The Gaming Den

Sir Ownsalot is screwed. What sort of idiot would take more than 2 levels of Bloodstorm Blade when he can take more levels of Warblade instead? My recommendation would be to go Warblade 10 (unless you want to play with Bloodstorm Blade; Warblade 5/BB 2/Warblade +3 works there), there's not enough va...

I take it you're playing single-player? Multiplayer changes things a lot, I think. On the collection of arrow-catchers; if it's a pain, only put 5 guys up front to block arrows & lug around some extras as bodyguards. When they die or rout, create replacements from the bodyguards & don't both...

How about having a mechanism for calling in other skill checks? The bard gets the NPC to listen (diplomacy) then passes the buck on to the wizards knowledge skills for the next check, or whatever. This requires that these content skills be in some way more important than the bard spamming tricked ou...

That's a lot of negatives, PL. What are you in favour of? If I'm reading your earlier comments right it's social attacks doing direct HP damage with a different effect if you 'kill' someone, but I may be misunderstanding you.

Perhaps something like some scaled system of HP - something like doing their base HP in damage will get you a minor victory (10% off!), twice that a moderate one (Yes, I will take that second-hand armour in payment), three times an major one (Please! Just take it away from me!) The opponent should b...

MTP = Magic Tea Party, i.e. winging it. I don't think exact distances were used on that occasion. Yeah, I wasn't talking about movement on a scale of months as in LotR. Hick's point about reading the archives isn't a bad one by the way. It is a bit like telling someone to look it up on tvtropes thou...

Chase scenes - running someone down, or running away from someone. One example; running through a crowded market. It was handled largely by MTP, with a few skill rolls, but one of the players was left pretty unhappy because he felt his characters' significantly better speed than the others should ha...

mean_liar, that a disease is usually nonfatal in children doesn't mean it's always so. Dunno about diptheria, but measles is usually described as nonfatal if you get it as a child, but it does kill a fraction via pneumonia and/or brain inflammation. Vaccines have the same risk, but it's 2-3 orders o...

Combat is necessary to any game I've played, but to me there also needs to be a way of avoiding combat (stealth) covered by the rules. There also needs to be a way for players who aren't geniuses at convincing the GM to convince the NPCs, and once you've got both of these covered you might as well h...

Assuming that the people you game with agree with you as to what is or isn't an improvement, you have a game slightly better than either 3.0 or 3.5 but requiring twice the weight of books as either alone. Further house rules and/or gentlemen's agreements are still required IMO.

There's no great reason that every martial adept has to have a different maneuver recovery mechanic, I think they did it that way because the writers were trying ideas out. Creating new lists of maneuvers isn't a big problem. There's a lot of stuff out there to steal - search for various stuff like ...

Favorite book. I wanna see more Fightan Magic classes, but I've never had the time to sit down and do it. This is the internet, someone's always already done half the work for you somewhere. In this case there's a guy on the enworld boards who spent a fair bit of time writing up some more disciplin...

Eberrons answer to the airship question was that magicked seagoing ships are faster and carry more. Not consistent with the spell descriptions and aero/hydrodynamics perhaps, but someone gave it a thought at one point.

I can't believe you guys are still arguing about this. It's such a tiny, tiny thing.

'They may have has a strong assiociation with death ...'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf

Just to clarify - I am not Elennsar, and I am not insisting that in the games I've played every battle with giant rats or other mooks has carried any significant chance of a loss. Not all battles need to be life or death for the PCs.

But no one plays a game where characters die. I mean, in all the RPGs I've ever played I'd never seen a player character die a permanent death. Either the DM fudges the rules pretty blatantly or some form of resurrection is brought into play. There are some pretty substantial differences between th...

One of the things which grated hardest on me about 4e - and, granted, some 3e D&D games - is the idea that there are no consequences. A night of sleep will cure almost everything, and a days shopping will cure the rest. Up to and including death. If the characters can't ever die practically spea...

Improved Familiar feat? "Almost any creature of the same general size and power as those on the list makes a suitable familiar."

Here in NZ the law was recently changed - there was a defence when charged with assault on a child which allowed reasonable force in discipline, and historical precedents had built up which allowed it to be used when beating your kid with a riding crop, say. This defence was removed. The sky hasn't ...

Short of pouring concrete? Putting down some black plastic and covering the plastic with gravel might be your best bet. I wouldn't recommend regular weedkilling chemicals, especially if your dog eats the grass.

Agreed on the GM fiat. All that stuff Frank was talking about condensing gaseous iron on people to kill them etc? Won't work if the GM uses the damage caps which tell you how much damage a given level of a sphere is allowed to do. Now, I wouldn't have bought Spirit up to 3 but now you have it you ha...

In Rolemaster there's a version or two of this which counts off seconds for attacks or other actions. It looks good, but the perverse incentive is that the players want to spam attacks as quickly as possible and do as little else as possible for maximum effectiveness. I didn't like it; the people I ...

I agree with JE.

One question about "Setite lore holds that the church existed thousands of years ago and was only rediscovered in the 1800s" - aren't there any number of long-lived or immortal creatures who can simply confirm or deny this in any WoD?

... all else being equal, you'd rather have a muggle crew with a whupass ship than a kickass crew with a civilian ship. But at least the latter stand a chance. That's a tricky balance point to hit. The PCs are going to need some expendable resource - hero-only moonstones, edge/luck/action points, o...