The Gaming Den

4e explicitly tells you that PCs need enhancement bonuses, how many of them, and exactly which items grant them. So even if the DM doesn't ask for wishlists, PCs are guaranteed the basic toys they need to adventure. [Citation Needed] That's horseshit on several levels. The 4e books do not in fact t...

What level is your game btw? 1. About 12 + 3/4 level. 2. Well you've got your feat taxes: Paragon Defenses, Robust Defenses, plus those that give bonuses to just one defense. Other than that, you've got powers that buff defenses/debuff attacks. All of these are of inconsistent and questionable value...

What I mean is, Diablo generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to whatever devices you can think of to twink out your toon. There are zero guidelines (obviously) or guarantees other than 'the more time you spend grinding, the more [mostly useless] items you get.' How is this not a descripti...

Wow, 4 for 4! Well if there's one thing that TGDers are, it's predictable. And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!" How so? What I mean is, Diablo generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to whatever devices you can think of to twin...

But seriously, that's as far as we got. We never made builds with various numbers of Minor, Medium, and Major items at various levels to do Same Game Tests with. I'm genuinely not sure of how many Minor magic items a character "should" have at level 4, nor am I sure at what level characte...

I've been thinking of doing something like Frank's method, but I'd use a rolling method that wouldn't generate odd numbers. Would you change the "+1 to stat every four levels" rule, then? Drop ability scores and stat wishing /tomes/manuals, and you'd actually even out the game's scaling m...

My numbers are double checked, and all check out so this is the final draft. I added total cash by level, so I'm done with this project. I mean it! No more number crunching! Really! Gaaah! Final 4e WBL TS's parcel system is, frankly, obscene. At level 6, you can afford 5 level appropriate items. At ...

Would you be interested in sharing the underlying math? 1. For each level, I added together the value of an item two levels higher than the PC and the sell value of an item of the PC's level. Yes, I added the 100 gp for first level, just to be extra anal. 2. At levels 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16...

I've heard complaints from some DMs who don't like the parcel system, so I decided to spend a tedious half hour writing this.

Happy holidays, fellow DMs!

I can do the same for 4e's parcel system. Ugh, I'm getting tired of repeating myself. So stop. I can tell you right now, no matter how many times you repeat your opinion, it won't become fact. I can also tell you that it'd be more productive to figure out why you have this emotional need to hate 4e...

Let me rephrase: If you can excuse 3e's 'loot credits' system by saying that it wouldn't be a problem without broken spells and useless scrolls, I can excuse 4e's 'screw you for losing a copper' system by saying that it wouldn't be a problem if rituals had no cost. On the flipside, if you fixed the...

If you can use that defense for 3e's WBL, I can defend 4e's explicit parcel system by claiming that ritual costs have nothing to with it. Blah blah blah... Let me rephrase: If you can excuse 3e's 'loot credits' system by saying that it wouldn't be a problem without broken spells and useless scrolls...

because while ignoring minor expenditures like Scrolls of Goat Fucking does downgrade a PC's wealth for the rest of his career, That's absurd. If it downgrades your wealth for the rest of your career then you can't ignore it. I think you misunderstood my comment; I was trying to say that YES, if th...

Ya know, you do give some good advice here. But as usual, your hard-on for 3e leads you to one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard: 4E could have gone a long way towards mitigating this effect if they had implemented a sane Wealth-By-Level system like 3E did. 3e WBL is one of the most arbitrary, lo...

4e wins the gold for interesting combats. I've heard that monsters can have too many hp, but that's an easier problem to fix than 2e's obscene imbalances and mechanical repetitiveness.

When I DMed 3e, I did my best to discourage pets. The PHBII druid variant was mandatory, and I offered players of other classes a few bonus feats in exchange for dropping their pets.

It makes me giggle more than rage, but the phrase "3e/4e isn't D&D" is retarded, whatever response it gets.

I think it'd be better to rebalance all the basic races. They should all complement their favored class and have no more than four or five racial traits [none of which should be stupid +2 skill bonuses or similar bullshit]. But I play 4e, so maybe that's just me. That ... makes me want to make Vin D...

What's weirder in my eyes is his rabid insistence that he had fun, and with equal rabidity that he would never play or buy that game. I had fun playing a session OD&D, but I'll never buy it or suggest playing it over another edition. Maybe that's not exactly what Shadzar said, but it is possibl...

It seems to me that most rpg systems, d20 in particular, don't really model size all that well. Apart from grappling people, if you want to hit things you are almost better off being really tiny. This doesn't really seem to play out in the real world - Orcas eat Penguins, Bears eat People/Salmon, T...

Now imagine if that warrior had magical weapons he made himself. Other then making these magical weapons and other gear, he shows no other magical ability. Could he still be a 'warrior'? I think so but I'll see your opinion. Same deal as the arse lightning. If the author provides an explanation, or...

It's a simple matter of class names: 'mage, wizard, sorcerer, whatever' have an explanation for crazy moves built right into the title, while 'fighter, warrior, rogue, whatever' have 'local kid turned hero' built into the title. Because before we played D&D, what did we think of when we heard th...

Judging__Eagle wrote: I've yet to see someone in an anime claim that they are 2/3 anything.

Most anime I've seen is 2/3 teeth-grinding melodramatic story-stalling freeze-framing.

Wait, you meant a character's claim...nevermind.

Masterwork and enhancements don't stack because if they did, and your DM said 'You find a +1 sword,' you'd be like 'You mean masterwork?' and he'd be like 'No, a magical +1 sword,' and you'd be like 'Oh you mean +2 to attack and +1 to damage, or... :confused:' and then you'd both be like 'Fuck this ...