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Mors Rattus posted:Nah, this can be pinpointed to Strike Witches, a horrible anime about girls who are also planes and fight in wars and are supposed to be cute. 
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Mar 27, 2016 14:51
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Kaza42 posted:Or you could not introduce giant magic genitals in a game aimed at children about whimsical adventures in the countryside  Genitals are inherently whimsical. 
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Apr 1, 2016 16:20
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Much like everything else in Australia. 
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Apr 2, 2016 19:31
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If you cast a spell to point the car at the sky, you could just shoot the fucker into space.
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May 10, 2016 07:47
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Robindaybird posted:I wanted DitV to be a nice alternative to weird west from Deadlands, but being someone near chief Mormon country, it is rather uncomfortable how close the 'virtues' is to the breakaway fundies beliefs.
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May 12, 2016 09:12
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Fighters' saves went to poo poo. Pre-3e they had remarkably good save progression, and the saves were not as tied to their ability scores. Spells also became functionally impossible to interrupt, and I think the save DCs became tied to the caster's level instead of being flat. The Fighter's damage output was lowered as well, as attacks after the first get to-hit penalties, unlike in previous editions.
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Sep 19, 2016 09:02
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When the game says you can drop a fireball on anything you can see... ...Does that mean also anything you can peep at through your worshippers' eyes? 
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Sep 19, 2016 20:25
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People tend to sell it in the most obnoxious "only squares care about dungeons or dragons when you could discourse with the very concept of stealth farts, nyeh!" way, but Planescape is generally pretty cool. If you're into fantasy literature, I guess Planescape was New Weird before there was any New Weird, maybe?
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Sep 23, 2016 09:27
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To be fair, very few rule systems paid anything more than lip service to their settings until very recently. Most are just varying complexities of combat engines, with an afterthought of a skill list on the side.
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Sep 23, 2016 15:52
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Bieeardo posted:One of my favourite ads from the Sigil sourcebook was for a shop that specialized in food imported from the Prime. One line read "SQUIRREL. Meat that grows on trees!"
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Sep 23, 2016 19:39
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Asimo posted:Being a horrible clunky mismatch for its themes was pretty much an issue D&D and its clones and not really an industry-wide thing.
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Sep 28, 2016 06:23
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Please don't engage terrible gimmick posters.
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Oct 3, 2016 15:56
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Hostile V posted:Coming soon in the summer of 2005, it's The Last Samurai Tabletop RPG: The RPG of the Movie Not Based on a True Story.
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Oct 17, 2016 05:56
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:The voice comes from the back of the room, but there’s nobody there. If the PCs check it out, a small grey cat jumps up on the table; if they ask the cat if it just spoke or summoned them, it’ll say “Nope. It wasn’t me.”  DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:A note on art: the art in this book is mostly the incomparable diTerlizzi, but unlike in RTTOH it’s not all neatly encapsulated at the end. I’ll do my best to cut out some good pieces to break up all my text. 
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Oct 17, 2016 19:14
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The March looks like a fun romp, but I can't help but wonder what sort of a hosed-up idea Modrons have of "maps". "There shouldn't be a river here! It is not in ~OUR MAPS~! This is the work of CHAOS–blblblbl!"
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Oct 25, 2016 21:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:Enhancements for Wild Shape include:
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Oct 28, 2016 11:24
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Here's a trick to getting your head around THAC0: It's short for "To hit armor class zero". In other words, it's the target number ("DC" if you grew up with third edition) for your attack roll, assuming you're swinging at something with an AC of 0. A knight in shining armour, say. It's honestly growing onto me, since I like having my target numbers on the sheet in front of me.
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Oct 29, 2016 13:58
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Yeah, and also comparatively few enemies actually have AC 0, making it pretty bad as a baseline.
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Oct 29, 2016 14:21
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Doresh posted:And those Japanese translations have been pretty funky. The Rules Cyclopedia for example has been split into multiple smaller books with manga art. Honestly, I wish more English games came in a pocket-sized format.
