Spotlight, please?

[Valles]

My tinkering with that site had come up with a 20 km rock, but yeah. *double checks* Huh. Maybe I mis-entered something, that first time.
Anyway, I figure that the ancestors of the 'civilised' states would've filtered back into the area, rather than living there since before the Jewel impact.

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You're right on the omnivore/carrion eater hypothesis for humans precursors to survive - after the end of the Cretaceous, minimal to no purely vegetarian or carnivorous animals appeared to have survived. Unfortunately, the Cretaceous impact killed pretty much everything larger than a housecat/small dog planetwide.

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*blinkblink* Including sea life? And, directly killed or just starved out with the dust cloud?
The kind of explosive radiation you'd get in the wake of that would, I think, likely include some strains undergoing a drasic size increase... the hominids of the day might've been small enough for their language-using descendants to drop-kick without trouble. Or they might've been tool-using already, and that could prove a factor. Or, or, or... Look! A Creationist! *points, then starts to sneak away*

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Well, the Cretaceous impact was a sea or at least seacoast strike, right? A center-continent hit would have had less extreme global effects, leaving life on other landmasses not so badly affected.
--Sam
"It's a clastic sediment from Utah."

[DHBirr]

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A center-continent hit would have had less extreme global effects, leaving life on other landmasses not so badly affected.

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Depends. Which would stay in the atmosphere longer for "nuclear winter" effect -- water vapor or dust? I'm not really sure. Also, a land impact might well touch off forest fires by superheating the atmosphere, putting lots of smoke and soot in the air that you wouldn't get with a sea impact -- at least, not unless the latter hit the crust hard enough and in the right places to trigger lots of volcanic eruptions.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[RMH999]

Using the Cretaceous impact as an example
Plant effects:
North America - mass extinction & plant kill
Rest of world - Plant kill at event time
"Fern Spike" during recovery

Sea effects:
Crash of planktonic food chain - species dependent on plankton (and those species dependent on the plankton eaters) die off.
Calcium carbonate food chain - shelled (molluscs & the like) suffered heavy losses
Detritus/scavengers - able to survive fairly well
Animal effects:
Largest land animal to survive believed to be approximately the size of a cat.
Largest air-breathing animals to survive (crocs) - are semi-aquatic and can go for multiple months without eating. Young are slow growing and are scavenger feeders for the first few years.
Nuclear winter - complete crash of photosynthesis and food chains derived from photosynthesis
Possible other effects (some theories/possible evidence)
Global firestorm - debris from impact starting meteoric fires worldwide. Secondary effect - buildup of CO2 from fires for greenhouse effect. Will reduce nuclear winter (potentially) but may freeze-bake surviving species and increase extinctions.
Some things to balance out the gloom and doom
Wind patterns (the earth's hemispheres N/S are effectively separate) could have minimize nuclear winter effects in the opposite hemisphere from impact.
RMH

[Valles]

ETA: superseded by most recent post

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[CattyNebulart]

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First, for anyone considering a house rule of just assuming maximum HP rather than actually rolling the die, forget it. Ability scores should be assigned according to the 'Organic Characters' option on p 169 of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

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I don't like D&D much, and I am not that interested in this world, but I can tell you that that is a bad bad, horrible idea.
People are fored to play a specific role based on what their atributes come out as, or be near useless. And some people want to play the big guy with the sword but they get a strength of 7 and a charisma of 14 they will be unhappy. I also dislike rolling for atributes instead of buying them, but that is not as big a killer. (Though be carefull about the party balance, someone with a total atribute modifier of +14 will seriosly outshine someone with a -2 total. I was in such a party, not fun unless the GM can compensate, which is hard.)

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Fourth, Feats, as I'm not confident/energetic enough to monkey with the way Skills work. Anywhere it says 'Proficient with all (type x) weapons', cross that out and replace it with two counts of the '(type x) Weapon Proficiency' feat. Wielding a weapon in combat, no matter what sort it may be, is not simple, and requires a modicum of practice with that weapon.

