The Gaming Den

4e. All of it except the combat simulator. Especially skill challenges, the Parcel system of loot, and all NPCs being literally unkillable friendlies.

Wait did you just explicitly advocate lying to your players? What the actuall fuck. I know I've been not so subtely implying that team basketweave is full of lying assholes but don't just come out and admit it. If I gave you a fair challenge, I'd kill your character every session. Every. Damned. Se...

Something awesome to note about the SLA metamagic feats from BoVD: They apply x times per day *per spell-like ability*. So Quicken SLA lets you quicken *all* your SLAs 1/day.

If for some reason you're playing a PC who gets lots of SLAs, you want the BoVD version of these feats.

I'm going to use 'rules' and 'fluff', since I can't be bothered to find better names for them. The problem for him arises when the rules don't match the fluff. I mean, 4e assures you that it's a game of epic stories, but the rules don't deliver. Its not that you can even sit down and agree that you ...

While I find the "evil backwash" theory to be interesting from a storytelling perspective, the moral math here really does seem to be "It's gross, and gross things are evil." I mean, the game is honestly telling you that casting a spell with the heart of a dragon that has been a...

Cthulhu wants to be in a place that was uncovered 9 million years ago and then covered and then uncovered again in the extremely recent past. Being near a spreading plate in the Pacific Ocean is perfect for that. -Username17 I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here, because it doesn't m...

Regarding the location of Cthulhu: the problem with putting him near the oceanic pole of inaccessibility is that's near a spreading fault, which basically means the sea floor there is brand spanking new. If he's been slumbering for several million years, that's really not the place to be. http://en....

'THE DAG' - what? Can they not write "dagger"?

Also: Pipes!

Thymos: you might want to try reading the Capes system (Capes Lite is available for free last i knew). Players expend resources to affect the outcome of conflicts and to gain the narrative control to describe those outcomes. And the definition of conflict is a lot broader than 'combat' - basically a...

hyzmarca wrote:The Cancer Mage can also give his diseases an intelligence score and communicate with them, so at level 5 he could just ask his Festering Anger to give him the strength bonus.

Why must you remind me of these things!

The litany of wrong and backpedaling is almost painful to read. I never said there was anything particularly wrong with bubble cities or whatever. What I've been opposed to is your insistence that Chicago be the only city worth caring about left in the entire continental United States. I wasn't awa...

Beijing is useful because you can totally look it up in google maps and have a good idea of what's there. All we have to do is lay out where the craters are and the living giant penis skyscrapers. And, you know, Chinese people might wan to play our game. And you can't look up Xi'an or Zhengzhou or ...

And its a century later. Those places *could be* like that. And the flooding didn't happen overnight. You have a mass exodus inland as sea levels rise. Actually, those places will differ markedly depending on what they do following the moon beast attack, some of which may end up looking like that, ...

Reincarnation of a God of Tiger :: The Human Fist! (that's disturbingly plausible) Adamantine now coats his Hammer! :: Flamingo Star! Mystic Suit grants the power of Car! (what.) :: The Amazing Pulse! Gained superpowers by studying a Teapot! (rofl) :: Fire Man! (Does he shout when he gets all steame...

Amusing note: the statue of liberty is far enough out that it would probably suffer little damage from the nuking of New York City, and the pedestal on which she stands is tall enough that the water comes no higher than her knees. Visitors to the new, amphibious NYC are still greeted by her as they ...

China's eastern coast is a place where economic inequality is very, very easy to see and pronounced. America statistically has more actual inequality but in China you can see it. The rich people look pretty much exactly like the dudes in the New York stock exchange, but the poor people look really ...

This isn't about campaign resources. It's about being able to set a campaign in China and have it actually be in China . In Beijing, or Nanjing, or Hong Kong, or Macau, or other parts of China that people actually care about. I'm sure you can name plenty of Chinese cities "off the top of your ...

When your list of suggestions for major cities in China and America features Kansas City and Kaifeng it means that you have annihilated all of the most interesting population centers of two of the world's three most populous nations, and that's terrible. Kaifeng isn't on the likely to get nuked lis...

I find a setting much more interesting when it has a geography that I care about, because it creates an instant sense of continuity with other stories, even if they're unrelated. Sometimes this can just mean having it set on the same world map as some other piece of media I already enjoyed (anythin...

That actually makes me reconsider whether melting the ice caps to get at stargates is a good idea. The land is unchanged except for a few bullet points where things are weird. That's kind of cool but not a big deal. On the other hand, a solid ninety percent of the cities we would actually want to i...

So, one thing to keep in mind is part of the setting involves melting the polar ice caps, all of them. (We sunk the Borians stargates, remember?) This means global sea levels rose at least 60m. Actually, this is cool, because it really changes the face of the world quite a bit. -The top of the Sphin...

Honestly, if I run another 3.x campaign (and I'd like to), I'm just going to make inherent bonuses to stats part of normal character progression. That way it's not a lump +5 all at once as soon as they can cast planar binding, and everyone gets it with no muss no fuss regardless of class. I'm thinki...

Wishing I had my 2nd edition books with me... someone should do the Flail Snail. (Pretty sure that was in 2nd edition. But it might be something from like 1st's Fiend Folio or somesuch). It is from the 1st edition Fiend Folio. Not totally surprised. I had a full collection of 1st and 2nd edition mo...

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"? It's a question of how much agency the DM is willing to allow players. There's nothing wrong with hiring other adventurers just like the...

Some more thoughts: -technically UA should work with a weapon, even a 2h one, as TWF. Ie, you can swing your sword and kick them at the same time. I don't remember if there's a sage ruling or what the specific RAW would look like. -Non-casters have three real options for contributing to combat. (a) ...