The Gaming Den

Clearly, Leadership can provide a larger benefit than most other feats. Due to the economy of actions, a cohort lets you do twice as much stuff. Give them a wand and they're like a quickened spell. But they do have their limitations. Two HD isn't a big disadvantage, but they ARE more fragile than th...

Silly question. Due to Frank's comment about the Aztecs being better farmers than the Europeans...in settings like the Forgotten Realms which are mash-ups of Fantasy Counterpart cultures, could we safely assume that the Aztecs' non-shitty farming techniques make it over to fake Europe? Interesting ...

One idea I really like for hoarding is the idea of abiogenesis. This is a classical/medieval theory that life orginates spontaneously. For example, a log left floating in a swamp will magically transform into a crocodile. Meat will magically turn into maggots. Now, we've clearly abandoned that theor...

Combat Maneuvers are worse. The CMB vs. CMD system makes it very hard to be a tripstar or grappler. Pathfinder has many actual flaws, you don't need to invent any more to criticize it. If the CMD is still 15 + Combat Maneuver Bonus, against an equal opponent, you succeed 25% of the time; rather tha...

The biggest problem with D&D Next that I'm seeing is that they're afraid to give meaningful bonuses STILL. I get that there is an RNG, and you don't want to push people off of it. But seriously, all these piddling +1s do is a big fat nothing. They make it ridiculously easy for a cleric to be bet...

WotC can't quality control all the products that would be released on this model. First off, nobody will want to submit their stuff to review. By making WotC the final arbiter of what can or cannot be published, they're basically accepting that WotC could shut them down at any time. If Wizards of th...

I reminded of the classic scene in Lethal Weapon 2 where Danny Glover has a gun pointed at the South African Ambassador. "Diplomatic Immunity". BAM! "Just been revoked." The law works how people think it will work, and when you have a bunch of 'strongmen', they'll take things int...

Since I've just been watching Women's Olympic Swimming, I wouldn't take that as a 'guarantee' of the gender of the picture.

Again, I think it's supposed to be a guy, but if the artist told me that it was a girl, I'd have to take (his?) word for it.

I can't tell if you're serious. The first picture is PROBABLY a guy, but what's that based on? Practical clothing? Comparing the figure to the woman in the second picture? The first picture is someone with long hair. Seen from the back. If we didn't have any preconceived notions, it could be either...

D&D is _entirely_ cavalier about healing, and always has been. It isn't even an issue unless you want D&D to be something else entirely. This disconnect isn't 'hp are abstract.' That would be easy. The problem comes in because they are defined as both abstract and sometimes not under certai...

The healing surge issue doesn't have an easy fix. Movies like Yojimbo or the Bruce Willis western version Last Man Standing both have a hero that is severely beaten and spents months recovering before being ready to fight. Even Wesley (Dread Pirate Roberts) is mostly dead and needs a 'miracle' to ge...

So far nothing and I mean nothing I have seen about D&D Next looks to be in any way an improvement over 4e and the designers talking it up continue to contradict each other while presenting ideas for needlessly complex systems that should have been streamlined, if not outright rejected shortly ...

So the question is: was 3.X the best that DnD will ever be? For the forseeable future, probably. D&D Next doesn't really show any signs that it's going to do any of the things it needs to do to make a 'better' version of the game. There are lots of ways you can measure 'best', and by most of th...

In my regular group, we've been playing with a system of Wound Points (WP) and Vitality (VP). This is drawn at least in part from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana, but I can't recall how similar it might be at the moment. What do you do with sneak attacks? We treat sneak attack as 'normal damage' - just more o...

Regarding the article on 'Fighter's getting Special Maneuver Dice', I don't care for the idea as being excessively gamist. I don't like playing with 'chits' when activating character abilities... But I can see why it might appeal to others. What bothers me more is that he suggested a Fighter with a ...

In my regular group, we've been playing with a system of Wound Points (WP) and Vitality (VP). This is drawn at least in part from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana, but I can't recall how similar it might be at the moment. Let's say you have a class with a d10 HD (like Fighter). At 1st level you get 10 WP + Con ...

dndarchive is my main RPG board (dndarchive.com). The community is small, but that's usually a good thing, since they also tend to be intelligent, thoughtful and fun to hang with. Though newcomers are always welcome. Lately it's been a little TOO slow, so I've been posting here a little. I think thi...

It's a beautiful model -

let D&D blaze a trail and fail. Then follow that trail and make sure you do it at least as well or better.

They've decided not to be the innovator, just to emulate and 'improve'.

My understanding is that the Illithid are not Open Gaming Content. However, since they draw pretty explicitly from the Lovecraftian Mythos, you might be able to circumvent that by going back to the source material... Maybe.

I don't know if it matters, but I figured it couldn't hurt to mention it.

Just a hypothetical (as far as I know). But at some point in the future, there's no reason NOT to do it. If they can get people to buy all new books, they'll make a lot of money. And they already have a 'marketing point'. 'Paizo brought you Pathfinder, a major improvement on 3.5, allowing you to sti...

Could people run up VP totals by 'trading' a province back and forth? Like in RISK where you must conquer a territory each turn for a RISK card, people often invade a country than choose to defend it minimally so both sides can get a RISK card, even if they're not on the offensive anywhere else.

I agree that skills should be open to everyone. The Fighter should be able to Hide and Spot, if that's what he wants to do. The Rogue should be able to Handle Animals if that's what he wants to do (nice doggy!). The cross-class bullshit doesn't add anything. For Use Magic Device, I'm not convinced t...

Why? Pathfinder should have been really impressive when it came out. If, with all the information and tools at their disposal, Paizo managed to come out with Pathfinder, what new stuff do you think could POSSIBLY happen to inspire them to make Pathfinder II actually good? Paizo claims that they wer...

I enjoyed reading Frank's thoughts on Pathfinder, and I don't disagree with anything he said. I haven't played the released version, but I did participate in the Alpha and the Beta playtest (and bought the Beta version). In general, if you enjoyed 3.5, you'll probably enjoy Pathfinder. But Pathfinde...

I'm interested to hear of any occurrences from history where a posse of dukes (not earls or counts or something, dukes -- one level just below the king) tried to personally stop someone from attacking the king. If you're a BBEG, and you have a 'Number 2', he's probably not your super-bodyguard. You...