d20 (D&D, Pathfinder, etc.): General Discussion, Help, and Fun

[tacticslion]

Welp, since the last thread is now on the... *quickly checks*... well, I guess it's not ON a page anymore (or is on the second, depending on what you're accounting is). Anyway, since the last general D&D thread has gone the way of the dodo - and I needed something, because I'm selfish that way -, I figured I'd open a new one! This one!

So to start us off, I'mma askin' fo' sum' help all up in he'ah!

So I've got this character with nearly godlike power over the nature of outsiders he can bind. He also likes fey. He happens to be building a kingdom.

He wants to bind lots of fiends (he finds them... distasteful), annihilate them with powers of GOOD, and use their left-over ashes (this is not entirely accurate) to create new outsiders/fey. Basically, he's going to create axiomatic half-celestial fey (of various kinds) and axiomatic half-fey celestials (lantern archons, mostly) out of predominantly demons (and a few devils, as well as a fair number of daemons - in the end, the kind doesn't really matter). He's got all the power he needs to do this, I just don't have all the information.

These fey will be part of a greater "hive mind" - they don't actually share a mind, but rather share alignment, concepts, information, and ideas via what amounts to a great web-work of thoughts which they are all constantly reading and aware of. This web-work is not intrusive, meaning they it doesn't actually take up their attention. They are also aware of the alignment and current status of all other members.

Most (but certainly not all) of them will hopefully be bound into specific locales, such as dryads into trees; blodeuwedds into fertile plains (flowers, grass, and shrubs); miengu into pools and springs; and the like.

My problem is this: I've exhausted my knowledge of fey creatures. And fey creatures are not really compiled into a single, pleasant, easy-to-use reference guide either. Especially not those presented in Pathfinder.

Now to clarify, I've got most of the 3.X D&D stuff that'd have fey kinds in it. Books-wise, I'm missing Stormwrack and Incarnum, as well as anything published around the time of the Tome of Swords or the early 3.0 era, but I've got a rather large library of older books. I don't have (many) adventure paths/adventures/etc, however.

Mostly what I'm looking for isn't D&D stuff, however, but Paizo stuff, especially Pathfinder. The game is in Golarion (the Pathfinder world) and is specifically the Kingmaker Campaign, so, you know, if you guys've played it, please no spoilers. I've made ridiculously large knowledge checks, so general kinds of fey are great, regardless of their kinds, but notsomuch the specific (named) NPCs.

So, I need you guys to use your epic knowledge of nerdy places and people to gather information for me! I need you to reach out to your resources, your hidden caches of information, and your vast network of contacts to enlighten me on the nature of Golarion's fey! Or, you know, just shoot the breeze, telling funny or interesting stories or asking for help yourself; you know, your choice.

Help me nuklearforums, your my only hope*!

*I'm not actually asking for any information on Starwars.

Almost-immediate edit: I'm aware of the "Oread" from the D&D 3.X Fiend Folio - it is to mountains what dryads are to trees - as well as the Pathfinder Beastiary 2 "Oread" - basically Paizo's equivalent of an earth genasi. I'm also wondering if anyone knows if Paizo replaced the first Oread with some other creature/name, or just kind of left it alone.
Also: don't feel limited to environment-themed fey. I'm planning tons of grigs, sprites, nymphs, and the like too. Fun times.

[Vauron]

Well, if you don't mind homebrew than you may want to look at this thread (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151147), as it contains a few dozen fey. Granted, some are fey that are already present in DnD, just done differently. Also, it is for 3.5, not Pathfinder. Still, you may find some use in it.

[Azisien]

General Discussion and Fun: So I bought the Pathfinder handbook. I think it's the best PnP handbook I've ever had. I'm probably going to give it my personal crown over d20 Modern (which up until this point I preferred over D&D 3.X, 4E, M&M)

Already ordered the Pathfinder Advanced Players Guide, but only getting those two books because the rest are pretty useless crap.

[Pip Boy]

I played in a Pathfinder game a couple of months back and since have fallen in love with the system. Magic seems to have a lot fewer "Save or die" effects (replaced with "Save or lots of damage"). Physical attackers have recieved a lot of buffs in the form of new, interesting feats that make a lot more combat options, and melee classes have all recieved new class features to make them more interesting.

I like to consider it to be what D&D 3.5 was to D&D 3.0. Lots of balance issues have been taken care of, and everything old has been changed enough to make it fresh and interesting.

They've also combined a lot of redundant skills. Listen, Search, and Spot are combined into Perception while Balance, Tumble, and Jump are now Acrobatics. Gather information is now just a part of Diplomacy, and they've changed the way Class vs Cross Class skills work so that Cross-Class skills aren't so wasteful.

Exp costs for spells and item creation have all been replaced with an appropriate price in gold pieces. So your wizard in the party will never have to worry about being five levels below everyone else just because he's been taking the time and energy to make everyone's fancy pants for them.

The "Master Craftsman" feat allows non-spellcasters to learn to use magical components in item creation and essentially make magic arms and armor despite not knowing how to cast spells.

Azisien, as for the rest of the books being crap, I'd recommend Ultimate Magic as well. Aside from adding a lot of classes and feats, it has archetype variants of preexisting classes that allow you to give up X class feature in order to gain Y class feature instead.

Last I heard, there are also a pathfinder book on Psionics and a pathfinder expansion called Ultimate Combat still in their beta testing phase.

Also, if you're running a pathfinder game, its worth grabbing the DM screen. Its got shit loads of charts all over it that are usually the things that send you looking through the manual mid-game, so I find it really helps speed up gameplay.

[tacticslion]

One other thing that Paizo is great at is AP's - Adventure Paths.

Now, some of you might be saying "that's a lazy-man's way!", but honestly it's a great blessing for those of us that literally don't have the time to make completely unique ones, and what's more they have really great stuff introduced by way of their Adventure Paths. Each one I've picked up has a new special mechanic that's added to make each AP that much more unique. Each new mechanic is tailored specifically for that campaign, but is applicable to other campaigns as well!

The one I'm playing now, for example, is called Kingmaker. It specifies how to build a kingdom from scratch: exploring land, gathering resources, building cities and buildings, claiming more land, how successful your kingdom is, how difficult it is to control, and special events which may or may not affect or afflict your kingdom. Each of these have their own, fully-fleshed rules and, despite how complicated it seems, they carefully and successfully streamline it so that it's realistic (enough, anyway) and rather simple to follow through with. For example, land is divided into hexes - six-sided figures set in alternating rows or columns - and each hex is roughly twelve miles across. This is the fundamental unit of land they divide the map into. You must explore and clear the hex before you can claim it - both steps gaining you certain amounts of XP, and either or both can be adventures, should you choose (or should the AP describe it). The rules continue from there, but since I don't wish to steal from Paizo, I'll stop there.

In another (I'm given to understand) there are rules for gaining the trust of an overly suspicious (with good reason!) town, and in another rules for competing teams attempting to be the first to locate, explore, and claim an ancient ruined city! Further, they expand their monster lists, and, honestly, that's what I'm hoping to find from you guys. While they attempt to compile most of their monsters into the Bestiaries, some slip through the cracks, and I was interested if any of you knew fey from the APs that didn't end up in the Bestiaries - I know of three or four.

In any event, this next month is my character's "birthday" (not his real Birthday, as the GM pulled some chicanery to get me here!)... and also the month that I finally gain enough land to be raised from a Duke (and my country from a Duchy) to a full-fledged King (and Kingdom)! I started out as a Baron! Let's Go, Baron! (hey, it's funny to me)

Currently, I've got four Guardian Spirits (basically Shield Archons with Cassians as their helms) in each of my three cities, the fourth being a super-amalgam spirit in an important, but remote and well-hidden terribly magical location hidden amidst some mountains. Fun story next time (maybe), after someone else updates with their stuff!

EDIT: How rude of me! Vauron, I didn't even thank you! Home-brew is up to GM, but that list is actually really great, and has come in more than a little handy. So, thank you, Vauron!

[Azisien]

Azisien, as for the rest of the books being crap, I'd recommend Ultimate Magic as well. Aside from adding a lot of classes and feats, it has archetype variants of preexisting classes that allow you to give up X class feature in order to gain Y class feature instead.

Last I heard, there are also a pathfinder book on Psionics and a pathfinder expansion called Ultimate Combat still in their beta testing phase.

Also, if you're running a pathfinder game, its worth grabbing the DM screen. Its got shit loads of charts all over it that are usually the things that send you looking through the manual mid-game, so I find it really helps speed up gameplay.

The one I'm playing now, for example, is called Kingmaker. It specifies how to build a kingdom from scratch: exploring land, gathering resources, building cities and buildings, claiming more land, how successful your kingdom is, how difficult it is to control, and special events which may or may not affect or afflict your kingdom. Each of these have their own, fully-fleshed rules and, despite how complicated it seems, they carefully and successfully streamline it so that it's realistic (enough, anyway) and rather simple to follow through with. For example, land is divided into hexes - six-sided figures set in alternating rows or columns - and each hex is roughly twelve miles across. This is the fundamental unit of land they divide the map into. You must explore and clear the hex before you can claim it - both steps gaining you certain amounts of XP, and either or both can be adventures, should you choose (or should the AP describe it). The rules continue from there, but since I don't wish to steal from Paizo, I'll stop there.

Gee thanks guys I'm so glad to be $100 poorer (and 500% more amazing) because of this thread making me think twice as much about why I don't own enough Pathfinder. UNTIL TODAY:

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a128/Azisien/PathfinderAddiction.jpg

Edit: Also looking at this Kingmaker stuff and it looks a bit bulky to add into a custom campaign but I think I might do it when I run one.

[tacticslion]

Azi: I'm a helper! Also, that looks so great!

Personally, as someone who LOVES casters (and all their broken, broken goodness), I have a deep and abiding longing for Ultimate Magic. But. Ultimate Combat has gunslingers. Which might be completely stupid, from what I'm hearing. Nonetheless. Want. Babies take priority over books financially, however.

The one thing I don't like about Kingmaker (so far, mind, I'm a player) is that the rules for each part are spread across the (first four, so far) modules. First adventure: exploration. Second adventure: kingdom building. Third adventure: ... uh, more kingdom building (but not really any new rules in that one, just a great story). Fourth adventure (I think, as it's only been hinted at by the GM): mass combat (local). I'm guessing adventure number five has something like mass combat (wide scale) or something. I've no real idea what adventure number six has, if anything - maybe something like extending the kingdom to extraplanar locales (like the First World)?

Anyway, in a fashion it makes sense, as that's pretty much how the rules come into play in the campaign, and also it makes you purchase the AP. It's frustrating because it makes you purchase the AP. Serpent's Skull is similar in that while it's two parts of travel and ruin exploration/claiming are split into two books... that's two books, not four or five.

Anyway, the game itself is a blast. The rules themselves are easy to use. One of the BEST things is the player's guide - which you can download for free from Paizo - that gives you blank hex maps (make your own world maps!), blank city grids (make your own cities!), and a blank country sheet (make your own country! ... wait, that's kind of the point of all this), though it doesn't tell you how to use them. I've printed out ten city grids, as I'm planning on expanding my (almost all-natural) cities extensively!

I've already got one city that's three districts wide (the capital), another that's one full district(a recent acquisition, now fully fleshed out under our care), another that's kind-of-a-district (sort of - a long-time acquisition that we've accepted on the grounds that we can't do anything to it until later because of PLOT), and one that's being built right now (the future "city of the gods" where Erastil is actually the foremost honored, but many non-evil - especially good - deities will be honored there as well). I've got (distant) plans for an underwater district (an extension of my capital, for the merfolk I've planted near my capital to live), one on a forbidden island far away (a future "arcane" city), and another in a fortress on the edge of my territory (a future fortress city). All that will be in the distant future. I've also got plans for smaller settlements along the way nestled into mountains and other places for special boons to the country. Everything else is either farms or mountains! And roads (actually, this is going to be a sacred thing in my country, a kind of literalized metaphor for the Path of Light)!

Personally, one of my favorite parts about the campaign so far has been the time I punked out the 11,000 year old lich!

Anyway, baby Ben is up, so I'm away!

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Friend of mine is recruiting me into his pathfinder campaign that'll be starting up again in a few weeks. Grumbled about lack of books. He referred me to this site. It is a good'n!

http://www.d20pfsrd.com should take the edge of of costs if money is an issue.

[Azisien]

Personally, as someone who LOVES casters (and all their broken, broken goodness), I have a deep and abiding longing for Ultimate Magic. But. Ultimate Combat has gunslingers. Which might be completely stupid, from what I'm hearing. Nonetheless. Want. Babies take priority over books financially, however.

IMO, Pathfinder does a fantastic take on firearms. Only systems I've tried using firearms in are 4E (house rule I think? At least when I played it) and d20 Modern. I'd say with ease that Pathfinder handles firearms just as well as d20 Modern, which is built around them as a core, and its really easy to slot them into your games based on the tech level of your fantasy world. Firearms are CRAZY expensive and not even overpowered or anything.

Gunslinger is hilarious, since it uses grit to fuel its abilities. I'm noticing a possible criticism of Pathfinder might be how much it borrows from pop culture with references like that all over the place, but I personally think that's a plus to the series. Witches with cackle and broom flight? Count me in!

The one thing I don't like about Kingmaker (so far, mind, I'm a player) is that the rules for each part are spread across the (first four, so far) modules. First adventure: exploration. Second adventure: kingdom building. Third adventure: ... uh, more kingdom building (but not really any new rules in that one, just a great story). Fourth adventure (I think, as it's only been hinted at by the GM): mass combat (local).

Yeah the rules are so spread out I'm actually not going to buy Kingmaker, but I did slice out the rules segments to use them in my own campaign. I'm actually really looking forward to it, the level of elegance in their mass combat rules is almost off the charts. So simple, so effective. When I told my potential PCs about including those rules they all went apeshit, too, because we've all been enthralled by Mount & Blade: Warband (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount%26Blade:_Warband) in the past, and those rules basically turn Pathfinder into Pen & Paper: Warband.

[tacticslion]

Thought I had a few moments... then I didn't, now I do, so here's a post!
I continue to be awesome in most ways.

Thanks! It doesn't have gunslinger stuff (it seems to be missing both of the ultimates), but it's quite cool and useful!

Pathfinder's great at firearms, fantastic and funny references in abilities, and no Kingmaker AP but TOTALLY the ruleset for me!
It's good to hear at least one person really like them. Basically (so far) on the Paizo forums I've really only read people complaining about it being stupid... or people who like it while trying not to irritate the people who complain about it being stupid.

I LOVE the references. I mean, when I found out that "cackle" (among others) actually has in-game effects, I thought that was the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices - and those are the best things ever! I do have to wonder, though... is that grit the gunslinger uses, only an illusion? Or is it true...

I understand not wanting to buy an entire AP for just a few rules. That said, I wholly recommend getting the players' guide (free PDF at Paizo.com) to supplement whatever game you're playing. The rules are great enough that I'm planning on using several of them together in a game I'm planning (and have been planning this one a long* time... and likely will plan longer still, given BABY!).

I plan use a) the travel mechanic from Serpent's Skull, b) the city-exploration mechanic from Serpent's Skull, c) and the kingdom building mechanic from Serpent's Skull. I might even use the Trust mechanic from the upcoming Carrion Crown that I've heard about but haven't seen, yet. The idea is that the PCs become local heroes, eventually get called to a vast, important exploration, and (hopefully) end up rulers of an ancient "ruined" city that they can then expand upon to begin creating an empire. I'm looking forward to using (and abusing) the Mass Combat Rules whenever they come out. I mean, my country already can't fail its checks unless it makes a natural 1 - and that's without any rulers! So even if we all kick the bucket, my country should be able to continue to survive, which, in the River Kingdoms, is saying a great deal!

*No, seriously, it's kind of silly. Each time we get close to me being able to implement this thing, something comes up and I can't. Then another one starts in the meantime. Then I find some cool new rule or specific aspect that should be added and I tinker while playing another game. Lather rinse repeat! It's fun, though. I'm creating quite a base campaign world for myself!

[Azisien]

It's good to hear at least one person really like them. Basically (so far) on the Paizo forums I've really only read people complaining about it being stupid... or people who like it while trying not to irritate the people who complain about it being stupid.

Not sure how people would think it stupid unless they don't like the pop culture references. They dislike firearms? But there's like a whole page asking right out: DO YOU want firearms in your campaign? Does it fit? There's a progression of different firearms technology levels (including NONE) that could occur. Divide/multiply/restrict firearms based on these levels. Complaining about optional rules never made much sense to me.

I plan use a) the travel mechanic from Serpent's Skull, b) the city-exploration mechanic from Serpent's Skull, c) and the kingdom building mechanic from Serpent's Skull. I might even use the Trust mechanic from the upcoming Carrion Crown that I've heard about but haven't seen, yet. The idea is that the PCs become local heroes, eventually get called to a vast, important exploration, and (hopefully) end up rulers of an ancient "ruined" city that they can then expand upon to begin creating an empire. I'm looking forward to using (and abusing) the Mass Combat Rules whenever they come out. I mean, my country already can't fail its checks unless it makes a natural 1 - and that's without any rulers! So even if we all kick the bucket, my country should be able to continue to survive, which, in the River Kingdoms, is saying a great deal!

Wait, does Serpent's Skull have a second kingdom building ruleset? I thought all that was in Kingmaker?

[tacticslion]

Complaining about optional rules never made much sense to me. Trust me, I'm right there with you. That said, I get it, once it's 'canon' (as in published) even if you don't like it, someone else might and it might 'infect' your 'pure' or 'untarnished' or 'real' game. It's still stupid, but that's, at least, some mental justification I think people go through, consciously or not.

Wait, does Serpent's Skull have a second kingdom building ruleset? I thought all that was in Kingmaker?

Yes, it's all in Kingmaker. Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse!

What I'm thinking of doing is taking the exploration rules from Serpent's Skull ("long, grueling over-land travel" and "claiming ancient ruin first" rules) and then, after that, starting the kingdom building rule set, using the ancient ruin claiming rules to justify the PCs having control over an ancient city they must make functional again (effectively becoming their capital), then expanding from there into the kingdom building. The Trust mechanic (if I like it or if it fits) from Carrion Crown that I've heard a little about could come into play with either their "home base" city (if they have one/spend time there), or local, indigenous tribes (humanoid or otherwise) around the ancient ruin that will eventually become some of their first citizens. The more I'm thinking of it, the more I'm leaning toward the latter, honestly.