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Nov 18, 2016 17:12
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I really loved the 4E Essentials' form factor. "Box sets and paperbacks" is entirely my aesthetic.
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Nov 18, 2016 17:30
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Midjack posted:Too bad none of those shows had a game about them. Okay, Adeptus Evangelion counts I guess.
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Nov 20, 2016 18:28
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A parody is supposed to make you laugh. But it's true that Anno took all the giant robot cartoons he loved and then did an ~adult take~ on them. It's actually pretty amazing how well Eva works even if you've never seen Combattler V or whatever.
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Nov 30, 2016 13:34
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Young Freud posted:In fourth edition SR, they introduced the concept of the "Internet Of Things", where most objects, everything from consumer electronics to cars and industrial equipment, had a Device rating, was wireless, and could be hacked. You didn't have to have the GM come up with elaborate network topology for one player anymore, if they needed to access a door, they could simply hack the door instead of having to run through the corporate extranet, to their intranet, to the building's net to pop the door lock. You could still do the elaborate topologies for more dedicated data runs, but spoofing a wireless connection, hacking a Device, etc. within Bluetooth range could also allow them to get all that paydata. I've heard people complain that it was super-easy to hack cars in SR4, that a lot of jobs were solved by hacking a Ford Americar and driving it into a target. https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/803593204088049664
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Dec 2, 2016 08:11
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Speaking of Neverwinter Nights, it's free on GOG right now.
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Dec 2, 2016 16:54
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Dec 4, 2016 22:32
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Midjack posted:Roadside Picnic was pretty much wall to wall arbitrary fuckery of the protagonist by the laws of nature; how can this be anything besides codified GM railroading?
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Jan 19, 2017 09:31
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Doresh posted:Most Visual Novels are more open-ended than this. 
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Jan 29, 2017 11:27
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hyphz posted:Yes, I just checked that. They are actually expecting FLGS's to hand out free copies of a book called Vaginas Are Magic. That contains "nihilist feminist reality destroying spells for LotFP".  I mean on one hand the guy lives in Finland and there actually was a time when Finns thought vaginas really were magic... But on the other hand it's Raggi.
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Feb 4, 2017 14:24
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I'm guessing it's a throwback to sixties hippy culture and meant to invoke the sexual liberation of the time. No, I'm serious. (It's just a guess tho.)
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Feb 4, 2017 16:28
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It's a slightly modified version of Mentzer's Basic D&D, as far as I can tell. If you like ascending AC, terrible editing (layout? important rules are just loving hidden) and grindcore album cover art, that might be the game for you.
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Feb 4, 2017 17:41
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No that's Adventurer Conqueror King.
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Feb 4, 2017 17:53
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occamsnailfile posted:
occamsnailfile posted:Alien Rope Burn: ”Zanji Shinjinken-Ryu” is from Erick Wujcik’s Palladium game Ninjas & Superspies and is almost certainly a fictional concoction, given the only references I can find to it link back to Palladium sites (or bullshido sites that literally stole from N&S’ martial arts listings
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Feb 5, 2017 18:29
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Honestly, GitS is fairly subdued by modern manga standards. Shirow has some exploitative stuff like the infamous sex scene, but at the same time the grand majority of the comic is a straightforward tech-thriller (with tongue slightly in cheek) and Motoko's outfits are so, so much better in the comic. She knows that pants exist, and wears them on the regular. And not just hip-huggers, like. Slacks. It's kind of amazing how other designers (in the anime, other manga adaptations, etc.) have sexualized the character so much more than she was originally. It's definitely not a comic without issues but the anime's outfit always makes my eyebrow twitch.
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Feb 7, 2017 08:30
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Doresh posted:Where Block Bars encourage too much blocking, Imbalance encourages it by allowing you to push the opponent away and debuffing his Initiative. I swear I've seen one or two games with that, but I can't remember exactly which one.
