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Tag Archives: D&D 4E
Multi-Round Actions (Part 3, 4th Edition)
Channeled spells are great and all, but they don’t exist in 4th Edition. This entire endeavor started because I was tired of the “if you don’t make an attack, you’ve wasted your turn” design philosophy and play methodology of 4E, … Continue reading
Posted in Game Design, House Rules
Tagged D&D 4E
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Non-Binary DCs (or, Why Players Can’t Have Nice Things, Part One of Infinity)
D&D is largely a binary system: you either succeed at something or you don’t. There are no partial successes or glancing blows, and aside from critical hits and natural ones on Reflex saves there’s nothing in the system that rewards … Continue reading
Multi-Round Actions (Part 1, The Folly of Setup)
One of the post ideas that’s been puttering about in my head for at the last year is the conceit that D&D 4E drastically cut down on the amount of actions a player can perform. Ostensibly there are the same … Continue reading
Posted in Game Design
Tagged D&D 3.5E, D&D 3E, D&D 4E, Pathfinder
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Character Creation
Little-known fact: there’s nothing that gets me quite as excited as this: I’m the sort of person who watches video game rosters very closely during production. I watched every reveal trailer for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 the day it was … Continue reading
Making Death Interesting
I’ve died six times. Given the amount of time I’ve been playing D&D, it’s a little surprising that I’ve only died six times. One was from a TPK during the first session of a campaign, and I decided that maybe … Continue reading
Designing Interesting Classes (or, Why Nobody Plays a Samurai)
As I look at races, classes, prestige classes, and other things (but mostly classes, since they’re the biggest deal) for Underpowered, I’ve found myself wondering more and more why I think these options need help. It’s true that I don’t … Continue reading
Alternate Hit Point Systems (or, Various Ways to Make Crits Stop Being Fun)
There’s a quiet assumption in 3rd Edition and its related systems that hit potions don’t actually keep track of damage. Getting cut by a sword is normally quite severe if not fatal, and gunshots and firealls aren’t any better. Rather, … Continue reading
Arbitrary Attack Bonuses in 4E
Somebody asked about the correct values for the arbitrary attack bonus that accompanies racial attack powers, item powers, and so forth. I put this together to see exactly how they stack up: This chart assumes the following: A character gets … Continue reading
Underpowered: Duergar (4E)
Generally I’m not the kind of person who ranks things by power level. I tend to leave that to the experts. But I do talk with people and I see a lot of gameplay. One of the big benefits of … Continue reading
Underpowered: Bullywug (4E)
D&D has lots of options, and it’s fairly obvious that they’re not all equally powerful. I’ve ranted about this, but over time I’ve also been doing something about it. Rarely, it’s a house rule to limit to power of a … Continue reading