Anyway, that's what I meant.

[Ryong]

Okay, so, D&D 4e:

I'm making a fighter that relies on the Weapon Master series of attacks, which allow you to switch weapons at the drop of a hat ( using them, you can sheathe one weapon and draw another as a free action ) but there's an issue. I want to use a shield. The one character I've played that had a shield simply never took it off, so it wasn't an issue, but now... So, I ask, is there a way to unequip/equip a shield as a minor action or better?

[tacticslion]

Well, Ryong, no one else has responded for two days, so...

Okay, so, D&D 4e:

I'm making a fighter that relies on the Weapon Master series of attacks, which allow you to switch weapons at the drop of a hat ( using them, you can sheathe one weapon and draw another as a free action ) but there's an issue. I want to use a shield. The one character I've played that had a shield simply never took it off, so it wasn't an issue, but now... So, I ask, is there a way to unequip/equip a shield as a minor action or better?

First is the obligatory: have you checked Martial Power (1, 2, or others)? (I presume you have because I don't know the Weapon Master stuff, though it could just be my rustiness at 4E at present and lack of sleep)
Second: No, I'm afraid I don't. That said, I can see it being a fairly decent and easy-to-use feat-progression. My 4E rules are a little rusty, so I'm just throwing this out there (feel free to bring the ideas to your GM, tweak them first, or whatever)
Something like:

Heroic Feat: Raised Defense
You are always ready to defend yourself or your comrades with a strong shield arm.
You may equip any one shield you have on you as a move action; by spending an action point to do so, you may do this even if it's not your turn.

Paragon Feat: Always On Guard (requires Raise the Wall)
Your constant vigilance has paid off. It's nearly impossible to catch you without your shield ready. You may equip any one shield you have in your equipment as a swift action; by spending an action point to do so, you may do this even if it's not your turn.

Epic Feat: Walled Warrior (requires Always On Guard)
Devotion to the Way of the Wall has brought you far beyond what your younger self thought possible. You are now truly the master of shielded warriors. You may equip any one shield you have in your equipment as a free action; by spending an action point to do so, you may do this even if it's not your turn.

I just came up with those off the top of my head and, as I said, my 4E is a bit rusty at present. Check it with your GM and the general power-level of other feats of similar strength, and it might grant what you're looking for. I don't know your build - it might already be feat-heavy, in which case... sorry, I've no idea. You might want to make one of your fighter at-will powers something akin to this ability (something you can likely afford, if you're a human), or you might not. I know it's not much, but maybe this will help. I'm surprised... usually Meister'd (or someone else 'round here) be all over 4E stuff like white on me!

EDIT: also, with the ability to swap feats in 4E, what you might want to do is take the earlier feat, then, the level after you take the higher feat, swap out the old one. In fact, this specific character-build trick is referenced in Player's Handbook 2 as an official thing that really works that way. They specifically mention it as a valid tactic for the heroic, paragon, and epic tier save-bonus feats, actually encouraging players to do this (since none of those feats stack with themselves). So, yeah, that's one way of getting around a feat-heavy build, if you still want to use these basic ideas. If the feats are too powerful (comparatively) I'd suggest knocking off the ability to spend an action point to use them even if it's not your turn. If the feats aren't powerful enough (comparatively) I'd add something like a +1 bonus to AC/tier while using a shield (i.e. a +1 at heroic tier, a +2 at paragon tier, and a +3 at epic tier). Keep in mind, however, this would be a feat bonus to shield AC, which wouldn't stack with any other source, IIRC.

[Meister]

Look man, a guy's gotta sleep sometime.

These homebrew feats aren't going to work as you intended because you can't actually spend an action point when it's not your turn. And honestly, considering the benefits action points give you, using one just to equip a shield faster would be an outright waste. In addition, you can swap feats like you said, but you can't swap out one that's a prerequisite for something else you have (incidentally, 4E doesn't really do feat chains very much, most likely for exactly that reason).

Alright, now, that shield problem. Ryong, you're talking about Weapon Master's Strike, right? Because I have good news: it doesn't require you to have a hand free or not wear a shield for other reasons, so you can strap on a shield and still switch weapons all day long. Switching a one-handed weapon for a two-handed one won't work, obviously, and there doesn't seem to be a feat or item that allows you to equip/stow a shield as anything less than a standard action. But on the other hand, you'd only miss out on the additional effect for spears and polearms, which just gives you opportunity attacks against shifting enemies, and a fighter already has plenty ways to discourage enemies from shifting away.

[tacticslion]

Alternate title: "Yes, I'll use the same joke twice. In a row. Even though it wasn't funny the first time. Shut up, I'm sleepy!"
Look man, a guy's gotta sleep sometime.
HAH! My life with BABY! has proven you incorrect! I've learned to throw off the tyranny of Hypnos upon mortals, and I'll never have to sleep agai-*snooooooooooooooooooooore*

Your feats aren't going to work as you intended because you can't actually spend an action point when it's not your turn. And honestly, considering the benefits action points give you, using one just to equip a shield faster would be an outright waste. In addition, you can swap feats like you said, but you can't swap out one that's a prerequisite for something else you have (incidentally, 4E doesn't really do feat chains very much, most likely for exactly that reason). Got it. That's fine - it was literally just something I was throwing together at the time, as right now I'm steeped in Pathfinder stuff, not in 4E.

That said, I'm pretty certain that the PH2 (or perhaps it was the PH3?) specifically called itself out on the fact that you could totally retrain prerequisite feats and replace them once you got the higher level one, if you wanted to go that route. Specifically, it was the saving throw defense feats they used as an example (great fortitude -> epic fortitude, lightning reflexes -> epic reflexes, iron will -> epic will).

Regardless, it's good seeing you around! I guess I've just missed wherever it is you've been posting lately :) Thanks for the input - I was curious as well.

[Meister]

The epic defense feats don't actually have the lower tier defense feats as a requirement, though. In fact the epic defense feats provide an untyped bonus and will therefore stack with the lower tier ones. (Which is... really good, to say the least. I didn't even know until I looked them up just now. I'm a little taken aback, honestly.)

How it works is, if you have a feat that's a requirement for something else you have, you have to retrain that before you can retrain the feat.

[Ryong]

Well, dang. I wanted to switch weapons constantly. I blame the way Vaan plays in Dissidia Duodecim ( each attack sets him to a different weapon: sword & shield, axe & shield, spear, staff, crossbow, gun, greatsword and katana ) so I was trying to be able to do broadsword & heavy shield, battleaxe & heavy shield, spear, greatsword and scythe ( as a katana replacement. Because the Katana deals a lot of hits... and the scythe does 2d4 damage. It's stupid, I know. )

There are some stupid alternatives - there's some third party "buckler" which doesn't need a hand, but you only get the shield bonus against one enemy or something. Or I go with just two-handers or just one-handers.

[Meister]

Hope you play with inherent bonuses or you'll never have enough cash to keep that arsenal relevant.

What are you looking to get out of the shield? Maybe there's another way to gain that.

[Ryong]

Was planning on using a few shield-only powers. And yeah, we play with inherent bonuses sometimes.

[Meister]

Ah. Well. Not really much of a way around that, I'm afraid. :p

[Pip Boy]

Slightly off-topic but not worth starting a new thread over. I'm going to be playing in or possibly instead assisting to DM a naval D&D campaign themed largely after Pirates of the Carribean. I'd like to be able to give the roleplaying a good amount of depth, so does anyone know where I can learn some historically accurate stuff about a pirate's life back in the olden times and what terms would be used aboard a ship?

[Meister]

Sounds like a job for the library. Either a well-stocked public one or the history section in a university library should do you fine. Possibly even the language section for a specialized dictionary.

[Pip Boy]

I lost my motivation to do any actually real searching a while ago and have instead decided to use this as an excuse to watch a bunch of pirate movies for "research"

[Meister]

Honestly, that's a much better idea for RPG preparation anyway, especially if the game is already themed after the pop culture idea of piracy.

[Ryong]

Go to Cracked, search "pirate", read every article.

[Melfice]

Go to Cracked, search "pirate", read every article.

End up as a 7 o'clock headline and in the morgue.

[Ryong]

Man, I'm not talking about TVtropes here.

[Pip Boy]

Although its a serious campaign, we decided that since we're pirates we have to have a vulgar ship name to show people we're not a bunch of friendly guys who want to give them hugs. As such, our ship has been named "The Fickle Bitch" and our two confirmed party members are a Tactician (Archetype of Fighter in pathfinder) and a Ninja. The tactician gets to grant teamwork feats to allies within a certain range, making them ideal leaders for large gangs of pirates. Gonna be a fun campaign.

[tacticslion]

EDIT: meant to say this before, but Pip, you're totally not off-topic. That's kind of what this thread is for!
Although its a serious campaign, we decided that since we're pirates we have to have a vulgar ship name to show people we're not a bunch of friendly guys who want to give them hugs. As such, our ship has been named "The Fickle Bitch" and our two confirmed party members are a Tactician (Archetype of Fighter in pathfinder) and a Ninja. The tactician gets to grant teamwork feats to allies within a certain range, making them ideal leaders for large gangs of pirates. Gonna be a fun campaign.

Oh, that sounds fun. Don't forget the Calistrian. Pirate ships (especially those with a name such as you propose) almost need a Calistrian of some kind or another. Unless, of course, you're not in Golarion. In which case, nevermind!

Also, that sounds like a cool archetype. I'm surprised he didn't go bard/cavalier/battle herald (prestige class in the APG), though. Does the tactician continue to gain that type of stuff at high levels, or is it limited in scope? Which book is it in? The ninja sounds awesome too! ... although a ninja on a pirate ship seems like it's going to have a short life expectancy. The pirate ship, I mean. After all, there's only one ninja*.

INCIDENTALLY, I was wondering if you guys'd have a gunslinger in the game? I'd be very interested in hearing how that goes. I'd also love periodic updates from your playing sessions - in character or out, it's cool. :)

*Totally not linking to TVTropes, as I don't want to be the indirect cause of death among these forums. Today. The power! Oh, yes, the POWER! Bwahahahahahah! ... er, I mean, nothing.

[Pip Boy]

The original DM's ruling to encourage boarding-based combat rather than ships firing on each other was that there would be no gunpowder in the world. When one player wanted to play a gunslinger, I spoke with the DM and he's decided that gunpowder exists, but is new and extremely rare and expensive, so only small firearms have been developed so far. Since then that player has changed what they're going to play but we've kept the gunpowder changes.

Our party has grown from two members to four, and this is our composition.

Our Captain, Marcus Gwent, is a Tactician who can grant teamwork feats just like the cavalier ability but gains the ability a few levels later.

Our First Mate, Creed Tomran is a ninja who specifically focuses on infiltration and assassination. He has a Cloak of the Manta ray that he will use to approach enemy ships from far away. Then he will use his Hat of Disguise to pretend to be a crew member and approach the captain. The Captain will be dead before anyone knows whats going on, and then Creed will be back in the water returning to our own ship.

We have another character (has not been named yet) that is an Oracle with the Waves Mystery. Her curse is the Tongues curse, and in times of duress or during combat, she can only speak and understand Aquan. Roleplay-wise, she is very valuable because the DM will be giving her cryptic revelations and clues as to the location of the treasure we're looking for.

Another unnamed character is our Summoner, who is using the Aquatic base form for his Eidolon found in Ultimate Magic. I'm helping him with the evolutions and stuff so that it can be similar to a Kraken. It will eventually, when more points are available, be a huge tentacled monster that grabs enemies and pulls them off their ship. Alternately, it could just grab the enemy's ship with all of its arms and constrict it until it is destroyed.

[Ryong]

Going to get this thread back up for shenanigans.

You know in D&D 4e, these expertises everyone gets? My group's been playing using the Essentials expertises instead of the old ones. They give a special something for each kind of weapon that the older ones didn't, such as a reroll on a 1 for axes or more damage on a charge for spears...

But staves get to ignore opportunity attacks granted from ranged and area attacks and get reach when used as melee weapons. That second part means you can use any staff as a +2 to hit, 1d8 damage, one handed weapon with reach. It's the only one handed weapon with reach as far as I know. You get a defensive staff and you can still use a shield, resulting in a pretty good combo for some classes, even if you lose some damage.

[EVILNess]

I have mentioned a few times that I do homebrew when I get bored and don't have a regular game night to look forward too.

Well, to sate my addiction I have been slowly making a Final Fantasy Tactics D20-ish game. It's not quite d20, but I am most familiar with D20 so it has many similarities.

I was wondering if you guys might help me with some opinions the initial balance numbers for Black Mage. I am currently struggling with MP costs. I want someone who sacrifices HP growth to have lots of MP to be able to use the best spells a few times, but at the same time I don't want to make it too high to prevent mage-warrior hybrids. Let me just paste this from my documents.

Black Mage

A warrior who uses Black Magic to channel elemental powers into powerful offensive spells. High magic damage output but physically weak.

--Stat adjustments--
(Not real sure how I am going to handle this...)
--Innate Abilities--
Equip Rod
Equip Dagger

--Black Magic--
Fire JP: 100
Effect - Black magic erupts in a blazing inferno. Level 1 Spell. 1d4/level fire damage (max 5d4).

Fira JP: 500
Effect - Black magic erupts in a blazing inferno. Level 2 Spell. 1d6/level fire damage (max 5d6).

Firaga JP: 800
Effect - Black magic erupts in a blazing inferno. Level 4 Spell. 2d12 + 1d6/level fire damage (max 5d6).

Firaja JP: 1000
Effect - Black magic erupts in a blazing inferno. Level 5 Spell. Deals 2d20 +1d6/level fire damage (max 10d6).

Thunder JP: 100
Effect - Black magic strikes down in a flash of lightning. Level 1 Spell. 1d4/level lightning damage (max 5d4).

Thundara
Effect - Black magic strikes down in a flash of lightning. Level 2 Spell. 1d6/level lightning damage (max 5d6).

Thundaga
Effect - Black magic strikes down in a flash of lightning. Level 4 Spell. 2d12 + 1d6/level lightning damage (max 5d6).

Thundaja
Effect - Black magic strikes down in a flash of lightning. Level 5 Spell. Deals 2d20 +1d6/level lightning damage (max 10d6).

Blizzard
Effect - Black magic releases falling ice shards. Level 1 Spell. 1d4/level ice damage (max 5d4).

Blizzara
Effect - Black magic releases falling ice shards. Level 2 Spell. 1d6/level ice damage (max 5d6).

Blizzaga
Effect - Black magic releases falling ice shards. Level 4 Spell. 2d12 + 1d6/level ice damage (max 5d6).

Blizzaja
Effect - Black magic releases falling ice shards. Level 5 Spell. Deals 2d20 +1d6/level Ice damage (max 10d6).

Poison
Effect - Black magic creates poison inside one's body, gradually lowering HP as the body is consumed from inside. Level 1 Spell. Add Poison at (1d6xInt)%. Vitality Check nullifies Poison status.

Bio
Effect - Black magic creates corrosive poison inside one's body, dealing non-elemental damage and then gradually lowering HP as the body is consumed from inside. Level 3 Spell. 1d6/level damage (max 5d6). Add Poison at (1d6xInt)%. Vitality Check nullifies Poison status.

Frog
Effect - Black magic turns target into a frog. Level 3 Spell. Add Frog at (1d6xInt)%. Vitality Check nullifies Frog status.

Death
Effect - Black magic slays target instantly by removing its soul. Level 4 Spell. Add Death at (1d4xInt)%. Vitality and Spirit check nullifies Death. Both checks must be failed for the spell to work.

Flare
Effect - Black magic burns an entire area by converting ultra-energy to heat. Level 5 Spell

--Reaction--
Counter Magic
Effect - When attacked by magic, counter with same spell. Must have adequate MP to use the spell.

--Support--
Magic Attack Up
Effect - Can cause great damage with magic attack. Added 1d4 to magic damage rolls.

--Move--
N/A

The spell levels are for the Red Mage job, so other than that it's really not important. Any thoughts?

Heh, I am actually getting pretty far with this. I might have to start up a game of my own using this...

[Meister]

But staves get to ignore opportunity attacks granted from ranged and area attacks and get reach when used as melee weapons. That second part means you can use any staff as a +2 to hit, 1d8 damage, one handed weapon with reach. It's the only one handed weapon with reach as far as I know. You get a defensive staff and you can still use a shield, resulting in a pretty good combo for some classes, even if you lose some damage.
Not sure where you're getting the one-handed part from, a staff used as a weapon is treated like a quarterstaff and those are two-handed. Unless I'm missing something. Also, remember you ignore opportunity attacks only for implement attacks, which is still really good.

e: if you're not proficient with the staff as an implement and use one as a weapon, you only get the enhancement bonus and critical hit effect anyway, no properties or powers. That limits the number of classes this combo would be useful for. Without additional feats it's pretty much just the Assassin and the Sentinel. e2: nope, even the Assassin would need to pick up the weapon proficiency.

Also, whips are one-handed and have reach.

[Ryong]

Using character builder, I can use a staff as an one-handed weapon for my Warden. Again, we use essentials feats without essentials characters since we never checked if essentials feats are only for essentials characters so, yeah. It's very wonky. I can use it for any Warden power and I still gain the staff's property.

Edit: Upon reading the description of staves on PH1, yeah, it works like that, so now I'm wondering why is character builder being wonky.

[Meister]

I guess it's such an edge case that they didn't account for it. Most likely the reason you can equip a staff one-handed is because that's a valid way to wield it, but only if you wield it as an implement. Looks like the CB doesn't have a way to check for that.

[tacticslion]

EVILNESS:
STUFF, AND IF I MAY SAY SO, IT'S ABOUT TIME THAT HE POSTED STUFF HERE INSTEAD OF LINKS THAT I COULD NEVER DOWNLOAD, NOT THAT I'M BITTER

Actually that looks pretty cool. As in, I've always wanted to do this, but never did, 'cause I'm lazy. Dude, if you're ever in central Florida, let me know! Some questions and suggestions:
FIRST: on the nature of JP - lolwut. what I mean by that is "what is JP in your system and how to people get them some?"

SECOND: it looks pretty good. You need listed ranges, though. I'd recommend making it a burst effect, much like it was in FFT - kind of like flinging minor fireballs with a shorter range, save without needing line-of-sight (or even much of a line-of-effect, for that matter). I'd say 15-foot diameter would do it (the five-foot-square it targets, and each that are adjacent to it) in order to flesh out the area of effect. I'd also set the range to "close" (25 ft +5 ft/2 levels) in order to imitate the more intimate effect of FFT battles (but that's just me).

