The Gaming Den

Affinity can be a fine mechanic that encourages you to build around certain themes, so long as it doesnt' snowball off itself. The Affinity for Lands cycle was a clever way to make 2-4 mana creatures that were good in monocolor decks. The primary problem with Affinity, and with a lot of artifact car...

So, what do failures in MtG look like? Do they frequently "own goal" themselves with unforced errors, or do they just occasionally mess up in unpredictable ways? WotC's recent track record with breaking the Standard format and constantly needing to ban cards is one of their biggest mistak...

Just read through Chapter 5. Having a great time with it so far. No feedback to speak of.

5e seems like a candidate, just because so little is there already that you can build on top of it. The basics of the d20 system are also something you can build on top of without too much trouble. I don't enjoy the SAME system, but that's very small and you could start hacking on top of it if you a...

I'm not one of the people who mentioned feats + ASIs together, so I can't comment on that. I can say that your feat build would be better than the non-feat build, but that's partly because Champion is significantly weaker than Battlemaster. In general, a build that pumps its primary stat performs wo...

Yeah, I think that making damage-prevention a frequent thing just means you need to design around it. Making sure everyone has multiple tactical options, and that some of them can get around high DR, seems like a good solution. Alternatively, just using the existence of DR to pump up other numbers s...

I think minimum damage is only has worth considering when you're dealing with low or fixed HP values. Like you noted, dealing 1 damage to a 200 HP blob is pretty meaningless. If anything, it could actually be more annoying if you have to track damage this way, because there is a teensy tactical adva...

I have yet to meet a D&D vet (even a 4e vet!) who prefers 5th. Do we even have one on the Den? I am not one of them, but I know of 3. All 3e vets, who didn't take to 4e or PF, but moved to 5e when it came out and love it. 5e has a very strong grip on the people who don't care for rules and just...

ope, yeah I assumed when you said that chapters come out every week, that there would only be 1 chapter this week. I'll look at the rest.

The idea that halflings get physically sick as they get further away from their village was interesting. I'm interested in seeing more of your take on the world. I guess if I had to think of feedback, this seemed more like an introduction / prequel than a chapter. It felt like it was over as soon as...

I just got my 5E books last week (and haven't even cracked open the MM), so I don't know if there are any rules on how to build monsters from scratch. Looking at the 5E entries I've seen in the past, I can tell you what it feels like is that everything is just arbitrarily decided. I'm sure they had...

I know, but there is no grapple in the 5e Wyvern. I was pointing out that his flowchart didn't account for the other side of the grapple check.

Gotcha, my bad.

First part was fun, looking forward to next Wednesday.

While 3e does have more complexity than 5e, the supposed vast gulf between 3e's impenetrable walls of rules and 5e's welcome cuddliness that's always used as a selling point for 5e has much more to do with the players than the systems. Anyone can pick up any edition of D&D at 1st level, especia...

Cannon: - Powers up then blasts PC's - Blasts PC's then needs to recharge Crusher: - Shove PC's around, anything big really - Pull PC's too, anything with looong temtacles Controller: Creates encounter-long effects - Zones you can move through, spooky gas - Zones you can't move through, wall of dir...

More of an editing question: Why are Vile Dancer DC's based on 15 + 1/2 level instead of 10 + 1/2 hit dice like the other monster classes? The effect is the same, so it seems weird to have a special case for the one class.

It's low-value bickering. Don't egg them on please. The difference in complexity between 3e and 5e is vastly overstated. I've run multiple parties of total newbies through a few sessions of 3e and they go from "What the heck is a d20?" to "Yay druids, I'm a bear riding a bear summonin...

I think I lean towards pragma's perspective on this. It doesn't matter how beautiful & condensed your statblock is if the average party won't use it properly. I would add that statblocks in 3e can also be misleading. For instance, a full attack entry can look pretty impressive, but a lot of inte...

I'm going to be honest, I don't think it's worth the effort to try to fix 5e. I'd rather just play 3.5. 5e has the 2 most important things of all going for it: (1) popular media uses it, and (2) onboarding is incredibly easy. It is probably for those reasons that 5e is 37 times more popular than 3e...

Revising monsters and spells and classes is a lot of work though. There relatively simple fixes to improve the 5e experience then? For example if hitpoint bloat is a problem then cutting hp's by half or doubling damage or both. The choice to make monsters sacks of HP with a multiattack was a soluti...

I'm rambling, but what I'm trying to get at is a mixture of both. Stones not only let you evolve Pokemon earlier, but you get access to a free Tutor Move (like how Charizard can go to a tutor and learn Iron Tail and stuff). HOWEVER, that consumes the item, which also happens to be a pretty decent a...

So Fire Stones (and Thunder Stones, Leaf Stones, etc) look like an idea that Gamefreak had for diversifying the evolution process and encouraging players to explore the game. In later gens, Gamefreak decided that there were better ways to mix up the evolution metagame than "use this colored roc...

I think the design space for low-embedding fantasy heartbreakers has been pretty well explored. I think there's more room for a heartbreaker to stand out from the crowd by going for a high-embedding design. I think this is mostly because it is harder to codify embedded-ness. Writing out a chart for...

Part of the point of void is that you are playing with something that is incredibly dangerous and directly, infinitely hostile to the idea of you being. The reason void debt is so draining is because I wanted to express that danger in mechanics. Past iterations of this concept have had very little ...

I don't think I see any of the Katas? In your first void debt I see "Radiance damage" which should be "Radiant damage". I don't really like Void Debt being the core of the class. All your cool abilities care about how many levels it has and it gates how frequently you can use you...