The Gaming Den

Oh, I like that idea. Then you could perhaps expand it and have different levels of temple you can pray at, or different levels of praying, so you can get your 1st and 2nd level spells back here in the village, but have to go to the bigger town to get the 3rd and 4th. Has the soft roleplay effect o...

Was there Arnesonian DM'ing in early D&D as something different? There was, kind of, though it wasn't called such. It was a much more free-flowing style where numbers and player knowledge and skill were de-emphasized (the kind of game where instead of the DM saying "the goblin stabs you fo...

Hmmm...that gives me another random idea. Do you need a paladin if you can have a cleric/fighter? Likewise rangers and druids could be the same class but crossed with fighters or clerics. Assassins could likewise be fighter/thieves. Like how the old bard needed someone to multiclass 4-5 times or wh...

The Device of Time Journey sounds like it was created in the Gygaxian era because it actually was: it's a 1e-vintage magic item, first showing up in the Dragonlance Legends trilogy in 1986.

I've been playing with a few knobs to try to address the short/long issue. I've had the most success with the following ideas: * Make all short rest powers in 3/long rest. * Make long rests a bit longer (2 nights w/ no HP damage or spell slot use), so taking one is a meaningful decision given the p...

...Huh, turns out this thread never showed up for me as having new replies until today, so I missed a bunch of stuff. So to me, all of these intentionally-dickish DMs are really more of an edge case than anything to be overly worried about in practice. Don't know if you blocked me or not, but figure...

I vaguely remember saying something like this earlier in the thread, but I don't think you, necessarily, need to remove all plane hopping et all to have unknowable gods. If your level 20 cleric shows up to Pelor's Golden Palace, there's no reason for Pelor to let him in, and if he does, there's no ...

Speaking for myself, in a game system that is balanced around parties having a level appropriate cleric, I find "able to revoke the cleric's cleric privileges from on high at their personal discretion" to be a distasteful ability for gods to have. It's the "personal discretion" ...

When Gods are real, you have to explain why the Elf god is very powerful and the Kua-Toa god is very weak and why the gods aren't solving real problems. I mean, you theoretically also have to explain why 1st-level adventurers are wandering around slaying goblins to protect their town from invading ...

My current homebrew world has two main pantheons. The larger pantheon of 12 gods is worshiped as the same set of beings and in the same way by pretty much everybody pretty much everywhere, but various local sects differ on the theological details (like how some MCU Thor fans prefer the earlier more ...

I don't think Stand Still implemented should derive save DC from damage, but rather 10+1/2 BAB+Stat bonus. I wasn't saying that it should go with a damage-based DC, just that that's how Stand Still currently works, and the effective result is that the target doesn't get a save if you deal enough da...

Conversely, I thought up a "Death Pool" of damage points that refreshes at the beginning of a warriors turn. This would be about (weapon damage) + stat bonus + 5x BAB. This damage can be divided between multiple targets, or dumped onto a single tough foe. I think a pool of dice would be b...

The races overall left me ho-hum: Malebranche sound too close to tieflings in concept, while Gifted, Morgants, and Sylvans feel too close in being “like humans but X.” My major exception were Marionettes, who feel the most distinct. Yeah, I've been annoyed for years that basically everyone who want...

If the genders here are more related to the dragon colors, you have a situation where there's an obvious hierarchy of red > blue > green > black > white in terms of the power levels of the actual chromatic dragons Bit off-topic, but while white dragons are obviously worse (no love for poor white dr...

And now I'm just thinking "something something crystal spheres like ancient metaphysical philosophy posited, then Earth's shattered, and that's where the magic went (because, unlike atmosphere, gravity alone can't hold in magic, so when the sphere went away, the magic wasn't being held in anym...

Because they have no natural sex, their genders are completely unrelated to sex, and instead based on expressed dragon ancestry and the elements thereof (so, Fire gender, Acid gender, etc). I think this would definitely be interesting to focus on. If the genders here are more related to the dragon ...

Gibbering Mouthers (who are literally insane and shouldn't be able to speak any normal language) and so on. I get what you mean , but as someone with multiple things going on with their mind and brain that would make an Iron Age culture consider them to be "completely insane" and who actu...

Common is supposed to be a "trade language" and if you actually tried to follow that you wouldn't be able to communicate more than simple concepts. A trade language is the shit you learn in Semester 1 of a foreign language class. [...] Why not say language works differently because it's a...

For those not in the know, City of Brass' earlier incarnation was a city-based planar metropolis made during the final years of the 3.5 era, with some accompanying adventures. You probably know this, but it's worth pointing out that the City of Brass was mentioned in D&D long before 3.5. It was...

So, after those, the only real strong contender is FATE with some hacks, but I'm not sure FATE can be hacked to have character advancement in a satisfying form. It depends on what you'd consider satisfying. I've made a bunch of Fate hacks for my group (who wanted to play "basically Fate, but m...

Late last year, my players wanted me to convert Tomb of Annihilation into 3.5. Good god that module is shit. I constantly have to keep changing things, it's so bad as written. Is there a particular reason they wanted a Tomb of Annihilation conversion, as opposed to using the existing 3e Tomb of Hor...

2e has also been super easy to teach to new players. I have had 3 players with zero TTRPG experience rolling dice and havjng a great time in the first 5 minutes of the session. They loved it. While something along these lines is often used as a selling point for 5e and PF2 as if it's some dramatic ...

The Lady of Pain does not serve the function you describe, she serves the function of absolutely forbidding any change to the setting and crushing any PC attempt to try. She is not a good idea executed badly, she is a bad idea executed exactly to spec. Why is preventing large-scale changes to the s...

In the prequels, the Dooku was a disaffected jedi. Same with most of the separatists in the clone wars. Dooku bailed and got corrupted to the dark side immediately, but he was open to it because he had the same realizations as Ahsoka (who notably also left the order and went wandering in search of ...

I think it comes up in Clone Wars. My memory is even hazier on that front since I've played KOTOR more recently than I've watched that show but I remember Ahsoka and Anakin in different episodes complaining about how the Republic does business. I haven't seen Clone Wars in a while either, but as I ...