THIRD: as to STAT adjustments, that's fairly easy, I think: look at the Chameleon, from Races of Destiny. Depending on your daily focus, you gain a bonus to one of: caster level, base attack, [(a) specific saving throw(s)], or hit points. You also gain specific class features, again, based on your focus. I'd suggest this as the perfect template for creating alternating class-focused characters. The short version is that the chameleon basically gets the worst of everything ever (BAB, saves, etc) except their hit points [d8] and their skills [4+].

I'd suggest actually giving the characters the worst base of everything ever (BAB, saves, etc and worst hit points [d4] and skills [2+]), and then making their class "focus" a kind of template that applies to them: they gain additional skills equal to those the class normally provides chosen from the class list with a number of ranks equal to their class level (however you track that, if you do, use their character level/HD, if you don't track class levels separately).

Give them an increase in hit points based off their new class:
* (d6 [+2/level], d8 [+4/level], d10 [+6/level], d12 [+8/level] and skills [2 if normally 2+, 4 if normally 4+, etc]).

If you feel like being harder:
* (d6 [+1/level], d8 [+2/level], d10 [+3/level], d12 [+4/level] and skills [0 if normally 2+, 2 if normally 4+, etc])

You could also split the difference between them, with more hit points and less skills or (more to my liking) less hit points and more skills!

Alternatively, depending on how you "lock" the class mechanic, you could give static bonuses, based on when they level up. For example: "you just killed the BBEG, you're a elemental evoker wizard black mage now, so you gain d4, 2+, worst BAB, best will, etc!" That would be more like FFT, but would also be a harsh thing in a d20 system where they'd basically be multiclassing every level, which would not be fun, I think. That said, you have very hard limits on the damage of your spells, as listed, so it could work out okay.

One caveat, though, I'd ensure a minimum of 4 hp, regardless of what you did (instead of rolling a d4, just presuming it's a 4). That's just me, though.

As far as MP, and mage/warrior hybrids...

You can crib the spell-points system from Unearthed Arcana (use a bard, I'd say), or the power points (like a psychic warrior) from Expanded Psionics. This works great with refocusing, thus changing your "class" every day. You don't need to worry about hybrids that way - a hybrid simply uses half the benefit of the "primary" class template they have access to. Summoners would likely need a LOT of work, however (and probably use sorcerer/psion/wilder growths for SP/PP/MP/whatever you call it*).

With movement abilities, I'd say look at the movement ranges in FFT and compare them to the d20 system. You could presume the squares are five-foot increments... it's what I did with the areas, above... and use that to measure the effect of movement-modifiers, but it can yield strange results. For example, using that one-to-one conversion ninja's would only have a 20 foot movement range, but would have a +20 feet to their jumping! Most classes would have a 15-foot movement range. This could work, but it's not really standard d20 presumptions, so I don't know exactly how to set that up.

*I don't mean to imply that sorcerers have the same SP growth as psions and wilder - they don't, as I recall. I'm just saying that use this set as opposed to wizards, bards, or psychic warriors.

Replying to the Magic Attack Up: I'd suggest adding that 1d4 to damage and caster level. That would seriously make it a more valuable thing than a mere +1d4 damage. That said, it really, really depends on how you handle HP.

Anyhoo, that's a LOT of feedback, but I hope you enjoy!

PIP:
I'm curious if this game has gotten off the ground. Also, re: gunpowder - one way of making it rare is making it dangerous (just not to PCs) - "liable to blow at any time (because it's reactive to magic)" and requiring fiddling with "deadly alchemical concoctions (which turn into 'liable to blow at any time concoctions)" are just the kinds of things to make most people shy away from it, but make it a great boon to players.

MEISTER:
In 4E, did they ever release any non-monster version of a charm, compulsion, domination, or the like that didn't cause hit point damage and was, in fact, instead an actual charm, compulsion, or domination? I enjoy 4E's streamlining sometimes, but it annoys me at others, and I haven't kept up with the latest supplements.

[Meister]

I'm gonna check that tomorrow, I'm sure there's stuff. Just as a pre-empt though the stuff I find isn't necessarily going to be described explicitly as charm or domination, owing to the usage of keywords in 4E.

[Ryong]

I believe the vampire class - yes, class - from the heroes of the fallen lands book have just that.

[DarkDrgon]

My gaming group is switching to Pathfinder, and I've had an idea I'd like to share with you all. How would you feel about a tabletop D&D lets play? where I'll record every session, youtubes it, and then get feedback about what horrors to put my party through.

[Meister]

It's a good idea, but I'd also include summaries because a lot of people might have plenty of DM advice to give but only limited time to watch several hour long youtube vids.

tactics: after thinking about it, the request for no damage is a little out of place in 4E. The notion that there are two separate ways to end a conflict, one beating your enemies down and the other charming them into submission without harming them, is one that very deliberately doesn't exist in 4E, in order to prevent the one party member who specializes in charming from solving every problem on his own. HP damage doesn't necessarily equal bodily or mental harm, it can just as easily represent an enemy's will to fight, so any power at all can be as violent or nonviolent as you make it. Powers that deal psychic damage lend themselves to that especially well. The bard's Vicious Mockery, for example, is a charm by keyword, deals psychic damage, and can easily be described as something like "your insult deals the orc's ego a harsh blow, and he seems to have second thoughts about how smart it is to take your group on."

Or to put it another way, if you insist on applying your own definition of what an "actual charm" is, you're in danger of ignoring options the game actually offers you. :)

That said, I had a look at just the wizard for now, and I'm surprised how much there was myself:

[1] Hypnotism, causes an enemy to attack his ally or to move where you want him
[1] Charm of Misplaced Wrath, slide the enemy and have him attack his ally
[1] Illusory Obstacled, daze enemies and prevent them from charging
[1] Sleep, slow enemies and maybe make them fall unconscious
[2] Instant Friends, makes someone your friend for a few hours (this is totall bullshit by the way, it does the same thing as a bard ritual but more efficiently, instantaneously and for free. Sure let's make the wizard able to do anything better than everyone else again)
[2] Blissful Ignorance, slow creatures and keep them from taking opportunity attacks
[3] Hypnotic Pattern, draw enemies closer to a conjured pattern of colors
[3] Maze of Mirrors, immobilize an enemy
[5] Tasha's Forcible Conscription, stun an enemy and have them attack their ally
[7] Charm of the Defender, slide and immobilize an enemy and have them attack allies
[9] Symphony of the Dark Court, daze and immobilize an enemy
[13] Hold Monster, restrains an enemy
[17] Mass Charm, slide many enemies and have them attack each other
[19] Evard's Ebon Bindings, immobilize, maybe stun and maybe even dominate an enemy. It does deal damage afterwards or on a miss, though.
[19] Plague of Illusions, prevent the enemy from attacking, maybe blind and immobilize him.
[23] Charm of False Heroism, slide, daze and immobilize an enemy, and have him opportunity attack his allies
[27] Charm of Puppet Strings, dominates an enemy, slide it, and guess what he does to his allies
[27] Lost in the Mists, dominates an enemy
[29] Visions of Wrath, dominates an enemy, but for longer

Not all of them, but most. And boy, someone at WotC really likes "make enemy attack his ally" effects. Those are almost all from the same (relatively new) source. I actually feel like picking the wizard wasn't very fair now, since they get so much. Gonna look at a few other classes soon, and also and especially rituals.

e: Rituals:

[2] Spirit Fetch - sends a small spirit to a person, gives them a command and stays with them until they follow it
[3] Lullaby - gives Insight and Perception penalties to a group (Bards only)
[4] Call of Friendship - turns someone into your friend for a time (Bards)
[5] Animal Friendship - turns a small animal friendly so you can command it to do simple tasks
[8] Anthem of Unity - unites a group of listeners behind a single cause (Bards)
[12] Mark of Justice - define forbidden actions or behaviour for a subject, and impose a penalty if it violates the mark
[16] Adjute - enter negotiations with an immortal creature to command it to perform one task
[18] Memory Seal - lock away one memory in the subject's mind

e2: Bard powers:

[1] Fast Friends - prevents an enemy from attacking a creature
[5] Song of Discord - dominates an enemy
[15] Whispers of the Dream King - puts an enemy to sleep or dazes him
[29] Spellbind - dominates and dazes an enemy

[Pip Boy]

PIP:
I'm curious if this game has gotten off the ground. Also, re: gunpowder - one way of making it rare is making it dangerous (just not to PCs) - "liable to blow at any time (because it's reactive to magic)" and requiring fiddling with "deadly alchemical concoctions (which turn into 'liable to blow at any time concoctions)" are just the kinds of things to make most people shy away from it, but make it a great boon to players.


The traitor formerly known as the captain has been ousted, and we've stuck one of his former Lieutenants in his place as a figurehead. I'm acting as First Mate. We're going to be looking for the hidden treasure of a legendary and long-dead pirate by using the visions of an Oracle (previously held captive by the now-dead captain, she aided in the mutiny). A short way out to sea, we discovered we had a stow-away aboard. We were going to throw him overboard, but his pet Kraken just put him back on the boat. Then we decided to let him stay because he had a pet Kraken, and thats fucking awesome.

We may have had some help coming up with the story for our campaign. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8qFV_umoVw)

As for the gunpowder, our PC who was planning to be a gunslinger instead went with summoner, and knowledge of gunpowder and firearms is not available to the general public. The only hinting at it so far are rumors of strange foreign ships with exotic weapons, most of them thought to be about as credible as anything else you hear from a drunken sailor.

[tacticslion]

Welp. Ask and you shall receive!

Meister: NICE. Thank you very much. I, too, was surprised at simply how much! I'm more interested in the rituals that make someone your friend combined with the domination effects. Question: do some of the high-end domination effects last long enough to perform a ritual? What are some of their durations (i.e. rounds/minutes/hours/etc)?

Basically, I found it difficult to make a pure enchanter, like I used to, with 4E, however, I readily admit, it's a "like I used to": 4E is it's own thing, and it requires its own form of interpretation, rather than 3.X's format. Sometimes, however, I forget that and can use the reminder. Also some info. Thanks!

Pip: NICE (part two).

Keep us informed and updated! I like the way you've introduced (and not) gunpowder - it explains its rarity well. Similar to how pasta didn't exist in Italy until Marco Polo brought back "that weird stuff from Asia" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta)*.

*Yes, I'm aware that it's only a myth, but then again, so are fantasy games!

EVILness: I've got to clear out my inbox. I recieved your email, but have 100 messages (this is after cleaning it out already... more than once), so I don't believe I can send more now (unless the cap has been increased) so I'll work on that and let you know. Time is limited right now, but I'm very interested in going over the PM more with you!

[Meister]

Meister: NICE. Thank you very much. I, too, was surprised at simply how much! I'm more interested in the rituals that make someone your friend combined with the domination effects. Question: do some of the high-end domination effects last long enough to perform a ritual? What are some of their durations (i.e. rounds/minutes/hours/etc)?

Basically, I found it difficult to make a pure enchanter, like I used to, with 4E, however, I readily admit, it's a "like I used to": 4E is it's own thing, and it requires its own form of interpretation, rather than 3.X's format.
Exactly: you can still make a pure enchanter, it's just enchantments deal damage because that's the basic mechanic. :)

Even the highest level domination powers only last until a successful saving throw. You're probably not going to be able to extend that to a ritual's casting time no matter what. Generally durations of power's effects last one round, until a save or until the end of the current encounter, i.e. 5 minutes at most. You need to be crafty to cast a ritual on an unaware or unwilling subject. The Bard-specific ones can easily be part of a musical performance (or, following a strict reading of the ritual descriptions, indeed must be), and I've always ruled that this wouldn't be detectable to anyone who could be affected by it; others, like Mark of Justice, specify that the target must be either willing or helpless.

You could, of course, cast Call of Friendship, then persuade the subject to undergo Mark of Justice or another ritual they need to be willing for...

e: also, out of curiosity I just tried my hand at a pure enchanter, a Mage with the Enchantment Apprentice class feature. Turns out it was actually very easy to pick only nondamaging powers for him until level 5, which is where I stopped testing for the moment. He has only one attack that deals damage, and that damage is just his INT modifier (well, it's two attacks really, but one of them is Magic Missile, which is a class feature and can't not be selected.) Everything else is strictly nondamaging, most of it has the Charm and Enchantment keywords, and there's a strong focus on forced movement and some very good status effects especially at low levels. Looks pretty effective and interesting to play.

[tacticslion]

So, Meister and everyone else out there that plays 4E:

What do you guys think of the recent hiring of Monte Cook and it's potential impact on D&D?

I've seen a lot of (baseless) speculation that this could be a prelude to the creation of a 5th edition, which may very well be true, but which I doubt will be occurring anytime in the future, as I recall there were many calls of "another edition is coming!" fairly early when 3rd came out, and then when 3.5 came out, too. But that's just my opinion. I'd like to hear yours! ALSO, I'd like Pip to update us on his game. AND I'd like EVILNESS to post more FFT-based goodness. AND I'd like more time. :( Lousy time. Always getting in the way of having fun. :)

[Meister]

I totally missed this post, wow.

I'm not particularly worried about a 5th edition. There will be one at some point and I'll check it out, maybe do a test game, and when it seems as much of an improvement over 4E to me as 4E was over 3.5 I'll give it a go and when it doesn't I won't and my 4E materials aren't going anywhere.

I'm not sure what to make of Monte Cook's ideas so far. In his first Legends & Lore he describes a concept for a perception system that seems identical to the existing one, which is very odd. His second makes an excellent point that I completely agree with - that magic items probably shouldn't be as much of a natural part of character progression as they are at the moment - but also contains minor points like valuing "the logic of the world" over the balance of the game system, which is exactly the kind of thing I started playing 4E to get away from, or that players who put in more work, so to speak, should end up with better characters than those who "play it safe." Not liking the sound of those at all.

[Meister]

Guess I could elaborate on the second point: it's inevitable that some players will put more effort into building a character than others, and that those players' characters will have powers and feats that synergise better. That's not what I'm talking about, although while we're on the subject, 4E does an amazingly good job at keeping both kinds of characters somewhat on the same level of mechanical power, while Monte Cook is well known for designing game elements that actively promote rewarding more effort in character building with mechanical advantages with not quite as much concern for relative balance.

The point he made was that a low-level character who decides to go after a dragon should get a powerful magic item even though by the game balance aspect he shouldn't have one yet, and that a high-level character who only goes after kobolds and goblins shouldn't get a powerful magic item just because the game balance dictates he should have one at his level. The problem is of course the implication that some characters in a party would end up mechanically more powerful than others because they went after bigger threats, and would therefore be able to go after even bigger threats that yield even bigger rewards where the others wouldn't, and soon you're back to the days of fights where either the one powerful member wipes the floor with the kobold grunts that are an appropriate challenge for his teammates or he has an exciting combat with a powerful beast while the rest of the party can only hide because they'll drop dead if the beast so much as looks at them.

It becomes less problematic when you assume Cook meant to put this under a "per game" premise, i.e. "the PCs in a game where the parties go after dragons at level 5 should be more powerful than the PCs in a game that is level 1-30 goblinslaying." Hard to argue against that because the two parties will never influence on another, so sure, run it this way, chances are you already do if you've ever said anything like "okay guys, this is going to be a sort of low-magic game, I'll set up challenges for you accordingly."

Still: I don't want game rules that describe a world ("Adult Red Dragons always carry a +3 magic item and 2d4 1000 GP gems"), I want game rules that handle the basic math and balance and let me worry about the rest ("Adult Red Dragons are an appropriate challenge for a level 15 party" and separate from that "a +3 sword is an appropriate reward for a level 15 party").

[DarkDrgon]

last night I had the worst experience playing any rpg i've ever had.

One of my players has been asking for a chance to DM, so we gave her a shot. it was... well it was bad.

we started out en route to a major city, our party a half elf bard, specializing in being able to run away and hiding weapons everywhere, who is trying to get some quick cash and an inquisitor who is there on church business. we got to see the city, and then we were there. 2 blocks from the entrance, we see a robbery, and our inquisitor incapacitates the thief while the bard hides in the crowd. the inquisitor was picked up by the police, who just happened to be able to tell the bard was with him (despite the fact that said bard was half a block behind)

we get pulled into the station, the bard grumbling the whole way, as the chief of the watch and inquisitor discuss the 2 thieves guilds. they go back and forth, discussing that thats not why he's here, they aren't committing any blasphemes so they shouldn't be a target. this takes 20 minutes, with the dm eventually saying "follow what he says or the game is over"

this was the point that I knew it was gonna be a bad night

we go on for an hour, and find out that the head one thieves guild is running around on the rooftops near us. the inquisitor follows, using his flight potion to keep up leaving the bard alone on the roof. the 2 have an epic showdown, and the session ends.

i was the bard. I got to do nothing all game but sit there cracking jokes.

[Ryong]

A friend o' mine went crazy about Monte Cook and says we'll be getting 5ed in 2013 and it'll be (3.5 + 4.0)/2. While yes there are some aspects of 4e I don't like - reliance on magic items, some skills are lacking, not really a whole lot of difference between normal, accurate and inaccurate powers, unbreakable equipment - I still feel it fixed a lot of issues with 3.5 which will only get broken again.

I agree with Meister except on one thing, which I guess is nitpicking: If you fight goblins from level 1-30 and they're consistently weaker than the party, you'll get lousy rewards per encounter...But you have to fight a lot more of them to level up, so it'll even out?

[Meister]

Probably but either way that sounds like the most boring campaign in the history of roleplaying.

Following up on Monte Cook, the latest Legends & Lore (http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111011) is very good.

[Pip Boy]

Pirate game ended pretty early, sadly, because of transportation difficulties. My own game, however, has taken off quite nicely. Today I rolled Deck of Many Things on my encounter table (1 in 800 chance) and an old widow with a deck of cards offered to tell the PC's fortunes. One has treasure inbound, another has a squire now, a third is being hunted down by a yet unidentified outsider (but defeating him will have its own rewards so he doesn't have to be left out of the goodness). After the presents and stuff got the party to trust her a bit, she offered to make one a deal. In exchange for something she won't say in advance (except that taking it will not directly harm the PC or their family) at a time of her choosing, she will grant a wish now. The druid stepped up and made the deal in exchange for a "greater connection to nature". I simply bumped up his caster level by one for now, but later when a major story arc involves locating an important, ancient, and legendary hammer, the old crone will return and claim it in exchange for the wish.

