Recent content by Incendax

Natural Bond can do two interesting things: 1) If you lower your effective druid level by taking an advanced animal, Natural Bond can help make up the difference. For example, at 10th Level you could have a Polar Bear with Level -6 instead of Level -9 Modifiers. 2) If you take the Beastmaster...

I do not think many players would make such a statement outright, but you cannot divorce yourself from the knowledge that tackling a challenge will probably result in experience. It's hard to tell exactly how much this is influencing their decisions. Maybe your players really don't care. Maybe...

I've been thinking about the pros and cons of accumulating experience versus being awarded levels, and I am having a hard time thinking up very many pros for the former. To be clear, I simply tell my players to level up when the story makes sense for them to level up and do not deal with...

It's completely possible to play and enjoy the game without any of this Feat Tax nonsense. However... It gets really boring watching my players pick almost the same exact feats every single time with every character. Sometimes the order is a little different, but dozens and dozens of characters...

You've got three issues here: Issue 1) Nobody seems to have checked to see what the current Rogue player feels about this situation. If he has no concerns about having an Assassin/Rogue in the party then there is no reason to prevent it from happening. If necessary, sit them both down and talk...

Hello, my name is Incendax and I... Vigorously defend the rights of powergamers. Can spend two hours agonizing over where to put a single skill point. Sometimes freak out about symmetry like Death the Kid. Cannot understand why people don't just memorise their feats/powers. Rarely make female...

My players hate it when I do not railroad them. Any time the game even remotely starts to resemble a sandbox style of game, my players inform me that they felt like they didn't get much accomplished and that the game was directionless. The closest I can get to not railroading them and still keep...

If the player wants to portray a character that is somehow less competent than others then he could do that through roleplay without influencing his statistics. He should get no statistical benefit for reducing his stats below the average.

I rape, steal, and pillage ideas constantly. Sometimes I use them as mere inspiration, and sometimes I drop them in wholesale with only the names changed to protect the innocent. If an idea is great it should not be ignored just because someone else thought of it first, and if your brain is...

I do not allow any kind of repeating firearm, but I happily allow any form of single shot black powder weapon. An actual example from a game would be... Blunderbuss (Superior Weapon Proficiency) +2 Proficiency Bonus, 5/10 Range, 4d6 damage, High Crit. Standard Action to Reload. I did have one...

This is really good. I love the first template the most, but the second might be good for conserving ink. I'll have to dig through those files and figure out how to use them.

Power Cards are pretty worthless to me. I can easily memorize all the powers that my character has and never worry about forgetting my modifiers. However, because I only use a given monster a half dozen times per campaign I tend to have poor retention of monster abilities. I am wondering if...

4E Class Balance. I can suddenly play a Fighter/Ranger/Paladin/Barbarian/Monk and not be statistically worthless after about level 8. There was not a single edition before it where this was true, and in earlier editions you couldn't even get past level 8 depending on your race. :D

Separate the D&D Economy from the Real World Economy. Replace the majority of coins rewarded in the world with Residuum. Perhaps they find the monsters congregating around Residuum crystals that are growing out of the earth, or perhaps they find vials of Residuum in the necromancer's lab, or...

I love the term Apologist. They makes up the backbone of any D&D adventuring party. You've got the Striker, the Leader, the Controller, and the Apologist. :p