The Gaming Den

You can always split that force up, though. If 10 alarms go off, you have 10 mages go to each. They don't. 10, one after another. How many spirits can you summon again? Oops. Sure, 100 mages spirit-spamming is overkill for a gang - but what's the drawback? There's 0 risk to the mages and it will ta...

It will take, like, 12 seconds from "alarm sounded" to "100 spirits of man manifest and stunbolt the intruders into the ground." And how do the spirits know whom to attack? On a somewhat smaller scale though, that is what I would expect the basic security model to be in all but ...

Of course it less useful the less dice you have. Which is why I said it is completely opposite to what Karzak's intuition told him. Full defense is good for experts, stinks for novices. Also keep in mind that full defense still works when losing initiative or being ambushed. "I'll just kill the...

Is full defense a good option? It's usually a terrible idea in D&D, but this is of course a completely different game system... I mean if you have fewer IP's than your opposition, then you either do Full Defense or continue moving. But, if you have a reliable means of generating high numbers of...

Excluding 4E since it's not actually the same game as previous DnD editions: 3E has by far the best rules. It also has by far the fewest abuseable rules. What it does have is a large amount of abuseable content . For example, Divine Favor is bad content, but the rules are not the issue, they are nei...

I'm sure that there must be some explanation as to why every piece of corporate property isn't an impenetrable fortress, but the fact remains that a lot of common and highly-effective security measures are extremely cheap, and I can't really see why they wouldn't be ubiquitous. Considering that I'd...

I'm not saying you don't have rules for combat and the basics. I'm just saying you don't need little subsystems to try to cover everything from swinging on chandeliers to dropping rocks, because I really don't give a shit how in depth your rules system is, at some point the DM is going to have make...

do you mean "inherent" .... because, otherwise, this makes no sense to me. Yes. In hindsight I have no clue why I wrote inimical instead. But let me give you a reason why changing the tactics/strategy ratio is a bad idea. Either your group was happy with the existing ratio, in which case ...

Okay, what am I missing now? The part where there is no need in the first place to alter the balance of strategical and tactical minigames from level to level. Doing so is entirely up to the designers of the game, and I can make a decent argument for it being a bad idea, period. Contrarily to what ...

Look, we already agreed that being able to plan before the battle necessarily means that what you do during battle is less important. Your entire argument is reduced to "high levels = strategic abilities, therefore high level = tactics go away". But the very premise is already flawed. No g...

Guys, could you either take it to PMs or go into more detail? As is, you are not entertaining enough to justify the posts.

or just starting a scratch built system. Perhaps, but that's not what the thread is about. He does have a point though. DnD is vast, both in the stories it covers and the amount of stuff that has been written for it. Now, looking at 3E + Tome, it seems entirely reasonable to say that a large part o...

I have no idea what you are trying to say here, or in what way it relates to mechanics. Let me repeat: I believe that sound mechanics enhance the roleplaying part of the game. For example, if you actually get to protect the king's courier with your body, this opens up the basic concept of the bodygu...

Exactly, except that you can store food for non-vampires. Having to hide from authorities for a week is a staple of the genre. This is rather easy to do when you just have to deal with eating cold soy snacks for a few days - but quite hard when you regularly have to drain essence from others.

Meanwhile, in most SR games, the social penalties of vampirism are a real problem. You stand out in a crowd and are easier for the authorities to track. Also, you're down four dice on anything you do in sunlight and someone can bust your face in with a wooden chair, which might be an issue. Not to ...

1) Finishing your work is hard. I bet most, if not all of us, have a couple of unfinished pet projects lying around. But you can count the number of people on this board who have finished, polished and posted anything bigger than a prestige class on your fingers. 2) Designing good games is hard. It ...

How so? Advancing can mean bigger numbers or new abilities. Bigger numbers generally don't change gameplay, other then allowing you to stomp your original enemies easier. And new abilities only change gameplay if powers with strategic relevance are reserved for higher levels of advancement. The only...

So why is DnD not like chess? It's not adversarial for one. The DM isn't trying to kill the PCs, you're trying to make fun encounters. Also you're trying to tell a story. When I'm playing chess I don't worry about each of my knight's motivations and wonder if maybe one of them may decide to retreat...

Ok, assuming killing people in secure facilities without being detected is the benchmark - well, there are benefits to both types of killer. Mages get some very nice infiltration toys and can get their actual killing done opposed by willpower, which can be very nice. The actual killing is not "...

Browsingthe older threads brought one of FT's other comments to mind; how hard is it to bring down a dragon (great or otherwise)? Can a high-initiation Mage really tell one to sit down and shut up? You don't need mages. Mages are good at killing a single tough opponent, dragons are good against mag...

You are not trying to be better than your teammates or opponents at any one thing, you are trying to be good enough in as many fields as possible. Uh... no. This is just wrong on many levels. Your character is trying to do two things: Not be a liability to the team. and Be an asset to the team. Yes...

Well, thank you all for showing why guidelines are problematic and writing rules is hard better than I ever could. Now, if we could step away from writing rules about dropping boulders on people for a second .... tactical depth: If tactical shallowness is being able to spot "the best move"...

Shadowrun and action heroes do not mix well, at least in the standard setting. You are not reenacting Lethal Weapon or Predator. Think The Italian Job or Heat instead. You are not trying to be better than your teammates or opponents at any one thing, you are trying to be good enough in as many field...

but a more efficient use of time is exactly what makes them superior; the less time spent crunching numbers, the more time spent thinking about tactical options, story, and other things that make the game more enjoyable than a few lines of text in a book would suggest. Guidelines ensure you spend m...

You are using a rule, you're getting it from a table, but granted which box in the table you select it from is up to you, but given that "boulder" isn't a standard gameworld object anyway, I don't see an issue with it. Boulders come in all shapes and sizes anyway, so maybe the first bould...