The Gaming Den

So, thoughts? Giant land. When you've got monsters that are that much tougher than humanity, humans don't have an answer. Humans would be in the same situation as goblins, orcs, and so on, living in caves separated from everyone else as primitive hunters. The race with any actual technology and civ...

That is horse shit. If you can walk into the elder red dragon's lair and never run into the elder red dragon because you're 1st level and the difficulty always scales to you, then your choices don't matter . Smaug's lair has to have a genuine chance of having Smaug in it or low level parties will n...

Uh, there are plenty of free MMOs, and I'm pretty sure 4e charges for books and stuff. The act of giving up your evening of playing the MMO solely to recharge your abilities is a big cost. If you limited a D&D ability to once every 6 hours in real time, you're not going to get players who blow ...

Some relative difficulty is essential in RPGs. You don't want your DM rolling up some random encounter table and getting an elder red dragon and stomping a party of 1st level characters.

Acrobatics (Balance): Unstable surface is a Moderate DC Narrow is Moderate, +5 if unstable Very Narrow is Hard, +5 if unstable Your 10th level character has a DC 18 to cross an Unstable surface. Your 25th level character has a DC 29. Nothing about the surface has changed. Again you're assuming that...

Doom wrote: Wrong again--you can always just log out if you want to, so no player cost there.

I'd say not being able to play is a definite cost, especially since you're paying a monthly fee to play the game.

This is the biggest conceptual problems most rules whores have. They think that if you manage to straitjacket a bad DM enough, he'll become a good one.

This is and always will be a crock of shit.

The difference between MMO daily and D&D daily is player cost. In an MMO, the 2 hours you're waiting for your daily to recharge is actually time you're playing where you as a player don't have it. In D&D, you can skip the waiting period, because it's the character whose waiting, not you. And...

Berserker rage should just be a feat. Barbarian has no right existing as a class.

1) If you want to do something like 'have difficult locks' while simultaneously going 'but talking to the guards is easy' you can't DO that. Even if you adjust the level of the skill challenge upwards, you've made the 'talking to the guards is easy' part harder! The problem isn't the skill DC syste...

You just admitted that a balancing act of certain width was defined in terms of difficulty for the player , rather than any actual value. So balancing on a thin ledge has a different DC if you encounter that ledge as a 6th level character vs. encountering the same ledge as a 12th level character. O...

But I bet you can find two modules both of which involve balancing on a one-inch beam (or some other example) where the task being performed is basically identical but the DC given for success is wildly different . The rules compendium has some slight information on 4E acrobatics, which states if a...

The problem is the notion that the PC's are unique; I'll take that over Forgotten Realms style, where you're one of many heroes, all of whom are better than you. I really like how 4E finally gets with the program and accepts that the game is about the PCs story, and they get to be special. There's ...

If they do that then they're houseruling. The DMG gives very strict guidelines for skill challenges. It does not say 'throw in a DC that makes sense' or 'if you want to cockblock a PC, throw in a DC 40 skill challenge for heroic-tier players'. It gives you three DCs for each range of levels and you...

Ah, but you say that a DM would retain that same DC for the skill? Yes well, now you're more or less houseruling. Ok, you're a moron. You're telling me that if you play the same module (which presents a fixed DC) at a different level, that printed DC somehow changes? Keep on the Shadowfell doesn't ...

a) The fact that the DCs follow you as you level mean that in practice, you never "get better". Technically, easy tasks that you can blow past after level N exist, but they're all in the "content" that you've "levelled out of". All the locks switching from DC 20 to DC ...

For modules this isn't a big deal, since it works out the same. When the adventure is fluid, however, this leads to foolishness like a moat being harder to cross as a 13th level character than a 1st level character. DMs can (and should) try to describe it by saying that it's magical water with croc...

That doesn't make it USEFUL however. I mean, look at 4E. The diplomacy skill does all of those things and more in 4E and that skill still doesn't do jack shit without you sucking the DM's cock or a module covering your ass. That's true of skills in general. Diplomacy is useless without conversation...

These two are almost the same. The difference comes from what happens if they revisit an area. If the low level guys encounter a "good" lock, and later return to discover that it's a "masterwork" lock, there had better be a good reason the lock was upgraded. Your reasoning flaw ...

Unless you're specifically willing to retire that skill and all applications of it after a certain point (which may not be a bad idea), diplomacy needs to be comparable to that shit and at a fairly middling level, too. You can have some other balancing factor in there like 'diplomacy lasts for a lo...

Essentials isn't for the hardcore RPG player. It's for the casual who just wants to play a class that can get away with using simple tactics and not suck completely.

So when do you get bored of playing "mother may I" with the GM about setting DCs? When I get bored of playing RPGs in general. The DM always sets DCs, the only question is whether he does it directly or indirectly. By putting a red dragon in a room instead of an orc, I've set some DCs. Is...

Now you're (EDIT: Swordslinger) just being an ass. Apparently sarcasm is a forgotten art around here. I shall include tags for you guys from now on. Sliding DCs are fine, but only as benchmarks, not objective measures. It's one thing to say, "Lockpick checks at level 12 are DC X", it's an...

Sliding DCs for unopposed checks are generally a silly idea. If the game tells you that your character is getting better at something, but then raises all the benchmarks as you advance so that your success chance never changes, the designers are engaging in intellectual dishonesty. If they think th...

[quote="FrankTrollman"] And so on. The only reason it doesn't matter where you go or what you fight in 4e is because nothing you do actually matters. They can dispense with players being able to influence the course of events because the entire game is a waste of time. [/quote] Yeah, we al...