History Headscratchers / DungeonsAndDragons

**** Correct. Customising monsters in 4E is actually ludicrously easy. Any monster can have it's level adjusted up or down by simply increasing or reducing it's defences and attacks by 1 for every level, increasing or reducing it's damage by 1 for every 2 levels, knocking the damage die up or down for every 4 levels and giving it a new ability every 4 - 6 levels. You can also add templates to monsters, turning them into Elites or Solos (doubling or quintupling their power respectively) and there's an entire section in the DMG which gives readers the exact rules and regs required to build an entire monster from scratch. I'm not sure why so many people seem to feel 4E isn't customisable, it's easily the most customisable of any of the DnD series, it's FAR faster and easier to customise things in 4E than it ever was in 3.5, and it's more fun too, since Monsters are explicitly allowed to break the rules. The difference is that all the monster customisation stuff is in the DMG, not the MM. The MM is just a list of pre-made monsters that fit into the rules outlined in the DMG, it's not even a list of all the monsters in the world, it's like, a book full of example monsters, "this is how your monsters should look like."

***** DnD is based around Humans being 'the average'. If something has a score of higher than 10, it's better than your standard Human in that respect. When you think of 10 as the arbitrary score for an average man walking down the street, many of the scores make sense. Far more make absolutely none however.

***** The main problem with this idea is that we're not considering the whole "Dwarves have a higher constitution than we do" point. Meaning that, in DnD, if humans are MadeOfIron, Dwarves are Made Of Steel.

***** This troper isn't as familiar with DnD as some are, but a kobold is a monster, yes? As far as I'm concerned, it's always ok to kill a monster, even a baby one. The baby monster will eventually become an adult monster, better to nip it in the bud. If I recall correctly, a paladin is a holy warrior, and thus it would seem to me that he SHOULD kill any monster he can get ahold of. When we encounter a "baby monster", the "monster" part is more relevant than the "baby" part.

** Could be that while the spell is one word long, there's a fuckton of stuff that needs to be recorded - notes on pronunciation, mystic sigils and so forth, plus planar diagrams to record how it works. Wizards are the DnD equivalent of scientists - they usually don't just want to make stuff happen, they also want to know how it works, what makes it tick, where the energy comes from and so forth.

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** It ''may'' be possible anyway, because it's not lip service that matters, and the line between a deity's portfolio and essence is quite blurred. E.g. if a wizard taught a few dozens of students, did research to the end just because he felt like it, but didn't pray to anyone for last twenty years, he may still get a pass to Dweomerheart: "on Toril, Mystra ''is'' magic"(c). Maybe, Tyr is interested in a BullyHunter who did this out of sense of justice and not just a pretext for a good fight? And so on. IIRC, there were no mentions of babies in Avatars or {{sourcebooks}}, though.

* Okay, maybe this is just me, but the thing that bothers me most about the whole death of Eilistraee bit is that suddenly Dark Elves are something completely different from Drow, and the former Good Drow suddenly became them. Yes, there were older references to the Drow formerly being the Ssri’Tel'Quessir... but couldn't they have come up with a common name for them that isn't massively confusing and doesn't disregard all continuity prior to this point? Hell, call them "Go-Squish-Like-A-Tomato Elves" or "FlurbleBlurble elves" if you can't think of anything else.

** In 3.5? After making the classical joke about "[[{{Munchkin}} playing Elves as Storm Giants with sharp ears and Dwarves as Earth Elementals with beards]]" canon almost literally and [[ArbitraryMaximumRange fireballs cut in half by range limit]]? RunningTheAsylum, duh. In 4 ed it's just seeped into the core completely (Bear Lore et al).

*** Drow (purple elves with pupilless eyes.)
**** ...black in every edition before. ''Recolored!''

** In 3.5? Between making the classical joke about "[[{{Munchkin}} playing Elves as Storm Giants with sharp ears and Dwarves as Earth Elementals with beards]]" canon almost literally and appearance of Bear Lore and Durr-Clang? RunningTheAsylum, duh.

* One of the magic items given in the Dungeon Master's Guide is a "Ring of X-Ray Vision." How do people in any normal setting know about x-rays?

* Why does the Complete Warrior Samurai ''EXIST?'' Did no one, when they were coming up with ideas for the 3 base classes, smack the guy who came up with dual-wield focus smack him, and rightfully point out that historical samurai were known to fight in a variety of ways, including mounted combat? Did no one, while the class's mechanics were being planned out, suggest that mabye the class would be better if it mastered it's combat style at a half-reasonable level, that Kia Smite would be better if it wasn't ten times worse than what it stole from, and that demoralizing is a horrible status condition that isn't worth wasting class abilities on? Was there really no one who was bothered to write in a better description then "they're kinda like historical samurai", and use the much more badass ronin picture instead of the retarded dwarf? Was there NOT A SINGLE PERSON screening the book who sent it back with an angry note on the front that reads "this class sucks, make it better"!?