The Gaming Den

Anguirus, what you propose in simple math is this: Let n be the encounter index. That is, the first encounter is 1, the second 2, and so on. Fighter(n) = c , where c is a constant Mage(n) = a - n , where a is a constant and a > c For the first half of the adventure, Mage(n) > Fighter(n), which is d...

Even if we have the paradigm that wizards dominate the first encounter and do nothing the second and there are always 2 encounters every day we still have imbalance. Massive offense simply is not balanced by a massive weakness. Not to mention the appropriate CR's for the first and second encounters...

You are wrong Please elaborate. What is the central balance point or is 3.x so poorly designed that there is no intended balance point? Not entirely wrong. The bigger issue is that the spellcasters are swinging for the fences with spell effects and the non-spellcasters are getting +1 to their skill...

If this has already been covered in another thread I apologize, just link me to the thread and I'll go back to lurking. So it seems to me that one of the major issues with 3.x DnD is that martial and magical character balance is predicated on the idea of a full work day such that there are encounter...

This conversation can not take place in a vacuum. The relative strength of death-spiral vs. epic comeback are largely dependent on broader design goals and genre considerations. In a gritty spy game a death-spiral system coupled with rocket launcher tag could add to the attitude of paranoia because ...

How the hell does making every Lycanthrope Steve make everyone Steve? Because the players play a "supernatural creature." They can choose to be a Nosferatu, or they can choose to be a Deep One. Or they can choose to be Steve. And that means that they are all Steve. Once you include the &q...

I don't like races that are very physiologically dissimilar because this tends to result in very heavy handed role by race situations. I much prefer having races be distinct cultures allowing for separate classes that generally fill similar roles but -and this is important- function differently. You...

Do you mean the part about your homebrew? You're God damn right I didn't read that. Somehow I missed this post back last time I was around here. Good god it's shit. Look you presented some very specific examples where you felt there were major problems, they required some massive assumptions about ...

Sherlock Holmes on the other hand isn't a character that's modeled well by a game with levels. At all. He knows tons of shit and he's fantastic at gathering information and putting it together, but he's not any tougher than other characters in the setting (at least not as I recall, I could be wrong...

This all sounds good except that your wrap up doesn't mention the scrying skill or the like (which your post did allude to). How would you make Sherlock Holmes with the new knowledge system? Also, I'm a little bothered by Bardic Knowledge being the only remaining hold out. Surely there must be some ...

I apologize if this is a de-rail but I don't know much about the planes and think it might be useful to consider the higher planes in relation to the lower planes. Would some one mind summarizing what the moral philosophies of the lower planes are?

Yeah, I don't think I'm interested in protecting the role of 'guy who knows stuff'. He's a sage, not an adventurer, and he can be a level 1 commoner with a nice library or a level 20 wizard with one and he has access to the same piles of knowledge. Knowing things is certainly helpful, but it doesn'...

The nerfing is just that some one's shtick just went from being a whole bunch of skills making it prohibitive for others to be the information guy to just one or a few skills that everyone might be tempted into taking. It isn't really nerfing. Nerfing was a bad word to choose, it is role violation. ...

Simply that knowledge type skills, which sometimes are based on wisdom instead of intelligence, are now either active skills (in which case the guy that knows stuff -be it from intelligence or wisdom- just got more effective -not that this is a bad thing-) or don't exist (in which case these same ch...

I mean I'd let a player do it, but I wouldn't make it easy. They're not going to immediately find a buyer for all that junk. In fact most of it probably won't sell for the entire campaign, or some guy may offer you a copper for a bunch of bundles of broken floorboards as firewood. Otherwise you're ...

Fuchs wrote:We play out scenes, then roll skills to see if the characters succeed.

I like doing just the opposite. Roll skills to see if you succeed and to what degree and then RP that in way that would make that outcome make sense.

It's not entirely logical to say that the goods are truly worth nothing, but given they take so long to sell and deal with, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the heroes just aren't going to bother taking them. It isn't reasonable at all to say that. I get to decide what is reasonable for my cha...

Also, since when does 'don't' mean 'can't'. If you think it is unrealistic for characters to spend all of that time and effort looting (which indeed it may be) then you up-play the reason that they wouldn't do that. What you don't do is tell them that they can't do it. There is a world there with ru...

I didn't mean that it was related to the social skill discussion in that knowledge skills are applicable in social interactions. I meant that the discussion was essentially "Should 'x' be handled with special rules and systems or should we just magic tea party it?" You're system privileges...

Knowledge Skills... I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’m not going to do the same thing for knowledge skills that I’m doing for the rest of the skills. Like I alluded to in response to Crissa a bit ago, and Frank and others have babbled about in various places, knowing something is no...

Roy, we're not "singling you out" because of a prejudice against you, we're "singling you out" because you don't make any fucking sense. You speak "classic Den speak" in the sense that you've imitated *stylistically* some of the qualities of posters here -- we speak au...

Except for the part where you'll still be using armor for special properties... which means you don't benefit. At all. Not even a 'get the better' type effect. You can use your heavy armor vs straight attacks and your new shinny touch AC vs touch attacks. In effect you play the same character with ...

Marvel Universe RPG Largely functional diceless system (the only diceless system I've ever seen that wasn't complete fail). Diceless lets you affect the story to a degree that is within a set range of possibilities. If you want to pick a lock and you -can- pick it, and you are willing to expend the ...

Best way to solve this problem without rewriting the entire game? Right here. I'm sure that it has a number of problems when you dig into the math of it, but what part of 3e doesn't? On the plus side, they managed to do it right, where everyone advances at the same rate so the RNG doesn't asplode. ...

Does anybody remember the social combat discussions from back in the day? I favor a social combat system for Gaijin Activities, but with a bit of a twist. The idea from back in the day was that you would re-use the combat mechanics for important negotiations with the "losing" or "kil...