[Mr.Bookworm]

While yes there are some aspects of 4e I don't like - reliance on magic items, some skills are lacking, not really a whole lot of difference between normal, accurate and inaccurate powers, unbreakable equipment - I still feel it fixed a lot of issues with 3.5 which will only get broken again.

Grab Dark Sun. It's A) an awesome campaign setting, and B) has rules for campaigns without magical items. It also has rules for breakable weapons, so hey.

Also, anyone here play Pathfinder? If you do, don't grab the Advanced Race Guide unless it changes significantly from the playtest.

As it is, I have shat things better balanced than that piece of crap.

[Ryong]

I play on a Dark Sun campaign. It's not the magic items that I don't like, it's the "oh I definitely need to have these things by now else I can't hit ever" part. And I don't want rules for breakable weapons that consist of critical failures.

Dark Sun has items that break by attacking improperly, not items that can be destroyed by attacking them.

[Mr.Bookworm]

I play on a Dark Sun campaign. It's not the magic items that I don't like, it's the "oh I definitely need to have these things by now else I can't hit ever" part. And I don't want rules for breakable weapons that consist of critical failures.

Dark Sun has items that break by attacking improperly, not items that can be destroyed by attacking them.

Fair enough on the bonuses part. On the other hand, it is simpler in the way 4E is set up to assume certain bonuses on the part of PCs when designing monsters rather than needing to adjust the stats of the monsters for every magic item you give them.

Also, targeting breakable items sounds nice. You could do it in 3.5 with the sunder rules (pretty easily, too, with an adamantine weapon). But nobody ever used it in 3.5, because it was a horrible strategy. It completely failed against everything that didn't use weapons, or to put it another way, almost all of the Monster Manual. But most importantly, you're breaking your loot. Break the bad guy's magic sword and you screw yourself over.

[Nikose Tyris]

Our Paladin shatters every evil opponent's weapon, and either pays to get it fixed or donates the broken pieces to the church for safekeeping.

We have a storehouse of shattered evil magic items that are probably going to get used in a later adventure [latent magical energy bleed creating oozes or something].

[Ryong]

Breaking loot? Hah.

When we find an enemy with equipment, it's worthless equipment. We don't skin monsters to sell their hide for the price of some magic armor, or tear off the claws of some dragon 'cause they count as a +3 weapon. Consistency!

[Meister]

Skinning monsters is a great way to flavour giving out an item. The fighter in my game has a Cloak of Displacement that he got after hunting a Displacer Beast, and they're still carrying the armor they had made from the first dragon they ever killed (white dragon makes armor of cold resistance).

[tacticslion]

Also, anyone here play Pathfinder? If you do, don't grab the Advanced Race Guide unless it changes significantly from the playtest.

As it is, I have shat things better balanced than that piece of crap.

I play Pathfinder. Also, they decided to change it for balance reasons only two days into the playtest, such was the outcry against several of their design decisions. Check out Paizo Forums (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG/advancedRaceGuidePlaytest) to see what's happening with it.

Meister: I'm mostly siding with you on not knowing how I feel about the Monte Cook articles. although my own stronger preference is for 3.X (and Pathfinder) to 4E. I believe that what you elaborated on with your second point, is actually what he was saying (if a bit poorly). That said, the latest article you linked seems, to me, to be the strongest indication of him working on a new edition. It just doesn't sound like he's describing 4E. My own inexplicable ability to kill (or nearly so) one player-per-boss aside, I've found that most of 4E stuff can be done solo because the classes are so independent now. One thing I really dislike about the articles are the artificially shallow "polls" at the bottom that give you "hyperbolic choice A" or "hyperbolic choice B" as your only options instead of any kind of actual gradient. Also, yeah, I really like flavoring items like that.

DarkDrgon and Pip: Ah, I'm sorry to hear. Dark, you might want to work with/coach her a bit more, as she seems just be making simple new-GM mistakes. She might improve with time and assistance. Perhaps running through the current game as-is, or being allowed to remake your current (or roll up a new) character that allows you to work with the game as she has it now will help both of you. Pip, it sounds great!

Nikose: great ideas, as always!

Ryong: in at least one of the campaigns I ran, some of my players skinned and subdivided almost every single opponent creature they ever came across, going so far as to get many multiple specially built bags of holding that applied Gentle Repose to anything put in them, so that it never went bad. I mean, they had dragons, and drow, and giants, and spiders, and magical beasts, and pretty much everything else you could think of. If they fought it, then they kept pieces of it. Came up with vary useful and interesting applications later (both they and I >:-D). Consistency! :D

[Meister]

My own inexplicable ability to kill (or nearly so) one player-per-boss aside, I've found that most of 4E stuff can be done solo because the classes are so independent now.
Huh. Don't think I quite follow you on that one. You're going to have a pretty hard time playing anything but a striker solo, most other classes' abilities rely pretty strongly on allies being there. And that solo striker is, of course, going to be relatively vulnerable.

e: maybe not "a hard time" as such but for example a defender or leader will have a lot of their abilities reduced from "useful tactical resource" to "slightly better basic attack" when there's no one around they could apply them to, and others will simply become unnecessary. Marking and enforcing a mark? No one else there the enemy could attack anyway.

[Azisien]

Last Sunday we had our first practice and introduction session to my new campaign running Pathfinder. Four out of five PCs were present.

Premise for the campaign is super simple to start. The PCs all wake up on a beach with amnesia, and a crashed ship in the surf behind them (or is it a ship?!). They didn't have much time to contemplate their situation because a party of gnome engineers appeared. The PCs learned there is a settlement to the east, and to my surprise, they left the engineers quickly (alas, there goes several pages of material, the life of a DM). Goblins intercepted them, though, and they got into a pretty big romp (12 goblins total, using bows with decent tactics).

My ultimate sneaky hook is that the PCs are heroes that escaped a cataclysm on the other side of the world, caused by evil/PCs of my LAST 4e campaign. The two continents have never encountered each other, but that doesn't mean the evils that consumed the other continent won't eventually creep towards the new continent. That does leave plenty of time for goblin/orc/gnoll/troll/giant/baddie stomping in the mean time.

PC Party - 3rd level

Halfling Cleric/Rogue - a "con man" who charges gold for heals
Human Druid - hates things that mess up nature, which included goblins apparently
Half-Orc Barbarian - drunken-master build, gets rage bonuses/extensions if consuming alcohol
Human Magus - has an intelligent telepathic Black Blade weapon, has an interesting dichotomy ahead between his pessimistic character and optimistic Blade
Gnome/Human Alchemist (not present yet)

My excitement is building for session two this Sunday. It will probably be a "Find the Alchemist" episode, since all PCs will be present.

[tacticslion]

Huh. Don't think I quite follow you on that one. You're going to have a pretty hard time playing anything but a striker solo, most other classes' abilities rely pretty strongly on allies being there. And that solo striker is, of course, going to be relatively vulnerable.

e: maybe not "a hard time" as such but for example a defender or leader will have a lot of their abilities reduced from "useful tactical resource" to "slightly better basic attack" when there's no one around they could apply them to, and others will simply become unnecessary. Marking and enforcing a mark? No one else there the enemy could attack anyway.

To clarify my position, while I don't know that this would consistently hold true at above-paragon level, I've taken my defender paladin and solo'd two full adventures with him - one at first->third and one at eight->ten - as well as a few non-adventure dungeons (a couple levels thereafter, as well as a couple of first level ones*).

Later, when I was running games, I've had a rogue almost** completely solo a dungeon (4th level rogue, 5th level dungeon) and I've had a wizard solo through two more*** of various levels, as well as several "random" encounters.

While I completely admit there are many elements that use other characters that go wasted (especially with leaders and controllers), those haven't really seemed to be much of a hindrance. Basically, this is all anecdotal, which I understand isn't the most powerful evidence, but when you run a dungeon that's not meant to be solo'd, and you don't hold back your punches (at all), and people solo it, and this happens more than once, you begin to sense a pattern. :)

Also, to clarify, while in 3.X people can solo stuff, usually it's been much more difficult and grueling of a process, and they've needed to either have NPCs or very specific items to make up for their deficiencies. I've not encountered that difficulty with 4E.

All this talk of 4E has actually gotten the 4E juices flowing, and now I want to get back to one of our 4E games that was put on hold some time back. I've got a much better and clearer idea of where we want to go next, and how I expect the over-all story to flow and suss out (as opposed to the specifics, 'cause, *pschaw*, as if you could predict players! :D).

* To be fair, when I later ran a re-skinned version of the exact same dungeon (stats-wise), as DM, I totally killed the dragonborn paladin without trying. This is that dungeon at the back of the DMG. You know the one.

** Effectively: everyone was present when they broke in through the basement for the first session. All other players couldn't play (the rogue's player was in town for only a couple of days, so ran it during the day for him), and he finished off the rest (a dungeon supposed to take two more sessions, he killed it in one). But really, he could have done the whole thing, only having potential problems with one non-boss monster, a gelatinous ooze. I do grant that he technically died... ironically after he had killed the entire rest of the dungeon! Mostly, however, it was his refusal to use his last healing surge (again, ironically "just in case") before the next encounter, which, with persistent damage by a grunt+really flubbed saves = negative hit points until death. I did save his character (as a dragon, effectively having the other characters complete the ritual their opponents were up to, only targeting the dead PC instead of the cult leader), but yeah, I'll admit he died, what with his really, really low constitution and all and facing a higher-level dungeon than he was, and not having any magic items. At all. (Again, his choice! He wanted the cash!) :P :D

*** Though again, to be honest and fair, I've dropped her before on a one-shot (but non-random) encounter. Then again, I've dropped everyone at my table more than once in 4E! Usually by accident!


Azisien! Sounds nifty! Keep us informed!

So, as a belated update, two play sessions ago in the Pathfinder AP I'm currently running for my wife, she discovered that she was a warrior who was over 15,000 years old... sort of. Effectively she'd lived 15k years ago, died by virtue of the poison blood, breath, and bite of the evil deity she'd just beheaded, and was, once all the spiritual poison was cleaned up (something that, understandably, took a while), reincarnated by through unusual circumstances into a new mortal body. Aaaaaaaaand that may be put on hold for a little while now. But that's where we are!

[Meister]

I always thought a pretty surefire way to solo everything in 3.5 was "play a wizard."

Anyway that's interesting. Like I said, I can see how it's possible, just not very fun or varied especially at low levels. Then again I've never run or played a session like that so who knows. Would be an interesting experiment.

One thing I definitely see is when you take on an encounter budgeted for 4 or 5 characters alone and you power through it, you get all that XP. That's gonna be a factor for sure.

[Azisien]

If I may speak briefly on this power level discussion in 3.X/4E, I am curious. Were these adventures you completed published modules or something?

I ask this because as a DM, I don't even see how it's possible for a character to solo a segment you don't want them to. I don't mean being unfair either. If anything, monsters vs. PCs, I mean being really fair.

Take the main encounter I had that I spoke briefly on in Pathfinder. I think any one of the PCs at 3rd level could massacre 12 Goblins unless they got rather unlucky. But it was actually a challenging encounter for them. Why? The goblins know they'll get massacred in close combat. They watched a couple go down that way. They used Run, and stealth. They pulled out their shortbows and started kiting around the PCs, who had to use Run (massive penalties) to even try to catch them. I wasn't even toying with stats or falsifying rolls or anything. I made some goblins act like they might if they actually wanted to survive this battle.

The end result was a decent challenge for 4 PCs at 3rd level. It leads me to believe that there's no way even the best min/max character could solo that. The goblins would have turned a wizard into a pincushion.

EDIT: I speak to the wizard, but honestly I noticed little difference in 4E. Deployment of encounters mattered way more than what the encounter actually consists of. I learned this in d20 Modern, where firearms rule. When I was a novice I didn't have enemies make use of much cover, and PCs tore through them. Exact same encounter, but enemies are constantly in one-half or higher cover, and make use of distance. Bam, instant challenge that required tactics on behalf of the PCs to solve.

[tacticslion]

FIRST, a note: while I have a preference for 3.X and Pathfinder, and occasionally will engage in a good-natured ribbing of 4E, it's just that: good natured. There are plenty of 3.X/Pathfinder flaws, and I'm not all about edition wars, my humor aside.

Azisien, to clarify: pre-published. Sure, it's possible to completely and purposefully prevent soloing, but that's not the point. In what should be well-balanced encounters for a party above the character level in two different cases turned out to be completely doable alone. I did balance (and had balanced for me) XP, so I didn't alter the curve in that way (and when others appeared again, I distributed the treasure as appropriate). And yes, tactics were definitively a part of it, don't get me wrong. However tactics are usually a part of our games, some quite brilliant. That doesn't change between editions for my players (which right now basically consists of one, but OH WELL).

Also, Meister, 3.X wizard is great... once you get to level 11 (or level 9 if you really work hard at tweaking the system's nose). Prior to that... after level five, they're useful in a group. Prior to level five (and thus attaining second level spells), they'll fare fine... once per day.

As far as published modules for 3.X/Pathfinder go, I've never been able to run a pre-published adventure without modifying it substantially for solo play.

Also, Meister, I'm curious, do you know if there's anything at all like a Time Dragon or Chrono Dragon or whatever in 4E? Reason being, I've been fiddling with a 4E campaign that I was running and I had a plot involving a Phane (MM1, creature that fiddles with time) and a dragon (green, specifically, though it's irrelevant now) and have a mounting conflict with Tiamat. I was hoping to pull some magical mumbo-jumbo out of my rear end (and/or 4E published stuff) and voila: create a time-dragon-thing! BUT! If it's been done for me, I'd much prefer to do that, as creating critters is far more of an art in 4E than in 3.X, and it's not one I've truly mastered as I've spent more time with the other system.

For the 4E'ers out there: how many ever played 3.X and/or Pathfinder (and how many still do)?

[Meister]

I played 3.5 for longer than I played 4E, three or four years I'd estimate. That's two and a half complete campaigns and a few one-shots or campaigns that never got off the ground. I switched completely to 4E though, all 3.5 does for me these days is highlight its flaws. Last 3.5 game I played there was a big, three-hour encounter where at any time, half the characters were completely unable to do anything effective, at least one of them throughout the entire fight, and all I could think was this would be so much more fun with a different combat system.

Didn't see anything like a time dragon anywhere but it seems pretty easy to make one. Anything you especially want him to do, or just as close as possible to the 3.5 one? Also, level range? Looking at the 3.5 one a mid-epic solo controller seems about right.

[tacticslion]

Didn't see anything like a time dragon anywhere but it seems pretty easy to make one. Anything you especially want him to do, or just as close as possible to the 3.5 one? Also, level range? Looking at the 3.5 one a mid-epic solo controller seems about right.

That actually sounds about perfect. A controller would be ideal, and probably epic, probably somewhere in the midst of the epic setting. I'm thinking it will be part of the official "first" campaign WotC created for 4E (I'm running a by-now highly variant version of that campaign series of vaguely linked adventures.)

I'm not actually sure how to make it.

My supposition/plan is that it will appear twice: once in the midst of the paragon levels (sometime after the Troll Haunt Warrens), possibly later, and again at actual epic levels, sometime after whatever that one is that an aspect of Orcus is summoned in that place that gods are sealed from entering (I don't recall the name of the adventure right now).

I'm curious, if you've either run or run through that set of adventures (the one that starts with Keep on the Shadowfell->Thunderspire Peak-> Pyramid of Shadows->Trollhaunt Warrens->???->epic stuff v. Orcus)...

- what's the gist of the latter part of of the paragon levels? I believe one has to do with the shadowfell and a dragon, and one has to do with Lolth and/or the drow, but I really don't know for sure.

To let you know, we've actually done away with Pyramid of Shadows, as that really doesn't fit in with our campaign (instead, it's been replaced by extra stuff with the Keep on Shadowfell, Winterhaven, the kind of main city (I've currently forgotten the name) and Thunderspire Peak.

The (semi-tentative) plot:
In the feywild (accessed via the Trollhaunt Warrens), an eladrin city is under assault and will be destroyed entirely if the heroes don't stop it (it's no longer livable, but they can save the people from the marauding demons/dragons/etc). That will lead them into defending the city in the World, and back to the Keep on the Shadowfell in order to pass into shadow and stop the assaults. All this ties back to the original Dragon of the Nentir (and the unnamed hero with a statue in the city), but that part will mostly be wrapped up by late paragon levels.

What I'd like to know is:
a) how integrated are the other two paragon adventures with the epic stuff
b) the nature of the other two paragon adventures
c) if you could please, please, please, please, please, please, please make a time dragon? *hopeful puppydog eyes* :D

[Meister]

No idea about the adventures, I never bothered to check them out. But I have already come up with a good concept for a 4E time dragon! Gimme a few days to iron out the kinks and make a paragon version.

[tacticslion]

No idea about the adventures, I never bothered to check them out. But I have already come up with a good concept for a 4E time dragon! Gimme a few days to iron out the kinks and make a paragon version.

Thanks! The pre-published are good for when you don't really know what you're doing (as I was when I first started), for when you're strapped for time (as I am now, often), or for when you want some nifty ideas and a skeleton (I've re-run some of the same things with different skins and a few changes to stats, and no one has caught on, for some of them. It's great). Otherwise, I try to home as much stuff as possible.

I'm REALLY interested and excited about the time-dragon! Woot! :dance:

[Azisien]

Just finished session two. Six hours of amazing, entertaining shenanigans.

This time our new Gnome Alchemist was present, but the Druid was not. Luckily the cheapness of the amnesia premise easily affords random "comas" to afflict absent characters.

The PCs had rushed to Thren'fas Trading Outpost, a small town they quickly found out was the only significant settlement in 200 miles. Jorum the Magus set about town gathering information to draw a rough map of the continent, since no one in town seemed to possess anything beyond a local area.

Grog the Barbarian and Jayke the Thievin' Cleric found out at the bank that their strange foreign currency is actually 25% heavier than the local gold, and received a handsome boost to their personal wealth. Jayke managed a fantastic bluff check, convincing the bankers that he was an astronomically wealthy foreign prince from across the ocean, temporarily stuck in these lands while the Succession of his homeland is settled. In return the bankers offered him in on a mining venture in the Thren'fas Mountains to the north, once the goblin problem is dealt with.

