The Gaming Den

Even if 4E wasn't a commercial success, you'd think the next edition would hew closer to 4E rather than be almost entirely different than it and be a total retreat to "3.5 with really funky houserules."

You would likely design the foes different than the characters but at least it seems more of a "science" to what a monster or foe would be than 3.5. It is especially more pronounced with a point buy system than 4E or 5E where there is zero rules interaction almost and the monsters and oppo...

If it sold so well, why did the Essentials line die, why did they abandon their product release schedule, why was it an unofficial dead edition by 2011 and why was 5E announced in 2012? What is the answer to that? It was selling so well that they decided to stop putting out books for it and declare ...

I strongly disagree that Paladin and Ranger classes are "ass" or that Inquisitors are better than them. I think they are two of the best things Pathfinder did with their classes and are leaps and bounds superior to their 3.5 counterparts. Pathfinder has whored out trap finding and sneak at...

If you gestalted Monk and Fighter into one class that got 4th level spellcasting I think that's the minimum bar required to let them play the game. Some spellcasting is required to play, it just is. The only things that break that rule are things with their own resource systems that achieve the sam...

If you have a flexible and scalable enough superhero class system that kets you make giant tough guys and strange wizards alike, isn't that basically a 'monster creation' system you could port over to a D&D style class based RPG? The classifications of being a 'brick', 'speedster', 'gadgeteer',...

Edit: Keep in mind just how large a very comprehensive and crunchy system can get, too. Hero 5th edition, called FRED by many (Fifth Revised Edition) is a honking, intimidating book. Its like a 600 pager hardcover that was so intimidating that there were rumors around that it could stop small calibe...

HERO is a game where you can buy your Offense and your Defense bonus. It can be very easy for somebody you took just a trivial amount of Martial Arts and then did something like... OCV, Hand to Hand Combat, Limited to Martial Arts only, Obvious Inaccessible Focus (Sacred Talisman from my Kung Fu ins...

Wow, that's even shittier than I thought. I knew they weren't really going to go far enough to fix Monks, but I didn't think they'd try to match buffs with nerfs! I guess it fits with their improvement strategy though - "Never admit you did anything wrong". If they're still pretending tha...

So they're a d10 full BAB class but they dropped Will save, yanked Still Mind? And the Slow Fall thing is just absolutely perfect of what they think Monk Buffs constitute. An actual monk buff that matters is something like X AC/X times 10 to move speed where X is half Monk level, or Flurry of Blows ...

When he and Superboy fight, he wins. Superboy has faster than light reflexes, faster than light speed, and is strong enough to move planets. Karate Kid, who has no superpowers, beats him, because Karate Kid is just that good. There comes a point where pure skill beats superpowers. Wow that is asini...

Gadgeteer/Utility Belt Guy Superheroic Weapon User (Green Arrow types) Those are the same character. -Username17 I think in HERO though that a gadgeteer or utility belt guy is somebody with like a Variable Power Point pool and a work shop and he makes items there. A character like "The Tinker&...

The 12 classes would probably be what HERO describes as the 12 most common superhero types. something like... Brick Martial Artist Suit/Power Items Guy Gadgeteer/Utility Belt Guy Energy Projector/Blaster Mentalist/Psionicist/Telekinetic types Metamorphs/Shapeshifters/Transmuter types Speedster Magic...

The main trend I see when I go to local game stores is how much space Magic and increasingly, board games and quasi-collectible Living Card Games get. RPGs get comparably jack SHIT in floor space and floor prominence. The gaming book section is like 2 or 3 shelves in the back, located in an obscure ...

So, Insomniac, if the Barbarian is in a better spot amongst mundane classes, what of the Bloodrager? Is it worse than the Barbarian despite having some spells, or is it actually worth playing in the sort of game where a Barbarian type can work out? Its comparable. I think a well-constructed Rage-Cy...

CMD having a 10 slapped on it for no real reason, and then adding Dexterity to boot, conceptually hoses so many people. Even the way they want you to play a Rogue, tumbling around, happens against sky high CMDs. CMD should NOT have that plus 10 and Dexterity or Strength, the best number, should be u...

I think while the feat nerfing hurt feat starved classes, that the Barbarian, Paladin and Ranger are high points of the core game. Were Fighters, Monks and Rogues balanced off them, they would be much better off. I find it almost impossible to believe that a Paladin didn't get an overall substantial...

While martial classes got a boost, Casters got similar and equivalent boosts and their boosts are stronger overall. Lets look at what a Wizard from the first 10 levels (where the overwhelming majority of the game takes place) gets without min-maxing or dumpster diving. Just straight up lets consider...

I wonder how much of the activity is that 5E hasn't even been out for a year. 3.5 games still have traction when that system came out 12 years ago. The second most popular in games and first most popular in player numbers, is Pathfinder. Which are a form of Official House Rules for 3.5 I simply cann...

I think if they did some radical things, like Tome level martial classes and Feats that Actually Matter but prefaced it with, "Yeah, we're whipping our dicks out and sticking them in the mashed potatoes but all of this is optional," Paizo probably thought it would be decried as revolutiona...

Unchained, huh? Seems pretty tame and lame to me. Its not even Unearthed Arcana. At leas that introduced things with some traction, like Fighter and Wizard Variants, Wildshape Rangers, Savage and Divine Bards, Spontaneous Divine Casting and Gestalt rules.

How can they keep the trend going? You cannot just keep assuming you will sell PHBs, DMGs and Monster Manuals at the same clip. Sure, people new to the game have to buy them, but the people most interested in playing it already own it. Now, some people might like to buy spare PHBs or something, but ...

I'll cop to loving Scion. I LOVE religion and mythology and think the game is an absolute blast. I've played and ran great games of Scion... And it is a completely confusing and unbalanced clusterfuck of trap options, fail options, God stats and Crap Stats, an absurdly broken combat system and expli...

It is the selective, elite brotherhood of the fuckups who didn't get purged last Christmas and all their friends from Seattle and Portland.

The firing probably inspires some guys over their to tunnel like the Viet Cong. They'll get theirs before anybody else.

I think it is absolutely amazing, given this company's penchant for firing people around Easter and Christmas, that somebody would be developing a competing pen and paper game, likely on WOTC time and dime, and be hocking a kickstarter for it. I mean, there's balls, and there's 10 ton balls, and the...