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Feb 12, 2017 21:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd say it's also the idea that the corporation itself is all that matters. Oh, you're a lifetime CEO with millions of nuyen who brought the company up from nothing? Tough poo poo, you hosed up big time now you have to basically be sacrificed so the corporation can keep going. Oh and by the way that's the new normal. All I wish is for neon signs to make a comeback. Then we'd live in a proper cyberpunk future.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:12
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Okay but why are they dressed like Saiyans?
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Mar 10, 2017 17:37
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LatwPIAT posted:There's a delightful irony in how Dark Ages tells us that the 12th Generation are considered the last "proper" generation of vampires, with the 13th Generation being thin-bloods who can't embrace or make ghouls, and don't follow the ancient traditions and are surely a sign that Gehenna is approaching. 
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Mar 10, 2017 19:27
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I just realized that although I have very fond memories of reading old Forgotten Realms supplements on the loo and playing Baldur's Gate, I've never actually read the rules for AD&D. I'd like to fix that! However, I'm a bit broke right now so we'll have to make do with something that's freely available on the Internet: For Gold & Glory: Old School Roleplaying  (Walter Crane: La belle Dame Sans Merci, oil on canvas, 1865) The back cover posted:For players and game masters alike, For Gold & Glory™ is compatible with the second edition of the “advanced” version of the world’s most popular role-playing game.  Said edition of the most popular RPG in the world is something of a mystery to me. While Forgotten Realms supplements for it were my first experience with tabletop role-playing games, I've never actually played that game. My first D&D experience was 3.5, with a group who (like most) didn't much bother with a close reading of the rules and thought Toughness was a good feat. All I know about AD&D I've learned through osmosis and reading the OSR thread. So let me crack open this book and read it myself for once. I'll try to do a fairly close reading of the material, but spare you the boring bits. For Gold & Glory: Table of Content, Forewords and Chapter 0: Introduction The book begins with a clear and helpfully hyperlinked table of contents. It's a big, nearly 400-page book, but the core rules only take up 94 pages. Most of the book is actually appendices, detailing magic (114 pages), treasure (90 pages) and the bestiary (60 pages). The book concludes with an index (thank you so much), one final appendix for OSR legalese, and a character sheet. A list of tables (also clickable) is also included, and I have a feeling I might actually have to reference that every now and then. I absolutely will not go through the appendices spell by spell and monster by monster, just so you know. Before the first (zeroth) chapter, we also get forewords by the author Justen Brown and the editor Moses Wildermuth. Jason Brown posted:Cracking open the original 1989 player’s guide, the first illustration you’re drawn to is a full-page oil painting by Larry Elmore. Entitled “Dragon slayers, and proud of it!” the painting depicts five adventurers triumphantly posing before the body of a very young green dragon dangling from a tree as a fisherman would present his prized catch. A small wooden box at their feet held gold coins, a few glittering gems poking out here and there. The adventurers weren’t wearing ridiculously exaggerated armor, bikini-mail with bare midriffs and massive cleavage, or wielding fifty-foot long paper-thin swords. Our heroes were a lightly armored elf archer, a cleric with a hammer and a holy symbol etched on his belt buckle, a massive bearded warrior with rusty chain mail, a smaller raven haired female warrior, and a mysterious looking magic user cloaked in red. I like Elmore's art too. Here's the piece Brown's referring to: Moses Wildermuth posted:Even though I didn’t know it at the time, my first gaming experiences were in hybrid games. Thirty years later, I can now see how my first GM had intricately woven rules from the (then) new, “Advanced” version of the game with his favorite house rules pulled from the “Basic” games that came before it and the now infamous RPG magazines of the day: the Dragon, Dungeon, Polyhedron, etc. After all this, we finally get to the oddly-numbered introductory chapter! ...It's exactly what you'd think it is. There's a very short history of Notably, the Introduction includes the core mechanic for the game: If a situation is not covered by some other rule, you should roll a d20 and add some modifiers. Higher is better. How high is enough? Don't worry about it! Higher is better. Like always, there's also an example