The Gaming Den

Hit points should be in the double-digits even at maximum level. ... Counting damage upwards would help. If you mix in some standard DR, you can keep HP smaller and keep scaling up damage too. Nice to stick with one number though, just have the common man with 3 HP and the gods with 66, and have a ...

Who allowed gay marriage? That's fricken hilarious. Marriage is older than law or religion by a very large margin, and was largely a process of an old man paying a younger man to take his hungry-ass daughter off his hands. Early laws just covered the obligations of the various participants, that the...

On GURPS and armor. Note that I'm drawing from GURPS 3e here. I'll note where 4e fixes some of this, a little. It did help. Armor in 3e also adds to your dodge rate with its PD, or passive defense, negating some attacks outright before DR is even considered. That's one, the big PD is no more, just ...

Pay off all your debts. All of them. Do not go into debt again. Doing so is the best investment you can ever make. Debt is for your limited liability shell companies so you can steal the investor's money without them knowing, not for you personally. Pay your mortgage faster. If you can't, buy a smal...

GURPS is awesome, because that's what Reign of Steel is written for. Maybe time travelling bounty hunters. Star Wars meets Battletech meets the Zombie Apocalypse powered by etherial nanobots. The rules, moreso with G4, scale quite well across the genres if you want to keep the same characters and me...

Re: thread title. Different people like different power systems. A game with more than one system lets more people play together in the same game. It's why people are still playing 3.5 and Pathfinder ahead of 4e, because someone in their group liked one of the systems that got left behind. Lots of p...

Orion, thanks. I'll counter a little for the sake of argument. C3PO only worked as a foil for R2, who is the primary character in A New Hope, the droid who destroys the Death Star for the rebellion. R2's an interesting character; narrator, silent witness, but also the primary instigator of everythin...

Classic that Paizo thread. Stated problem: all players are weak and defensive, but one newer "problem" player is high damage. Fact: "Problem" player started out using a tower shield and one-handed weapon to fit in with that, as a Barbarian no less, wasting the feats and everythin...

hopefully I fixored that. Ew. Sorries.

TPM: Obi-Wan and Anakin (who is about 21) are sent to mind-control the trade fed boys into leaving Naboo alone. But, oh no, not only are they greeted with droids and violence, the trade fed are already being mind-controlled by a Sith! Maul orders the jedi's killed, the invasion to begin, and magic-c...

Classes (in your classic D&D) are primarily about separation of mechanics. Fighters with the super-swords, Wizards with the uber-spells, and no swapsies. So the Fighter is the class which uses the combat chapter, uses it well, all of it, all the options, all the tricks (some of them in 3.0 or on...

Let's break it down. Hell, let's see if it's possible to get under 25 with a PA Brb, even in Pathfinder. Human, 16 Str, +2 for level and no strength enhancement. Rage +4 gives us 22. Greataxe for bonus style points is 6.5 + 9 Str, +9 PA, +1 Item = 25.5 damage. 76.5 on a crit. Nope, not possible. On...

Regarding gunpowder, D&D era weapons should use serpentine powders. You need to mix the powder immediately before use not cart it around thinking it will still work. /Any/ vigorous shaking ruins it as an explosive. Basically, a few rounds of running or melee and it's stuffed. An hour of walking ...

Constantly moving on to bigger and tougher challenges is an iconic trope. How is this anything new relating to 4E? Low level challenges in AD&D are the Kobolds can kill you in one hit, and there's 12 of them with shortbows behind cover over there, ohfuckno. High level challenges in AD&D are...

Of course, my game the kobolds live in 3' high tunnels full of deadfalls, and the PCs do have to shrink up to get around in comfort. So the centaur's fucked, he can stay out and look after the Druid's bear, the Paladin's mount, the wagons, bullocks, two score archers, and dozen heavy infantry, and ...

Anybody else with their own notes on how to make Diplomacy work? Set a goal, achieve that goal. Want the king to give you an army for an adventure? So there's a reason for that, you organise a meeting with the king's secretary and explain it. You get a list of people to go annoy, and maybe figure o...

many are recently talking about how quick combat was in 2nd ass opposed to 3rd and 4ths drag out slug-fest. 2nd ed with all the options on is a nightmare. Quite cool for a few PCs against a couple of boss monsters where you want a short fight to feel longer, but in the day I didn't realise I should...

Yeh, I'm pretty sure that seeing as how all the dungeons made by kobolds, goblins, and gnomes handle medium PCs without a penalty (because bullshit like that is sometimes good for the game), you can just let the centaur go wherever and not sweat it. Who knows, maybe he'll find 100 Orcs in a 30x30 ro...

Meh, he wants +50 on the d20 checks for the gods, but only +1/2 level mods like 4e uses. It's a bad idea, but people genuinely have bad ideas. Look at 4e. :) Don't compromise a bad idea with a good one, dude. +2 per level on a 2d10 RNG over a 15 level game has much the same effect as what you're doi...

No idea how they get away with banning religious observance, "establishment" means the government declaring one true religion for your state, not saying a prayer at football game. Religious observance has never been banned ever. It's banned all over the show. As you noted, it's largely fo...

The 2nd amendment? The 4th amendment? The 1st? 2nd amendment: The one congress voted for says the federal government must not disarm the state militias. The one the states ratified says the general populace must not be disarmed, because they make up the state militias. But the courts consider "...

Note regarding dice. 4d10 has the same variance as 1d20. On XdY it's proportional to SQRT(X)*Y. Variance is important in relation to your bonuses, and how large they need to be to matter. +2 on 2d10 is about the same effect as +3 on 1d20. You'll probably end up fudging in 6% automatic success and fa...

2e players are just as bad as 3e players, because they are the same damn people. You know, there's something in this paying attention thing for older games. At least in theory. In AD&D, the module would say "there's 300 gp hidden in a fake floor of the desk drawer". In 3e/4e that beca...

Trying to be the centaur who can climb is annoying

'S funny, in a game where dragons can fly, humanoids reach 25' tall, and ascetics can run the quarter mile in about 16 seconds, all sans magic. Maybe you're just over thinking it.

Perhaps I should try my attitude explainer here. Say you shoot a democratic senator in the head, drop your guns, and try to survive the arrest. Security comes for you, but the first one on the scene totally knows you socially. 1: He hates you: You're dead. Surrender all you want, it's five in the fa...