The Gaming Den

I don't think Vancian casting is dissociated. It's easy to associate, actually, though when I first encountered it in the first Dragonlance series way back when, it seemed very, very strange. Regardless, when spells are cast, they are ripped out of whatever is used to contain them and into oblivion...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you never actually read any of Vance's books? Because if you replace "gandalf" and "Lina Inverse" with Rhialto the Marvelous or Iuconnu or other wizards who use Vancian magic (like D&D presents it), your substitution makes no se...

So the villain isn't seen by the PCs unless he's fighting them, and spends the rest of his time either holed up in his wizard treehouse or remembering to fill out his checklist of Eldritch Gotchas. Sounds like a really intriguing and immersive story arc! It is a lie to claim that scry is the spell &...

As noted earlier, there are stories which require scrying and whatever to get going. Mindblank or a spymaster or whatever gives the GM the option of running CSI if they want against a clever and well-prepared enemy, OR the epic PCs can use scry+teleport to skip to a crucial epic encounter location ...

Scry locates a single person who fails their save. If they don`t have detect scrying, or non-detection or nindblank, then you`ve found one person who you already knew anyway, and they can still be in an illusory terrain, or a dark featureless room, or just move next round. Discern location comes on...

Goddammit Jack, are you being deliberately obtuse about these divination spells? The point is, you can't get pissed off at Commune or Contact Other Plane if you're okay with fucking Speak with Dead. I didn't mention either of those spells; I repeatedly mentioned Scrying and Discern Location. Commun...

So, what spell is that, exactly? How is questioning a corpse with Speak with Dead fundamentally different from questioning a diety with Commune or Contact Other Plane? Is it Detect Thoughts that's causing problems? Holy carp, I can't believe you're asking! The differences are tremendous. Speak with...

If the PCs want to build a cottage on the moon, they have to fight the moon people and their moon rabbit army. You need no excuse to give the adventurers their four EL=PL encounters per day, because that's always the assumption. If the PCs do not look for adventurer, adventure will find them. The d...

Serious question moment, what are many Divination spells really, if not fantasy analogues to CCTV systems, forensics labs, and research facilities? Those resources require detecting and finding evidence using your own personal skills, time, expertise, and access. Plus, evidence can be erased or nev...

It is definitely plausible and chock-full of verisimilitude for a party of melee combatants to go up against a pack of flying archer skirmisher baddies that they can't touch except to plink away with mundane bows or throwing weapons. It’s also plausible for the PCs to be stuck in a muddy hamlet for ...

There's also a problem where most of the "magic" we tend to see in DnD doesn't reflect traditional fantasy magic very well. It's too cheap, easy and convenient. Traditional fantasy tends to have either weak magic (ie. in a knight vs wizard fight the knight always wins, although he may com...

I think Kaelik's original argument was that there were no rules for the magic rock structure construction. In that how would the magic rock would work with X,Y, and Z scenarios. What happens when the magic rock gets sold? What happens when you go inside of the structure? This I have no problem with...

Knowledge: Nature. Oh snap! Wait, you mean there are skills to know things about things? So if I could roll Nature to know things about a swamp, I could roll Arcana or Dungeoneering to know things about a magically spontaneously generated physics-violating obsidian tower full of monsters? So Kaelik...

You actually demonstrated one of the weaknesses of D&D in general, which is that being a badass keeps anyone from killing you. There are numerous instances of powerful people being killed by relatively weak unknowns simply because physics works and a knife in the gut will kill you no matter how...

woah what are you doing abstracting the assassination? now you're just playing magical teaparty. gotta roll that shit bro But what if the assassins creep through the king's cellar and find themselves in a (rolls) 10x10 (rolls) broom closet containing a (rolls) chest and a (rolls) ancient red dragon?

That, and Roy has played MMOs much more than I ever have. What's all this talk of things turning green and grey?

I hate the idea that just because the PCs are level X, they must always face level X challenges. It's so retarded that I couldn't play the game. ... If the party is marching thru a dragon's territory (sorry that it exists outside combat), there is a chance they'll encounter it. If I roll a random e...

Someone from the troll team said above that Conan is somehow supposed to be badass because mundane humans can't take him down - save for a couple of relatively common circumstances. But in the game where you are supposed to walk up to the cosmic principle of greed and envy and attack her until she ...

I kind of wonder whether, if you surveyed 100 people who bought a 4e PHB, you'd find even 10 who could identify and describe the relevance to D&D of Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, de Camp & Pratt, or Poul Anderson. The numbers would probably only be marginally better for 3e buyers, that's not a ...

As for a 3.5 bashing thread, it has plenty of problems too, and unlike 4rries, I am quite willing to go into those problems. The thing is, it's less flawed than 4.Fail, and less flawed than most everything else out there. Mostly because tabletop gaming is really fucked up . Have you considered bera...

Conan is himself largely unbeatable when fighting mortal men unless he's surrounded on all four sides or is subdued while dead drunk (a mistake he makes many times). Dude's pretty clearly superhuman according to a "realistic" measurement. Batman's much the same, technically "normal&qu...

Holy crap a lot of stuff was shit in this thing for such a short amount of time. I expected a lot of defenses against me not being able to light my campfire the regular "Your MC is just stupid (shouldn't have to play Mother May I)" or "Light can't be used to make fire (Umm how not?)&...