Grog created a bunch of noise in the center of town, claiming to have defeated the goblin menace (in fact he had slain only 3 goblins to date). It attracted the attention of a group of hunters out to slay Big Tusker, a reportedly vicious dire boar that had claimed the lives nearly a dozen hunters to date. A crazy hermit on the outskirts of town claimed to have more information, and Grog set off to find him. Mostly ignoring the crazy ramblings of the hermit, Grog managed a set of decent Survival checks to begin tracking the boar.

This did leave Jorum in the dust due to a miscommunication, since he expected Grog and Jayke to return after speaking to the hermit. Instead they went hunting for three days. In that time, the dire boar tried to ambush their night camp, but was foiled by night watch and good Perception checks. It sprung a successful trap by rolling a boulder onto the Jayke, the halfling, who only really survived long after that due to his cleric abilities. Big Tusker escaped, and the duo were baffled as to how a boar managed to outwit them. Puzzled, they returned to the Outpost and a disgruntled Jorum.

The three were then called to a meeting of the town elders, and got to see some of the power players on this end of the continent. Mainly, a greedy bureaucrat that runs the bank for Banar, a metropolis far to the southeast, who finds herself at odds with the wizened elven alchemist who prefers influences from that region stay away. The town blacksmith and head engineer fall somewhere in a neutral middle ground. At the meeting it is agreed that the town should raise a militia and consider building a simple wall to defend against the goblin threat. The PCs agreed to investigate a group of fifty goblins spotted marching northwest, with guaranteed payment of 8 gold per goblin head, plus potential bonuses.

So the PCs set off on their three day journey, and Zolmnite the Gnome Alchemist wakes up naked and bound in a cage in the middle of a goblin camp. With a few wacky Escape Artist, Stealth, and Bluff checks, he removes all of his bindings but makes it seem like he didn't, and ascertains several key locations in the camp. When night falls, the trio of PCs arrive on the outskirts of the camp, while Zolmnite escapes his cage and sneaks around the camp and into a command tent to grab his gear.

Jayke creates a hilarious, if cruel, distraction on the opposite side of the camp: a cloud of Obscuring Mist and a Summoned Dolphin in the center. The entire camp is alerted, but are completely baffled and focused on that one small area. Jorum uses invisibility to reach the command tent quickly, but lacking sufficient lighting, mistakes Zolmnite for a goblin and wounds him significantly. Grog the Barbarian charges in, using the distraction to start mowing down goblins.

The commanders of the camp, several less-mooky Orc Barbarians, are alerted to Zolmnite and Jorum fighting - Zolmnite is still naked - and incapacitates Zolmnite in a single blow. Jorum dispatches one barbarian, while the other recedes to order a full withdrawal of the camp in Orc. Grog, however, speaks Orc. He screams orders to stand their ground, also in Orc. The Goblins are left sufficiently flat-footed in the following rounds, some retreating, some not. Jayke and Grog continue picking off goblins on the outskirts of the camp, while Jorum finds one of the orc barbarians attempting to open a cage holding a Troll.

A fatigued but battle ready militia arrives, led by the town blacksmith, and helps the party pick off straggler goblins. The orc manages to smash open the Troll's cage, though, and the PCs encounter their first real fight. Grog and Jorum are capable of dealing excellent damage for their levels, but no one has fire or acid attacks, and the Troll continues to regenerate while dealing out ridiculous damage to whoever hurts it the most each round. Jayke finally reaches Zolmnite, and after a lengthy discussion over several rounds to determine his health care plan coverage and fees, heals him. Grog and Jorum are nearly incapacitated at this point, but the Troll is severely wounded as well. Zolmnite finishes the fight in an epic style kill. He delayed his action and the round went really fast, bringing it back to his turn AGAIN before he even acted once. Normally I wouldn't allow stuff like that, but given he had done little in the battle so far, I allowed 2 simultaneous turns. He tossed two firebombs, engulfing the Troll and dealing EXACTLY the damage required to kill it, made cooler by his feat choices that allow him to cherry-pick what squares are NOT struck by splash damage, so the explosions conveniently avoided Grog and Jorum.

With their next level at 6000 experience, that battle put them at one more large session, or two more average sessions away from 4th level.

[Flarecobra]

Ok, so my friends invited me into their D&D group.

And I got permission to make a Yuan-ti character.

So you can guess where I'm going with THAT. Only question is... where to start?

[tacticslion]

Azisien: story gold! W00t!

So you can guess where I'm going with THAT.

Actually, I can't, I'm afraid! That said, I would to a Pun-Pun, myself, just for fun. In which case: start with alertness* and endurance*.

Alternatively (and probably the better idea), tell me what you're thinking and I'll help as best as I can. 3.X (I presume) or 4E? Class? Idea? Good or Evil? Type of Yuan-Ti? Etc?

Sounds fun nonetheless!

* If I recall correctly (it's been a while since I looked), these are both prerequisites for the prestige class Master of Many Forms, and bonus feats that Yuan-Ti come with.

[Flarecobra]

Yuan-ti pureblood, I found stuff for 4E, but nothing for 3.5. Probably going with Fighter class, keeping an option open for Weaponmaster down the line. As for alignment, lawful neutral. She won't be all about death and destruction and whatnot, and is generally quite a decient fellow. Unless someone crosses her, then she... well... let's just say she's not the type to just let someone walk away with all their parts intact.

Especally if you happon to be male.

[tacticslion]

Yuan-ti pureblood, I found stuff for 4E, but nothing for 3.5. Probably going with Fighter class, keeping an option open for Weaponmaster down the line. As for alignment, lawful neutral. She won't be all about death and destruction and whatnot, and is generally quite a decient fellow. Unless someone crosses her, then she... well... let's just say she's not the type to just let someone walk away with all their parts intact.

Especally if you happon to be male.

WELP!
Flare, I'm really sorry, but I'm afraid that I still don't know what edition you're going for and can't tell if you're more interested in a strong fighter or tricky fighter.

So, to help clarify for me:
1) are your friends playing 3.5 or 4E?
(Note: I don't have any information on Yuan-Ti in 4E, other than as monsters, so you'd want to ask Meister or Ryong for help there)

2) are you more interested in brutal power or deceitfulness/intrigue style stuff? Or neither and are interested in being a pretty fighter with exotic weapon tricks? Highly defensive? Do you have a particular weapon in mind?

If you're interested in brutal power... there's a lot to do, but I'd focus on two-handed weapons with a nice, super-sharp light one-handed weapon just for the intimidation factor against males - the small one doesn't help you with power, but it sure does make for a worrisome thing with guys who treat you wrong. This advice applies regardless of which system you follow (to the best of my knowledge).

If you're more interested in tricking your fighter out, either for deceit, speed, or exotic attack styles, then it more heavily depends on the system you use. Unfortunately, with 4E, I don't have anything for you but the Player's Handbook 1 (of the first three Player's Handbooks, the FR Player's Guide, and the Eberron Player's Guide, only the first Player's Handbook has any fighter stuff), so I'd be limited to that.

Now, if you're interested in absolute min/maxing... eh, I'm not the best one for fighter-types to ask. If you're interested in fairly decent builds that can work well with a group, I'd be happy to help when I get more specifics.

If you need others to help, off the top of my head...
For 3.X
myself, Azisien (I think?), Nikose Tyris, and Mr. Bookworm, Pip Boy, RedMageBlack, DarkDrgon, SmartyMcBarrelPants, Overcast, Ravashak, Sifrit, TDK, MagicMarker, and Corel are known to me to be players of 3.X

For 4E
Meister, Ryong, and russianreversal

This is by no means a complete list, is not in any order at all, and is just what I could find and think up quickly.

[Flarecobra]

That's the thing, I don't know which edition, and if you'd note, I found stuff for 4th to work with, but nothing for 3.5.

I'm basically covering my ass, and making up stuff for both editions. I got a week to work on it anyway so it's not like time's an issue.

[Mr.Bookworm]

You can play a Pureblood in 3.5 (they're in Races of Faerun and you can figure it out with the MM), although I really wouldn't. They have 6 RHD and +5 LA, so you are going to be kind of fucked if you try to play one.

So, yeah, 4E is probably the way to go if you want to play a Yuan-ti.

[Meister]

Honestly I wouldn't let my decision which system to play depend on which one has the race I want. You can always customize or reflavour existing stuff.

Also I don't think there's an official Yuan-ti player race in 4E, and the homebrew one I found on dandwiki has some pretty stupidly overpowered features and some that aren't defined well enough to work. Which one's the one you're working with?

e: also yeah, quick quiz on 4E in combat:

What do you want to do?

Protect your companions?
Take down the biggest threat on the battlefield?
Help and assist your allies?
Cross your foes' plans?

How do you want to do it?

Through physical prowess, experience, strength, and sheer badassitude?
With divine help?
Using the art of the arcane?
By your ties to nature and the spiritual world?
Using only the raw power of your mind?

[Flarecobra]

Like I said, mostly aiming to a Fighter Character. Probably going with polearm weapons. The DM is also giving me lattitude (since he did it for everyone else) to have a custom weapon, so I'm working that part out.

[Meister]

The trick in 4E is that classes aren't descriptions of professions, they're descriptions of combat functions or roles. Playing a Fighter means playing a guy who knows how to use a weapon, and whose job in a fight it is to protect his allies. That's built into the class. And it's a good choice - 4E Fighters are a ton of fun and incredibly effective!

But if protection isn't what you're in for, you gotta take a step back. You can say you want to play a chararacter who uses weapons well - that leaves the entire range of Martial classes. A Fighter who protects allies, a Rogue who sneaks around and takes down enemies, a Warlord who encourages and bolsters his friends, all that and more.

So, like I said, Fighter with a polearm is a good choice if you're okay with being the meatshield, so to speak. If you want something else, there are other options, and not having "Fighter" on your character sheet doesn't mean you can't call yourself a fighter in game. You could even play a Barbarian, for example - they specialize in using two-handed weapons.

[Flarecobra]

I'm ok being a meatshield. Besides, the group I'll be with has 2 casters, and two rogues already, so they could use another meatshield.

[tacticslion]

Yeowch, Meister, you're right, I just looked that sucker up, and the flavor and function are both terrible for the 4E conversion of Yuan-Ti.

I'm ok being a meatshield. Besides, the group I'll be with has 2 casters, and two rogues already, so they could use another meatshield.

In 4E, you might want to look at paladin or barbarian anyway, for that. Fighter's great, but a Paladin can heal herself (lay on hands) and a barbarian has a rather egregious amount of hit points for a striker class. It's totally your call, however, and virtually anything defined as a "defender" (including Fighters, Paladins, Wardens, Sword Mages, and Battleminds, to my knowledge) will fulfill that roll nicely, but barbarians have high enough hit points that if you hum a few bars, they can very easily fake it.

One of the problems with 4E Yuan-Ti is that they don't look human. Every single picture I've seen of them indicates that they look like a snake-headed humanoid, not a human with some subtle snake-like features.

In 3.X, go with fighter.

Also, in 3.X:
I've been doodling about with a bit of thinking, and I've realized three things:
A) if you go with Yuan-Ti...
... a1) go with pure blood
... a2) find a way to reduce you LA
... a3) find a way to apply the native outsider type to you
B) if you just want snakey-like stuff, go with extaminos (spelling?) instead
C) finally, you could just go with a were-snake

Now, I know that a2 and a3 above seem antithetical... and they kind of are... but here's the reason: with outsider type, those hit dice make a great deal of sense. One thing I might suggest is talking to you DM and seeing if s/he'll let you drop the weapon-thing and instead use a variant of the Unearthed Arcana optional rules that allow you to "buy off" your level adjustment. Effectively, ignore the special weapon, and every time you've gained three levels (3/6/9/etc) when you are about to gain the level after that (4/7/10/etc) instead lose the XP for the new level (4/7/10/etc) and lose one of your level adjustments. It's a godsend for high LA races. Also, valid, is asking to gain something like the half-celestial (+3 LA) but dropping: the spell-likes, the wings (and thus the flight) and the smite power, possibly even dropping the ability score boons, and keeping a +1 LA for it. But the benefit is: you get to be a native outsider. That will synergize wonderfully with your natural hit dice, so your hit dice remains the same (d8), but you get best BAB, best saves, and 8+INT mod skills. If you can get both (as I describe below), so much the better.

One thing that worked for me, once, was to create a Yuan-Ti pureblood character (+6 LA) who had the Shade template (+2 LA) [total +8 LA], who had a super-powerful cursed armband made of cold iron with the tip lit by a permanent daylight spell, thus negating all the Shade benefits for as long as it lasted (and negating the +2 LA). The curse was being unable to get rid of it (caster level check required was 40, I think). I also took a penalty to some ability score or another (I think it was CON?) and it remained with me when I changed forms (making me identifiable), which, together, gave me another reduction (to a total of +5 LA); but I was able to enchant it (but that cost a lot of money). Then I paid off some (two) of my remaining LA via my racial hit dice and one class level (6 HD total) by starting with zero experience points (0 XP), and a +3 LA.

That means that I was, effectively, a 9th level character (6 HD, +3 LA), and I paid off my remaining LA at 9th HD (12th level, instead of going to 13th level/10HD I lost an LA and became 11th level, remaining 9 HD), 12th HD (14th level, instead of going to 15th level/13HD I lost an LA and became 13th level, remaining at 12 HD), and finally 15th HD (16th level, instead of going to 17th level/16HD I lost an LA and became 15th level, remaining 15 HD). That means that you'll gain a few less levels than your group, and you'll always be "six" levels behind, no matter what, but it's not a bad trade.

Alternatively, you could see if your GM would be interested in letting you start without any racial hit dice, meaning you'd still be saddled with the +6 LA, but you'd pay it off at 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, and 15th HD, as described above. Paying it off by HD instead of by level is actually not as good a deal for you, but paying it off at every third hit dice is a good deal, as opposed to the rather obscure 3.0-style rules Unearthed Arcana uses in a 3.5 game.

For "B", becoming an extaminos means that you'll be like Yuan-Ti, in that you'll have ties to them (and actually be half-Yuan-Ti), but you won't actually have everything they do. I forget where they're presented, but I know they exist in 3.5 stuff.

For "C", that's pretty easy. Find the kind of snake you wish to be. Become infected by (or be born with) that kind of lycanthrope. Don't forget your +2 (or +3, if natural) LA. Enjoy. (Personally, I'd work on gaining a single wish so that my snake-side, in this case, became a spirit creature, allowing me to go incoporeal in my animal form and cool fey hit dice instead of lame animal hit dice... but that's just me, and also kind of evil*).

* To clarify, it's evil as a player. As an actual in-game act, it's entirely neutral - neither good, evil, lawful, or chaotic. It's not even "strongly" neutral so that you head towards neutrality, it's just kinda there. Nice side effect that you become immortal, in terms of age (but not violence).

[Flarecobra]

Yuan-ti pureblood, I found stuff for 4E, but nothing for 3.5. Probably going with Fighter class, keeping an option open for Weaponmaster down the line. As for alignment, lawful neutral. She won't be all about death and destruction and whatnot, and is generally quite a decient fellow. Unless someone crosses her, then she... well... let's just say she's not the type to just let someone walk away with all their parts intact.

I think that rules out Pali and Barbarian.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Are you going to hiss all the time you speak? Andbe evil at the end?
Cause Iused to play snake characters all the timeand every single timeI would end up betraying my party and they would be surprised and I'd be like "I'm playing a bloody Snake!"

[Flarecobra]

No. Besides, if there's a hissing noise it's usually when I laugh.

[Vauron]

If you are playing 3.5, you may get some usage out of this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8017736&postcount=127). Admittedly, its not the beefiest class, but its just six levels long. Also, you can leave the class whenever you want and come back, so theoretically you could be a Yuan-ti 2/Warblade 4 and that'd still work fine. Note that if you use this class that you would not have any racial hit dice or level adjustment to deal with.

[Meister]

I think that rules out Pali and Barbarian.
Good news: 4E doesn't have alignment restrictions. Even if it did there are no consequences for not sticking to your alignment. For that matter, there's technically no "lawful neutral" alignment, but alignment is so inconsequential in this system that absolutely nothing keeps you from writing "lawful neutral," "chaotic good" or "the Terminator" in the alignment field and playing that.

[Meister]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111018

Dammit Cook. You're deliberately writing those in the way that will rile people up most without actually settling on any point yourself, aren't you.

I do enjoy seeing names of monsters and spells I recognize. But there are two ways to go about including a well-known game element in your new edition: you take a step back and look at how it would work best within the confines and design paradigms of the new edition, or you try and shoehorn the way it used to work in by any means. I'm pretty firmly in the former camp. I still think, for example, that the Magic Missile errata they did for 4E was total bullshit - you go to the trouble of making a new system, almost from scratch, and then down the line you decide "oh, except this spell, cause that's special"? Fuck off. I do want to see monsters, items and spells I know, but I want to see how they work in and complement a new system, not be the same effects in a different package that isn't even made to hold them.

Incidentally, tactics, this is why your time dragon won't be rolling 2d20 for every attack or be immune to anything with a duration. :) (Saturday/Sunday alright?)

[tacticslion]

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111018

Dammit Cook. You're deliberately writing those in the way that will rile people up most without actually settling on any point yourself, aren't you.

Yeppers, he is. Has been since the beginning. from what I can tell. That's why I thought his articles were odd - in both good and bad ways. The polls are also both terrible and misleading.

I do enjoy seeing names of monsters and spells I recognize. But there are two ways to go about including a well-known game element in your new edition: you take a step back and look at how it would work best within the confines and design paradigms of the new edition, or you try and shoehorn the way it used to work in by any means. I'm pretty firmly in the former camp. I still think, for example, that the Magic Missile errata they did for 4E was total bullshit - you go to the trouble of making a new system, almost from scratch, and then down the line you decide "oh, except this spell, cause that's special"? Fuck off. I do want to see monsters, items and spells I know, but I want to see how they work in and complement a new system, not be the same effects in a different package that isn't even made to hold them.

Actually, I could see a distinct balance between the two and finding a way to create new rules that work with the new paradigm while evoking the old ones accurately enough that it works with the broad outline of stories created either system, if not the specifics.

That's one of my beefs with 4E, is that they completely eliminated that from their system, necessitating the complete rewrite of large chunks of history with campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms (although I think they handled Eberron (i.e. sans time jump) pretty well, and I've heard good things about Blacksun.

