The Gaming Den

Well, the caster has to concentrate on moving any features other than location. It's not a big abuse. Actually yeah it is. It opens a totally big can of worms you dont' want to open. It can basically become no save blindness. Imagine "I create a helmet over the guys head that constantly change...

What's cloudy conjuration?

You don't really need two rules-sets. You seriously do, because one game envisions fighters as sort of a meat shield that exists to block corridors and shield casters from arrows and crap. The other game assumes everyone can take care of themselves and presumably hands out a totally different role/...

It might be a bit tricky to cover a rapidly moving thing like a person in combat though. Probably doable when the illusion is significantly larger, like halfling -> rust monster, but covering an elf with a human disguise might show some "graphic artifacts" when the elf started dodging and...

Yeah, as Robby said, you can't use a figment to disguise another creature, at most you can create something to block line of sight to it with something big, like a wall, but you can't interpose an illusion (at least not a figment) on top of it to make it look like something else. I mean at that poin...

It's been brought up before, but 3.5 D&D is basically two games, one is a low-fantasy romp reminiscent of LotR and the second is some superpowered romp through the planes. The problem is some people want to play just LotR, and some people want to play Superheroes, even if it was mechanically po...

Demanding to see a person's identification (with the implication that you'll let them in with proper ID) sets one of the ends of the social battlefield. It's an opening attack. Well no, because he's claiming that you explicitly need to agree to social combat. But it's totally okay (in fact necessar...

However, we're not talking about some shitty thin piece of metal made by humans are we? We're talking about, to use your words "armor plating". Like scales maybe? And strength is no longer a limiting factor either, so it's entirely possible for a balor to wear 1/2 inch thick steel plates,...

I'm sorry... are we still in the place where stats in 4E actually mean something in regard to combat besides being a class' arbitrarily chosen primary attack stat? Cause when I run a game I don't even see a pc using CHA to hit something with a sword anymore, I just see them using their particular p...

The guard's job is to let people through the gate. If the guard wasn't supposed to be letting people through, there wouldn't be a gate. Refusing to engage in social combat is refusing to do his job, and he will be fired and replaced. Well no. See here's the thing. You can apparently suggest prices ...

Iron isn't indestructible. Not by a long shot. Most kinds of thermal or chemical attack will mess up something made of iron. Hell, it practically does that on its own with ordinary water. Over time, sure. But there's nothing on a battlefield short of extreme firepower that's going to take out somet...

Isn't that basically an Iron Golem? Rust attacks, Thermite, Polymorph it into something squishy, teleport it to somewhere far away, magic super sword. If you have phlebotinum it's not that hard an enemy. That's an iron golem if treated realistically. Seriously right now an iron golem has no fire re...

Seriously, do you want to just fucking waste time social kombating for things that people wouldn't agree to in principle, so when it's all over we just ignore the results? Cause that's what I seem to be getting from you. But that's the entire point of social combat is getting people to agree to thi...

Anyway, dealing with a creature made of metal with a hammer is worthy of a darwin award. You're right, 100% metal is fucking tough, tough to the point that anything the wizard or fighter can toss at it is going to do precisely shit, so it's a non argument. If you're saying it's 100% metal, then bas...

You can totally beat something that has "skin of iron" with just raw strength. You're just probably not going to beat it with a sword. You take a big hammer or mace and you beat the crap out of it. If you happen to be really strong, you can totally take it down. You can do the same to gear...

The Badass Normal, as you describe him, is nonsensical rubbish. Not at all. The badass normal is an accepted trope. Batman is a badass normal. He fights against people with all kinds of crazy schtick, and all he's got are some gadgets and his martial arts training. Yet he's somehow on par with supe...

So Koumei, I think you should add this: You don't have to participate if you don't want to, and you can walk at any time up to agreeing on ending points and participants. You don't get to add participants to an existing social combat. At that point, the system is totally fucking useless. It's like ...

This is of course a problem for an RPG: you need to think about how you are going to faithfully model exreme lethality of blasters (and lightsabers) without making characters die left and right. Honestly they seem about as lethal as any other weapon, guns or swords. When Conan stabs a mook, he dies...

You probably don't need a rule to keep diplomacy armies out of social combat since anyone bringing an army to a social combat could just be refused a seat at the table, so to speak. If you're really worried about it, just write in a rule 0: both sides are wiling to negotiate under the circumstances...

Considering blaster bolts hit like grenades (one shot in ANH apparently took a torso-sized chunk out of starship-exhaust-proof walls), Blasters are notoriously varied in the damage they deal. While it does indeed put holes in walls, a blaster hitting Leia's arm in Return of the Jedi barely seems to...

but I think there's a place for both in D&D, even in the same game. Well honestly no. While it is true that D&D contains low level combats you'd like to model on grid systems and high level combats you want more abstract systems for, it's really not feasible to try to have both systems insi...

The problem is at low levels, down when things like wizards get all splashy after a bad round of melee. At those levels, you actually do need a fighter or something actively soaking damage for you. If you don't, someone gets into melee with you and you end up as red paste. Well in a low level game,...

More concretely, crack open a 3E PHB or Spell Compendium and look at the higher-level attack spells that aren't just straight-up damage. I don't approve of the rocket launcher tag of the spell system, but the spells themselves have a variety of interesting effects. High-level attacks should look li...

1) You can't tank without the class features to do so. Just having sufficient hit points or AC doesn't work any more; you actually have to be able to prevent people from attacking a zone. Eh, if you're talking high level battles, then tanking isn't even all that important a concept. Rarely do you s...

While that's still quite a bit more archetypes at low level than 4E, the fact is that you're still spamming the same tactic to hell and back. The fun, such as it was, usually came in when you were able to combine the character archetypes, but really, it's still pretty narrow. Yeah, That's what I ne...