Lately I’ve been discussing abilities in terms of their realism or credibility. I use such distinctions when devising character abilities. For instance, anything a normal person could do, within training, is by definition ‘realistic’. Things that are of comparable scale and effect should also be in this category, even if …
Last week I showed how I might convert a Pathfinder base class (cavalier) to an expert path. I’m pretty happy with how it looks, even if it doesn’t quite conform to what I expect paths to look like (i.e. it doesn’t have an exceptionally shiny high-level power). For a first …
Yesterday’s post was a bit weak because I didn’t know quite where I was going with it. Today I’m on more solid ground. D&D and its descendants have long had the idea of race, of human and non-human characters. It’s been handled in different ways in different editions and in …
There are many kinds of rewards PCs can gain during a campaign. I posted yesterday about items of power, and this post will discuss monetary rewards. I’m going to admit to a bias here: monetary rewards usually bore me. The needful is… needful, in game money is useful, but it …
So far I have looked entirely at character ability, and not at external sources of ability. A common external source of ability is an item of power. In a fantasy setting this is most often a magic item of some sort. In D&D, magic items often come in several forms. …
Or perhaps ‘higher level expectations’. I have long held the opinion that D&D-based game have several modes of play. In old school D&D, the low to middle levels, from first to just-before-name-level, were a sort of ‘personal heroism’ level, before ‘making a name for themselves’ and becoming significant powers themselves. …
A couple days ago I wrote about the effort mechanic from Kevin Crawford’s game, Godbound. There is some great material in here, let’s see if there’s anything else I might want to use. Bundle of Holding If you find this post piques your interest in Godbound — and I hope …
Feats were one of my favorite additions in D&D 3e. To some degree they replaced the weapon and non-weapon proficiencies. More importantly, they gave a means of customizing characters that wasn’t class-based. Mostly; there were exceptions. It seems many other designers liked feats, even became enamored of them if the …
Games almost always limit how many times actions can be done. Some actions can be used at will without limit (attacking with a weapon). Others can be used a limited number of times per day (often 1/day or 3/day, or number-plus-modifier; ’rounds per day’ is a similar limit). I think …
Basic paths are just that: very generic paths, probably one per significant option (something like D&D 4e’s power sources: arcane, divine, martial, primal, psionic, and shadow). They will likely be somewhat similar to d20 Modern’s basic classes, granting some common abilities and allow selection of talents. This is contrary to …
