The Gaming Den

Tradition: Mentalism Concept: Mentalists believe that their powers are manifestations of the human mind. By cultivating their awareness of their surroundings, they become able to reach out into the "aether" to reveal and manipulate the otherwise inaccessible. Mentalists consider spirits to...

Christian Theurgy makes me angry. It was one of the traditions I thought was lacking the minute I read the core book, so I was very excited to see it in the Street Magic table of contents. But why does it suck so much? Look, people, I get that you need to tread lightly for fear of giving offense or ...

SPIRIT RANGER "These woods are dangerous for those who do not know the way. We're going to take a shortcut through this tree." The word "ranger" always means a warrior who tramps around in the woods, but why he does and what he wears while doing it are subject to much debate. Th...

Let's say I summon a spirit and let it possess me. Are its stats limited by my augmented maximums? or can they exceed them? Does it still have 2 initiative passes? Now, suppose I have Channeling I can use my own skills while possessd by the spirit. Using the spirit's powers still costs a service. Wh...

I'm really curious to see what your Paladin was going to look like, though I'm *extremely* happy with how the Kantian paladin plays. Mad props to the designer; at a casual read, it looks balanced and playable, but you have to see it in action to get just how *fun* it is. A Ranger might also be nice,...

Actually, having your shtick disrupted can be fun too if you have reasonable backups.

I had a monk player who liked to fight with a quarterstaff, but I made sure to disarm him occasionally so he could make unarmed strikes.

I actually side with K here-- everything about his proposal makes sense except that I think defending one's home *is* a cool adventure, maybe even more than once, enough to be, while not a campaign, a solid subtheme of one. And finding out that your *own* home is under attack on the morn you besiege...

Okay, we had the big finale today -- a fight through a complex full of ogre zombies, skeleton archers, invisible (enlarged) Janni and orc ghoul and drow vampire paragons. Good times. The bosses: "The Warden," a Bearded Devil Conduit 1 (Fire) -- this guy tossed a fireball that seriously sca...

right, but .25/level is actually still worse than buying the skill directly. Or do Adepts go voer 6 in thier skills so often that thye don't care?

Does it bother you that Improved Ability, Great Leap, and Enhanced Perception are now (mostly) not cost effective? (Perception is if you have Astral Perception)

they're still useful for breaking caps, obviously.

I'm assuming you use Karma/2 for the BP cost of magic junk that costs Karma?

Frank-- There's actually a *really* simple way to deal with that problem-- Award XP/SkillPoints/other advancement at the *beginning* of every adventure, based on the difficulty of the adventure. That way people get a power-up before taking on big bosses, not after; and they can use the resources gai...

My biggest concern with running Shadowrun, honestly is the sheer amount of work designing adventures looks to be. I mean, a basic run like "break into this building and steal something" requires me to do the building's layout and inhabitants/security, plus their computer setup and security...

1. Possession and Inhabitation spirits are affected by gravity. 2. The fact that you can air walk doesn't mean that a set of wings isn't useful. -Username17 also, most of the printed possession traditions have air an earth. ETA: I notice that essentially all of your house rules make things cost les...

So, I have a player who wants to be a Druid. Being intuition-based seems to be awesomesauce -- not only is it a great stat, but Orks have no disadvantage. Spirit-wise, it seems a little worse than Shamanism -- the plant's "magic guard" could be really useful, but not as useful as the Spiri...

Is there a way to encourage people to pick up basic levels of perception, infiltration, eitquette, etc.? It seems like, with all skill rated equally, a magician would *always* be better off with another die of a casting skill. I still don't understand the difference between flight and what materiali...

If getting on a horse is an acceptable counter to kiting, why isn't getting on a pegasus an acceptable answer to flying?

Furthermore, if the flying, ranged character is also as powerful generally as the melee specialist, isn't he higher level? And doesn't he thus deserve to win?

I found your hacking revision. It makes sense, but seems to make things even more complicated. It also appears to make hackers more powerful, though maybe that's just because I didn't understand what hackers were already capable of. Why do some spirits have Flight, if none of them are affected by gr...

Novels Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli I can't remember the books, but aragorn has a powerful bow in a lot fo movie-related material. Boromir got killed by an archer, so clearly his archetype paid off. Richard Rahl - "Sword of Truth" series, Terry Goodkind (yes, he occasionally used magic - but h...

I'm starting a game of Shadowrun in a couple of weeks with a crowd that's pretty new to roleplaying and completely new to Shadowrun. Some issues: One-- the matrix really, really confuses me. I know you had a reformation of the rules somewhere. Also, on karma vs Build Points: I understand why the dua...

Obviously Water Walking is a much less valuable PC ability than flight. But I was thinking in terms fo thigns that invalidate melee heroes. I should have separated out the ones I was conceiving of as characters from the ones I conceived of as challenges. If you encounter Jesus, he's going to be near...

I don't know why Bellerophon is cheaper than Perseus or any of those other Greek bastards. DNAngel features 2 angel guys who fly around and shoot energy beams at each other. But there are pletny fo other anime, and western cartoons, with flying magic-shooting heroes. Pern? Yeah, the fungus are a maj...

there's Bellerophon. And there are tons of flying archer women in The Golden Compass. Actually, flying archer girls are almsot as common as regular archer girls in cartoons and anime. [br][br]Ranged attackers that are apparently unheroic:[br]http://www.luc.edu/faculty/pgraha1/myth/bellerophon.jpg[br...

I *do* thinnk flying could stand to be regulated better than it is -- I'll probably have an essay up eventually about who needs it and when -- but Random, there IS a place for "really good swordsman" -- it's level 3[br][br]At level three, you are an un almost unbelievably badass warrior; e...

melee-only characters have problems with

ranged+flying

or

ranged+starting at really long distance

or

ranged+ faster than you

or

ranged+ inaccessible

or countless other ways of being screwed over.