The Gaming Den

What I like about FantasyCraft is that it's like you paid a feat to write Giant on your character sheet. Oh no, wait, that's actually kinda stupid. Does seem a little like that's what people want 'round here when they say "play a giant" though. I mean, +2 Str? Less than a 6' tall 210 lb Ha...

Multiclassing sucks for a caster in 3e, because you fall behind in spell levels and nothing is really worth the loss of spell levels; designing caster PrCs is hard because most casters don't have much to give up outside of spell levels, which is a bad idea. The following is an idea to hopefully fix...

You might get problems with squeezing, hard for big guys to fit in Kobold warrens. No large mounts. Nothing major though. You could forbid large reach weapons, so medium warriors can match them there with a longspear. Banning a buttload of gear is good for flavour in the Bronze age, battleaxe, short...

It pointlessly brings in a ton of rules that add nothing and never end up getting used. This is an eternal problem in game design. The official playtest group uses them, and the rules work for them, that's pretty clear from the blog. But if most other groups find not using them makes the monsters d...

In other words, I think it's lame. A design goal is to be compatible with 3e (like, play the same modules against the same statblocks at the same level without breaking anything), which means things Fighters can do will have to be a bit lame. Three Druids and a Cleric, problem solved. Truism is true.

Heroes of Battle used flowchart battles for the most part. Work out what's going to happen in your head, pick a few critical points that might change the course of battle, and let PC actions decide which way it goes. My own thoughts are that 3e battles come down to which army keeps it's high level m...

The reason 3e went with L*1000 XP per level was that they wanted to use XP costs for things. Not so much to penalise players (though it did, a little), but to have a game-world reason for why things that happened quickly didn't happen all the time. So no infinite raising of the dead, or making +1 sw...

Human with TWFing and Finess (toward fair AC for survivability). +4 Dex, -2 TWFing, +2 Flanking. 10/18/14/8/8/8 and however many points extra you get over 24. If I wanted to twink things a bit for 1st level play, I'd go for 32 point buy, with 20 Str half-orc fighter and cleric holding the line, whil...

1/720? Oh no! Why, that's going to happen about once every four years if we do nothing but fight a dozen goblins over and over again and never get any gear or XP. Kill the Wizard? Yes indeed, that's why I only gave him one action in the worst case scenario. Dude needs to do his job and find cover, q...

Are you seriously suggesting that skills should work like "Mother May I", while wasting 50 pages pretending it's not? I'm suggesting that the stuff on my character sheet should take narrative control away from the DM when I have to take the time to roll dice or spend spells on it. So it's...

Sorry I wasn't specific enough for you; 1st-level characters should be more powerful than they currently are in 3.5 compared to everything else. Like Chamomile said, they are. Even on your first adventure. Ftr 1: +5 to hit for 5-12 damage, AC 18, 12 hp. Extra attack on a kill. Goblin: +3 to hit for...

Whatever power level is called 'Level 1' should be higher than what D&D 3.5 starts you as, I agree. 'S what people have said since forever. Every new edition makes 1st level characters (even the 4th level ones in 4e) a lot stronger than the last. But then they make the basic monsters stronger t...

Re: awesome batman thing. Comic book authors couldn't write a consistent character if their life depended on it. Meanwhile, alignment "sucks" because people mostly don't being told they're Evil by a game book. Chaotic? French revolution, bitch: liberty, justice, equality, and rich men's he...

Wait, are people really arguing bad rules are fine because All True Scotsmen will see them for what they are and make up better house rules on the fly? No True Scotsman is he who uses the rules as written? Guys, the 4e skill rules are shit. They tell the GMs to make sure you always need to roll a 12...

Skills should not give you superpowers; superpowers should be class abilities. Skills should be class abilities, shared across all classes where it makes sense to do so. Oh, wait, they are . Once you get past the idea that skills are supposed to make you awesome, or even worse, that skills should b...

Good saves = +(level+stat+2), poor saves = +(level+stat). Monster saves = +(HD+stat). DCs scale at a rate of one point per two levels or HD. You won't want saves scaling at a 1:1 rate with levels or HD. Monster DCs are about +1 per +1 CR for the heavier ones. HD rises faster than CR and key stats g...

Just fix the saves, and give everything that does anything useful a save (or two). Diplomacy? Will save, and again if you're trying to win with it. Oh, and ditch everything that reduces metamagic costs. Good saves = +(level+stat+2), poor saves = +(level+stat). Monster saves = +(HD+stat). Done. Efree...

A not-inconsiderable proportion of the playerbase do not want skills to do anything fantastical at any point. Tell them they're full of crap. Thieves were hiding behind nothing and running up 100' cliffs in one round before most of them were born. In 2nd edition you were even allowed to be 99% perf...

Pfft. Climbing and sneaking and knowing about monsters or any other mundane shit is just something that PCs do. Don't even roll for it, it just works. When the Rogue buys climb skill, it lets him backstab giants in the eyes and scale walls of force at a run. When a Cleric buys Religion, it lets him ...

Fiat means "from nothing". Old currency was derived from the relatively stable trade value of certain precious metals. Fiat currencies aren't derived from anything, they're just an arbitrary number (developed in order to force economies to serve the money printers rather than the productiv...

The Hulk gets a fuck load of help from the authors. Being able to jump and punch (and be mostly immune to damage) should do absolutely nothing against all sorts of shit, stun him from helicopter with a few tonne of chem munitions, wait 'till he unhulks, load him up on happy gas, then cut his throat....

Superman's a level 10 Wizard Hulk's a 10th level Fighter what the fuck man what the fuck Wiz10 can telekinesis, fly all day, shoot eye beams that fry people, see through walls, kick out a super-cold wind now and then, be immune to normal bullets, travel faster than light to the next plot point, and...

Superman's a level 10 Wizard with a taste for touch spells. Hulk's a 10th level Fighter, Thor might be a bit higher with The Weapon. There are no high level Fighters in fiction, and very few high level Wizards. Maybe Green Lantern for 18th level, but most Gods have nothing like that level of power i...

the heuristics thy espouse sophomoric and suboptimal The arguments against them are strawmen at best. Each step on a chunked set of choices is still a choice full of complexity and subtlety. ie: if there's a mass-healer keeping the mooks up, you don't go to your AoEs as a general heuristic choice a...

Fun fact of the world. Animals of all sizes can jump three foot in the air from a normal gait, if they have the legs for it. Fleas can, crickets can, mice can, cats can, we can (if we're fit), horses can. Even an elephant could jump like that, only the forces involved would break and dislocate it's ...