The Gaming Den

Well, there are a limited number of ways you can do magic. You can go the D&D spells route, where the things you can do are separated into well-defined, discrete spells. This method is nicely crunchy; if you add in augmentation (such as "for every success you get beyond 1, you can pick one ...

If you make Fireball deal double damage to bloodied targets, you get the same problem as with the current D&D rules, where a person casting SoDs and a person dealing damage are completely failing to synergize with each other; albeit now only once the targets are bloodied. If you make Fireball de...

Rolling fistfuls of dice is fun, sigma999.

Well, if by "explode", you mean "explode with rage", then you're overgeneralizing.

I'm inclined to be in favor of sunlight explosions from a strategic perspective. Such a massive, yet situational, weakness encourages thinking about how to kill the Count by destroying the roof instead of by attacking him. Letting full plate work as a solution is pretty terrible though, because then...

Epic Psionic Focus and Improved Metapsionics are at least stronger enough than all other options that you'd have to be pretty silly not to pick them. Improved Metapsionics twice means that you can be tossing out Quickened powers at only a +2 pp cost at level 5; at level 6 you can also get Psionic M...

There are some things about this color magic system: at least in reality, red, yellow, and blue are not fundamentally special colors, they just happen to be popular among humans because most humans have trichromatic vision. So, why are the schools of magic divided in this way? Was the creator of mag...

Well, in this version, Blue is actually quite distinct from the others, although information and soul have some overlap. However, Red Mon magic seems like it could be taken to do anything (altering the universe is a pretty expansive subset of possible actions), assuming that that's what you meant by...

Well, it was certainly an interesting read, and I think the implicit multiclassing effects have much potential. However, Yellow is almost completely encompassed by Red (the brain as an organ is part of the human form), and Red is completely encompassed by Blue (ability to alter the human form is par...

I'm signing this petition too. Especially 5 and 6.

The problem with freely bought background points is the problem with all significant refluffing: you reduce the amount of information that descriptions give to the players, and the value of changing your appearance to confuse your opponents. There is some entertainment value in listening to a charac...

Well, each important entity's opinion of each other important entity is fundamentally a lot of data. If each entity has an opinion about each other entity, then a 2D array is the most efficient possible way of representing it so it's easy to look up and interact with. A dedicated program that handle...

Dang it, Lago's not wrong. Anything more complex than the base 14x14 grid would get impossible to use on paper. 200 numbers isn't a lot when arranged properly, although most of the cool things want more granularity. The alternative would be to have each group or NPC track only those reputation links...

Well, if all you ever do with reputation is use it to buy things, then it is certainly Not-Exciting, and just a pointlessly complicated version of the Diplomacy Attitude chart. The major appeal to such a system is really that it quantifies different NPCs' or groups' attitudes towards each other , an...

Each NPC has six ability scores, a dozen skills, double- or triple-digit hit points, half a dozen defensive attributes, attack rolls, save DCs, initiative, and a bunch of other numbers. Consulting (and even altering) a variable is not hard, Lago.

I'm not sure where the cost in tracking 200 numbers of this nature is. It can easily be represented as a 14x14 spreadsheet, and there aren't many complex multi-cell interactions (some, of course, since playing groups off against one another is a major draw). Occasionally looking up or changing a num...

Yes, K, you can change the rules so being able to hit things is not dependent on your ability to see, and then low-light vision is only better for people who like to wander around at night (See: Rogues) or don't have Rope Trick. So you change the rules for Natural Armor, and suddenly nobody who want...

Alien mindsets that can't be comprehended are the most interesting to figure out. The races that you need to design for your core setting are the ones that need to be balanced against the game mechanics. If you've got a body slot system, you should have races for a fair number of body shapes. If you...

Actually, if you go with flat thresholds for HP, and fixed damage values for attacks, you could achieve much the same randomness and uncertainty by rolling for the monster's health (and not letting the players see the value). It wouldn't have as much fun dice rolling entertainment, though.

Of course it was sarcasm.

Why do you think Sorcerers are inferior to Wizards, Tussock, despite being slightly better at spamming the most powerful spell available to them at their level? (assuming an even-numbered level, of course)

Sure, Tussock. Wizards don't select a very diverse selection of spells in their level-appropriate slots, which is clearly why Sorcerers have to be a level behind in order to maintain the balance. You still want to devote a slot to Dimension Door (or some wimpier equivalent) so the Black Tentacles ta...

"Magic must defeat magic", eh?

That said, I agree with you. Parrying spells is an essentially magical action, while the things your fighter can do are just impossible.

MGuy: You shouldn't complain about charm person so much. It makes someone your "friend", and you can't convince them to do anything you want, so it's ill-defined enough that the DM can just MTP it down to a balanced level. For a refreshingly new old take on Social Manipulation, people seem...

nockermensch wrote:a paladin's schtick is "protects innocents".

Can we role-protect that? I don't want any of the other classes stepping on the Paladin's toes here.

sigma999: If you ignore someone, you get the option of going to the Ignore Page. From there, all is made clear.