The Gaming Den

Well as a wizard who focusses on summoning, instead of improved familiar, you might want to consider shadow project . You will still keep your +4 init bonus from your familiar and turn your familiar into a shadow. And an incorporeal shadow can scout, thus you know when to start summoning; it can deb...

Europeans probably count the EU starting in 1951 with the Treaty of Paris, that lead to the common market treaties in 1957 forming the European Economic Community, which was later absorbed into the EU. Which was those political and diplomatic changes that were carried out to make wars both less lik...

There is also a vest of resistance. While some characters have need for a cloak to do something or other, characters who need a cloak and a shirt (note: not armor, shirt slot ) are basically nonexistent. The enhancement bonus to saves might as well be slotless. -Username17 Well, also from james jac...

A few pages in Holden deflects attention to saying exalted is more balanced than DnD3e and more flexible than dnd 4e all proud like Well that depends on what you find balanced. I mean: Holden[/url]] So a thing that I'm curious about: One of my players just spent half his bonus points on knowing lik...

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/akashic-magic This...this isn't what I think it is, is it? There were people who liked incarnum that much? Veils do not interfere with magic items that occupy the same slot. So am I missing something or does PF-MoI no longer block you from getting y...

OgreBattle wrote:What's the most straightforward house rule for a d20 hitpoints based game like D&D3e to split AC into an evasion and armor element.

Damage reduction, 'armor gives you more hp'?

Ain't this already the case? More AC means you get power attacked for less.

As I explained earlier in the thread, I don't really have a preference for whether the PCs succeed or fail on any particular task. If I'm doing things right, I'm prepared for both possibilities and the game continues incorporating the decisions, successes, and failures they've made. While I might t...

So, in your mind, anything greater than a minor inconvenience to the player characters needs to be alleviated by GM fiat? Oh for fucks sake. YES. The "major inconvenience" of a monster you cannot defeat is NOT something that should happen because someone failed a star trek trivia check. T...

Having a chance means there has to be a random element. Otherwise there isn't a chance, by definition. -Username17 Actually, no. For example, you could have a cleric who can cast find all traps. So the chance in finding the traps is in whether the cleric casts that or not (which still sounds pretty...

If you always take 10 as your resolution mechanic, then there is no such thing as "more likely to hit". You either hit, always, or you don't, ever. The combat is decided from the moment it began. You initial decision whether to attack or not decided the fate of your character with no furt...

I guess you could say previous player investment can matter a tiny bit even though Deaddm didn't mention that and in fact only stated he wanted the RNG to dedice no matter what abilities the player had. So yeah, even if you have a +0 or a +40, you still gotto roll that d20 to see if you succeed and...

He was specifically talking about desigining encounters after he knows what abilities his players have. And creating encounters based on those abilities, so no previous player choices don't matter in this specific case. That's only one very specific interpretation of what he wrote and I hardly doub...

You're obviously illiterate, because there's basically no other way to read that statement you made. If you think that the "whims of the dice gods" preventing you from doing a thing you wanted to do (by which we mean that you attempted to do something and failed because of a bad roll) mea...

FrankTrollman wrote:Your claim that guaranteed success is necessary for agency is considered and rejected.
-Username17

Fuck you Frank, stop strawmanning. I never made that fucking claim.

That is only true if all you look at are ad hoc decisions and desires and completely disregard long term investments and ressource allocation. Player agency is not solely defined over direct actions, but also investment into success and success probability. The player agency in deaddm's excemples c...

Part of it comes from a desire to limit bias as the GM. If I know what my players abilities are, if the results are entirely deterministic based on what they have selected, when I am designing a scenario I must constantly confront the question of whether I want the PCs to find some thing or not fin...

Uh... what the fuck? If you don't use impartial dice, your abilities operate as per the fickle whims of the MC. That's all there fucking is. You use an RNG to resolve edge cases of you have the MC rate your felatio. There is no option three. -Username17 Uhmmm there totally is an option 3. To give a...

The existence of actual abilities that don't have die rolls at all doesn't actually meaningfully argue against the idea that having your abilities interpreted by impartial icosohedrons gives you more agency than having your abilities interpreted by the whims of a fickle MC. It's an incoherent line ...

And I've agreed to that point. I absolutely think that giving everyone a passive 'take 10' on all search checks to auto-detect things is good. I just don't think that it's as good if you don't allow a chance to find something that is hidden in a more difficult way. I like a gray area in the middle....

3rd edition ditched a lot of the weird bonus non-weapon proficiencies, but represented rather more skills in core. Consider: even the basic Thief skill set of Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Find/Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, Climb Walls, Hear Noise, and Read Languages became Open Locks, ...

But why stop at random monsters summoned?
Just make everything random. You cast random conjuration spell, random evocation spells. The fighter randomly attacks random targets with random weapons etc.

Well D&D next is the next that unifies all previous D&D games into next gen. So you can just use all your previous edition monstrousus manules! A theory I hold is that people who bought the DMG, their last chance at having a book with actual rules, were distraught and gave up hope of being a...

I always wonder why having a HP bar pisses people off when guns are involved but they are fine with taking 100 sword stabs in the eye.