The Gaming Den

Did you guys ever look at having Attuned magic items mostly -break- when their bearer dies? Some kind of difficult save for each item such that you don't get the huge pile of miscellaneous / redundant items as you roll through levels? This method would introduce a massive amount of uncertainty into...

Unfortunately... that seriously is the only way . The primary failings of 3e WBL are: [*] Items have costs that are totally fucked up. (unfixed). [*] The projections of how many items people are supposed to have are bad. (unfixed).[/list] Those last two are still serious problems, and the only way ...

Well, to be fair, the Wizard can hit in melee almost as well as the hardcore melee characters. There's no real 'binary' situations. The PCs can all hit their targets in combat, b/c monsters cap out around 20-something AC; maybe 30 something on a "high" AC creature; and PC to-Hit keeps cli...

Wow, and they seriously printed that ability and those templates and never put the two together? Its lucky for them people like you are here to work out the kinks in their system for them. Otherwise they might have to do something difficult like balance it themselves. Regarding the earlier question ...

In my own experience watching Tome Samurai, Tome Barbarians, PHB wizards with Tome PrCs; Tome Monks, PHB Druids and Tome Assassins; the Tome Fighter is on par. Well you just listed only the most powerful classes in the game there, the classes which most people agree need some toning down. So maybe ...

The template rule was added just so you couldn't become one-off creatures and vampires and defeat Frank's cheese. -Crissa Is this: "the rule was added so you couldn't defeat Frank's Cheese" (As in Franks Cheese is now unbeatable because templated creatures were the only answer) or "t...

Nothing would change if there was some statement of 'gnomes make most of the steampunky things you see' repeated two or three times in the PHB or setting books. It'd be no different than the whinging of dwarves making exquisite sets of armor or elves making pretty pretty bows and arrows. Gnomes wou...

So they are. I always thought that was a template and the list was just examples.

Still, it would seem anything that is a template is disallowed.

Out of interest, which elemental grants wish as an ability?

Well, red rob, when some of the spell-like abilities are things like "wish, for anything, without paying XP", you take notice. Orion, I was responding to this statement by Frank: looting the Monster Manual for templated forms that have Spell-likes you want is broken as fuck The rules seem...

So far, the facts that no-one seems to be disputing are: Save DC's for most effects should start around 14-15 and increase by 1 per level to be in line with existing powers. A/C should start between 15-20 and increases by around 2 per level. To hit bonus increases faster than Armour Class. Spell eff...

Okay. I will admit I hadn't read the PrC examples you gave. They are pretty much the exact Steampunk thing I was referring to. They have given Gnomes steampunk magi-tech options that are cool and flavourful. However, the point raised by Frank was that Gnomes are more popular as characters than Dwarv...

At level 5, halfling druids have the option of trading their Medium Size wildshape for Tiny Wildshape at level 5. Races of the Wild, page 158. The substitution is called "Undersized Wildshape" and it gives you one bonus wildshape use per day . As racial substitution levels go, no one care...

When your own sourcebook has start out by pointing out your nothing like these other guys you know you have a problem. Okay, but that has nothing to do with the fact that Forgotten Realms actually does have steampunk gnomes running around in ridiculous machines. Looking on here: http://forgottenrea...

They work in Forgotten Realms (even getting their own PrC)] That doesn't mean anything. They got their own sourcebook in 2nd edition and they still ended up being poorly defined. I mean the first page of their own sourcebook was all about how they weren't dwarves, alright? . When your own sourceboo...

Simply rolling back Gnomes to one of the popular versions (Cogspyn or David), from the scattershot incoherence of the 3e and wholly incompatible 3.5 versions, would have restored Gnomes to their place in the world - one where they are more popular than Dwarves. I would argue that the popularity of ...

For damage you have to look at the enemies of that level and determine how much is required to one round an enemy of the same level... because they can probably do the same to you, and will eventually if given a turn. Two rounds might be acceptable but is very risky, you will probably die in any an...

I'm fine with a playable draconic race. That's dandy. But the problem is that 4e ditched gnomes as one of the Core races ("Core" referring to the 3e version). Even if one didn't particularly like gnomes--and I'm not a huge fan of them--they're such a legacy race that leaving them out was ...

Virgileso, big breasts alone do not a hottie make. Also, Tzor, it doesn't really matter what the description says, people take away the image presented in the pictures. And the pics provided sure do make it seem like 4e Tiefling = Draenei. If you have some 4e pics of Tieflings that don't look like D...

Again, you pick some arbitrary benchmark and derive everything from there. An obvious choice is the CR system, but the CR system is pretty bad, so Roy's suggestion of looking at the spell list and balancing everything around that is solid. All that matters is consistency within your frame of refere...

Okay, so theres a lot of talk on these forums about level-appropriate abilities, enemies, items, effects and pretty much anything else relating to D&D. However, for a DM fairly new to 3.5 is there any kind of reference showing what is considered level appropriate at the various levels? Say, at l...

One quirk of Frank's system is that average PC stats will go up as party size increases. So a group of 6 will have better average stats than a group of 2.

Yeah, for that to work, you absolutely need to be on a per level workday where PCs can't just recharge whenever they want to. PC's can pretty much always recharge whenever they want to, its just a matter of what they sacrifice to do it. I mean, run away / teleport away / jump up a rope trick is alm...

Judging Eagle has hit this on the head. If the buffs are balanced using the action economy to be as effective as using your action to attack, then if you can somehow buff before the battle its like taking extra free actions at the start of the fight . So the party can defeat level innapropriate chal...

I mean, there's honestly nothing in Star Wars that makes stormtroopers a force for evil. As far as I can tell they're just guys following orders. I'm getting a german voice in my head shouting "Ve vere only folloving orders!" Following orders to kill innocent people is a pretty evil act i...

Interesting fact: go ahead and look at the four stat lines I rolled up and recorded. If each player was required to simply submit their first roll, the average stat would have been 12.04 - almost precisely average for rolling 4d6 and keeping the best 3. However, since the worst set is also allowed ...