That said, considering 4E's made it's bed... yeah, it's pretty bad form not to lie in it. Related: what's the errata of magic missile? :ohdear:

Incidentally, tactics, this is why your time dragon won't be rolling 2d20 for every attack or be immune to anything with a duration. :) (Saturday/Sunday alright?)

Fine by me! (all of it) :D

EDIT:
Also, Flare, in addition to Meister's words being true (alignment doesn't really matter in 4E), Yaun-Ti are not held to a limited set of either alignments or deities, unless your group plays with house rules that indicate otherwise. So your pure blood could easily be beholden to a god of any alignment you so choose. In fact, in the 4E campaign settings now, there's evil clerics of good deities, good clerics of evil deities and unaligned (the new "neutral") clerics of all sorts of deities. So, you know, there's that. In 3.X. you're still not beholden to your racial god (who is, regardless of how you look at it/who you look at, chaotic evil, in Forgotten Realms, where most of the "generic" Yuan-Ti info comes from), you'd just be considered odd.

And I'd strongly recommend going with Vauron's link, as it's likely the most straightforward way (above and beyond my earlier suggestions) of avoiding the problems with racial hit dice and level adjustment.

[Meister]

Old Magic Missile was an attack roll vs. Ref, 2d4+INT damage.
New Magic Missile is an effect. One enemy within range takes 2+INT damage.

No attack roll or anything, just "that guy over there takes damage." It's not devastating damage by any means but it does completely negate any advantage an enemy might have gained from cover or concealment or other tactical elements, and I think it's bad form to ignore that aspect of the game if you've spent so much time implementing it. Even if it's just for one at-will with piddly damage, it's the principle of the thing.

Especially if your reason for the change is literally "we wanted it to feel more like the 3.5 one." Not kidding, that's basically what it says in the errata document.

[tacticslion]

Old Magic Missile was an attack roll vs. Ref, 2d4+INT damage.
New Magic Missile is an effect. One enemy within range takes 2+INT damage.

No attack roll or anything, just "that guy over there takes damage." It's not devastating damage by any means but it does completely negate any advantage an enemy might have gained from cover or concealment or other tactical elements, and I think it's bad form to ignore that aspect of the game if you've spent so much time implementing it. Even if it's just for one at-will with piddly damage, it's the principle of the thing.

Especially if your reason for the change is literally "we wanted it to feel more like the 3.5 one." Not kidding, that's basically what it says in the errata document.

Well... that's certainly an errata that I won't be using. It's not even good errata, even invalidating its own purpose! Seriously, if they wanted to feel more like the old one: drop the extra INT damage, leave it as 1d4, give it extra missiles (1 missile per d4, 1d4 per tier). Restrict it to one missile per target, and there you go: it's still piddly damage and it makes it feel more like its old self.

I mean, someone who's pumped all their stuff into INT (like, say, any wizard who wanted to be a wizard) could easily have a 26 INT, meaning they're dropping a consistent 10 damage to anybody they want any time they want.

Also, yes, it's totally bad form to just rewrite your rules for the sake of rewriting your rules... which is what this is. It's not a balance issue, it's not an actual game-play issue, it's not even for some story purpose. This kind of thing is just rewriting the rules "just because we felt like it, shut up". Yuck.

[tacticslion]

I apologize for multi-posting, but I don't think the forums would handle these as one post... and I don't think the forumers would handle it either. If a mod wants me to change it I will.

I posted these elsewhere, but I'd love feedback from the community here, too.

So, by way of introduction, I was reading the 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and came across this little tidbit:

Circle magic is most widespread in Faerûn’s eastern reaches, among the Rashemi and Thayans, but it’s found all over Toril among those who wield divine and arcane power. Circle magic shapes daily attack powers into rituals useful for large, long-range effects on the battlefield.

War Spells: Circle members can perform a ritual to cast a war spell (a collaborative version of a ranged or area attack power). The performance of the ritual requires 1 minute per participant. Each participant must know the attack power to be used and must expend that power on completing the ritual. Increase the power’s range by 1 square, the radius of its area of effect (if any) by 1 square, and damage dice by 1 for each participant.

Example: Six circle members, all wizards, get together to produce a war spell version of the wizard power fireball. They spend 6 minutes performing the ritual, after which time the power of the fireball flares forth. The war spell affects a burst 9 within 26 squares, counting from the space of the wizard designated as the caster. The power uses the Intelligence modifier of the caster for its attack roll, and it deals damage equal to 9d6 + the caster’s Intelligence modifier to each target in the area that is hit by the attack.

As I posted there:
A long rant/breakdown about why it sucks:
So, yes, it's a ritual, and it is absolutely terrible. The very example (with six casters) is horrid. There's six casters that are hanging around for 60 rounds (that's what "six minutes" means) in order to produce an effect that's not even as powerful as if all six had cast the spells individually and called it a day. Seriously, a ritual spell like that gains them 6d6 damage, but loses them 15d6 + 5 [ts](average intelligence modifier) damage, for a net loss of 11d6 + 5 [ts] (average intelligence modifier). That's horrid. And for what? For: thirty extra feet (aka "one move action") of range and affect. BUT! It actually costs them more: each of them could create a burst of three (which is a 3x3 square in 4E) which means 45 square feet that's six [ts] 45 square feet (or 270 square feet). Their circle spell is a 9x9 burst, or 81 squares, for 405 square feet. NICE, right? But, it takes them 60 rounds to get that extra 405 square feet. Let's look at this in terms of a war: it takes them 60 rounds (standard/move/minor) of real-time combat going on somewhere within 130 feet of them when they start this. Enemies move at, roughly, 30 feet per round (presuming they're doing other things with their standard actions and the terrain isn't conducive to running). 30 times 60 = 1,800. This means a typical enemy could lap the mages 13.8 times before their spell went off.

Now, let's be "fair" and say those same war mages were facing down hordes of enemies, BUT they had hordes of allies, such that they felt they had the leisure of taking a short rest and spending 10 rounds doing nothing (six minutes/60 rounds). For doing diddly squat for 60 rounds of battle, they gain 165 extra feet (450-270 for area +30 for range) of lesser damage (net loss of 11d6 plus 5 [ts] the intelligence modifier). The Campaign Guide is really telling me that it's not worth them using up all their daily and encounter attack powers in six rounds, go somewhere to take a five minute rest, and then use all their encounter attack powers again? That's far more damage, on average, far more area, and they'd likely save far more lives than spending 60 rounds doing nothing but twiddling their thumbs. Ignoring their ability to go rest for five minutes, they could still, on average, do far, far more damage and be much more affective as individuals than as a group.

Circle magic only works, at best, in very ridiculously specific situations, and those it would still be more effective for a bunch of mages to just let loose by themselves. Also, spell-selection is already a factor - to get that to work, not only do you have to have six mages who are, at least, level 5, but they've all got to have learned and prepared fireball that day. That's... not really good use of resources. At all.

This simplest change is to move it from one minute per participant to one round per participant. I mean, it still kind of sucks due to the over-all massive damage loss and rather ridiculous time consumption, but at least performing the ritual makes sense. It's usable and useful, but is far from over powered, especially considering what else you could have had those six (or however many) mages doing with all that time (five additional standard/move/minor actions is a lot).

And I'd made a call to change and "fix" it. I'm going to (possibly temporarily) multi-post my own series of responses here because, again, I don't want to break the threads here, and I don't know how much they can hold.

[tacticslion]

Here's the second part. This is pretty much lifted directly from my post in the other forum with a couple of edits to make the code in this forum work right.


Now, in reference to Circle Magic, I've got an idea I'd like to run by you guys. First, despite my earlier assertion, I'd suggest leaving Circle Magic as-written... sort of. After all, as-written, you basically get it "for free", and one of the fundamental tenets of Circle Magic in older additions is that it required heavy investment to get "right" (presented as being limited by kits/prestige classes). 4E has done away with lots of that concept, and has instead relegated things like that to: feats. And that's where I'd recommend Circle Magic enhancement goes. The "free" stuff is still possible... and is still pretty terrible outside of specific circumstances... but those who work at it (invest feats) are the ones that reap Circle Magic's benefits. I'd break the feats into paragon feats and epic feats, leaving the Heroic tier the one that the FRCG explains as quoted above. The breakdown would go something like as follows (please keep in mind the titles and precise benefits are tentative).

Heroic: as written in the FRCG
Paragon: three feats:

Circle Magic Participant - Circle Magic is faster for you, but only a limited number of participants can join: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, that ritual Circle Magic now takes only one round per participant rather than one minute, however you are limited to a number of participants equal to one quarter your level.

Circle Magic Specialist - Circle Magic is more flexible for you [prerequisite: any other circle magic feat or Tattoo Specialization]: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, the participants can all expend any daily spell slot of the appropriate level or higher instead of that specific spell.

Circle Magic Ritualist - Circle Magic can be done in advance [prerequisite: any other circle magic feat or Tattoo Specialization]: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, you may increase the time to one hour per participant (or, if you have Circle Magic Participant, only 10 minutes per participant), however the spell enhanced does not have to be expended immediately; the spell remains enhanced by the circle magic until it is expended by the leader, the leader takes an extended rest, or 24 hours, whichever comes first.

Epic: three feats (each requires the paragon version):

Epic Circle Magic Participant - Circle Magic is much faster for you, but only a limited number of participants can join [prerequisite Circle Magic Participant]: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, all the participants may choose to delay their action in order to apply the benefits of the ritual Circle Magic during one round (the same round you cast the spell), however you are limited to a number of participants equal to one half your level.

Epic Circle Magic Specialist - Circle Magic is much more flexible for you and you can have many participants [prerequisite: Circle Magic Specialist]: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, the participants can all expend as many daily spell slots of any level to enhance your spell or spells, instead of just that level or higher, however you only gain the benefit of a number of spell levels equal to one multiple of the spell level expended. For example, if you wish to have a thirteenth level spell enhanced, you must have a total number of spell levels sacrificed equal to thirteen or higher before you gain one enhancement, or twenty six if you want two. You can have a number of participants this way equal to half your level. If you have Circle Magic Participant, you may have a number of participants equal to three-quarters your level, and if you have Epic Circle Magic Participant you may have a number equal to your level.

Epic Circle Magic Ritualist - Circle Magic can be done in advance [prerequisite: Circle Magic Ritualist]: when you lead a ritual Circle Magic circle, you may increase the time to two hours per participant (1 hour per participant if you have Circle Magic Participant, or 10 minutes per participant if you have Epic Circle Magic Participant), however the spell enhanced does not have to be expended immediately; the spell remains enhanced by the circle magic until it is expended by the leader, the leader prepares a different spell, or 48 hours passes, whichever comes first.

Here's Tattoo Focus, as I see it translated into 4E:

Tattoo Focus (feat, heroic) [prerequisite: human from Thay or trained in special rituals kept by the Red Wizard Enclaves severed from Thay] - you have chosen a specially codified form of magic to master, and your studies in other forms are weaker as a result: choose one "school" of magic as your "Specialty School". You gain a +2 bonus to all attacks with arcane spells with those related key words, and a +2 bonus to all defenses and saves against the arcane spells with the related key words and enemies take a -2 penalty to their save against your arcane spells with those key words. Choose one school of magic as your "prohibited school". You gain a -5 penalty to all attacks, defenses, and saves against the related key words when they are part of arcane spells and your foes get a +5 bonus to related saves. If a spell falls under both categories, then it gains both the bonus and penalty (thus takes an over-all -3 penalty). The schools (and their related key words), are listed below:
* Abjuration (force, reliable, stance, zone)
* Conjuration (conjuration, force, summoning, teleportation)
* Divination (healing, psychic, reliable, sleep)
* Enchantment (charm, fear, psychic, sleep)
* Evocation (any four of: acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, thunder [choose three, once chosen they don't change])
* Illusion (illusion, radiant, psychic, shadow)
* Necromancy (healing, necrotic, poison, shadow)
* Transmutation (acid, healing, poison, polymorph)
Special: this also allows you to qualify for the Master Crafter feat (pg 92, Eberron Player's Guide), even if you don't meet the prerequisites.


The reason for this feat is so you can have the Red Wizard paragon path (without having to shoe-horn in that feat as part of the paragon path). I'll post that below in a second.

[tacticslion]

So here's the last (two) posts I made there. I'm going to try and work them together, but they're pretty big, so here's hoping it will work. First the Red Wizard, then the Hathran.

Paragon Path: Red Wizard
[prerequisite: master crafter, ritual specialist, tattoo focus, must be an arcane caster class]
Special (11th level): Red Wizard Specialty - you gain one circle magic feat of your choice and your Tattoo Focus benefit for your Specialty School increases to +3 (while enemies take -3 on their saves) and your penalty to your Prohibited School decreases to -3 (and your enemies only get +3 on their saves). You may prepare one additional utility spell with keywords related to your Specialty School of your lowest level per day. If the spell has keywords related to your prohibited school, you cannot prepare it as the additional spell.

Special (11th level): Circle Magic Action - you gain Circle Magic Specialist as a bonus feat; further, whenever you decide to lead a ritual circle, when you spend an action point, instead of taking an extra action, you and all participants who spend an action point can choose to delay your action to participate in the circle magic. Your initiatives all follow the lowest initiative of the participants, but on that character's initiative, you cast the enhanced spell.

Special (16th level): Red Wizard Master - you gain the last paragon Circle Magic feat that you don't have (if you have it already, this give you another bonus feat you qualify for instead). Additionally, your specialization bonus to your Specialty School increases to +5 (and your enemies take a -5 to their saves), while your penalty to your Prohibited School lowers to -2 (and your enemies only gain +2 to their saves). Instead of your lowest level, your additional utility spell per day related to your school is of your highest level spell, and can be chosen, even if it has keywords related to your prohibited school.


Taught the ancient secrets of the Red Wizards, your tattoo informs the ultimate results of your carefully crafted magical incantation.
Encounter*arcane, school, (varies according to school, see below)
Immediate Reaction..... Close Burst 3
Trigger: an enemy moves to any square within range
Target: a number of enemies in the burst equal to one quarter your level
Attack: INT v. variable (see below)
Hit: 3d4+INT modifier damage of a type determined by your Specialty School, plus your Specialty School effect. See Effect and Special Below.
Effect: depending on your school you gain one of the following bonuses, as noted:
... * Abjuration [This power gains the force, reliable, stance, and zone key words; deals force damage; attacks reflex defense; and, if you miss all targets, you don't expend this power. You create a zone equal to the burst radius. All enemies within the zone take a -1 penalty to their attacks, defenses, and saves against all arcane powers except those related to your prohibited school. This stacks with other penalties.]
... * Conjuration [This power gains the conjuration, force, summoning, and teleportation key words; deals force damage; attacks the reflex defense; and you teleport all targets up to two squares in any direction you like into an empty space; you conjure a vague, moving, misty image in all but one of the squares that the enemies vacated of the enemies that vacated that square, leaving those squares as difficult terrain; in the remaining square you summon a near-direct copy of the enemy that vacated that square. The summoned copy can move at your direction and make only basic and opportunity attacks, though if you have spells that count as basic attacks it can use those (after which they are used up and unavailable to you if they are encounter or daily spells as if you had cast them). Sustain: minor - the misty copy of your enemies persist you may move the them a number of squares equal to your intelligence modifier. An enemy can target the misty images with a melee, ranged, or area attack; they have no hit points and, upon being hit are destroyed.]
... Divination [This power gains the healing, psychic, reliable, and sleep keywords; deals psychic damage; attacks the will defense; and you can expend a healing surge. All enemies within the blast act as if under an enhanced sleep spell - they are slowed (save ends). 1st failed save: they are unconscious (save ends) and take ongoing 5 psychic damage that does not awaken them (save ends).]
... * Enchantment [This power gains the charm, fear, psychic, and sleep keywords; deals psychic damage; and attacks the will defense. On their turn, all affected enemies must make a basic attack against one of their allies and make a save. If the save is successful they must move at their full speed away from the caster (save ends). If the save fails, they fails, they are affected as if by an enhanced sleep spell - they are slowed (save ends). 1st failed save: they fall unconscious (save ends). 1st failed save: they no longer make saving throws for this power and remain unconscious for an amount of time equal to an extended rest for their race, but they gain no benefits of a rest of any kind.]
... * Evocation [This power gains the four keywords that you chose, deals damage of those kinds (equally split between them), attacks the reflex defense, and deals ongoing 4 damage of those kinds (equally split between them).]
... * Illusion [This power gains the illusion, radiant, psychic, and shadow keywords; deals radiant damage; attacks the reflex defense; and fools the targets and their allies - the targets look like you and allies of your choice to the target's allies (target's save ends), you look like the target's allies to the target (target's save ends), and the target's allies look like you and your allies to the target (target's save ends). The targets and their allies can make a perception check each round to tell the truth, with a DC equal to 10+half your level.]
... * Necromancy [This power gains the healing, necrotic, poison, and shadow keywords; deals necrotic and poison damage; attacks the fortitude defense; and you can spend a healing surge. Each of the targets are harried by unseen shadowy spirits, and grant combat advantage to you and your allies (save ends).]
* Transmutation [This power gains the acid, healing, poison, and polymorph keywords; deals acid and poison damage; attacks the fortitude defense; and you may spend a healing surge. You transform yourself into a powerful-looking magical creature of your choice of large size (or one size larger than your current size if you are any size other than medium) and gain the ability to make all your spells as melee basic attacks. Their attack values become against the AC of the target (though they still use your intelligence modifier) and you gain a number of temporary hit points equal to half your level plus your intelligence modifier. At the end of the encounter or once you are out of temporary hit points granted to you by this power, you revert to your normal size and your powers work normally again.]
Special: you gain only the benefit based off of the Specialty School you chose when you gained the Tattoo Focus feat.



The power of your tattoo focuses your magic into new heights of grandeur, and you realize that your are more potent than you thought, capable of adapting as time goes on with your specialty guiding your way.
You may choose any arcane utility power of your level or lower from any arcane class that has key words associated with your specialty school, but not with your prohibited school. You gain this as a utility power. Each level, you may retrain this power to something else. You do not prepare this spell - you simply have it to use. This can even be a paragon utility power, although it must contain the arcane key word.