of play, and for what must be the first time in my life, I've read it. A four-person party has just finished murdering some frog-men, and enter a ruined moathouse. The ranger (apparently named Ranger) tries to follow some tracks but unknowingly spooks the brigands keeping watch. The thief (named Thief) wanders off, spots some gold coins and gets ambushed by a giant spider, at which point the brigands lurking in the moathouse decide to make an entrance. It looks grim for our heroes. The GM does not say "roll initiative". Judging by the example, the game apparently has "skill checks" to read tracks, spells that don't require dice rolls and d6 rolls to avoid surprise. Surprise checks are actually d10. quote:Wizard can cast sleep which may be the key to winning the battle. After the example of play, we get a short glossary of terms: quote:Ability Check: A roll of 1d20, plus modifiers, against a relevant ability score. If the result is equal to or less than your character’s ability score the action succeeds. As a general rule, any action not covered by the rules should be handled with an ability check.  Turns out higher's not better. Other quick notes: AC goes from 10 to -10 instead of being unbounded like in later editions. Initiative is a flat d10 roll between parties, not individual Dexterity checks. A turn is ten rounds instead of the other way around, and I can already tell that's going to trip me up hardcore later. Unlike ability checks, both attack rolls and saving throws need to be equal or greater than their target numbers, just like they do nowadays, because it's 1989 and consistency hasn't been invented yet. Finally, unlike in second edition, the great big bugbear of the game is now called THACO: "To Hit A Combat Opponent". I have no idea why, THAC0 did nothing wrong. The chapter concludes by outlining how a character is created. Roll stats, pick race and class, choose alignment, choose skills, buy equipment. While old grogs might bristle at the separation between race and class, this is familiar stuff for us younger folk. The book says to read chapters 1–6 before making a character so I guess we'll have to wait a couple of updates before digging out the dice. Usually I skip the introductory chapter altogether, but it turns out this one had a bunch of fairly important stuff in it. I knew making an F&F was a good idea! As a final note, in the best "free OSR rules" tradition, all the art in the book is public domain. Lots of 19th century chivalric romance, Renaissance portraits and romantic monsters. They're all of good quality and really well chosen for a cohesive look. I'm a huge sucker for that pre-Raphaelite look, so I'm actually enjoying the art a lot. Coming up next: Chapter 1: Ability Scores!
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Aug 2, 2018 16:21
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 For Gold & Glory: Chapter 1: Ability Scores It's time for the Big Six! Pick up some dice, roll some stats and shed a tear for the way Baldur's Gate used to let you reroll forever. For Gold & Glory includes four methods of rolling ability scores:
What's "exceptional strength"?  Strength quote:Strength (Str) represents raw muscle mass and is the most important ability score for warriors. A warrior with strength of 18 can roll a d% for exceptional strength. An 18/61 is stronger than an 18/35.   Strength affects the things you'd expect, coming from a later edition: Melee attack rolls, damage, encumbrance and maximum carried weight. Note how you don't get any damage bonuses until 16, and non-warriors flat out can't get more than +1 to attack. The disconnect between attack bonuses (+3 at best) and damage bonuses (up to +6) is a bit odd to my modern eye. I'd hazard a guess this is because the range of possible ACs is so narrow that even a +1 is a meaningful bonus to hit, but hit points just keep growing? In addition to the expected things, strength also affects attack rolls with the bow. The book directs us to Weapons and Armor: Bows for more information, but I'll do that later. Strength also lets you open very heavy and stuck doors, as well as bend bars/lift portcullises. Forcing open doors is a d20 roll under the indicated number while bending bars uses a percentile die. You can also try to force open a locked door, but for that you need to use the target number in parentheses. (Don't even bother unless you rolled really well on exceptional strength.) You can reroll a failed attempt when you're bashing open a door, but every try takes an arbitrary amount of time and makes a lot of noise as you work on it. You can't reroll a failed bend bars roll. Either you deadlift the portcullis or you don't, working longer at it won't help. Exceptional strength works weird with strength-affecting modifiers. Instead of going up to 19 or down to 17, you move from one category of exceptional strength to the next. This seems to mean that non-warriors (or warriors who didn't opt to roll for exceptional strength) get more out of Gauntlets of Ogre Strength or whatever, since those can boost them straight into 19 instead of getting stuck in the percentages. Dexterity quote:Dexterity (Dex) represents reflexes and hand eye coordination. It is the most important ability score for rogues.  