Ockham's Spoon

A clerk in a department store that is still operating is approached by a customer who asks for 2 pairs of underwear. "Only two?" the clerk asks. "Yeah, I wash one pair in the sink each day and rotate them." the customer replies. The clerk finds this odd but sells him the underwear. The next customer comes in and asks for 5 pairs of underwear. "Well with 5 pairs you won't have to rotate them daily." comments the clerk. "Yeah, that gives me one pair for each workday. I just go commando on the weekends." The clerk is mildly disgusted but sells him the underwear. T

What would Halloween be without scary campfire stories?

Oh it was bad to begin with, really bad, but it is downright putrid now.

"Big-ass lightning bolts are cool. That's just a universal truth." Rich needs to put that on a t-shirt.

The problem with critical hits is that they can be used against PCs too... A couple of house rules we have used are if you roll a natural 3 on 3d6 you do maximum damage. Doesn't happen often, but when it does it is usually a one-shot takedown. The other is if you roll 1/2 or less of what you needed to hit, you get to roll damage dice twice and then pick the better of the two rolls. That mostly grew out of player being frustrated when they would roll a 6 to hit and then roll a bunch of 1s for damage which seemed counter-intuitive for such a good to-hit roll.

I used to use Damage Reduction for really big creatures like dragons because that sword isn't going to be anything more than a hatpin to a dragon. Then I could give the dragon substantial armor (say +12 rPD/rED) without it being ridiculously high. But now I favor Damage Negation, in part because it is more granular than Damage Reduction (and point-wise it scales better) and in part because Negation Reduction gives me a way to bypass it; e.g. an archer with the Skill: Soft Spot which is just levels of Negation Reduction. You can also build it into a Dragon-Slaying sword (which would also pro

Wow. That didn't age well.

Two stockbrokers are returning from lunch, only to find that they have locked the car keys inside the car. They try all the doors just in case but no luck. The first one says "We might have to break a window to get in." The second one replies "But it will look like we are trying to steal the car. We should call a locksmith." "But we are all the way downtown! It will take forever for a locksmith to come." complains the first. "Maybe we could call the police. They might be able to help." suggests the second. "I don't know about tha

Two submissions to the this year's Wildlife photo contest. I feel the turtle picture is particularly appropriate for 2020.

My two cents on the bicycle debate, in the form of a comic just to keep the thread on track: I used to bike to work, but after several near misses and incident that left me with several stitches and a bad case of road rash I have given it up 🙁

I would say that you don't. Saving Throws were always one of the stupidest mechanics in D&D in my mind. The lethal poison either kills you instantly or has absolutely no effect? Certainly they could have done better than that. I would just stat out some poisons and petrification effects at different power levels and use that. There are a number of examples in the rule books that have already be written up. Okay, if you want to keep Saving Throws for simplicity of play or just nostalgic feel, build those powers with the Limitation - No Effect if Character makes a CON roll,

Very nice! I like the setting and conversion notes. One minor point that struck me in particular was the rolling 4d6 and taking the best (or worst) 3d6 for the result. How has that been working? I am sure I could figure it out statistically, but you know what they say about lies, damn lies, and statistics. Anyway, it seems to me like a potentially nice alternative way to do Luck (Unluck) rolls in Hero.

Agreed that if the spirit is just an NPC that the players talk to, there is no real need to stat it out. But if the spirit can affect the physical world, you will need to carefully consider how that works, and how the PCs can affect the spirit. If you go the Desolid route, by definition you must have some way to affect the desolid character other than using the Advantage Affects Desolid. That is pretty straight-forward. But if your spirit is using Transdimensional powers to affect the material world, there are very few characters that will be able to touch the spirit

We already have flying snakes. Just not rattlesnakes.