House Rule: Uniform Damage for Monks

Just a quick note about monks (aka mystics). One thing I love about original Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants is the option to have uniform attack damage - 1d6, regardless of the length or type of the weapon. This makes for extreme portability (as players would only need to bring a d20 and a few d6s), especially when coupled with the digest-sized books used by oD&D and many of its clones (White Box immediately springs to mind).

This table isn't in any way a brilliant idea, but it's definitely something I wanted to jot down. Instead of using the funny dice for open hand damage, monks can use only d6s with the following table; to stick to pure, unadjusted d6 rolls, simply ignore the "pluses".

Scattered Thoughts on Pathfinder (and Vampire)

Ah, Pathfinder. I have an odd relationship to this game. Though Dungeon Master 4th Edition For Dummies was my introduction to RPGs in theory (aside from Spoony's old videos), and a couple of Fast Play games cut my teeth on basic refereeing, the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box was my first time running a full-featured RPG - and my first time playing one. Nostalgia is a force more powerful than electromagnetism and more mysterious than animal magnetism, and it has impelled me to revisit the movies and video games of my childhood... but can it compel me to revisit Pathfinder?

House Rule: Health & Stamina

As I work on my own "fantasy heartbreaker" (as JB terms it), I've been thinking about the balance between deadliness and survivability. The following set of rules is a stab at addressing this. These rules have not been play-tested, and the concept of them is not original to me - I think the d20 version of Star Wars used something similar, though I'm not certain. I'm providing my rough draft here both as a safety in case my hard drive and other storage methods fail, and in the hope that someone else will find it useful.

Beowulf was a Monk

An odd thought popped into my head last night or this morning. It came while considering how to have the unique powers and playstyle of the monk class (or "mystic" in BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia parlance) without all of the kung fu and/or wuxia trappings. Consider: which hero of Old English legend...

• ...regularly fought monsters armed with few or no weapons?
• ...performed athletic feats for days on end?
• ...fought completely without armor (on at least one occasion)?