Dexterity only does a couple of things, but they're all quite handy. The surprise modifier affects the d10 roll to avoid surprise, but it's also used to adjust the saving throw versus breath weapons. Similarly, the missile attack modifier affects the penalties for dual-wielding. And just like in later editions, the AC bonus doesn't apply if you can't actually move. Constitution quote:Constitution (Con) represents a character’s physical endurance and is important to all classes. A character’s base constitution is also the maximum number of times they can be resurrected.  HP modifier is pretty self-explanatory. It's added to hit dice rolled and can not bring the result below 1. The modifier is also applied retroactively, so if your con goes from 15 to 16, you gain one extra hit point for every hit die you have. Note that non-warriors can't have a HP modifier greater than +2. System shock is the chance to die from magical changes to their body, such as polymorphing or petrification. It's not rolled until the character returns to their original form. Similarly, weak characters might not actually survive resurrection. If you fail the resurrection roll, you go from "mostly dead" to "all dead" and can no longer be brought back. I don't know why these rules exist, but I guess having even unreliable ways out of being effectively dead is better than nothing. Poison resistance is a modifier to saving throws against poison, but halflings and dwarves don't get it for some reason. Lastly, constitution 20 and above gives characters supernatural regeneration.  They heal 1 HP in the indicated time (1 turn is 10 minutes), unless the damage was by acid or fire.  Intelligence quote:Intelligence (Int) represents a character’s cognitive reasoning and thought. It is the most important ability score for wizards  Only wizards give a poo poo. Max number of spells is per spell level. You can't retry a failed roll to learn a spell until you've gained an entire character level. Wisdom quote:Wisdom (Wis) represents a character’s will power, comprehension, and common sense. It is the most important ability score for priests.  Another spellcaster stat, but this one comes with an upside for everyone: The mental defense modifier applies to all saves against spell effects that affect the mind. Bonus spells are spells per day, and are cumulative. You risk failing at spellcasting if your wisdom is too low, so rangers and paladins should maybe not dump this stat altogether. Finally, if you're really wise you become immune to a bunch of save-or-die spells. That last one probably applies for monsters too. I wonder if the book bothers reminding us of that in the bestiary. Charisma quote:Charisma (Cha) represents a character’s personal magnetism and presence. It becomes important whenever any character expect to deal with NPCs. Charisma does not necessarily represent physical appearance, although this may play a role. A horrific monster could have a high charisma, commanding fear through his appearance. A beautiful princess could have a low charisma because she’s shy and introverted.  Henchmen are NPCs who work for a character because they're cool people, while hirelings work for pay. Charisma bonuses only affect henchmen. Reaction modifiers affect "random reaction rolls during an encounter", but who knows what that means in practice. Depending on how important that last bit is, this doesn't seem like an important stat for either thing-killing or stuff-taking. And that's the chapter! I'm used to third edition's ability modifiers, so this mess of tables is really weird. Most of this stuff doesn't even matter in play because you need to roll pretty awful to suffer penalties and you also need to roll pretty hot to get any bonuses whatsoever. Even then, there's some kind of weird allure here. From third edition onwards the actual score you rolled has been completely meaningless, everything's derived from your modifier and the modifiers are effectively interchangeable through feats. It's all tummyfeels, but having all these weird fiddly derived stats is somehow charming. I do like how superhuman scores in constitution, intelligence and wisdom actually give you superhuman capabilities that are more than just the regular effects scaling ever upwards. I can't quite decide whether exceptional strength is a cool boon to warrior types, or just dumb fiddling. Coming up next: Chapter 2: Races!
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Aug 3, 2018 05:38
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Ghost Leviathan posted:2e does also have probably the most diverse range of retroclones and modifications, doesn't it? (and sadly probably the largest amount of heartbreakers)
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Aug 3, 2018 08:13
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