Your mastery of your specialization has led you to greater power than you knew possible. Let all who come against you tremble!
Encounter*arcane, school, (varies according to school, see below)
Minor Action..... Close Burst 8
Target: a number of enemies in the burst equal to one quarter your level plus your intelligence modifier.
Attack: INT v. variable (see below)
Hit: 3d8+INT modifier damage of a type determined by your Specialty School, plus your Specialty School effect (see below). See Effect and Special Below.
Effect: The effects of this spell are identical to your Spell of the Marked power, except as noted below
... * Abjuration [This power works as above, except that the penalty is -4 and, whenever a target misses with an attack, the spell instead targets them.]
... * Conjuration [This power works as above, except that you can choose up to two enemies to have summoned copies of instead of just one.]
... Divination [This power works as above, but deals ongoing 10 psychic damage instead of 5.]
... * Enchantment [This power works as above, but only requires one failed save to fall unconscious and no longer make saves.]
... * Evocation [This power works as above, but deals ongoing 8 damage of the energy kinds instead.]
... * Illusion [This power works as above, but requires a DC 15+half your level check instead.]
... * Necromancy [This power works as above, but the targets take ongoing 5 necrotic damage and provide combat advantage (save ends both).]
* Transmutation [This power works as above, but you gain a +5 bonus to all your attack rolls made while polymorphed.]
Special: you gain only the benefit based off of the Specialty School you chose when you gained the Tattoo Focus feat.

And now the Hathran:

Paragon Path: Hathran
[prerequisite: Ethran (feat I haven't fully formed yet), female from Rashemen or trained by a Hathran, must be at least two of [arcane, divine, or primal] classes (either a base class of one and fully cross classed, that is with all four cross-class feats, to another source; or a hybrid class with two power sources from that list) and they must each be different sources from that list; you cannot have mastered Enchant Magic Item ritual; you cannot be evil or chaotic evil]
Special (11th level): Hathran Sisterhood - you gain one circle magic feat of your choice and one cross class feat into any class that has an arcane, divine, or primal power source so long as the power source is different from the ones you already have. You gain two class features of your choice from your three classes - if you are a cross class choose one from each of your two cross classes, and if you are hybrid, you may choose any two class features you don't currently have from any of your classes. You also gain a new implement you may use with your invocations, prayers, and spells - a Wychlaran Mask.

Special (11th level): Witch Circle Action - you gain Circle Magic Specialist as a bonus feat; further, whenever you decide to lead a ritual circle, when you spend an action point, instead of taking an extra action, you and all participants who spend an action point can choose to delay your action to participate in the circle magic. Your initiatives all follow the lowest initiative of the participants, but on that character's initiative, you cast the enhanced spell.

Special (16th level): Oerthran - you gain the last paragon Circle Magic feat that you don't have (if you have it already, this give you another bonus feat you qualify for instead). Additionally, you gain the best defenses, hit points per level (starting this level) and healing surges per day of all three of your classes.


With the ancient incantations of the firedawn cycle memorized, you know the essence of the secrets of the land, its spirits, and the cycle of all things.
Encounter* (varies)
Special: Choose three encounter powers with three different sources - one arcane, one divine, and one primal; that's one from each of your three classes. These powers cannot be higher than your level minus five. Each day you must choose one of these powers, and it cannot be the same power as the day before. That is your power for the day. These powers can be retrained as you level up, but the stipulation of no higher than your level minus five remains.



Your deeper connection with your ancient deities, the spirits of the land, and the arcane mysteries kept the sisterhood through the ages enables you to delve deeper into mysterious secrets of the sisterhood.
(varies)* (varies)
Special: Choose three utility powers with three different sources - one arcane, one divine, and one primal; that's one from each of your three classes. These powers cannot be higher than your level minus five. Each day you may activate any one of these powers that you need, and it becomes the only power of those three that you have access to that day. After an extended rest you have access to all three again until you use one before the end of your next extended rest.



You have become an Oethran or "learned sister" - a revered and greatly-hallowed kind of Wychlaran. All rightly fear you and respect the land, and those who don't will soon learn the error of their ways.
Daily* (varies)
Special: Choose three powers with three different sources - one arcane, one divine, and one primal; that's one from each of your three classes. These powers cannot be higher than your level minus five. Each day you may activate any one of these powers that you need, and it becomes the only power of those three that you have access to that day. After an extended rest you have access to all three again until you use one before the end of your next extended rest.

So, to finish this up, here's my own thoughts on the matter:
So, I'm glad these worked... really glad.
It's taken me several hours to get them all rewritten - again - and get them up. I'm staying up way too late doing so, but I wanted to get these ideas out and critiqued before I forgot them.

Before you respond - they're probably not as balanced as they should be: I wrote these literally as I was thinking of them the first time, derped and lost it all, and then rewrote it as best I could remember (with flourishes) a second time. I get that. That's why I'm putting it out to help me refine and clarify. I figure they get several things, but there's a higher "price tag" to enter, so that should balance it out... but I could be wrong, so let me know. I'm also going to post these in another forum to get opinions there, too!

If any are curious, this is indeed the "other forum" I was talking about in the above quote.
Here's (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards) the Paizo community boards (and the specific thread (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/4thEdition/so4thEditionForgottenRealms&page=1#34)) that I actually posted this stuff on first.

[Meister]

:wtf:

Okay. First off - is there anything more on circle magic, because as written it's essentially nonfunctional.
Use it as a group of players? You'll have to have two or more players in the group who both play a Wizard and who both have Fireball. Chances for that are slim in a system that's built around the idea of diverse characters being most effective when they work together.
Use it as a PC Wizard with a few NPC wizards? NPCs and monsters aren't built after PC rules, so this relies entirely on your DM giving a group of NPC wizards the same Fireball power PCs get (highly ill-advised in the case of monsters), and at that point it's already completely within the realm of "DM gives you an additional option" so you don't need it as a general rule.
Use it as a DM for a group of NPCs? Same thing, you're the DM, you can give your NPCs whatever you want already.
Who the hell wrote this.

Secondly, tactics, the fundamental problem with your designs is that you approach designing stuff for 4E like designing stuff for 3.5 with different maths. :)

You're talking about investing feats that build on and require each other to get good at one thing. Not "get better," but "get actually good, because the basic thing sucks." Feats in 4E generally make minor improvements to things you're already good at.

Limiting participants in a ritual by level, and in a convoluted way? Why?

Spell levels? You're still thinking in 3.5 patterns. There's no inherent "level" property to spells anymore; all a power level does is tell you at what level a character can select it.

Tattoo focus: much to central a point to a character to be put into a feat. The intended effect is too good (-5, really?), and the way it's written makes it nonfunctional in most situations because your enemies, i.e. NPCs and monsters, simply don't "cast arcane spells" in any way that would make the designation meaningful. In addition, by now there is actually a class, the Mage, that gets spell school specialization as a feature - look into that.

Paragon paths: much too limiting in their entry requirements. Once you deliberately create a game element to be stronger than others, there's no reason for anyone not to take it. Strict requirements don't act as a balancing factor, but as an annoyance, because anyone who takes the obviously best PP will get annoyed at having to waste those feat slots. Again, like in 3.5.

Red Wizard: class features are lackluster. You get feats. Wow. Action point feature is too situational. Parts of it don't make sense - an utility spell of your lowest level? Level 11 power is far too complicated and features that silly "1/4 level targets" restriction. Level 12 power is lackluster. Level 20 power has the same problems as level 11.

Paragon paths are supposed to add something unique and defining to your character that you couldn't otherwise get, not give you feats and powers you could also, and more easily, gain through multiclassing without jumping through the requirement hoops.

Hathran: requirements are, sorry, ridiculous. Paragon Paths are also supposed to be pretty open - most of them will be limited by nothing more but race, class, role or power source, maybe a class feature choice. Rest of the PP only gives you multiclassing stuff again.

Seriously if I were you I'd scrap this entire thing and Circle Magic along with it because it was written by infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters. You know what you can use just fine to represent Circle Magic? Aid Another. That's really it.

e: why would you take a feat that makes you worse at something and then take a paragon path to make you better at it again

[tacticslion]

Okay. First off - is there anything more on circle magic, because as written it's essentially nonfunctional. If you mean what I wrote on circle magic... no. It's all I've made. If you mean what WotC wrote (the FR CG quote I gave above)... not that I know of. I quoted everything that was in the book to you.

Who the hell wrote this. I don't know, myself and someone at WotC.

Secondly, tactics, the fundamental problem with your designs is that you approach designing stuff for 4E like designing stuff for 3.5 with different maths. :) Of course! That's one reason I'm asking for critiques. Basically, my thought behind this, is to house rule 4E Realms into something that resembles Forgotten Realms.

You're talking about investing feats that build on and require each other to get good at one thing. Not "get better," but "get actually good, because the basic thing sucks." Feats in 4E generally make minor improvements to things you're already good at. That's one of the reasons I created the feats as-written. I seem them performing that function - mages already have what I gave you in the FR PG (the first quote I posted), so I just made it usable. I separated it into multiple feats because... well, I figured one feat was too powerful, and three just seemed to fit.

Limiting participants in a ritual by level, and in a convoluted way? Why?

Spell levels? You're still thinking in 3.5 patterns. There's no inherent "level" property to spells anymore; all a power level does is tell you at what level a character can select it. Actually, I meant literal levels. I was not thinking "spell levels" as in "level of spell" aside from "fireball is available at X level", and thus has that as it's "level". I actually was thinking 4E for that one.

Tattoo focus: much to central a point to a character to be put into a feat. The intended effect is too good (-5, really?), and the way it's written makes it nonfunctional in most situations because your enemies, i.e. NPCs and monsters, simply don't "cast arcane spells" in any way that would make the designation meaningful. In addition, by now there is actually a class, the Mage, that gets spell school specialization as a feature - look into that. Problem: my funds are, shall we say, tied up in non-fungible assets (hint: it's a child) and so I don't really have the luxury of spending dough on stuff like that. That's interesting, however, as I'd not seen any hint of spell schools prior to actually producing this.

Paragon paths: much too limiting in their entry requirements. Once you deliberately create a game element to be stronger than others, there's no reason for anyone not to take it. Strict requirements don't act as a balancing factor, but as an annoyance, because anyone who takes the obviously best PP will get annoyed at having to waste those feat slots. Again, like in 3.5.

Red Wizard: class features are lackluster. You get feats. Wow. Action point feature is too situational. Parts of it don't make sense - an utility spell of your lowest level? Level 11 power is far too complicated and features that silly "1/4 level targets" restriction. Level 12 power is lackluster. Level 20 power has the same problems as level 11. Okay, so what do you suggest? Obviously the power is too strong. I'm getting feedback from both threads because I'm curious. You dislike the complication... so how do you suggest it get fixed? The limit is specifically to prevent overpowering stuff, but making it functional, while still allowing it to progress in relative power.

Paragon paths are supposed to add something unique and defining to your character that you couldn't otherwise get, not give you feats and powers you could also, and more easily, gain through multiclassing without jumping through the requirement hoops. That's an interesting philosophy. I get what you're saying, but I don't know about any classes that allow you to specialize in circle magic or with school specialization (until this). So I'm basically designing blind. Ergo the need for critique! :D

Hathran: requirements are, sorry, ridiculous. Paragon Paths are also supposed to be pretty open - most of them will be limited by nothing more but race, class, role or power source, maybe a class feature choice. Rest of the PP only gives you multiclassing stuff again. I get what you're saying. I'm attempting to use the elements of 4E to recreate the feel of the older (any of them, not just 3.X) editions but still being true to the 4E fundamentals. I don't know if you know the Forgotten Realms (or the Hathrans as a result), but that's what I'm scrabbling for - making them fit within the world (something that, to my knowledge, WotC has had absolutely zero (0) interest in doing so, so far) with their iconic elements, their historical powers and styles, and their iconic features but meshing them with what I understand of 4E presumptions.

Seriously if I were you I'd scrap this entire thing and Circle Magic along with it because it was written by infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters. You know what you can use just fine to represent Circle Magic? Aid Another. That's really it. Eh... sort of. I'm really attempting to build into the Forgotten Realms but still using the 4E basics to recreate the left-behind the Forgotten Realms setting iconic elements.

e: why would you take a feat that makes you worse at something and then take a paragon path to make you better at it again I'm curious, which is this referring to?

Still, I appreciate the feedback! Also... I'm totally waiting for my time dragon! ;P :D (take your time... hah-hah)

EDIT: I'm thinking of scaling back everything to a +1/+2/+3 progression with a static -2 instead. Sound any good?

[Meister]

Yeah I kinda lost track of that one, sorry. Next weekend, feel free to remind me.

I'm attempting to use the elements of 4E to recreate the feel of the older (any of them, not just 3.X) editions but still being true to the 4E fundamentals.
Not going to happen, it's as simple as that. Much of the "feel" of earlier editions is a result of mechanics 4E deliberately doesn't use. And it shows - your way of recreating the feel, so far, is to fall back on mechanics and design ideas from older editions. :)

I'm curious, which is this referring to?
Tattoo Focus gives you a hefty penalty (one that, I'll reiterate, is reason enough to never take the feat) against magic of your prohibited school. Red Wizard then gradually lessens that penalty. Tattoo Focus is a prerequisite for Red Wizard. It's like cutting off a perfectly healthy leg so you can get a peg leg later.

I already told you what I'd do: ignore that section in the campaign guide on circle magic, it's nonfunctional garbage as far as I can tell (and that's 100% on WotC's head) and you're better off just making your own variant on circle magic than laboriously trying to heap fixes onto a nonworking fundament. Like I said, Aid Another is a good start for this, and in fact probably all you need.

Doesn't the campaign guide have its own take on Red Wizards? With how iconic they are I'd think Wizards would take the opportunity.

e: to be as blunt as possible: fixing your ideas means scrapping them and rewriting them from the ground up. There's stuff ingrained in them at a basic level that just does not come together with established design.

[tacticslion]

e: to be as blunt as possible: fixing your ideas means scrapping them and rewriting them from the ground up. There's stuff ingrained in them at a basic level that just does not come together with established design.
That's actually fine. I'd be okay if someone else wanted to take a crack at it, even scrapping my own base, but this is what I've come up with.

As far as Aid Another, I'm just curious how to. I like the concept of Aid Another, but I don't know where to go because, as you said, I've got a lot of 3.X design remnants in my head, and I can't fathom where to head after that. What's the upper limit of Aid Another? How does it function in this case? I'm just curious what you'd think.

Also, now, yes, what you say about Tattoo Focus makes sense from that perspective (4E). :)

[Meister]

Aid Another: you use a standard action to give one of your allies a +2 bonus to their next attack roll. I think the maximum is four helpers, so +8. This doesn't sound spectacular but it's really good - almost a guaranteed hit, in fact. It's definitely not the superior option to using that standard action for an attack of your own, but it can be helpful, and it's very easily flavoured as "your friends all weave some of their magic into your own spell." (Yes, even if they're all Fighters. That's how the system works! Everyone picks up bits and pieces of knowledge outside their field. Or rather, that's how it works if you want to, because it's just as easy to say "the fighter distracts the enemy, and the warlock helps you with your spell." Same effect.)

And during rituals, you can use Aid Another to make an usually easy skill check, and if you succeed, you give the ritual caster a +2 bonus to that same skill. Doesn't get more circle magicky than that.

Plus like I said if it's about NPCs do whatever you want.

e: I'm actually not sure if you have to be adjacent to an enemy or your ally for that - one of those for sure. But that's something where a feat to expand options wouldn't be out of line, I think.

[tacticslion]

Aid Another: you use a standard action to give one of your allies a +2 bonus to their next attack roll. I think the maximum is four helpers, so +8. This doesn't sound spectacular but it's really good - almost a guaranteed hit, in fact. It's definitely not the superior option to using that standard action for an attack of your own, but it can be helpful, and it's very easily flavoured as "your friends all weave some of their magic into your own spell." (Yes, even if they're all Fighters. That's how the system works! Everyone picks up bits and pieces of knowledge outside their field. Or rather, that's how it works if you want to, because it's just as easy to say "the fighter distracts the enemy, and the warlock helps you with your spell." Same effect.)

And during rituals, you can use Aid Another to make an usually easy skill check, and if you succeed, you give the ritual caster a +2 bonus to that same skill. Doesn't get more circle magicky than that.

Plus like I said if it's about NPCs do whatever you want.

e: I'm actually not sure if you have to be adjacent to an enemy or your ally for that - one of those for sure. But that's something where a feat to expand options wouldn't be out of line, I think.

Interesting! I'll have to consider it!

[Meister]

If you're really dedicated to the idea of a group of people casting a massively damaging spell, you can probably pull that off by making ritual versions of Daily powers. It's completely out of line with intended 4E design and I would never allow it to be done during combat - it would essentially demote everyone to the ritual lackeys of the guy with the best Dailies - but you can make it work.

Let's take Fireball as an example. Level 5 Daily, so the ritual's level should be at least 5. Component cost - honestly, no idea. Obviously someone needs to know the power, and I'd say a healing surge per participant, to represent spending some ressources. For the type let's make a new one - Circle Magic. This avoids unintended side effects with things that might improve a character's ritual casting of a certain type. Key Skill Arcana, Duration 5 minutes, Time Instantaneous. Include the usual effect-by-DC table and we should be good to go.


Fireball (Circle Magic)

Level: 5
Component Cost: 500 GP, and each participant must spend a healing surge
Type: Circle Magic
Market Price: whatever
Time: 5 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
Duration: Instantaneous
Special: The ritual caster needs to have the Fireball Daily power selected and prepared.

Once you finish this ritual, you cast a stronger version of Fireball. It functions as the power in every way except where indicated by the below table. You expend the power when you finish this ritual.


Arcana check Area Damage
<20 burst 3 within 20 3d6+Int
20-30 burst 4 within 25 5d6+Int
30-40 burst 5 within 30 6d6+Int
40+ burst 6 within 35 7d6+Int


That should roughly work, but there's still one big obvious problem: a character can easily reach the higher DCs on their own. No way around that, I'm afraid. Use at your own risk.

[tacticslion]

That should roughly work, but there's still one big obvious problem: a character can easily reach the higher DCs on their own. No way around that, I'm afraid. Use at your own risk.

That's pretty brilliant and far more streamlined/4E style.
Actually, I can think of a way around the one-caster-does it idea: require more assistants for each higher tier.

So you get the basic one by yourself.
You can only achieve the second result with at least one helper.
You can only achieve the third result with at least two helpers.
You can only achieve the forth result with at least three helpers.

