Life Is Cheap This situation came up in a Living Greyhawk module back in the day. The noblewoman was in peril and we failed. She died. But we had a free “raise dead” through favours and boons, and simply brought her […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Another Mark on the Wall When I run the game, my friend Bryan is the death magnet. But when I play, I attract player character deaths like a brutalised adventurer attracts flies. In the high level mini-campaign we’re currently playing, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
300 This is my 300th webcomic here at 5 Minute Workday. Yay! Party time. So I said to myself, “hey self, why not a colour strip?” Yeah… it was a lot of work. So I’ll be sticking in black-and-white for […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Playing By The Rules The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game has this to say about death: Dead: The character’s hit points are reduced to a negative amount equal to his Constitution score, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Convenient Timing In D&D and other roleplaying worlds, there is an unspoken law of conservation of experience. Player characters kill monsters and gain their experience in some sort of weird exchange, like a quickening from Highlander. The amount of experience in […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A Ticking Clock Negative hit points that slowly tick down as your character bleeds to death in the middle of the battlefield probably seemed like a good idea when 3rd Edition D&D was being designed. It added a countdown to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Against All Odds I love the chaotic randomness of the Deck of Many Things. I don’t think I’ve used it much over the years, but when it does make an appearance things get really interesting at the table really fast. Over […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Inherently Valuable Five-thousand gold pieces is a lot of money to spend on “ice”. With the silver piece being the standard currency, the baseline for the cost of labour, a single gold coin has the purchasing power of $500. To […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Expendable Resources I’m a fan of the idea that not every fight should be fair. A good GM shouldn’t set out to regularly create fights that the PCs cannot win. That’s a dick move. However, success should also not always be […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Trash Talking is a Free Action Each round takes six seconds. This does not mean every turn takes six seconds, but really that all turns share the same six seconds. So at a table of four facing two enemies everyone […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Level Cap Before it descended from its position as the best show on television (which just happened to be animated) to being a mere cartoon, The Simpsons coined the term “retirony”. A lovely portmanteau of “irony” and “retirement” referring to […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
What To Do When a PC Dies Everyone’s time comes eventually. Eventually bad tactics, story, or cold dice kill a character. I’ve lost a couple and I’ve killed a couple. But what happens next? I’m not talking about the long […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
