The Gaming Den

Skill points and hp should be the same across the board. Wizards will--possibly have more of the former and fewer of the latter because of their ability scores, while fighters will probably have the inverse. But balancing classes based on how easy it is to kill them with hp damage is A) stupid (if y...

You're missing the point, the point is that's stupid. Scaling dogs are stupid. And if you think its a good idea... well, draw a conclusion. D&D already supports all kinds of dog/wolf variants at many levels. You can seriously fight nothing but increasingly ridiculous such animals for a PC's 20-...

You could have some arbitrary skill like D&D's own Disable Device range between different characters by 10, 20, or even 40 and still be in the clear. Even though yes, the entire RNG is only 20 numbers long. You have one character that does not monkey with traps save to throw goblin bodies at th...

I apologize, Murtak. I didn't mean to be unclear (which is why I boldfaced both the 10-point and 5-point statement). You pointed out that 5 should be a conservative limit, hence my use of the word liberal in my reply, and that 10 should be the maximum. Again, I was trying to stress how close to the ...

Still going. However, just because [things the designers chose] can be done that way does not mean that they should [be done that way]. Your argument is 'the cool kids are all doing it, so we should too'. Frankly, this is a stupid argument, as bad design is bad design, no matter what precedent you w...

Okay, MS, I can say nothing about absolute Size modifiers, feat trees, or bullshit bonuses You're looking at a d20 game. Those're probably going to be there. I understand why you think those're bullshit, but calling the game a failure because of those is--I'm pretty sure--calling every d20 game ever...

Okay. Let's go. Ok, Hey_I_Can_Chan, you're an obvious fanboy. However, to humour you, I'll respond. Fair enough. There is no good reason whatsoever for a game to have such a steep learning curve. This is not something that's positive or useful at all - all it does is alienate new players and require...

Spycraft 2.0 is the most solid implementation of the d20 system ever . After grinding my way through the first chapter of mechanics (Character Creation, I think), which made absolutely zero sense no matter how many times I turned the book around, I then moved onto the rules for skills, and my ears ...

From that short list of bullet points (which is a pretty limited preview), there is a small, but notable trend towards powering up defenses relative to attacks in the system. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a *superhero* system. Yeah, but with keeping the Speed chart, it means combat can las...

GURPS is the kind of game where the DM takes everybody's character sheet and makes sure they're all on the same RNG before starting. … And then throws it all to hell with XP. Unless you're playing Runequest or CoC or whatever, in every point-based game there's the bullshit of you getting raw, ugly ...

That's me. It was a playtest draft of 1E Green Ronin Mutants and Masterminds . I never bothered with the full version. Did it have power levels? Achingly bad gadget rules (or virtually none at all)? Not enough powers to simulate anyone you really wanted to simulate? Same game. I think I have that pl...

That's too bad.

See here.

Why the fuck are people still playing this game?

Another Steve Kenson story (although not nearly as awesome as Frank's): I signed up to playtest Mutants and Masterminds the instant I heard about it--I was (and still am) desperate for an awesome d20 superhero game--, was accepted as a playtester, and got the initial M&M draft. My first reaction...

Now, were there some kind of reasonable way to accommodate Lost Worlds-style combat, then we're talkin'.

I just had a character get married to an NPC in one of my games; I allowed it because not allowing it would have gone against setting and characters. Now, I am trying to write a balanced (read: dead-weight but not completely useless) NPC for that and was contemplating the consequences of the relati...

What's more important, your plot or their characters? If it's the former, then, yeah, call in the B team. The Old Man Who Knows Too Much would obviously have a second group on tap in case the original PCs fail, and that ritual must not happen . If the latter, then, yeah, roll up new characters but t...

...And here I thought it was because, under Tome rules (and, at low levels, standard d20), if the fighter failed a Will save you were totally fucked because he carved everyone else into itty-bitty pieces. I assumed the high Will save was actually saving the fighter from taking the Iron Will feat, be...

Damn. Forgot the normal swift action. So you're basically getting over 9,000 spells per round, and the fighter is left with a tiny penis. After quantifying quickened spells as swift actions, has there been a book published that says if you somehow manage to get multiple swift actions you can cast m...

Even so, batman works in my opinion when confined to Gotham city, dealing with criminals in his league - mostly normal humans too. There's a fantastic Superman: The Animated Series ep wherein Batman's gone missing and Superman must impersonate Batman for a time. What's hilarious is that it shows wh...

I'm gonna share. So I'm the high school teacher and Bill, a former student of mine, shows up after school to have me read his college English paper. Yet it's not quite after school yet. There's, like, 7 minutes left in the school day. But Bill shows up. Moments later I get a phone call from the fron...

2) The PCs are crap novices who have to pay through the nose for reasonably ordinary things, and all the published NPCs are special people who either break the rules in at least one way or have more points than you ever will; or both. The world is inside-out, the law is upside-down. Not to be a 7th...

I have 18" of shelf space devoted to Seventh Sea , which, I think, barring serious obscurity (miniatures game, anyone?), is just about all of it. It's in my top 5 of role-playing games, up there with Feng Shui . And I've never played it. What does it do well? Fluff. Most of it, anyway. Sometime...

Why not just make the lower-tiered skills more valuable? Champions charges the same basic prices for almost all of its skills, with the implication that the skill chosen will be applicible and useful in the game world, and therefore just as valuable as any other skill. Why would anyone , knowing tha...

I'm good with the idea of gaining a body of knowledge each level or whatever. Saying that you've the Arcana background is valid and might be a reasonable compromise. However, I'm still not sure such things are necessary. So far, the only thing these would do is identify monsters, which lets you kill...

Dude, what do you want Knowledge skills to do? Really, what are they for? Is it so you can provide more information to one character over another? Is it so one character can then act on that knowledge to do something spectacular? What's the point of them? If they don't do anything but hang out in th...