The Gaming Den

asymmetric information. That is a good (and I think not previously mentioned) source of depth. It can be hard on the GM though, since he has to simulate the NPCs knowledge. And it pretty much falls apart in DnD, since character capabilities are very very arbitrary. In the right conditions though, n...

It may have a new guideline, but not a new rule. Remember when you have your dragon drop something, you're not producing a rule, you're producing a dice expression. "+18 vs AC, 3d8+12" is not a rule, it's a series of numbers, and more importantly, it's numbers your PCs don't even see. Thi...

I bet it's the one with rules you can actually be expected to know And this is exactly while having rules is better than guidelines for creating rulings. Once your dragon gets to drop a boulder on someone for whatever amount of damage your game has a new rule. You are expected to know and remember ...

The 4e DMG has an Actions The Rules Don't Cover. 1 page total on p42. It says nothing about area effects, ongoing damage or even attacking NADs. The only guideline of relevance to your scenarion would be to use the high damage expression on the table, as it is likely a 1/encounter effect. Compare t...

If I'm having to sacrifice strategic depth and sophistication for the sake of some concept of "tactical depth", then that discourages prior planning, and inhibits story immersion. If I'm playing an intelligent (or even semi-intelligent) character (especially one whose job it is to search ...

As to thread topic: We want to find ways to get tactical depth into our games. Presumably we also want to keep the rules of the game simple or at least somewhat simple. So what we really want is emergent complexity - tactical depth arising from the interaction of individually simple subsystems. And ...

At whoever said so (Artificers weak or broken at low levels) it requires work on the part of the person playing the artificer, but medium and high, non-broken power-levels are possible. Broken ,abilities (needs both 1st level infusion slots, summons large elemental of appropriate type for 11 rounds...

That's what happens when you have tons of rules and subsystems. Somewhere somebody forgets to do their math right, and you end up with something broken. The issue isn't that tables are better than rules, it's that one table is better than dozens of pages of rules, simply because you can ensure that...

@Frank I think the Artificer's effectiveness largely depends on wether custom UMD-boosting items are allowed or not. With them, the checks are doable even at early levels. One easy way for artificers to gain actual, not theoretical versatility is the 4th level Concurrent Infusions infusion (Magic o...

Plebian, you do have a single useful point: In 4E, you can play a fighter and be useful. And that is indeed something that 3E got absolutely, horribly wrong. Casters are too good in 3E. Even after you nerf the obvious stuff casters are still better than non-casters at low levels and completely outcl...

I have come to the exact opposite conclusion of most game designers, in fact I'm starting to embrace my 1E feelings. Character generation should be as simple as possible. "Investment" in a character, makes it harder to part with the character and in turn makes the posibility of character ...

I tried writing a Winds of Fate system for people's abilities in a game a while ago, but I ran into a bit of an obstacle when I realized that giving people utility uses for every power was kind of weird when out of combat time. Some kind of "focus" option would certainly be useful in that...

Yes, that is an example of what I meant.

That can still cause the "first to get hurt loses, so run after the first wound" effect. So - cutting out the hyperbole - you see "if you are clearly getting your ass kicked you should run if you can" as a problem? Why? If you are hurt and you haven't hurt the opposition to a si...

The "Death Spiral" effect is not good for the game either though, if it's too strong. We've had that problem in Shadowrun 2 and 3, when (due to the variable Target Number system) even taking a light wound often was enough to push the TNs just high enough to make recovery against an enemy ...

Fighters actually had saving throws, but that's about it. Spells were more powerful than in 3E and bullshit "i win" effects were everywhere. Mostly in the shape of spells. I guess fighters where more powerful in that there was a greater percentage of high-level monsters they could actually...

Shadzar, why are you even interested in using any rules at all? You are rambling quite a bit, but by now it seems like any rule at all is a bad rule in your eyes. Well, free-form storytelling does not restrict your freedom at all, does it? And it is free to boot. Should be a blast! So if rules = bad...

My point was that veterans essentially get more options - even in a hypothetical completely balanced game - because some options are worse for the newbie. Then you don't have a balanced game. We refer to these as trap options. The fact that some abilities are difficult to figure out how to work the...

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The point is to NOT have two pools.

Since you just dismiss any examples without apparently even bothering to think about them I will speak in general statements: If you always have all of your moves available, there is a place for very specialized moves, as you always have other moves to fall back on. There is no room however for move...

If your goal is to have the PCs get hurt pretty often, but at the same time to make it hard to take them out, wouldn't it make sense to have them lose wound levels one at a time, with each wound level harder to lose than the one before? This multiple pool idea seems like it is more complicated and m...

If I understand Frank correctly he is saying that WoF can actually afford to have moves like "regular attack + disarm" because the roll will keep you from spamming it if it happens to be strictly better than the regular attack in the current situation. Without limiting the use of the move,...

Mid-level Warblade, say level 8ish or so: Disarm, Trip, Bullrush, Charge from the basic ruleset. Power Attack or something from feats. Probably more like two. Some strike for additional damage, a defensive maneuver, some kind of full attack special, perhaps a healing strike, some disabling strike. P...

A veteran on the other hand can pick exactly the abilities he likes and use them well. Or he could just pick the abilities at random and end off just as well. Please don't quote me out of context. Even if a completely random selection of abilities is exactly as powerful as a handpicked selection of...

You might want to think about just shifting any extra actions/attacks from haste/speed weapons/spells and so on into their own initiative pass(es). Handing out passes by character level or the likes will just end up in noticeable power bumps at those levels, which is probably not desirable. But spre...