The Gaming Den

I was looking over the new feats from Races of War, and a thought occurred: these feats are really good. Indeed, if allowed in a game, they overshadow all other feats, making them useless and unpickable. I understand and agree with the reasoning behind them... but where does that leave normal feats?...

Regarding the wand; it was a lucky roll, mostly... the guy running the shop was a 4th-level Wizard of the sort that makes a living casting Identify a lot. However, I generated treasure using the tables in the DMG; I determined that he mostly had a bunch of Minor magic items, although he did have 3 M...

I wouldn't buy a WAND of Prestidigitation... too much money for too few uses. Really, Cantrip wands are fairly useless in general... consider the Wand of Light; 50 uses of the Light cantrip for 375 Gp when an Everburning Torch is only 110. Instead, I'd get a Wondrous Item granting Prestidigitation, ...

I'd point out that the only reason that Soviet Russia accomplished all that is because Stalin starved off it's populace in his zeal to industrialize. Yeah, if you pull all the peasants off the farms and stick them in factories, production will go up. Everyone will starve to death, but more guns will...

I see your point about Evocation, but in play, all the effective Wizards I've seen are Evokers. Not to mention the Warmage in a game I'm currently running that happened to acquire a Wand of Fireball at 2nd level (the party knocked over a magic item shop).

Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold... any of this ring any bells?

Drop Evocation? That's unusual advice... it's got most of the hurty spells, after all. Here's my analysis.[br][br]Abjuration, as you pointed out, doesn't have much. A few neat buffs, all the dispels, and some cool things like Prismatic Wall and Mordenkainen's Disjunction. You could drop it, and save...

1169685286[/unixtime]]Dude, but Batman is the equialent of Scry-and-Die, just with technology.[br][br]He's blind? He pulls out a blindsight gadget.[br][br]Broken legs? He has a power armor suit.[br][br]Space? Space suit.[br][br]Scry? Batwave. Batcomputer. Batsnitches. Bat Junior Detective Kit.[br][...

Ack. That's really silly.

Please do get Book of Gears out right away... the vast amount of crappy supplements coming out actually hurts, but quality work like yours eases the pain.

I've seen various classes/feats that do this (not WotC, IIRC), but they suck. Really, don't bother. There are magic items that do this, too; get one of those, instead. That way you don't waste feats/levels.

I totally agree. Generally speaking, the rules are ambiguous, and that is the heart of the problem. It makes me sad that the RAW isn't well-written enough to stand up to this kind of thing... the intent is usually clear enough, but the devil is in the details; leaving the balance of the game poised ...

I see where you're going with that, but no. Again, RAW specifically notes that you don't actually get the ability, regardless of anything else. Basically, so far as the item is concerned, you have the power, and the item works accordingly (hence: Use Magic Device). As far as the universe is concerne...

IR Vision is a fancy modern name for Darkvision.[br][br]Darkvision doesn't let you see Invisible creatures.[br][br]Therefore, IR Goggles won't help Batman against an Invisible Wizard. Some sort of super-hearing, yes, and there are devices to aid that... but Fly is hardly noisy, so what he'd be liste...

I can't see any confrontation between Batman and a maxed-out Wizard going well for Batman... the Wizard will benefit from Fly and Greater Invisibility without even thinking hard, and that gives Batman problems. While Batman's trying to locate his assailant, the Wizard is hammering away with save-or-...

Perhaps so (indeed, I concede that for the purposes of the argument), BUT that doesn't mean that you gain an 'emulated' class feature to the highest level you can emulate. You can gain to the extent of the magical improvement (otherwise, the ability to use the item is useless), but not to the extent...

Anyways, looking over the class, it is indeed like I remembered... it's got the sneaky backdoor entrance requirement of Evasion that can be used to bypass the Monk requirement. Given your Combat Feats in Races of War, this means that the prerequisite can be met with Lightning Reflexes... and thus, t...

As of post time, the thread was not accessible... it seems to be now, so never mind.

...Strange things going on with those servers...

On the Wizards boards, I noticed an expansion to the Boneblade Reaper, to be used with your Monk instead of the SRD Monk. Unfortunately, this is now inaccessible... for whatever reason, this was lost, along with the main Tome of Necromancy thread. Could you repost it here?

Well, it depends.[br][br]In GURPS, mages get magic the same way everyone gets skills... you pay character points. There's no restriction of 'spell levels', but all spells have prerequisites... which helps seperate mages into archetypes, as a given mage will only pay for the spells he likes; there's ...

I'm pretty certain that the Candle of Invocation doesn't do that...[br][br] Candle of Invocation[br][br]Each of these special tapers is dedicated to one of the nine alignments. Simply burning the candle generates a favorable aura for the individual so doing if the candle’s alignment matches that of ...

It's hardly dumb to use Scry-and-Die against random dungeon inhabitants... if you have the means, why not use them? It's a viable tactic to ambush and slay absolutely every enemy you ever meet, and fortune favors the paranoid in practice.[br][br]Of course, most people I know find that a horribly bor...

Wow... and here I thought nets were useless...

Nice little trick... I'll be sure to remember it.

I nominate Quick Draw.[br][br] [br]Quick Draw: For the moment, you can amuse yourself with the fact that technically everyone has Quickdraw for one rank of Sleight of Hand. According to the Sleight of Hand skill, anyone can take a -20 to their Sleight of Hand skill check in order to draw a weapon as...