The Gaming Den

Not to sidetrack, but what can fighters do in a non-flashy system, aside from auto-attack? Bring combat to a screeching halt as you pour through volumes of rules about what exact benefit a longsword provides over a bastard sword. That and be exactly the same as every other fighter on the planet. Sw...

Well for example polearms: I don't actually know what most of them look like to differentiate why one is better at tripping while another is better at disarming and a third is better at set vs. charge. So why not say fuck the difference, Polearms (No Name brand) can be designed to do either A,B, or...

I don't think there is necessarily a mechanical issue with such a philosophy, though some of your examples bring some into play. There's the fact disarm is made obsolete. Also, you're suggestion of limiting the number of weapons you can carry by some non-physical and wholly arbitrary amount is stup...

Co-DMing can work. DMPCs can work. But probably, you want a rotating DM system. You DM one week, they DM the next week. Rulings stand for the week (if the other DM hates it, allow change). The two of you agree on a character to play (background, general goals), and swap out that character. Usually ...

Wait, quick-draw as the assumed standard? Doesn't that make the concept of disarm as a combat option completely pointless? This is a really good point and something that I hadn't considered. In that case we could make disarm come with an inherent modifier to the drawing process. You lose actions if...

Are you trying to DM at the same time as in you are both sitting behind the DM screen and narrating events and what not, or as in you both take turns running a story arc, adventure, session or scene. What I mean is, do you want to co-DM literally at the same time or take turns? If its the former I d...

and there may be balance issues that I'm not aware of. Wait a minute... ow could you not be aware of them? We've been talking about them at length . Every maneuver you get is an "option" that will "useful" in a "circumstance." Assuming for the moment that these abiliti...

My suggestion would be that if you absolutely must have some combat styles that are only usable with daggers or flails or chainsaws, that you make the majority of weapon styles completely weapon independent. And then you make a couple that are weapon specific. And you make those move sets specifica...

Let's put it in D&D 4e terms, because that game is especially egregious about it. Imagine for the moment that you are being offered two abilities: one of them is off the Warlock list and the other is off the ranger list. Nominally they are both ranged striker powers, so theoretically they shoul...

The generalist, then, is frequently advantaged vs specialists because the likelihood of knowing their weakness increases as your number of styles increases, however you will never totally dominate vs anyone and if you encounter a specialist whose weakness you don't know you are screwed. "Jake,...

If you make different weapons useful in different situations, so that sometimes you want to use a spear even if you specialized in a sword, then you really encourage not overspecializing. This would be my approach. I would also make the situational penalties rare enough that specialization isn't un...

You certainly misunderstood something about SAME, because it doesn't even have classes in the main implementation. You might be taking "TNE" and "SAME" as the same (and yeah, they're currently using the same setting, but not rules), but even TNE is expected to have "classes...

I was thinking that you could have several combat skills, like one handed melee, two handed melee, thrown, one handed ranged, two handed ranged, etc. You put your points into these areas and each school gives you a variety of techniques that you can learn, up to your total skill level. I'd rather d...

I did say that to begin with. Conan, Drizzt, Aragorn, Gawain, etc. No you didn't. Not explicitly or declaratively. Nevertheless, if you want Conan there is a system out there for it. I'm trying to be helpful here but you seem to think that I (or other people trying to be helpful) have anything inve...

I mean, I thought it was pretty okay. Not exactly an ability you'd be whipping out all of the time, due to size modifiers, but it wasn't exactly hard to grok. So what's the deal here? I've never seen a grapple used that didn't bring game play to a screeching halt. Grapple is also the sort of thing ...

Well, if fighters gain things at 1, 6, 11... And skills at 3, 9, 17... You can just assign levels to that. However, you generally want things that cost a feat to cost a feat, and things that are default, default. Humans already get an extra feat, so basically humans can /be/ another race by taking ...

Leress: That could work, if you could make the system in general work for it - I believe it errs further on the gritty side than is desirable. (perhaps much further) Elennsar, define "superhuman," because I don't think you mean "superhuman" as in "being more than a normal g...

Recognizing that "Maybe we should hit them on the flank.", for instance. Knowing that melee guys in front, archers behind works very nicely. Etc. Its mostly because "being good at this" ought to be worth taking seriously, even if on its own its not enough. As for balancing class...

I think you're using the word more loosely than I am, but regarding roles... Combat: Ranged Damage, Close combat damage, status effects (removing enemy actions), battlefield control (enemy positioning), Combat buffs, Combat debuffs, aggression control, healing Non-combat: Gather information (can be...

Which does not require fighters being able to do things equal to D&D mages. If a mage creating light is a taxing feat, instead of hardly worth checking if he can do that another X times, then what fighters need to be able to do is much less demanding, which means we can model relatively "m...

No kidding - but we already have the Tomes and five other things for phlebtonium mania. Why can't we just represent people who are merely exceptional (if larger than life) and not able to perform super feats in a game for once? Because 'exceptional' is a way of justifying the ability to do things t...

Noncombat abilities for non-spellcasters: Options: 1: Noncasters are the specialists in using devices. Including magic items, if they exist. 2: Noncasters are specialists in organization, they lead tiny men. 3: I forget We could just make a big ass list of roles (both combat and non-combat) and the...

I don't know I agree with this. Why does having someone else be good at something negate the fact that you are ok at it? With your longbow example one might want to bring a longbow because it synergies well with things that they are the best at (like staying out of close combat). Even if they don't...

You still are left with the fact that making a Spot or Listen check is not nearly as useful as casting a spell, which renders them much less useful. Part of what they do means they need to be able to do gather information . It isn't their only valuable skill, but robbing them of it is like saying t...

I'm rather fond of a lot of the roles that magic allows for in D&D. I think magic users should be able to heal (or buff in general), control battlefield conditions, or gain important information better than non-casters. Non-casters, then, would interact socially, deal damage, and make informati...