The Gaming Den

Any kind of cost to mixing armies (loss of special benefits, surcharges, etc) come with the assumption that the marginal utility is about equal. However, when you're trying to make everything in the game useable together, estimating what mixing armies is worth would get complex. You can create what ...

If there's another, it's the idea that games should be super-narrow in focus... 4e really is... built on the assumption that every game of Dungeons and Dragons involves hunting down monsters lairing in creepy-ass places underground... Just like the shit pre-2e. OD&D has (sketchy, but present) r...

So, the suggestion is that pregens work about like Roland, Bear of the North? "Here is a character build, go play it, it will not suck"? Yes. Maybe not as exhaustively commented, but a few reasonably optimized pregens, encompassing each class, for each tier would be ideal. Depending on ho...

[*] Pre-printed characters are usually too narrow in focus and scope both crunchwise and fluffwise. I mean, even if you're going to accept that you have some options that you personally don't like, having a bard iconic that's a sexy gnome with a goatee is automatically alienating. That thing Pathfi...

Placing divine abilities into virtual magic items sounds like a good way of implementing them; so, a Paladin is a Fighter with divine endowments and a Cleric is a Wizard who consorts with a god. It's easier to balance than making entire separate classes. Some suggestions: *While the gods shouldn't h...

If the players have figured out the cipher, they ought to simply be allowed to spend in-game time to decrypt the scroll and have the MC hand them the decrypted scroll. Actually decrypting it by hand would be busy-work. With that change, I'd say that this puzzle acceptable on both counts. As an aside...

This creates a campaign of objective difficulty , even if that difficulty is somewhat variable. Y...no. This may create a campaign that allows for some objective criteria that serve as indicators. Any interpretation of those criteria is subjective (although subjectiveness may be based strongly on e...

The only way you can create "objectively difficult" challenges is to write a module blind with no knowledge of the PCs that will be played in that campaign. Which I think most people are going to agree results in shitty railroaded games because at that point you have by definition not all...

Because this doesn't have a system to back it up, it is literally impossible to get damage modifiers right, because things like "double" damage is always too fucking much, and you can't say "+20" because you don't know if +20 is too much or too little. Undead should have somethi...

Perhaps if I added: "However, if you have Fire Resistance, you are not treated as resistant or vulnerable to fire, and if you have Fire Immunity, you are treated as instead having Fire Resistance.". I'm OK with undead fire giants appearing as made of ash, with weak blue flame, that has bec...

The food require is meant as a change to the normal rules for starvation, so nothing special. It might be important for vampires to be able to go for days without blood, though; this could be an ability granted by the class(es). There could be a single Vampire class, or one for each type (e.g. WoD c...

Because it was claimed that templates cannot reasonably have a net-zero value, I made this as an attempt to show otherwise. Undead *You are healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy. *You do not heal naturally. *You are immune to poisons and disease. (side note: saline solution could a...

How about a giant scorpion against a level 7 fighter? You can pump your caster level by 3 easy, getting you the 10 HD necessary to polymorph to a giant scorpion. Same process applies to any creature--take its HD and drop that by 2-4, and you have the level of the caster using the spell (and thus th...

What is OSH? Stands for "Old School Hack". It's an OD&D retroclone fantasy heartbreaker with a resolution about on the level of 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle (not WHFRP). I genuinely do not know what the point is. -Username17 It's very loosely based on Moldvay Basic D&D. It...

Why did you send your PCs against a level 9000 opponent? What was the point of that? That's just waving your dick around. I think his argument was a reductio ad absurdum . If the PCs can use Explosive Runes based tactics, so can NPCs. This isn't to say that I'm convinced of his original argument, b...

Just pointing this out. It uses the Friendship Track to turn generosity, honesty, etc. into Magic Points which, among other things can be spent to use out-of-depth powers, so you might be able to solve the Dreamstep problem.

You can accomplish the same story without making the vampire burned by sunlight, because the story is predicated on "the vampire has a strategic advantage during the night". Abilities like Thermal Vision, Children of the Night (if it was made to be only allowed/more efficient when used at ...

Stephenie Meyer's Edward Cullen, on the otherhand... he can chill in sunlight. He can drink blood without killing people (I think, fuck if I know how twilight vampire bites work). He is immortal and has superpowers. He responds to that by going emo, which is kind of impressive because emo wasn't a ...

"When I became a Werewolf, I somehow forgot how to be human during a full moon?" You don't really get more WTF than that. It's wouldn't please everyone, since it's a template, but I would make lycanthropy cause Lunar Madness, which can eventually cause you to become an NPC until cured, un...

Having never encountered that before i was like "WTF?" I was genuinely unaware of the existence of furries and the like so I didn't get it. ... Is a shifter good enough for that? Halfling shifter, or does it have to be an independent familar. Sentient Cat, Humanoid-Cat Shifter, Cat-Person...

Templates make things terrible. Having optional templates makes an additional step in chargen... That changes it from "which race do you want (1 from X)?" to "would you like this template (repeat for all templates in the game)?" That's a simplistic heuristic for chargen, whereas...

What about the division between "a magic source that does magical things" and "a nonmagical source that does things almost defined as magic but still works in an AntiMagic Field" Maneuvers, for instance, that do things like teleport by shadow or breath dragon fire. "Magic&q...