The Gaming Den

Level 1-2 DnD is a ghetto of pain and sadness. The best thing about it is that you often get out alive, and then it's over. It is also the time when a small horde of skeletons or kobolds or whatever are a level appropriate challenge. Fireball doesn't do 1d6 per level: it does 1d6 per level per targe...

sigma999 wrote: A simple INT damage/drain attack can shut down animals like it was nothing. A dire creature drops to unconsciousness due to its INT of 1-2 with a single attack.
That's not right.

Couldn't you fix that more easily by giving them "-" Int?

Because I haven't seen it mentioned, http://www.dangerpatrol.com/ Danger Patrol is startlingly low overhead for the goodness of game it delivers. There's a couple real flaws, but most of them go away by just not printing the telepath. It would probably break down in a long term game, but is great as...

CR was actually a lot closer to what I was looking for, though it also needs someone to do CR well. On the XP issue though, giving XP by CR overcome is dumb, unless you are literally doing dungeon crawls. Use story awards, roll some dice, flat out make up awards. Absolutely anything is better, and t...

Templates were a good idea, but they take too long to implement. What if you made templates easier to apply? Or actually, what if you started with generic monster styles, balanced those well, and added templates purely as flavors? Consider a "Fast Animal" base, with a table of attributes ...

Gems? That's sort of genre appropriate; Conan was always all about prying gems off of things, and that's basically the only reward from Fafhr and the Grey Mouser.

Epic matches okay with some religeons with pantheons, like how Loki or Coyote or Amaterasu roll.

That's not entirely true. Just because you and he each dedicated yourselves to the visions and goals of Spaceasaurus Rex, doesn't mean your interests align. You may be all about contemplation, and prefer hunting tiny kobolds; your ally may prefer evangelism, and ask you to cruise around, looking for...

Everyone does quest trades for those things, what the fuck is "half" a quest? "Bring me back the stolen hammer of Nyang-Buk-Ting." You go over to where it is, kill the final boss, and get your photo taken with the hammer for proof, then go back without actually fetching it. Or y...

My bad Frank. I've never seen you credited for that handbook; it was an honest mistake. I read and reread that guide (different site, so different discussion, but identical front matter), but didn't see a good option out of DN. Schpeelah, that was exactly what I was looking for. I think Incantator i...

Too bad. It really seemed like that combination might be better. Is Mystic Theurge ever workable either? Unfortunately, it isn't a Tome game, and isn't going to become one. The Frank and K stuff is stellar for flavor, balance, and ease (I ran a spelljammer game with their rules a couple years ago, a...

Long time listener, first time caller. Some basic background: I'm in a campaign that's semi-rebooting after TPK (Gorgon in a library). "Semi" because some characters are sticking around, others are new, and the continuity isn't clear yet. The first try was a lawful good party, but like clo...