For various reasons I won’t go into, I have not been sleeping very well this week. I walked into the lunchroom at work this morning and saw the latest AVON brochure on the table, and misread the title (something about something that is ‘Super’, don’t much care what). I have …
I was thinking about how Ability Pools will be used. There are some obvious uses such as fueling talent abilities (such as Spot talent’s clairvoyance), they are a way to measure (and mitigate) conditions and ability damage. I love that they should get rid of ad hoc adjustments during play. It …
I have mentioned in previous posts the possibility of using ‘ability pools’ to fuel various powers and as a replacement for ability score damage and temporary effects. I wrote up a first draft at EchelonRPG.com that I will summarize here. Echelon does not inherently need ability scores, and I have …
This is the first draft of a talent to replace the Spot skill in Echelon I’ve added a talent to replace the Spot skill in Echelon. I’m not entirely happy with how Shoot Around Corners works, it doesn’t feel right. I’m considering replacing it with the ability to see across …
I took Justisaur’s suggestion to let shield proficiency grant some protection against gaze attacks (which is what the original aegis did). Shield Proficiency This talent allows you to use a shield to increasingly greater effect, ultimately providing impenetrable defenses, defense against spells, and even the ability to turn spells on …
After discussion in a few places (here, IRC, IM) regarding the first cut at the Shield Proficiency Talent, I’ve tweaked it a bit. Shield Proficiency This talent allows you to use a shield to increasingly greater effect, ultimately providing impenetrable defenses, defense against spells, and even the ability to turn …
The conversations on my blog about shield and armor talents has brought up spell resistance. If it’s in the game, one or the other of these talents would be an appropriate mechanism for gaining it. However, I have to wonder… is Spell Resistance really an appropriate mechanic in the first …
GreyKnight wrote up some talents for Echelon and asked for my thoughts on them. I’ll be reviewing them over the next few days, but his his suggestion for a Shield Proficiency talent (slightly modified in the wording) is such a shining example of what I’m looking for in a talent …
In this review I look at http://www.d20openrpg.com/gamemastering/combat-encounters and the pages under it. Encounter Checklist The encounter sequence looks fairly reasonable. Surprise and Initiative It might be worth changing “those that exceed the DC by a large margin” in the Perception check description to “those that make the Threshold on their …
I’d like to thank John Reyst for taking a look over what I’ve written for Echelon d20 and providing feedback. I’ve been doing a series of articles that does much the same for his Threshold d20 system. This post is my response to his initial feedback.