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A Brand New Nail-Biter: Skill Challenge « Dice Monkey
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My male dwarf normally gets decent initiative; however, my female is cursed to having initative rolls of less than 10. So my dwarf waded into combat with the hideous dogs and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if we could improve the attitude of that boar and have it help us out…we don’t have Handle Animal anymore…but hell, maybe the DM will think of something suitable’.
So my turn came around, and I explain to the DM that I want to undergo a skill challenge to improve the attitude of the boar, and what do you know, the skill challenge “Taming The Beast” was listed in the rules for the adventure. Sweet.
The Recursion King: Continuous initiative
The Recursion King describing another continuous initiative system.
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Recently, in our D&D sessions, I decided to resurrect the idea of a continuous initiative system. Continuous initiative means just that - it is continuous - and does not have a one person acting per combat round order.
Trollsmyth: Shields Shall be Splintered!
I'm considering allowing the shield to act as ablative armour. One thing historical shields frequently did was shatter. A strong blow with an axe or a sword could cleave a shield, splintering the boards. Viking duels often had a three-shield rule, allowing each combatant to enter the contest with a shield on his arm and two spares in reserve. (I believe this was seen in "The 13th Warrior", but it's been a while since I've watched it, so my memory could be faulty.)
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I'm considering allowing the shield to act as ablative armour. One thing historical shields frequently did was shatter. A strong blow with an axe or a sword could cleave a shield, splintering the boards. Viking duels often had a three-shield rule, allowing each combatant to enter the contest with a shield on his arm and two spares in reserve. (I believe this was seen in "The 13th Warrior", but it's been a while since I've watched it, so my memory could be faulty.)
ewilen: Making D&D combat realistic
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Later I wrote that the main obstacle to achieving "verisimilitude" in D&D was the use of abstract hit points to represent "survivability".
So this has me thinking what might be the minimum changes I could apply to the basic D&D combat system (I mean pre-AD&D 2e) to improve its verisimilitude and realism. These are just some ideas, written up in the spirit of keeping the game simple, and also without too much concern for "fun". What I mean by that is, I think most RPG players dislike high lethality, especially for "high level" characters. These rules changes by contrast make the game a lot less safe; they might be more acceptable as a set of skirmish rules than as an RPG module.
D&D Miniatures Changes Explained
As many of you know, we announced some big changes to the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures line on Tuesday. If you missed it, the announcement is here.
I want to follow up on the announcement that was made and take the time to shed some light on why we made these changes. I’ll start by giving you some background and then follow with some Q&A that I’ve pulled directly from the message board threads that we have been following.
I really need to step back a few years to give you the big picture. 2006 was a successful year for the entire D&D gaming line and D&D Minis played an important role in that success. In 2006 we released War Drums, a new minis starter, the War of the Dragon Queen Huge set, Blood War, and two D&D Icons Dragons. Although fans were embracing the new minis lines, 2006 was also a year when we started to see the D&D Minis line strain under the increasing costs of manufacturing. Labor, shipping, materials, tooling, and production costs were all creeping up so that in late 2006, after much analysis and many meetings, we made a decision to increase the price per pack to insure quality and profitability were maintained within the line. When we did the price increase our goal was that it would sustain the D&D Minis for at least two to three years. Unfortunately, we could not predict the sharp increases that we’ve seen in manufacturing costs over the last 12 months.
That same year we started to see a decline in sanctioned skirmish play. Typically sanctioned play will wax and wane monthly, so over the long haul we want to see general stability or growth. Even prior to the 4th Edition announcement in August 2007, we were seeing steady declines in sanctioned play.
With increasing costs and decreasing play we began to consider how we could turn the ship around. We explored many options from both the production side and the consumer side. On the production side we began to model minis in CAD (computer aided design). In the beginning, CAD is more expensive than modeling in clay but over time it will save us
Fluid Combat Rounds Rules
An insanely complicated set of D&D 3.0 rules for a less turn-based approach to combat
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Fluid Combat Round Rules Module
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