The Gaming Den

didn’t spot check an elephant, but you’re missing the size again, at huge it would be at x16 and as a quadrupede another 2x for 32x. Looking at the chart, 300 corresponds (300X32 is 9600), which is a STR 5 at heavy load (6 for medium, 7 for light). Theoretical stat block: Huge Elephant AC 8, Toughne...

d&d has never been very good at modeling the ye-old arm-wrestling competition, and I haven't given too much thought to that myself. It certainly wouldn't be a straight 3d6+STR opposed check, at the very least size would be a modifier, but no human is every going to lose against a cat nor win aga...

Creating negative numbers is a choice, and it is not obvious to me why you would do that? Why not set your -5 at 0, and your current 0 at 5? Why use negative numbers at all? It does not appear that you're applying the score as a bonus or penalty. What difference do you envision if you numbered Stre...

In my defense, I do have a bunch of probabilities written out at the very end of the PDF, for both one-off rolls as well as rolls over a sustained period. Thanks, these were helpful to look over. An important part of the game is that I do want things to be dramatically different as you progress fro...

Why do you have negative values for Strength? a STR of 0 would be equivalent to STR 10 in 3e,5e etc, ie it is a +0 in various ways. I haven't made a explicit decision, but a -6 in a core stat (STR,DEX,SPR,MND) might incapacitate someone, but stat damage and drain isn't necessarily a popular mechani...

you're pretty much right about that table being nonsense. It isn't really attached to any mechanics or anything, eventually I will need some method to determine hit locations for certain types of effects and I was unhappy with my previous table so made this one, which clearly isn't any better. I hav...

original thread here: https://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=57825 My initial thread on damage had many problems and hopefully these revisions fixes some of them. Instead of the overly complex size damage table, instead a simpler table of weapon types, associated damage, then a size modifier i...

When you first started this project I’ve wanted to provide more substantial feedback given the effort, and well, i’m finally trying to do that. Thanks for putting together the pdf. My first disclaimer is i’m not much of a pokemon fan, so I may lack some important context to various things. List of c...

So, the real critique of my big monsters being sessile is that they don’t really answer the problem of friendly NPCs who are just like you but better. The game assumes there are sessile monsters out there already and that’s neither here nor there. I think if you want endearing NPCs who can also wre...

so MGuys implementation isn't too far from my prior suggestion of tying narrative death to narrative powers, instead its attempted to be made fungible with a meta currency (where you pay x amount of tokens to avoid death and perhaps x - y tokens to succeed at some task that has narrative implication...

Anyways the "challenge" has already been answered. The best case scenario for PC death is letting it happen whenever the players decide that they want it to. The issue that was at hand was that Deaddm's thing was worse than that for reasons that have been explained. thank you for your res...

Kaelik, if you cannot answer the question then your criticism of a 'deathflag' feels rather quaint, since you're unwilling to advocate for any sort of PC perspective on the issue, therefore surmising the original deathflag concept as good or bad is rather impossible. as for you PL, i'm confused by y...

in terms of rocks fall and everyone dies, dead gm usage at the beginning of the thread isn't, technically, correct. he uses it in reference to a trap (death? trap?), but clearly he believes the mechanic of deathflag will save the pc in that situation. afterwards, i quote his usage of the term in one...

given krusk's self reported success of utilizing death flags, we have empirical evidence that death flags as a mechanic can work -- sure the death flag is raised or lowered after the fact, and perhaps that is what makes it work, but i still find it an open question on whether a death flag taken befo...

yeah, it's not exactly a convincing argument to say your mechanic doesn't work because what if the GM is a total dick? No amount of hard written rules and mechanics will stop an asshole from being an asshole. Same thing goes for citing rule 0, no rules work if your counter argument is rule 0. Someti...

of course after the PCs finish their 3 missions they will return and find out the powerful NPC never returned from their first mission... leaving the PCs to either complete the other two, or take the risk of going after whatever may have stopped the powerful npc.

'high level NPC' becomes a bit of a shared conceit for people who play long enough. Typically people playing enjoy adventuring, and asking an npc to do the adventuring for you isn't satisfying. So a new player may feel like they are being clever, but if every time they asked the powerful npc to solv...

it does continually amaze me how many members of the community here hate pc death, some going so far as to essentially ban it from their games. certainly different from my mind set and experience, but d&d editions have seemingly traveled a similar path of pushing away pc death, perhaps we'll see...

i've lost the thread myself, if anyone wants to define 'deathflag' that might help me out. returning to the 'narrative death' -- if say you had a deathflag, whatever it means, instead of a mechanical adjustment, why not a narrative adjustment, if say, you cannot die then your character also can't ha...

I don't see it, if you're trying to emulate a genre, presumably the people playing will engage in that genre? Otherwise, why are they playing this game instead of another game? Giving people 'hit points' one time also somewhat encourages players to sit on their get out of jail card until needed. you...

I've been reading too much manga lately and an interesting question came to me: How many TTRPGs out there let you level up in the middle of a fight? The only game I know of that explicitly does that is... well, mine , since I wrote it specifically to emulate the shounen genre. link goes straight to...

I don't mind if raise dead causes a temporary weakness, ie it takes you a day to fully recover, but any permanent damage or level loss is terrible and creates large incentives against playing the same character instead of a new one. Krusks solution is full on narrative death, everyone essentially al...

the more general question is, should PCs die? My answer is yes, it should be on the table, there should be some set of decisions and/or dice rolls that cause PC death. I agree that PCs should be able to die, in part because that's an expected part of genre simulation. Trivial PC death (such as step...

the more general question is, should PCs die? My answer is yes, it should be on the table, there should be some set of decisions and/or dice rolls that cause PC death. And if we were perfect arbitrators of destiny, what is the expected rate of PC death, every 100 sessions or so on average? What if s...

I have similar questions to PL and I really don't feel like slogging through the mountains of text between you and PL. I'm going to probably tread over territory you may have covered and hope that I can get a shorter answer, or a quote that answers it. I'm having a difficult time figuring out what ...