The Gaming Den

So are we defining class to mean "power source" now? Because that's not a universal definition by any means - often class ends up meaning role/skillset. Sure, you could say that being a Shadow Warrior means you get to pick any melee/ranged/support/defense abilities that are Shadow themed. ...

For that matter, it's not unexpected power sources that throw planning for a loop, it's unexpected effects. If, in a given game, teleporting is extremely difficult high-level magic, and then somebody comes along with "Euclidomancy" and can teleport all over the place at low-level, then tha...

As I see it, making new shit up only turns things "surreal" when it contradicts what the characters know. So if the characters are experts on the world, which has been entirely mapped out, every creature, spell, and mysterious effect categorized, and all that information made easily availa...

It also seems like while a given campaign might be better served by a fairly small number of power sources, the system could have dozens. When making a campaign setting, you simply pick which power sources exist, and which of those are common or rare. Not really any different than the fact that thou...

Sure, people can make failed characters. Especially people new to the system. But there's a simple fix for that, and it doesn't involve straightjacketing the choices for people who do know exactly what they want: Preselected Builds. So you have your Elementalist, or whatever, and in the class descri...

The problem is that basically you can't have NPCs that use magic items if this is true, because if NPC gear is as good as PC gear, then your PCs are going to be totally loaded up on magic gear that all scales with them, so they'll literally have a batcave of auto scaling gear after a few levels. Th...

I don't think K is against having abilities that synergize, like, say, an ability that immobilizes melee opponents and a ranged attack, or a stealth ability and a sneak attack. Yeh, Paralyze and kill fits into the "bad synergy" arena. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that seems to be exact...

If you get the human skills and feat though, you're a Human with extra skill bonuses and low-light vision - better in every way. Are we trying to balance to the existing races here, or are we going the Pathfinder "bump everything up a notch" method?

Not so. Creative use of your powers makes for lively and surprising adventures. Dreaming up good uses of powers means that you always have a good surprise up your sleave. My wording was a bit off here - when I said "not entertainment-based", I didn't mean "not entertaining", I m...

What you don't want is for characters to not have a good choice or to have only a marginal choice because someone else decided to over specialize and all encounters need to be cranked up to match the overspecialization. So what you're saying is that any level of specialization beyond spending one f...

people cried "broken" every time a good build trumped a poor or standard one(and rightfully so). So if people cry "broken" when a character with good combat tactics trumps a character with poor combat tactics, will it also be rightfully so? Having meaningful choice means the abi...

What I want to see is every class having Rock, Paper, and Scissors options. ... This means that there shouldn't be four things you can put together to get a better Trip or even four different kinds of Trip ... I don't think those are mutually exclusive though. To have "Rock Paper Scissors"...

Well, giving your character more than one trick is actually a part of synergistic character building. It's in fact a strategic decision how much to specialize vs generalize. If someone wants to make a one-trick pony, I don't see how that's different than wanting to use poor tactics in combat - you g...

I'm just not sold on this "tactics are great, long-term strategy should be stabbed in the face" thing. Making smart choices when creating, advancing, and changing your character is just as valid as making smart choices during a fight. The last point is important - you aren't stuck with bad...

I agree that picking any path should be viable, but I don't think it's possible or necessary to avoid certain choices not being suited to certain purposes. For instance, making a spellcaster and then putting all your feats into things like Improved Critical, Robilar's Gambit, and other fancy weapon ...

While I don't think there should be purely bad choices like "Monks always suck", I do think there should be meaningful choices in character creation, like "to be good at X, this class and these feats are better". And I don't think you need to be able to pick your feats out of a h...

There is a style of play, as seen in Nethack, and to some extent in older editions of D&D, that can be quite enjoyable if you come at it with the right state of mind. The game is "the world is a deadly place, let's see how far you can get". You're not the heroes, at least not for a whi...

I'm guessing a combination of Arcane Thesis and Incantrix, which reduces all metamagic costs on that spell by two, making it effectively: chained (+2) empowered (+0) maximized (+1) twinned (+2) quickened (+2) = +7 levels And if you want to get cheesy, it can be argued that +0 metamagics count as -1 ...

I guess that's a good point - against even-level foes anyway, but I would hope that against a significantly weaker foe you could go straight to useful control without stunning them or blasting them in an obvious way - for instance, the previously mentioned "Jedi Mind Trick" on a guard.

Something else I thought of, which is somewhat related to this thread - how to have mind-control and damage be cooperative, without making mind-control do damage. The 3E Situation: Mind control and damage aren't really cumulative in any meaningful way. In fact, they're almost anti-cumulative, becaus...

I think there may be one more balancing type, one that's very hard to balance but still gets used a lot: Separate Domain Casting Casting is more powerful in certain parts of gameplay and less powerful in others. For instance, magic might be less powerful in combat, but more powerful in obstacle avoi...

Global events are, well, global. And if your setting has global events coming out of the pirates area or the samurai area, then your Egyptians who are on the same globe are going to be wading in that out-of-genre stuff without intervention. But ultimately, it's the DM who determines global events. ...

You know, I'm not convinced that the existance of setting elements that aren't suited for a given theme "ruins" that setting, as long as you aren't forced to use them. Let's say that you have a setting which includes, in different parts of its world, a gothic vampire area, an ancient egypt...

I guess it's a bit relative, because the same complaints that buying gold is unbalanced have been said about grinding, see Sirlin's articles about MMOs, for instance. Sure, buying gold can allow a newbie to defeat a long-time player - and having played a long time can allow a no-skills player to def...

5) People will try to conduct a chase using regular battle mechanics instead of the chase rules if they can gain an advantage from doing so; this should therefore either be impossible or not advantageous. This is a tricky one, because sometimes the party is the chaser, and sometimes they're being c...