactly how the system works, in my mind.  so thye can get a better grip on how much experience they are earning.Oh jeeze... remind me to tell you about Miami Heat... I think that was the name.  it was a game system set in florida against the backdrop of the War on Drugs.  That was a game whose sole selling point was a hyper-realistic damage system for physical wounds. Fights went like this:Player 1: "I'll take a shot at him" (shooka shooka) "I rolled 24"DM: "Sorry, your bullet sparks off the hood of the car he's ducked behind.. he's returning fire, blindly... (Shooka shooka) and he hits (shooka shooka) In the stomach (shooka shooka) but it missies any major organs (shooka shooka) and the bullet exits (shooka shooka) so you have... (checks chart, rolls again) 35 minutes before you bleed out and die."More like "Because I'm tough, I don't cave under pain as easily as you do."  Hit points are arbitrary means of explaining a combination of physical fatigue from avoiding killing blows, and physical trauma from impacts and whatnot.  Thye work better than some other systems, for example: in Feng Shui (I sure am on a FS kick today, aren't I?) Everyone has 35 HP, reguardless of level.  But after a few experience points are dropped, they can be so tough that normal guns aren't enough to physically harm them.  Since everyone has a built-in damage reduction, it is theoretically possible to get your toughness to the point that you could take a chainsaw to the neck and feel no physical trauma.  In my party right now, we have a Karate cop who is immune to mook gunfire because he simply has too high a dodge value.More like "I'm wearing a ton of armor, even though that arrow was aimed at my heart, it just bounced off the steel plate."... no. just too stupid to argue.  "I can analyze the situation better than you can, therefore, my muscles must be twitchy enough to get me moving first!"  bad.I can thread three needles at once, and yet, I suck at playing baseball.  Oddly, my bigger, more "all thumbs" hosemate can CREAM that little sphere off the planet.  STR adds to-hit and too-damage.  Dex adds to-hit at ranged because, generally speaking, hitting someone is about a big swing, not a little twist.  Besides, you've pointed out where the game self-corrects in your own argument.Right about the same time they learned to throw fireballs and slow their falls by being near a wall.Yeah, right.  I'd site the japanese two-sword style, which is better docciumented then the european equivalent, but i can't recall it's name.  More than enough diesmbowel-them-honorably techniques there.  As far as i'm concerned, if i have two sharp objects in my hands, I have two means of acting offensively.Oh, this had better be good. "Support figure, capable of acting as secondary rogue, minor healing abilities, light offense, most useful for a wide variuety of buffs and social situations.Huh?  Sorry, but, druids were a major religon of nature-worshipers in the pre-roman britania and in other locations across europe.  I don't understand your problem with them.  As for familiars, a whopping +2 on reflex saves! Oh NOES!  Most familiars are forgotten, unless the wizard / sorcerer waited several levels to get a pseudodragon.Easy answers? I'm nearly blind from astygmatisim,  My housemate has destroyed his hearing by listening to music that was too loud.  I might never spot anything, and he certainly wouldn't hear it coming.  Now, if you had asked why these were connected to wisdom, i could understand that. Because, my house mate can climb ropes (or he could, when he was in a highschool gym class oh-so-many years ago) something I cannot do... but I can swim (thanks to spending many years in the water, lifeguard training, etc.), something he cannot do.  If we ever get in a fight, i'm headed for the pool.More easy answers!  Because the game dosn't HAVE to move fast.  Campaigns can be elegant, slow, and full of changes over time... why do you think there's adjustments for age?It's actually cheaper if you make it yourself, reguardless of what it is... generaly it costs half as much in finanaces, and one-twenty-fifth of that cost in EXP.  For small items, this could be as little as a day and a fistfull of EXP.  Certian things like scrolls and potions are indespendsible to dungeoneers, and should be crafted if at all possible.Standard two-weapon fighting penalty: -6 / -10, if it's a light weapon in your offhand: -6 / -8.  If you just have the feat: -4 / -4, offhand is light and you have the feat? -2 / -2.  You get one extra attack each round.Wow, i just paraphrased the whole PARAGRAPH that describes the TWF system in a slightly shorter paragraph.  reall complex there.Magic armor is one-size fits all, unless the GM says otherwise. "It's magic! it defies the rules!"  Regular armor is fit-to-person.  And if you're really going to argue real life and logic in this game, please direct all questions to Mr. Dragon.cover bonus: using a tower shileld to provide cover can give up to total (100%) coverage, which makes it impossible for any melee or ranged attack against you to hit.  That is why the romans used tower shields.  Also, the romans tended to use greek "phalanx" advancements under "the turtle" where pikes made it nearly impossible to approach the readied tower shields.  They also used the shields as total cover while hurling their special iron-hafted javelines, which bent after being thrown, making it so enemies could not throw them back. Furthermore, Roman armor usually consisted of at least a breastplate and some padding. Your real world example just backfired, as the real world use mirrored the existing mechanics.See previous entry on tower shields.  they can provide total cover, but if you aren't carrying them properly, you might as well be standing out on top of the wall.Actually, those two are related.  If the bear attempts to grapple, he must first hit the adventurer's Touch AC (which is allways significantly lower than his Armored AC)  Furthermore, each additional person who joins in to a grapple does so at a bonus for aiding.Now, if a bear were just to take a swipe at Hero In Platemail: his claws might skitter off the steel skin of the armor, but if he were to grab on, then the bear only has to reach out and touch in a proper manner.  If all two-hundred were to just attempt tp claw and bite, well, about 5% of them would crit, which means an auto-hit for damage, reguardless of how high mr. unstoppable's AC is...Furthermore, there are rules for "angry mobs" in the DMG II, which means that even two-dozen angry first level commoners can be a true threat to Mr. 20th level.Man, your trolling sucks. hard.  if you're going to kvetch about the rules, learn them first!</blockquote>

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