Degnanigans's page

I always assumed it was a a balance issue.

An extra d6 of damage grabbed as soon as you can shell out 2k gp would have been a bit much in the early days of 3.0 as well as modern groups playing at a similar optimization level. It would also be a bit explosive of ranged weapons since for 4k gp you could have a d6 of two different elements on your weapon and ammo.

On a more practical level +1 rainbow swords with GMW cast on them are pretty popular and dropping the +1 would just make them better.

If your race is the most interesting thing abut your character, your character is boring.

Furthermore due to a personal annoyance with people that spend too much game time describing their character's appearance, half my characters are "[gender] tanned, short browny/black hair, brown eyes, nondescript face, [build appropriate to physical stats], [armor], [weapon]."

In my experience, if your DM is going to directly balance against something it will be either DPR or crowd control first followed by immunities and things that are easy to be immune to. Staying power is the thing people are least likely to respond to, so it's actually the safest thing to go overboard on.

IMO, elves aren't represented well mechanically at all and likely wouldn't be a PC race if they were.

I think this sentiment is pretty accurate. Their lore presents them as pretty omni-competent, but in a core only environment, they were ok wizards and pretty s~~+ at everything else. It semed like the devs knew this, because they kept creating interesting and overpowered classes, feats and ACF's for Elves that were balanced by the disadvantage of "you have to play an Elf".

I feel like that niche was passed to Orc and Goblin in Pathfinder. This had a side effect of making half-orcs a bit too good at a lot of Int, Wis, Cha based roles.

memorax wrote:

Your not the only. I prefer Blackguard from 3.5. It seems to make the class stand out more IMO. As opposed to being the opposite of a Paladin.

The problem with Blackguard is that most people are not familiar with the word, so mispronounce it.

I get that this is a pet peeve for some, but "Black Guard" would still be a better name than anti/counter/un-whatever. Actually, I think it's a better name. Blaggard means scoundrel and feels like a wretch skulking about. "Black Guard" is a champion standing up for the cause of all that is Evil.

Yes, but not as much as I dislike the use of the word "Unholy" when the Evil pantheon is true equal to the Good Pantheon with it's own backstory rather than being an offshoot.

No, they aren't the cost of making an weapon adamantine is a flat +3000 gold added to the cost of a weapon of that type. You don't even need to pay extra for masterwork, as it is included in the price.

I guess I created a consistency between alchemical silver and other materials where one didn't exist. Any insight on why they work in dissimilar ways?

Isn't that just an adamantine longspear?

The costs of making a weapon adamantine are based on weapon size rather than the amount of metal used in said weapon. A spear uses as much or less metal than a dagger, but it's priced the same as a adamantine longsword. Fixing this is a not uncommon houserule, but crafting a improvised spear (pole+dagger) for noncombat applications where you won't care about attack penalties is a decent enough workaround.

I always been a bit put out by the various arguments for Improved Unarmed Strike being easier to get or more ubiquitous. Doubly so if they use the reverse guy at the gym argument (which the OP doesn't). They do however seem to feel that Improved Unarmed should be as easy to learn as how to use a sword somewhat effectively.

The ability to reliably do real damage to a standing opponent who is fit and aware is quite rare. Fighting an armed opponent is also ridiculously difficult. Movies and self defense trainers make it look easy, but their technique is usually akin to getting a new initiative roll to be made, winning initiative, then scoring a disarm or K.O in the surprise round.

In my high school/aimless twenties games I was all about detailing the everyday lives of characters. As I've grown older, I've found myself more and more drawn to either highly disciplined "professional adventurers" or to characters custom fit to the adventure at hand; followers of churches central to the story, people personally wronged by the BBEG, or any altruist in a scenario hat causes a proactive threat.

I think some of it has to do with the 8+ hour marathon sessions I played when I was younger. The last time I was at a game where people described their downtime in detail, I found myself thinking "Each player is going to talk about shopping eating and pickpocketing for 10+ minutes? That's half the session! I should have brought a book."

This is why i have a TN and not a NG on my character sheet.

Two can play the game of ""I'm just playing my character".

In my experience alignment isn't the issue. "Just playing in character" guy is banking on a sort of social contract that entitles their character to be part of the party, because they're sitting at the table. This prevents not only slit throats and daggers in the back, but also duals, arrests, ejections from the party, and righteous smiting.

Many gaming stores have an "open table" policy and at most schools if your group meets of school property and wants to put a notice on school bulliten boards then inclusion is enforced.

I feel like several people have responded to a definition of fantasy that they don't like (romantic medieval Europe+magic) by poiting a absolutely useless definition of fantasy (>0 supernatural occurances=fantasy).

I've always thought that the dividing line should be in how much world building was requiried. In your typical horror film the supernatural elements have little or no effect of world at large outside the events of the film. Nobody explains what the world of Night of the Living Dead is like before the titular night, because they don't need to. There's no world building and therefore it's a horror film rather than sci-fi/fantasy. Day (not Dawn) and Land of the Dead on the other hand are sci-fi films because they happen in a post-Dead world which the film has to explain to you.

*lower gravirty for the win!* but same strength

Giant Insects also need a more oxygen rich environment than we have. They absorb oxygen through their skin and their ability to do so scales up poorly in a similar dilemma to the square/cube problem giants have with strength/weight.

Giant Amphibians may be ok, I believe Insects only have this issue, because they actually only "breath" at their joints. Without an oxygen rich environment they need either lungs or to have thin patches spread throughout their body.

Quote:

Fallacy:

a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument.

a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid.

faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument.

Nice job quoting definition 1., a definition which is rarely used as it requires awkwardly worded sentences to use correctly, when the context of the discussion including the OP's title is clearly referring to definition 1.1/1.2

1.1 Logic A failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid.

1.2Faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument:

In reality most cases being called out as "Historical Accuracy Fallacy" are actually Appeals to Authority.

"Elves are like humans but prettier, lithe, masters of magic and live forever", "dwarves all have beards and love ale and are smiths and ect", "Humans are the under dog race that lives shorter lives than everyone but took over because "Human spirit" and stuff",... Those were engrained very powerfully after Tolkien.

I get wanting there to be more flavors on the plate than "Generic Medieval Fantasy", but I do think it's a bit unfair to hate on Tolkeen for it. All those things were firmly in place in Red Book D&D. Before the movies came out a non-negligible number of people learned these tropes from D&D first.

It's not like Tolkeen even created thses things whole cloth. His elves are basically the fae of Authurian Legends and other stories their genre. Dwarves were already floating around mostly formed, Tolkeen just injected a little of the culture of the humans whose stories he pulled them from. As for the humans, you're basically describing the perfect people to tell stories about. If other races had as much or more of the traits that have been ascribed to humans, we wouldn't want to read a human-centric story in their world.

A big point I feel most people seem to be missing is that when most people say "Historically Accurate" they mean "Not breaking the verisimilitude of this quasi historical fantasy world" in the same way that people often mean "verisimiltude" when they say "realism".

I get that this misnomer can be a pet peeve to some people and that many people have an inferor knowledge of history. I'll even cede the point that do to Dunning-Kruger effect the people the least qualified to judge "historical accuracy" are the least likey to say "verisimilitude" instead. However, verismilitude is ultimitley a good thing. I'd rather play in a "Historically Accurate" game where swords are forged in the manner of the opening of Conan and the roman marble is the sterile white we're all familiar with than in a "anything goes" world run by someone who knows better.

His base damage is listed as 4d6 with a non magical medium greatsword. Nothing in his stat block seems to explain this boost. Was it a typo? Is it meant to be an unlisted typeless damage boost? Does he have a completely legal damage boost that just isn't listed?