The Gaming Den

Don't demand explanations for obvious shit or I lose any fucking respect for you. There are a lot of guidelines in D&D that are utter crap and nobody uses them. Everybody hates WBL because it means that you have dragon hoard that are puny and you can't put gold doors in the lairs of your villai...

Ok, I know this seems stupid and overly complex, but given that penalties to ability scores are supposed to represent averages rather than maximums, what if instead of "-2 int" orcs had "roll [dice with an 8 average and an 18 max] for Int" That averages out to a -1 penalty inste...

This is not the point. The default assumption in DnD is that coin is valuable, period, as evidenced by the wealth-by-level chart. Infinite wishes break this guideline. This is a bad reason and you know it. Why do I even bother to spell it out for you? Why do I even argue, why do I bother to find an...

You can play this way, but your original world, a world where coin has value to everyone, is irredeemably gone. Why would you even want to play in such a world though? D&D does not support this because it expects the players to become demigods somewhere at around level 16 and I feel that it is ...

So would that mean that you'd prefer an orcs can't be wizard line over you gain stats that aren't as good for wizards as what other races give you? Why limit yourself to two equally shitty options? In this specific example I'd say "fuck that shit, +/- 1 modifiers are useless bookkeeping which ...

DMs who can't handle PCs getting infinite wishes aren't worthy of the title imo. My players figured out a way to pull it off around level 7-8 without Planeshift or a Candle of Invocation. Using Tome of Fiends Wish rules, it's not a big deal; Are you aware that you are using a houserule to fix this ...

Also, if the -2 to int is really a problem there is an easy fix play a human character, but call him an orc. done. "This is no problem because you can just houserule it." - where have I heard this before .... That aside, it's not about a -2 penalty as such. It is about another character b...

Any game needs meaningful choices. That is, every gamer needs to make decisions, these decisions need to have consequences, they need to be non-trivial and there need to be multiple viable choices to make. RPGs need a lot of stuff on top of that, but the mechanics all boil down to meaningful choices...

I got no problem with it for Slay Living, or even Sleep (which could just deal nonlethal damage). But trying to make Charm Monster do HP damage gets all stupid so we need another solution anyway. We might as well figure out that solution first just in case it also works better for Slay Living. You ...

Save or dies are a shitty mechanic and seriously need to go the way of the dodo. Any non-zero chance at one-shotting a major character has the potential to completely fuck over your story. Even if deal with it happening to the odd dragon and simply disallow it for players it still fucks over your en...

Completely depends on genre, characters, opponents and circumstances. In a duel of swashbucklers I'd be fine with missing 90% or even more as long as I still get to do stunts and try to maneuver for an advantage. I'd expect the second or even the first solid hit to end the fight though. On the other...

There are two main constraints with aqcquiring maneuvers: 1. You definitely want any normal human to be able to punch, kick and grab. 2. You definitely want dedicated martial artists to regularly perform maneuvers that normal people simply can't do. So at least a bunch of basic maneuvers needs to be...

You risk cognitive dissonance though. Stuff too many ideas into a setting and it stops making sense. Near-future corporate fascism? That's not even unlikely. Cyberlimbs? Entirely believable. Brain augmentation? From what we know it's at least possible. Somewhat sciency magic? Ok, this is weird, but ...

But that's where the problem comes in. I can't just leave people doing base weapon damage when they win, because then you can't get anywhere as a pistol sniper or knife fighter. On the flip side, if you just do damage based on your "winning hand" in the challenge test, fights between gran...

Okay so my question go like this: How do people get along at all if they're only employed 3 months out of a year most years? Do the corps just give out food to prevent the revolution from rising up and burning everything down or what? I can't imagine the earth having 9 billion people if there's so ...

In that case they won't ever transition into something bigger, which in turn means the status quo does not change. It also means that your jury-rigged bikes do not compete with the bikes sold at licensed dealers, but with bikes stolen from shipping containers.

You can easily extrapolate a 90% unemployment scenario from trends you can already see today. Corporations are already cutting jobs left, right and center. Corporations are already lowering wages for everyone but managers. Corporations are already acquiring more and more land, money and intellectual...

Why would anyone even try to recreate some sort of dinosaur and then use it as a guard animal? I get dogs, dogs have been bred to be guard animals for millenia. By now they are good at it. Also they don't freak people out and respond well to authority. I get paracritters, they are scary and some of ...

I do not think "Rifts" or "TORG" when I hear "cyberpunk". That is pretty much what I think when I read Aryxbez' posts - "oh god no, that sounds like Rifts". Frankly, Shadowrun already has too many plots, too much weirdness and too many "lol, yeah that so...

You might want to give everyone an extra 10 or so HPs. At level 1, getting one-shotted is too damn easy. Otherwise level 1 is fine. Magic is crazy enough, especially with the huge amount of choice divine casters get. Also you might want to go with many small enounters instead of few tough encounters...

It may be important to note that the whole cyberpunk genre is not just as much about sawed-off shotguns, knives and rotting skyscapers as it is about nanotechnology, brain implants and space travel. Adding magic to the mix - especially magic that looks and feels differently to different practioners ...

Well, considering a cybered athlete can already chase down cars in traffic, climb 10-story buildings in under 20 seconds, treat most walls as hurdles and, with a point of edge, have a decent shot at not only jumping from building to building, but actually jumping to the building on the other side of...

By teleporting away, by being unscryable, or by being able to effortlessly squish half a dozen said dragons per day and enjoying the effortless xp ride. Oh, or planeshifting to exploit time differentials. But yes, gate is broken, calling is broken, templates are broken, teleport is broken, astral pr...

fectin wrote:(and it's still probably worth saying "this appears to violate relativity. No one but physicists care, because doing so has generated no useful results".)

Seconded. If only to spare gaming groups similar debates. A tiny sidebar would do just fine.

No software we care about. The game shouldn't be tracking office productivity applications because we don't care. OTOH we do want hackers to buy expensive illegal software. Pretending that hackers won't just pirate anything hackable is retarded and the hardware implementation cuts that out nicely. ...