The Gaming Den

IMO you should just let the DM worry about it, like he's always done ... Vancian casting is just part and parcel of D&D. Just provide alternative casting classes in case the DM doesn't want to worry about it. Of course putting all classes on a Vancian resource system is still as retarded as it w...

The Google glasses only cover a small part of your vision AFAICS (from pictures it looks like you have to look up to see anything). They're not really AR glasses. The main problem with AR is that it's incredibly fucking hard to put images at the correct focal depth ... stereo is easy, focal depth is...

It is possible to make ranged and melee synergize in such a way that you actually want both types in your party. Heck, there are many such methods. For example: in 2e AD&D, low level Magic Users were extremely fragile and leaving "the melee" was essentially suicide. Didn't the lack of...

hogarth wrote:I agree with Frank: 4E's crappiness has little to do with encounter/daily powers for fighters.

Can't blame encounters/dailies for fighters on ToB to begin with.

The wizard can take them all out.

So apparently they're doing their budgeting by adventure instead of encounter. I wonder how that's going to work out. Are adventures going to be of set length now? Does a single adventure get you a whole level? Not really sure here. That was a bit non sequitur, what answer do you base that conclusi...

"The fact that to find those spells automatically sets them off?" This is only if you subscribe to the "rogues are not and should and can not be magical in any way" school of thought ... in the games I played search found magical traps without setting them off, period. Traps have...

The problem with running with ranged opponents that you can only ever get at range with the one you're running at ... scale up the 15th level medusa archers+hellcat encounter to a party of 4 for instance, you might be able to get out of range by running away, but you aren't going to bring all of the...

Sooo ... run away?

No, all classes should be able to contribute equally to everything they face does not mean that all classes must be identical and contribute in the same way. But a party of 4 Tome Fighters is not going to be told they need a Wizard, and a party of 4 Wizards is not going to be told they need a Fight...

So basically everyone should be a wizard with healing abilities?

so is magical item dependency/overload. The accounting angle of magic item bonuses is a major turn off to new players ... but once you get rid off most of the bonus items (except the weapons) and cut down the amount of slots a little I doubt most people would care if things like mobility or terrain...

I don't get why people want to see sacred cows slaughtered when there are much bigger fish to fry ... how about fixing the real problems and get D&D back on the rails before you try to piss off all the grognards.

fectin wrote:Hmm. If only there were some way of duplicating a face's efforts which wizards could use. Some first level spell like charm person...
Or of duplicating trap monkeys, like Summon Monster I...

Well that's non sequitur ... what does that have to do with what I said?

Meanwhile, I will continue to play the much better game where Wizards can effectively win fights by casting spells. And no, forcing them to bring fighters around is not a good thing, if you have 4 players who all want to be Wizards, that's fucking okay. It is not good game design in a cooperative s...

Never played it ... I thought you had a 1 or 2 extra attacks and that was it? How would your level 10 fighter describe his action to take down 10 goblins?

How is a mundane sword blow supposed to be "taking down waves of orcs each round" ... the guy is in cognitive dissonance. Any way, the only real example given is tearing the arm off a troll ... if the fighter can at least tear the arm off a troll and beat him to death with it then that wou...

MtG is leagues ahead of D&D when it comes to analysing how their game works for one reason: tournaments. Living XXX and Pathfinder society can substitute for this to an extent, showing up what becomes problematic in play ... the only problem is that D&D can't so smoothly be retroactively pa...

Why are you talking to shadzar?

I'm relieved that impressed you; my RPG book looks a fair margin more professional for that, which is a good thing as I'm selling it for standard commercial prices. That's docbook for you, it only gets you so far. It does it with less complexity than TeX flavours though and obviously cheaper than t...

I'm impressed with this . All done with free tools. The source code for creating it is available as well . Should be easy enough to adapt. You can do the same thing with OpenOffice, including the nice dual column layout, but without a document markup language you need a lot of discipline to work the...

And as for monetization, the program is going to be free at launch for both GMs and players. We're just asking for some funding now to get development done and pay the server bills. We do plan on having a 3rd party marketplace where people can share free and paid content, and that's how we'll suppo...

The feature set of the mapping doesn't seem up to maptool standards (no lighting I can see). The feature set of the sound doesn't seem up to rpgsoundmixer or softrope ... Why pay some dubious people you don't know money to reinvent the wheel? Go give the people with working products money and incent...

I have considered backing some mechanical kickstarter projects because I recognize the need for up front tooling costs ... but if all someone need is time to write then why the hell would you give them money up front? If they are good and dedicated they will write it with or without funding, free ti...

I don't know what they hope to accomplish with the kickstarter format. Smith and Tinker are listed on wikipedia as having 40 employees. A $300,000 cash infusion will maybe let them make payroll for a year. They can't put out any kind of product anyone would care about in a year. Troika pumped out T...