The Gaming Den

As far as power management schemes go, "you have a fixed number of slots for all levels of your powers, character level determines what level of powers you can learn when that number of slots expands" was already used by ToB so I'm saving that for martial artists. So far I'm visualising 7 ...

No particular reason for damage calculation complexity except brain bugs resulting from cycling through several versions of the spell making or not making separate attacks. 1d10 (or slightly more)+2/level should produce a quite comparable total. I'm against d6(or d anything else)/level, because I th...

Also about what Frank said above on simplifying spells and the dilemma of more complexity in powers/more distinct powers. Let's look at the power of "I shoot glowing magic projectiles" which is very common in possible sources of inspiration. It clearly can take a number of forms from "...

Yes, Armor Class is just a legacy typo that was not eliminated. As about iterative attacks, I'm thinking about a flat -5 or -4 penalty for all attacks after ther first. That said, full attacks probably are going to be more important for melee brute monsters than PCs, given that warrior PCs are more ...

An idea this time, rather than a ready document. I've once written a more or less stereotypical tier concept for this game, describing what character should be able to do, but as I'm inclined to think that making a monster manual first and THEN crafting classes to fit the challenges is probably a be...

And one more point on caster MAD, given that I spoke of magical ICBMs myself in the past (and certain DnD settings, like Greyhawk and Dark Sun, involved things like this in the past, albeit not in the form PCs can access). Ultimately caster MAD is a form of mental exercises to establish a balance of...

Powerless dirt farmers outside of the cities might have had little in common in different provinces but nobody fucking cared, the Roman culture was a city culture. You are talking about a society pre-industrialization of agriculture. Do you have any idea what the urban-rural demography would have l...

This is not even remotely true. It's just one of those stupid things people say because... well, actually, I don't know why. Because it happens to be true. Roman provinces had basically fuck all in common beyond being required to pay their taxes and give lip service to some very basic aspects of Ro...

Ressurecting one major bad guy is easy. Actually it isn't. First, just try resurrecting someone whose soul is currently in his killer's pocket. Alternatively, someone who was turned to stone, Sequestered and Imprisoned in a random location. There are general ways around resurrection, differing base...

I'm sorry. Maybe I should have been more clear. My issue is treating creatures like Orcs or Gnolls or Goblins as irredeemably evil and kill on sight. Well, if you don't like such treatment, don't use it. There may be valid reasons why they are kill on sight for human and human-allied races (and so ...

High level spellcasters are MAD. No. That's just completely factually untrue. Indeed, the nature of high level spellcaster powers in any edition of DnD proper incentivizes striking at any enemy high-level enough to conceivably be a problem to you as soon as you discover him, because offense general...

(1)The scope of threat. People, for some reasons, are unimpressed with antagonists that just massacre half or more of the populations (entire populations save for those who managed to run when their leader is pissed off), destroy the environment so badly that breadbasket of the world turns into impo...

I agree with what Frank and Mechalich said. I can only add for those who might find their statements a little hard to believe that the authors have never agreed on something as basic to their concept as how Solar Exaltation actually works (and no, the intended scope of the game does not allow to swe...

Frank, I thought about it and round-by-round speed penaltes are another good idea, as it will likely provide another incentive to first eliminate mooks, instead of immediately trying to concentrate on boss. Hogarth, dazzled is -4 to attack and attribute checks related to vision. It is left there bec...

Frank, I must admit that I have a sentimental attachment to DnD spell list, given that it, alongside with the Monster Manual (AD&D 2E versions), were the things that drawn me into RPGs. That said, you're probably correct. 9 tiers of powers with the minimum of 11 distinct powers per tier in just ...

Thanks for the advice, Frank, both of your points are sound and I'll likely apply them in the next revision of the rules.

Schleiermacher, I'm glad that my writings may be of use to someone, thanks for your answer as well.

Link to the files is here: https://yadi.sk/d/EDAdisq63HWXjA Explanation of Concept Fairly long ago I began thinking about adapting the d20 system to handle the mechanical part of Exalted, given that the class-level system was a natural fit for the setting and the sorts of games people want to run in...

The four standard questions for a space setting you probably should answer: 1. What is the main energy source behind all the SFX? 2. What drive is used for normal spaceflight once you turn off FTL magic? 3. What prevents players or villains of the adventure from using this drive as a mass destructio...

If they were just lazy and incompetent , I could live with it. Just throw shit at the wall, scrape of what sticks too well. But they have to be such enormously dishonest shitweasels about it and call everything "FAQ" and "clarification". OK, I take my words back, looks like I wa...

But low/no-optimization play isn't balanced . Casters rule, martials drool is still true even when your players don't know how to build either - they're just not going to notice . If your audience is not going to notice then the game is balanced enough. Disparity between casters and martials is in ...

I think it's fair to claim that publishing an item/feat/class feature/whatever and then saying "whoopsies! I didn't mean to do that" shows a certain lack of knowing what they're doing. If your standard of "knowing what they're doing" excludes pretty much everyone, including MMOs...

So my question is this, assuming lack of malice, what logic path are they using to generate the FAQs and erratas coming from Paizo? Catering to the audience they targeted from the beginning (i.e., people who believed that 3.5 is a-OK and only needs a few minor fixes, and people who still seriously ...

So, in our hypothetic perfect D&D that's still actually playable past level 9 with only a moderate amount of Gentleman's Agreement; that is, not 3.X or Tome D&D; there are two important design goals as i see them: 1: The basic currency is armies. Not gold or turnips, but armies. Yes, pretty...

LM, if you want the main struggle to be about cosmic balance, why it is a balance between Law and Chaos? To me the more obvious decision is to make Law the faction of cosmic powers who would like the current, well, laws, of the universe, accidentally the very thing that prevents mortals from becomin...

A horde of Orcs is actually conceptually a pretty difficult thing for Elminster to deal with. Srsly? By the most conservative imaginable interpretation of what Elminster can do, the disparity in power level between him and standard orcs is vastly greater than disparities that turned battles into ef...