The Gaming Den

You can't increase the difficulty if someone rolls a Hackmaster +12, because it encourages people to steal Dave's sword and throw it down the ditch so they personally aren't fucked over as much. ...who do you play with? Dave having a Hackmaster +12 does fuck over anyone: they aren't required to go ...

If there was magic that buffed melee weapons (i.e. the magic flows from your body into the weapon, and is not sustained in a projectile), swords (an also perhaps whips, interestingly) could be a viable choice for Fantasy characters, although it still wouldn't justify vat grown ninja using them.

*There is no "class level", just character level. If you multiclass, you get half the benefits of both classes. i still cant reason out what this is saying... if there is no class level, the what does multiclassing have to do with it? all i can figure is it was meant to be two things. 1. ...

I haven't played Hecatomb, so please tell me if this is horribly inappropriate, but could you have a fifth quasi-doom, Vanity, "as white as the bleached bones of past conquerors" for powerful people who believe themselves to be fighting against the dooms, but will one day fall into one?

I got lots of ranting from my DM for playing a Fighter that took archery feats, taking Skill Focus (Perception), animating a corpse with a necromancer, and bringing clubs to use for telekinesis instead of small rocks on the ground. Because the monk in the party got hasted in my campaign, everyone l...

*There is no "class level", just character level. If you multiclass, you get half the benefits of both classes. *Spellcasters get an even number of slots at each level; multiclassed ones get half that. No bonus spell slots from Int. *Martial characters past 5th level get explicitly superna...

Time

Also, Carmen Sandiego is an Esoteric Thief. Seriously, stealing the glint from the Hope Diamond?

Time for anecdotes, because they are evidence: I MCed at game for someone who had never played an RPG before. The session ended in a TPK due to misjudging the HD of satyrs. The new player thought it was great and still plays. I was running a martial artist in a Star Wars game. During a battle, seein...

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Lago wrote:Import Lifepath generator from Traveller.

So Elothar of Bladereach can now die during chargen - semi intentionally if his player rolled poor stats. Yay!!

The only version of Traveller in which you could die during chargen was the 1st edition.

Depending on the gnolls' motivations and circumstances, I could see doing something like this: the party is beaten to near death, robbed, and left for dead, but 'auto-stabilizes' long enough for one to recover, stabilize the others, and limp it back to society half-alive. Quest Received: "Wher...

I ran an encounter with some gnolls once. When the gnolls reached the party, they got two critical hits and another rolled for maximum damage. Half the party was going to go down in the first round. I decided that y'know what, no, the gnolls are not allowed to be that lucky, and rerolled the attack...

I once rolled (as a DM) two 20's in a row for an attack by a small annoying black bird - working for a rather evil goddess at the time - whose normal one point of damage became "death no save." I decided on the spot that the rule was flat out stupid and didn't use it. I mean two points of...

1. you also have the problem of DM being unable to save you, and if they do it feels pointless when the DM does get those hellish rolls, where he doesnt want a TPK, but open rolling means the dice fall where they may. If the DM is going to ignore rolls that he doesn't like, why does he roll at all?...

Two minor points: First, while rules can never prevent GM dickery outright, they can in some cases reduce it. For example, open rolling doesn't let the GM declare whatever number he wants and certain abilities (such as Divination, No Save attacks, and very high numbers) are harder for the GM to igno...

I buy Tzor's answer here. It's legitimate to ask about what they say when you're trying to figure out what "success" on the roll actually means. "I use diplomacy" is morally equivalent to "I use my spiked chain". What exactly are you trying to do? (hit, subdue, trip, d...

Every now and then (including a recent thread on GitP), someone says something like: A: "I have this one player who uses Diplomacy to talk to people, what should I do to him?" B: "Look at him blankly and say 'but what do you say?', and if he doesn't, slap a [unsupported in the rules] ...

in prior editoins you werent targetting an ability scores with an attack. that would make sense to defend with the ability score...but it doesnt make sense really to do it that way. They are a confusing way of doing that. You could equally use a single save progression for each class (which, incide...

it is why so often i fight ANY sort of skill system, as if you have classes, you dont need "skills", as the class specific things are built into the class, if you dont want to play a class with its built-in features, then jsut build your own class with skills. so you can have classes or s...

of course I kind of like races as classes too so I'm just a big doodie head anyway Don't worry, I do too. um no.. older editions didnt have "skills", unless you mean the player's skills Thieves and assassins do; they are explicitly called such. Also, 1e and beyond has weapon proficiencies...

No, there is no such thing as races... elf/dwarf/halfling were classes. or are you meaning the miniature game that was prior to the RPG? While they effectively were classes; and in all versions of Basic they literally were, in OD&D demihumans are not treated as classes. Dwarves: Dwarves may opt...

You left 'choose spells' out of every edition except 4e. I was excluding class specific things out of lassitude, but it is relevant. Other selected class features include Thief Skills in 2e (in 1e they were not selected individually), the variable number of skill points in 3e, Domains and/or god fo...

3.X WAS MORE RULES LIGHT THAN ANY OTHER EDITION 'CEPT RED BOX. Below are the number of pages in the player's handbook or player's section of different editions: OD&D: 34 Holmes Basic: 21 Moldvay Basic ("B/X"): 28 Mentzer Basic ("Red Box"): 63 AD&D 1e: 122 pages AD&D ...

Should probably couch the questions in references to the Big Model. Sometime it's spoken of, incorrectly, as a replacement for GNS; it's a subsumption, placing GNS under "Creative Agendas". Not mentioning it might seem like you aren't a well-read Edwards scholar.

i dont mean make something up, but generally come up with an idea, that doesnt have a listed form to follow to adjudicate. what about players making their own spells? Tenser's X, Tasha's Y...these and many more spells in the books werent made by Gary...but players, and the spells happened to be pub...

Josh_Kablack wrote:But when you are being paid to manage the granddaddy of TTRPGs, you should damn well pay attention to how rules matter and understand why all editions to date have been rules-heavy.

Except OD&D and the three versions of Basic.