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be carefull with the loot you hand out then, because a nice weapon noone is proficient with will annoy the players.
Overall you are really monkeying with the balance between classes which will make it much harder to GM well, esspecially with the organic characters (Which is if IIRC, roll 3d6 six times, the first roll is strenthg, the second is con, etc, no choie whatsoever) which can easily lead to say low con and high charisma, or similar combinations which make it hard to choose a sensible class for the character, as opoosed to someone who lucked into high strength and low everything else who will have several classes to choose from.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[VladimirTherin]

High charisma lets you pick from several different classes in the most recent dnd settings.
Bard/Sorc/Warlock for example.

[Sirrocco]

Is true. It also bosts turning the undead, helps paladins in a lot of little ways, and is the primary stat for certain builds of rogue. None of that's any help to the poor guy who just wanted to play tank, though.

[Valles]

Upon getting exposed to the Psionics rules - which were, at the glance I got, very close to if not exactly what I wanted for this setting's magic in general, I've thought over this post's original content and regretted much of it.
I did save it, though, so a lot of it may come back.
What I'm going to do instead is put together a campaign guide - adventures and potential encounters, setting descriptions, etc. - that should cover most or all of the available places that one might conceivably adventure.
It all starts in the Islands of the East, an archipelago of tropical islands in the Sunbed Ocean. In physical arrangement they're quite South Pacific - mountainous island interiors, coral reefs, riotous plant life all over the place. Depending how you look at it, there's either two main islands or four; the largest island has a sort of a string-of-beads appearance when seen from above or on a map. Surrounding these are a series of barrier islands, built where mangrove-like trees took root on the coral reefs and started a buildup of sandy soil.
The shared myths of the entire area claim that humans and lizardfolk are descended from the children the mother goddess, Sias, bore for her two lovers, Ama and Chalui. Ama, it is said, was a craftsman, himself, but was mostly known for his flighty nature, his love of exploring, and his terrible rages when provoked, and so the human inhabitants of the barrier isles often see themselves as taking after him. Chalui was cautious and very strong, and a very practical sort of problem-solver, and the only thing that could move him to any sort of unconsidered action was his deep love of beautiful objects.
Since Ama was not only the most skilled artist to be found in those days, but possessive of his work, to boot, it should be no surprise that the two did not get along even when Sias was not present to show off to.
Though Ama was a kind and generous parent, he was also a neglectful one, being so often focused on his own work or myriad interests, and left his children to work and learn of their own interests as they would - which they did, being capable and independant much as their father was. Chalui, in contrast, was much more diligent, as was his way. He taught his children as much of what he knew of the world as he could, including swimming, farming, and the like. Unfortunately, however he loved them he simply did not understand his daughters and was unable to care for them properly, and even to this day they have remained stunted as a result of this. That they survived at all was often due to their aquiring shiny seashells and other things their father found lovely, for without those to attract his attention he would often turn away in embarrassment and shame at his inability to truly help them.
Modern Chaluians live in permanent settled villages and towns which make up as many as a dozen tiny kingdoms, which often war with each other for access to resources or the services of valued craftsmen, that they might dedicate their work to their god. These realms are usually ruled by hereditary priest-kings with powers limited by their personal charisma, authority, or martial prowess. While lacking much in the way of internal stratification or pomp and circumstance, Chaluian society is quite unmistakably civilised, particularly in that they have an active literature using a native ideographic system - consider them as being at a sort of Sumero-Mayan stage.
Male Chaluians, in terms of physical game states, are Lizardfolk. Female Chaluians aren't quite Kobolds in that they take farming as a profession rather than mining and are usually neutral in alignment. They also lose their Light Sensitivity and Darkvision in favor of Lizardfolk's ability to hold their breath, and their racial skill bonuses likewise.

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"