The Gaming Den

It's not the equivalent of a [mind-affecting] tag at all, though, because psychic keyword attacks that deal psychic damage function just fine against undead and constructs. It's just an arbitrary damage color type. Note that "mindless" isn't a concept that even exists in 4e, because "...

Solid Snake isn't Martial, he's Technological. The guy has nanites in his bloodstream that give him built-in radar, immunity to fatigue, etc. And Metal Gear Solid villains are anything but mundane.

Any sufficiently advanced technology, and all that.

The example given about the guy making up a knightly order was basically trivializing the diplomatic challenge of getting in the gates. It doesn't, though. You can still make the guy roll diplomacy to see if he's convincing--the strength of the organization's name might not be enough. Maybe the gat...

Go with the Kalashtar Cleric, because that will be good no matter what the ranged/melee mix of your party is. Astral Seal and Sacred Flame are both good, and Moment of Glory basically makes your group nigh-unkillable for one encounter/day.

RC, does the "doesn't totally trivialize challenges" clause mean nothing to you?

God_of_Awesome wrote:Wait, how the hell is a flying wizard gonna fall into a pit trap?

They don't know where the pit trap is. Fly lasts for minutes/level. You can't sustain fly forever, so if you don't know about the trap, odds are that you're not flying when you encounter it.

Because these are 4e characters, and nothing has any fucking backstory! You play "a Knight." Your character is 22 years old, and he fights with a sword. And um... that's it. The demographics of your kingdom do not exist . Your country's government, customs, laws, and social structures do ...

If it's such a major part of his backstory why wasn't it mentioned before? While it'd probably be okay to let him spontaneously have that symbol on his shield if he mentioned being a member before, I don't think I'd let anyone outright create a major organization mid adventure. I don't expect that ...

I'm not really sure how it's "Gygaxian" to give players control of some things and not of others--really, I think a Gygaxian mindset would've shut down the player in the example of an "incidental reference" as well. Players get no author control in Gygax-land, period. Personally,...

Except that "charms" are enchantment spells, e.g., charm person, and that's going to create a lot of confusion.

Goats eat lots of things that they can't necessarily digest, I assume.

Two nitpicks: One: There totally are animals that can digest cellulose. Termites! They're totally in the kingdom Animalia . And while it's true that most termite species rely on gut flora to produce cellulases, there are a few that produce their own (although gut flora apparently still do most of th...

One thing 4e actually did sorta right was treat traps as monsters that should be thrown into a more complex encounter as opposed to being obstacles in their own right. An arrow-shooting trap or spiked pit on its own isn't very interesting or dangerous, and more elaborate murder-machines are puzzles ...

There are two kinds of broken (or at least two): 1. The game ceases to function if you do this 2. This option is so good there's no reason not to do it, so it isn't really a choice Leadership kinda falls into the second category. Is there any character anywhere who is not improved by Leadership? Is ...

Yeah, I also find that Leadership is a poor balance point. Double your actions per round, albeit two levels behind your main PC? Of the PHB feats (and maybe of nearly any published feat), Leadership is bar none the most powerful if you're granted full control of your cohort and their build. If the D...

I realize that in general Tome games are somewhat higher-powered than the standard (especially since most DMs are going to flat-out deny things like wish "abuse"), but even so, I think a planetar is a bit much for an 18th level PC. Even if they "only" get 16th level cleric castin...

You're going to have to make a judgment call for each monster. Dark naga and spirit naga are both 9 HD aberrations that cast spells as a 7th level sorc. Guardian nagas are 11 HD and cast as 9th level sorcs. But a water naga is a 7 HD creature that casts as a 7th level sorc. A nymph is a 6 HD fey tha...

Because HD aren't actually closely tied to level or CR depending on type, you're going to wind up with some really weird monsters--some will be way overpowered, others way underpowered. IIRC, a mind flayer has 8 HD; replacing its current spell-likes with 8th level psion (telepath) manifestation abil...

Point the first: Everything K said. Point the second: I'm still trying to decide whether J_E's whole spiel about the smell of meat-eaters is more or less ridiculous than the time that he went on and on about how human flesh is hyper-addictive and laced with PCP. Congrats, J_E, for almost managing to...

Overall, I feel like per level recharge is probably the best method. If your XP system is pretty predictable, PCs get a good feeling of how long they have before the next recharge and thus can ration abilities appropriately. I have to disagree. Per level recharge combines "you recharge when th...

The thing I hate about 7 is how arbitrary and metagamy it is. A session an literally be 20 minutes or six months or game time. How do you make that make sense in the game world? Really, the solution is that you don't . Powers like fireball and great cleave aren't 1/session recharge because that end...

So...you like 4e because it's an unintentional parody of other roleplaying games?

Different strokes, I guess.

So I'm working on a game design project that is still in its extremely early stages, and there are a few little things I haven't figured out how to handle. I figured maybe the good folks of the Den might be willing to throw in their two cents and give me a few ideas. Character abilities in this syst...

3.5e characters could totally go lower than 8 if they had racial penalties, and that's actually something that's likely to come up.

These sound like questions you need to decide the answers to before you can proceed with a design project. But if you're going to solicit our opinions about what we'd like to play: 1) I'd prefer fantastic. Throw in the mechanical people. I think a whole new "species" of clockwork steampunk...