Category: RPG Systems
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This weekend I continued my work on the epidemiology of Pathfinder, including an expansion of my programs to allow for different types of point buy. In the process I took the advice of some commenters at a related thread on the Pathfinder message boards: I think for the non human fast fighters dropping weapon finesse…
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Over the past few months I have been involved in a roughly fortnightly series of adventures to play-test a new RPG, 13th Age. Since play-testing is over and the product is now at a kind of first draft stage, I thought I’d give my thoughts on the system. My thoughts, however, will be heavily tainted…
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Continuing my series of posts exploring the epidemiology of Pathfinder, today I will report on the impact of adding ferocity to the orc stat block. Is the orc still a CR 1/3 monster when one accounts for ferocity, and just how tough does a fighter have to be to walk away from a fight with…
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In preparing an analysis of the effect of orc ferocity, I found I wasn’t able to reproduce the results of my previous post on different types of fighter and different races. The overall mortality in that post was 20%, but I kept getting values of 36%. Because I’m such a stunningly good programmer, I’d overwritten…
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After taking account of comments here and on the Paizo messageboards, I have adapted my simulation programs to allow for purposive attribute scores, feats and races, and re-analyzed the survival data for a smaller sample of more carefully designed fighters. In this second round of analyses Gruumsh the Bastard doesn’t acquit himself well, but neither…
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In yesterday’s analysis I made the mistake of assigning random HPs to the fighters, which is not the way that Pathfinder works: at first level in Pathfinder all PCs receive maximum hit points.Thus yesterday’s post is actually a fairly faithful representation of survival in D&D 3.5 rather than Pathfinder. Today I’ve brushed off a particularly…
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I’ve decided to begin a long-term research project aimed at understanding the underlying epidemiology of Dungeons and Dragons. This research project will consist of a series of (hopefully) increasingly complex simulations of battles between D&D PCs and various nemeses, to answer some key questions in character development and perhaps also to investigate some key controversies…
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I GM’d Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 3rd Edition (WFRP3) on the weekend for a group of three players. It was my first time GMing in 18 months, the first time I have ever GM’d WFRP3 in English (up until now it has been Japanese). It was actually the first time I had GMd in English in…
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While preparing yesterday’s post I stumbled on a discussion of house rules and hit points at Grognardia, where James the Grognard describes his planned house rules for Swords and Wizardry. It’s old and I don’t know whether he ended up using them, but I noticed that his hit points rules induce a very strange, and…
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I think it’s safe to say that OSR gamers aren’t big fans of 4th Edition D&D, and one of the (many) complaints about it seems to be that healing surges are a terrible idea. We can see this objection floating around in connection with D&D Next, which has retained them and therefore must be a…
Compromise and Conceit 