CinnamonPixie's page

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. I must say that, even though I'm a youngster by the standards of all you geezers (kidding!), and have never played anything but 3e, I find that I agree with this concept. I have glanced at 2e monster sources before, and was intrigued by the ecological information. I know that 2e was the apex of non-combat information for just about everything, particularly cultures and customs of races and nations throughout the various settings, and I am sorely disappointed that I never got to experience those things as they were ported into 3e (because, well... they mostly weren't). But though 3e seems to have toned down its Gygaxian Naturalism in some cases, it isn't without it completely.

For example, I remember looking through the 3.5 MM when I first got it and thinking to myself, "Why in the world does the pit fiend have so many spell-like abilities? There's no way even a dozen of these things together would ever have a chance to use them all in a combat! Most of them wouldn't do anything at that level, anyway." Similar thoughts crossed my mind in regards to the beholder's charm ray. But then I realized that it was important for these creatures to have those abilities to add depth and possibilities outside of combat. It gave an idea of how they conducted themselves; how they would fortify their lairs, what creatures they might have serving them, etc. In some cases, it was just an indication of the lifestyle creature X leads.

And I also noticed that those types of little details were lacking in other monster supplements that came out over the years; each iteration of the MM seemed to bring less and less information (except perhaps the MM IV, which I do not own but heard had a lot of guides regarding lairs and such, though I'm not so sure about the ecology). The monsters were just new combinations of numbers to challenge PCs, with a pretty picture slapped on top.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me for now. Thank you for sharing the article, and a new term that I can...

I agree with this a lot. I've noticed, when reading my brother's 4e books, that the new system is entirely MMORPG-style combat only in it's focus. That's a shame and a real loss, IMHO, for the gamers - especially those of us that like more role-playing than roll-playing.

Just wanted to point out there would never be a city of lost women.

1) We will stop and ask for directions so we never stay lost.

2) If it is a city of mostly women, men would never lose it. :D

Amen to those!

Of course it COULD be that the city isn't really "lost" (nor are the women in it "lost"). Perhaps they all just ran away to be free of silly idiocy of the male-dominated society?

LazarX wrote:

Also in most cases, you can't "take 20" on knowledge skills.

I don't know if I get the SRD right, but it seems to me that taking 20 is always at the DM's final decision... If there's a chance of messing up (risk), then 10 or 20 you cannot take. That makes a bard better off.

Also, notice that he can take 20 "as a standard action". That's the greatest difference, he can remember things faster, without need of long research or interrogation.

I thought most skills you COULD take 10 or 20 on (barring circumstances and the "chance of failure" thing - but that's a shady area if you think about it, you can ALWAYS fail ANYTHING if you're unlucky enough)... The big thing being time taken when you do so. I see no reason why someone couldn't take 20 on a Lore check if they've got access to some materials to aid their research (much the way a Knowledge skill would work in the same situation) to help jog the researchers memory or to fill in details he or she may not have known just off-hand like the little tidbit of lore that was known...

But, I do like that that kind of ruling should be a GM's call. It makes the game more sensible (especially if you've got "rules lawyers" in your group who will argue about whether or not something can be done because of a written rule in the book regardless of what the GM's saying will or won't work) and it doesn't bog it down with an overly legalistic style of presenting some sort of rule or directive for anything and everything that can be thought of just because some feel it should be "complete" or "cover all bases." Generally I think player and ultimately GM judgment should be left to fill the small areas like this (allowing or disallowing taking 10 or taking 20 on certain skill checks) - and have general guidelines to assist that process. A rule saying a character "under duress" can't take 10 or take 20 is fine (or where there's a chance of failure - though that should be reworded to explain what is meant, like I said, you can mess up ANYTHING so there's no such thing as a skill you'll never ever have a failure with if you use it long enough, there's no such thing as perfection!), and will cover most things just fine.

LazarX wrote:

If you make a wand of stoneskin then yes you had to have had material components for fifty castings of the spell.

Yes that is correct for a wand of stoneskin but we were discussing permanent item enchantments in the last several posts. Now is that standard applied to all permanent magical items at 1,000 gp market crafting costs with daily castings for enchantment?

If they're not changing the mechanics from the DMG/SRD, yes. On pg. 288 of the DMG it says (this is under Wondrous items) that you do cast the spell daily and that the spell slot for the spell is used in the work on the item. The only time you pay the gp or xp costs for the components is if the item will actually trigger/activate the spell.

Meaning a belt of Giant's Strength will require you to cast Bull's Strength daily, but since the item won't actually allow the wearer to use the spell at all it won't cost the material components costs (in gp or xp) for the spell - I know that this is not a great example, as I don't think Bull's Strength has any costly material components to it; but pretend it does for this example (since it doesn't matter anyway).

But say, for example, that Mage Hand had a material component of some sort costing 10gp to cast. The woundrous item "Hand of the Mage" would cost 500gp in material costs to create since the item allows the user to use the spell Mage Hand at will. (And, I know that Mage Hand has no material component... Just pretend... I couldn't think of an item that fit the example(s) off the top of my head.)

Since you're in the PRPG thread, you should be made aware that under PRPG there is no 1st level x4 multiplier. Rogues get 8+Int, Fighter gets 2+Int. All Class skills get +3 bonus, even when you multiclass.

In that case NO ONE should get only 2 skill points when the illiterate Barbarian gets 4! And the Wizard (scholarly educated types) should get more than 4 even.