booji

I'm still a bit lost after reading these posts a few times. What is Intensity used for? As I understand it a sorcerer can make a number of alterations to a spell equal to 1/10 his shaping skill and that each alteration costs a further magic point. Are Intensity points used to make free alterations?

I was an AD&D player for years and really liked the Dragonlance world but I could never quite get the story to work for me. I spent years making houserules and using things like the vitality rules to weaken characters because D&D makes superheros. Having overpowered characters makes NPCs inconsequential plus the rules allow characters to exist with no social obligations nor consequences. I couldn't work out why any NPC in D&D would choose to be a farmer when seeing as you get xp for anything so basically you could go fishing get enough xp from killing fish level up and then take on some low level monster that was easy to kill and for some reason carried loads of treasure. I couldn't have tension in a story as there was very little possibility of any real problem, it's just hack hack hack until you 99% of the time win. Personally I think D&D is geared toward creating sociopathic superheros and it's hardwired into the rules not just that it's how a person chooses to play it.