The Gaming Den

Zinegata wrote:I find it doubly laughable that people are seriously arguing that a cloak is a monster ability.

If you kill Mordenkainen, does he drop his Faithful Hound?

I thought the point of 4e's drop system wasn't so much that you can't pick up anything left on the monsters but that it doesn't tend to be particularly valuable and as such isn't worth picking up. It's basically just a way to get rid of the whole stripping down corpses minutia that I don't think an...

I don't think that "house-ruling" is a far assessment of my example. I didn't change any actual mechanics, merely ruled as common sense dictated and did so completely within the framework of the game. Furthermore, I don't see much practical utility in building pc's and monsters using the e...

Hi welcome. Just popping in to say that I let my players loot Kobold Slingers in my 4E games. They usually get 1 of each special sling ammo (glue pot, stink pot, fire pot). I treat them as level 1 alchemical items and adjust treasure parcels accordingly. I've also found that these really don't break...

If you make powers broader in scope it doesn't matter if you give out fewer of them; players still have to go through all of the decision trees. Summon Mammal is slower than giving someone access to Summon Bear, Summon Rhino, and Summon Giant Bat because Summon Mammal also implicitly has Summon Che...

I'm more interested in the poll, and whether or not the results from it will be used in any manner. I doubt it. If WotC's goal is to win back lapsed customers, then polling the 4E player base probably won't produce data conducive to that aim. If their goal is to keep the current base happy, then th...

Option paralysis happens to veteran players, too. Watch a chess match sometime. Between veterans, the opening moves of the game go by quickly because they've memorized a variety of optimal positions and have been taught by experienced the 2-3 best moves they can play. But when the unstudied middle ...

I'm of the opinion that D&D, at it's base, should be as streamlined and user-friendly as possible. That isn't to say that mechanical complexity shouldn't be there at all, but I'm a fan of the Basic vs. Advanced D&D idea. However, unlike BD&D and AD&D, I don't see separate, incompatib...

Fudging rolls is indeed basically the end of the game being able to generate give-a-shit. The moment it becomes clear that the players are going to be declared the winner no matter what they do , then people are going to stop putting in the effort to do good things and the story derails. However, i...

Okay, here is where the disconnect is for me...I play RPG's for the whole game aspect, rather than story. Don't get me wrong, having a cool story to interact with is great, but for me it's just icing. My primary motivation for table top gaming is to sit around a table with friends rolling dice. I ag...

FrankTrollman wrote: RPGs have to generate a feeling of risk without generating the actuality of risk.

Could you elaborate on this idea a bit more?

DJs and intellectuals. I don't *have* nerd friends here to speak of. Ahh...these things don't necessarily preclude alpha males. Particularly intellectuals, since there is a pretty big competitive streak there. I'm wondering if perhaps she does have a thing for alpha male types, and perhaps doesn't ...

So, the girl I'm seeing knows that I'm a nerd and she likes that. She also knows I'm a raging alpha male and dislikes that. I'm kind of skeptical about that. She claims to dislike your alpha male tendencies, and yet she wound up with you rather than your nerd friends. What were her former SO's like?

Isn't SKR the guy who used to provide rules clarifications on the WotC board?

And here's a follow up question:

Has he ever even PLAYED 3rd Edition?

The only instances of a unified power systems that I've seen have been in 4E, superhero games, and in gamebooks like Lone Wolf (The multiplayer gamebook from Mongoose is pretty much a direct port of the gamebook mechanics, and all of the classes are on the same schedule, with the "power" s...

Watching currently: No Ordinary Family Parks & Recreations Community The Office 30 Rock Archer G.I. Joe Renegades Young Justice Justified Leverage Lie to Me Castle Chopped Rupaul's Drag Race Portlandia Onion News Network I've also been watching an anime series lately called Mahou Shoujo Madoka M...

The inherent problem with d20 rolls is always that a genius trained in X skill can usually be shown up by someone who knows nothing just by the genius rolling a 1 and Bob McUntrained rolling a 20. I'll address this first. I'm not entirely sure this is a problem. This swingi-ness is the whole point ...

Skipping over die rolls where the result doesn't make any difference isn't just common sense, it should be part of the game rules itself. In fact, in 3e it is . That's what the Take 10 and Take 20 rules are all about. The fact that an equivalent mechanic doesn't exist in 4e is a legitimately bad th...

But Lago appears to have been traumatized by a very adversarial DM who left him thinking you had to suck off the DM just to get gear suited to your class, so there's that. Wait...wait..wait...you mean you DON'T actually have to suck off your GM to get magic items? Man...if I'd known that, I would h...

I certainly agree with most of this, but many people seem to be trying to say that 4E is a 'bad' or 'broken' system because of personal umbrage with it. I have no issue with people disliking any system, but I really dislike it when people try to state that something is objectively bad and then give...

Fuchs got it in one. If it doesn't really matter how many hammer blows it takes to break down a door, you don't bother rolling. The rules are just there to tell you if you can do it eventually, and then you you skip a bit until you have done it. If you're cutting through a rope or something in the ...

And that's the problem. Since breaking doors doesn't even have rules, every time the players try the DM has to either allow them to succeed or deny them without reference to the rules. One may be a bit anticlimactic, and the other is a direct and literal insult to the players. That's not a good pos...

The DM sets the DCs or says "Yes" or "No" depending on what he wants to have happen. I think the classic example is the utube example of play where Chris Perkins goes 'no darkfire doesn't work on inanimate objects' to the newbie because he wants the PCs to go work the magic ball...

Per Lago, I do agree that Combat Challenge/Opportunity madness needs to go. I swear, I must have read that passage every week before I played, just to get it down. Just make it all Opportunity Attacks, with "no movement on a hit" option or whatever. Otherwise, though, you really must trim...

I got one of these easy:

Ban enhancement bonuses from magic items.

None. At all. Magic items are about properties and powers.

Monsters...static value + 1/2 level progression.