Alternatively, have it determined by the helpers, as before, but increase the DC and cost accordingly: +10 to DC and 1 additional healing surge the for each participant beyond the first. I'd think that caps it pretty hard at a six-person circle for many characters, even with Aid Another actions. So...
Component Cost: 500 GP, and each participant must spend one healing surge per participant.

Also, making it have a cost as a ritual seems a pretty effective deterrent for not using it all the time, but potentially using it regularly. That five-minute ritual casting time is still ridiculous, though. Fifty rounds for a single attack spell effect... who would ever do that? Spending a few rounds, I can see (like, two rounds per participant after the first). It's expensive time-wise (and cost-wise, too), but I could definitely see it in certain situations.

How about this, instead of making a ritual variant of the powers, making a straight ritual, but it costs 500 gold per tier of the circle leader (who is the only one able to cast the spell)? Like, say, an 11th level ritual?

[Red Mage Black]

Okay, I'll say that I was planning a game out for people. To specify, using the Pathfinder system, which could actually be translated to 3.5e easily. The problem wasn't my game idea, but my players.

Synopsis: Starting level 1 campaign. The Lord of a large city atop a mountain is asking a very large sum of gold(exactly 9,000gp) for any able and willing adventurers to find a very specific book for him. The catch is, that they must first venture to the city to find out the details, which include the whereabouts of the book in question. The second catch is, they must first sign a contract and agree not to run off with the priceless artifact.

The Problem: One of the players had seriously metagamed horribly. He had figured out by I don't know how that the contract was enchanted with a geas/quest spell and therefore, had refused to sign it. With him, he took two of the other players. The last player was convinced to sign it, but it had to be a 'nonmagical contract'. Little did he know, that he gave up a third of the reward to be duped into signing a contract that he couldn't detect magic on. (He was a Cavalier anyway)

I found out today that because of what I had planned, because of their stupid metagaming crap, that they no longer want to play it. I don't know if this was bad story telling on my part or just asshole players. Either way, I feel incredibly insulted that the guy playing the wizard tried to steer it his way and away from mine.

[Meister]

It's not just about your story idea. Players have every right to steer the story their way. Note: "players", not "the one player who can figure out some stuff the others can't."

Metagaming like that is a dick move but so is planning to hit players with a geas in the first session - was there any chance for them to figure this out in advance? I suggest before you start a new game you sit down with your players and you all figure out what kind of game and story you want to do.

e: actually that was kind of a stupid question because obviously there was a chance but also obviously you didn't plan for or prepare to allow it.

Actually, I can think of a way around the one-caster-does it idea: require more assistants for each higher tier.
That kind of works but kind of also removes the need for the DC table in the first place, and since it's absolutely trivial to simply get people to help you, I'd rather go with the table. The surge cost might be a factor in making people think about it.

That five-minute ritual casting time is still ridiculous, though. Fifty rounds for a single attack spell effect... who would ever do that? Spending a few rounds, I can see (like, two rounds per participant after the first). It's expensive time-wise (and cost-wise, too), but I could definitely see it in certain situations.
A group of mages who sees the enemy army approaching. A group of adventurers who wants to ambush a stronghold. Situations like that.

Put it this way: if the time was measured in rounds, who wouldn't do it always? Casting a ritual like this in combat means either all PCs stand around doing nothing but the ritual while the enemy hacks away at them or runs, neither of which makes for an exciting battle, or no PC helps with casting because they know the wizard can hit the upper DCs all on his own, and it becomes a normal encounter except the wizard can hugely improve his Daily powers for a piddly cost. Daily powers are already the most powerful part of a PC's arsenal, so if you use this stuff, you'll want to keep it situational and expensive. Casting time's a part of that.

How about this, instead of making a ritual variant of the powers, making a straight ritual, but it costs 500 gold per tier of the circle leader (who is the only one able to cast the spell)? Like, say, an 11th level ritual?
Wouldn't recommend that, the spell effects are so different that you can't really make a universal table, plus you'll inevitably get spells that don't lend themselves easily to this application. So you'd have to go through all the Daily powers and figure out which of them do and don't and at that point you might as well do the little writeup for each that does.

[tacticslion]

Before I go further, I'd just like to say "ouch". I know how it feels to have your game rejected and your ideas thrown in your face. Also, how it feels for players to go off the rails and annihilate your campaign ideas completely. I empathize, and I know it's got to be frustrating considering all your planning and preparation. And yeah, it feels good to blow off steam for some things like this. That's the next-to-last nice, empathetic thing you're going to hear/read/whatever in this post for a little while. I'm sorry for that. (That's the actual last for a while.)

The problem wasn't my game idea, but my players.

FULL STOP! When you say that kind of thing, it's what's true in your own mind. Regardless of whatever else you've placed in your post, take yourself down a peg. This might be true, but don't look at it that way from the get-go, because otherwise you'll just end up having bad blood where none is necessary. Short version: get over it, and let them off the hook.

Now, let's continue.

The Problem: One of the players had seriously metagamed horribly. He had figured out by I don't know how that the contract was enchanted with a geas/quest spell and therefore, had refused to sign it. With him, he took two of the other players. The last player was convinced to sign it, but it had to be a 'nonmagical contract'. Little did he know, that he gave up a third of the reward to be duped into signing a contract that he couldn't detect magic on. (He was a Cavalier anyway)

Okay, man, there's something pretty important here... a fundamental question: why did you feel the need to "dupe" the Cavalier? Why dupe them at all? Was it a plot point? What was up? What I see happening here is a serious lack of trust in both the GM and the party/players, and a serious breakdown of communication and of intent.

I found out today that because of what I had planned, because of their stupid metagaming crap, that they no longer want to play it. I don't know if this was bad story telling on my part or just asshole players. Okiedokie, my friend, here's the deal. I'm going to tell you what one of my wisest, most eloquent college professor's ever told me: suck it up and take it. It's not very nice or pleasant, I know, but it's true. Advice like that stings to hear - at least it did when I heard it - but it's terribly valid advice, especially in a situation like this. There's literally nothing that can be done about what happened at that time by now - it's over and done. Feeling hurt about it (and dwelling on it) will only make things worse. A favorite saying of mine goes: "Bitterness is like constantly drinking poison and hoping the other person dies from it." It does you no good, them no good, and it does nothing but wedge more distance between you.

Either way, I feel incredibly insulted that the guy playing the wizard tried to steer it his way and away from mine. First, don't feel insulted - you can feel frustrated*, angry*, or downright irritated*, but there's absolutely no reason to be insulted.

Second, sometimes it happens. Occasionally games (and players) just don't work. It's sad, but true. This sounds like one of those times.

Third, don't let it bother you. FAR easier said than done, I know. I've been in your shoes before, and those pebbles that get in your socks are so annoying and hurt whenever you walk and argh. But, overly extended metaphors aside... don't let it stress you out. To get back into overly-extended metaphors, take your shoes and socks off, and wriggle your toes for a while. It feels good. :)

Fourth: it's really important to remember: the GM isn't supposed to run "his" game - he's supposed to run "everyone's" game. Despite how it's often portrayed, a GM is not out to "get" the players or destroy them. The GM sets critters up who are, but the GM is just as much a player of the cooperative story as the... well... players. If the players don't see that the GM is attempting to tell a story with them (and instead think they're being set up for something) it's only natural to try and avoid the path that leads to "Agh, we are dead!" That leads back to what I was saying with GM/player trust above. Whether or not it's true, it strongly appeared that you didn't trust your players to go your way (thus the geas) and they didn't trust you with their characters (thus the "no way!" response). Try to keep that in mind when dealing with players - they like their characters and don't often like getting messed with. I've done it enough to learn by experience. :rolleyes:

With all that, I finally, I get to put back the empathetic hat on again.

One: so tell me why its necessary to put them under a Geas? Honestly, if there's a healer in the group, a geas isn't all that big a deal. I mean, it will be for a couple of levels until they can easily survive the damage cap, but it's not really that important. Lesser geas will mess you up something fierce, though. Tell me what's going on and what was the story idea. I'll see if I can help you out.

Two: magic aura (the spell) is your friend. I know you (as GM) can't think of everything, but that should be a go-to spell for anyone who's trying to trick a mage into doing anything magical in Pathfinder. I also get it's a bit late for that, but ah well. Now you know! For the future! (*the more you know* song goes here)

Three: most importantly, talk to your guys (and/or girls). The past is behind you. Get over your anger, drop the grudge, and talk to them reasonably and calmly. Ask them why they felt it was necessary to drop the hook you left and just leave. Hash things out. It might lead to some fussing, harsh words, or whatever, but keep your cool. It'll be fine. It's not as serious as it seems or feels. The major point is: communicate. Don't just send words at each other. Listen. Hear what they all have to say about why they responded as they did. Don't be insulted. Accept it as constructive criticism (even if it's not constructive).

One of the best things I ever did was sit down with a really good friend of mine and, when he completely blind-sided me with, "Why are you being such a manipulative, amateurish DM?" I took it calmly, and asked him how I was being those things. And I listened. I listened to his complaints. All of them. Sometimes I defended myself, but sometimes I explained myself (as in, what I was thinking to the best of my understanding) and asked for advice on how to improve based off his understanding. It was a huge boon for both of us - it helped him get stuff off his chest, helped me know what kind of game he was looking for (and what I was doing "wrong" for him) and also helped me improve as a GM in general. The next day I took that question to the entire table - "How would you have me improve as a DM?" That was the entire session - they gave me feedback. I didn't take all of their advice, but I listened and considered all of it very carefully. And, most importantly, while I made some protests (which wasn't a good idea) I didn't reject any of their ideas out-of-hand, even though I told them in advance that I wouldn't change everything. Some had nothing to say, others had heaps. Listening was difficult... hearing my own flaws (as others perceived them, especially others that I thought liked me - and they did! It just didn't feel like it at that moment) was painful and often frustrating. The words that most often went through my head (but I thankfully didn't say) was "But you don't understand!" Which was true! They didn't! Couldn't, in fact, because the grand plan was in my mind, not theirs. And there was no way to tell them without spoiling everything. But it helped.

Periodically after that, I've talked with my groups and asked them "So, how can I improve?" It helps. Also, it's gotten easier now that I know and believe on the inside that they still like me, even when pointing out flaws. And also that I know that I totally have flaws, even when they say "No, you're doing a great job!" Become your own harshest critic**, and they can't hurt you too much.

Further advice/clarifications and questions:
> Why/how did the wizard "metagame"? By using detect magic or was it something else? Detect magic is not really metagaming... it would be more metagaming to use detect magic, realize what was up, and go for it anyway because he wanted to play your story. Which brings me to...

> Metagaming isn't necessarily a bad thing, despite how it's often portrayed. Metagaming can be good for a story, and in this case, it might have been a good thing if they did (as I'm unclear on how the wizard knew). You might want

> You might want to talk to your characters about toning it down on the "just playing my character!" concept/argument. Something similar happened in the one Nik attempted to run for us, if you recall. This (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/tll307KmEm4H9k6efFP.html) has a pretty good read in it. Specifically:
Decide to React Differently:

Have you ever had a party break down into fighting over the actions of one of their members? Has a character ever threatened repeatedly to leave the party? Often, intraparty fighting boils down to one player declaring, "That's how my character would react." Heck, often you'll be the one saying it; it's a common reaction when alignments or codes of ethics clash.

However, it also creates a logjam where neither side wants to back down. The key to resolving this problem is to decide to react differently. You are not your character, and your character is not a separate entity with reactions that you cannot control. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a player state that their character's actions are not under their control. Every decision your character makes is your decision first. It is possible and even preferable for you to craft a personality that is consistent but also accommodating of the characters the other players wish to play.

When you think about a situation, ask yourself, "Is this the only way my character can react to this?" Chances are, the answer is, "No." Try to refine your character so that you can deal with situations that conflict with your alignment/ethos without resorting to ultimatums, threats, etc. This will often mean thinking in terms of compromise and concession to your fellow players, or at the very least an agreement to disagree.

Here's another example: In a campaign I DM'd, the party's bard lifted a magical sword behind the back of the party's Lawful Good monk. The monk had basically decided that the bodies of several fallen knights would be buried without looting, and rather than argue, the bard just grabbed the sword. The bad news was, the sword was cursed; it was the blade that had belonged to a ghost that roamed the castle, and whenever the bard drew it, the ghost materialized and attacked him (and only him). Eventually, the bard 'fessed up that he had stolen the sword. The monk (and the monk's player) became furious, and declared that he could no longer travel with the bard. Either the bard had to leave, or he would. It became a huge argument between characters and players, and it was entirely unnecessary. The monk did not have to react with an ultimatum; the monk did not even have to be angry, no matter what his alignment was. The bard had already suffered the misfortune of having his Charisma drained by the ghost repeatedly; the monk could have chosen (for example) to lecture the bard on how his theft had brought him nothing but misery. He chose to create player conflict when it was just as easy to not.

Personally, I blame the paladin for this. The original paladin class created the precedent for one player thinking he has the right to dictate the morality of other players. That drives me nuts. Ever since, players who select a Lawful Good character automatically assume it is up to them to police the rest of the party, and too often, the rest of the party lets them. As far as I'm concerned, no player has the right to tell another player how to act. Lawful Good is not the "right" way to be, and it is unacceptable to push your character's ideals on other players whether they want them or not.

Another useful application of this concept involves accepting story hooks your DM gives to you. Try to never just say, "My character isn't interested in that adventure." A lot of people mistake this for good roleplaying, because you are asserting your character's personality. Wrong. Good roleplaying should never bring the game to a screeching halt. One of your jobs as a player is to come up with a reason why your character would be interested in a plot. After all, your personality is entirely in your hands, not the DM's. Come up with a reason why the adventure (or the reward) might appeal to you, no matter how esoteric or roundabout the reasoning.

If the paladin is to blame for the last problem, this one belongs to the druid. Druids have such a specific set of principles that players often mistake them for being a free pass to demand that each adventure revolve around their goals. Raiding a dungeon for gold doesn't appeal to the druid mindset, so what are you to do if you play one and are presented with that goal? You improvise. Maybe the gold will enable you to purchase magic items that will let you protect the wilderness. Maybe the ruins contain unnatural monsters that need to be killed regardless of the treasure. Maybe, just maybe, the other PCs are your friends and you are willing to help them just because. Too often that last part is forgotten; I don't think anyone reading this has never spent the night doing something they'd rather not because a friend asked.

So if you're really paying attention, you may be thinking, "Hey, don't those two points contradict one another? First he says to separate what your character thinks from what you think, but then he says your character doesn't have its own reactions." Well, no. Separate your character's thoughts from your own thoughts, but don't forget who is in control of both personalities. The division between your personality and that of your character only goes so far as it helps the game; once it begins becoming a disruption, a player has a responsibility to alter his or her character's decisions in the interest of the group. In the end, your relationships with the people you are sitting in someone's living room with are more important than your character's internal consistency.

* But only for a little while. Remember what I said about bitterness above? Yeah. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" and all that.

** Critic =/= person who constantly beats themselves up. "Critic" in this case means being willing to take an axe to your entire idea because it's just not working and re-write the daggum thing, because it'll make a better story/game experience, regardless of your original "vision". It's hard to do. This applies to rules as well. This applies to rules just as much as story, regardless of the edition you're in.
Same game as above, I had one friend who'd been in it for two and a half years and, because our group played so often (three times a week, we all worked at the same store) he'd managed to get into epic levels with this campaign (as they all did). For various reasons he'd ended up on a personal quest by himself, facing off against an epic beast (which he wanted to kill and eat to gain its power). I'd come up with rich, vivid, suitably-epic descriptions for everything that was happening, and it was a very tough, intense struggle, but one that was fun. Until I accidentally critt'd on him three times out of four attacks, and with the first attack having been successful (a non-crit) was juuuuuust hard enough to take him down. We rolled our dice in the open, so there wasn't a way to fudge that. The problem? He was caught flat-footed because he couldn't see the thing due to its vermin aura and a few other penalties he was taking. He didn't know that he couldn't see it, and so didn't think he should have been flatfooted. Further, he argued that if he'd known he was basically fighting blind and suffering other penalties, when he'd gotten as low in hit points as he was (before all the hits, he was at less than one quarter his hit points) he'd have retreated to heal and try again. Plus, due to other things that came with a previous battle (using pre-published critter), he was basically perma-killed. I was upset, and argued that I'd been using descriptive language, but he was upset and argued I'd never told him. I was kind of flabbergasted at what he'd been saying, as he hurried back off to work irritable that I'd killed his character of over two years at the cusp of the end run of the campaign. I thought about it and I realized two things: first, I was correct - I'd told him that he was blind and was still taking penalties; and second, that it didn't matter. He was correct in telling me that, even though I'd said it aloud, he hadn't understood it. I compared his fighting style of that battle with how he's played the entire rest of the game, and yeah: he'd have been far more cautious. In my (as he called it "excellent") descriptive words that helped immerse him, I'd accidentally obscured (from his perspective) the fact that he couldn't see the bag guy. Further, I'd given the unintentional illusion that he could take it much easier than in reality - and his character had enough ranks and wisdom to realize that. So I ret-con punched it (I said he'd received a "divine vision" of a possible future... considering he'd been doing time traveling, it worked). The encounter never happened. He wasn't too happy about it because it messed with him something fierce, and neither was I because I'd technically been in the right (but not really), but I argued him out of fleeing and helped him understand the mechanics of the battle better as we went. This time, he used several different abilities that he'd had available before, but just didn't realize he'd needed them and he won. The point of this story isn't to say "don't kill a PC". It's to say, "sometimes the RAW, and hard-lining the past history of what happened in canon isn't the best way to go because you or the player made a serious mistake". Every once in a rare while, it's okay to ret-con punch something. To date, that's my only one (even though I've had close to a dozen PC-kills, many of them his!), but that's because that was a bad call on my part. I did have the creature use the three crits at some point in the "second take" campaign, because that was a pretty important and dramatic moment. We both agreed on it because, although it wasn't good for him, it was fair compensation for running the battle again. It was, at that point, a good time. And the game ended well and good. And he's driven four hours twice (once by train) in order to take part in my games since then. I'd say I made the right decision. :)

[Azisien]

Good DMing does seem to be all about making the story the player's story, not your rollercoaster that the players get subjected to. I know the pain of wasted preparation (guaranteed 1-5 pages of material is not used EVERY SESSION for me). All I do nowadays is make a ton of hooks that make the world seem rich, and follow them to logical/semi-logical conclusions. It's been working well.

That being said, obviously the solution to your problem is to vent your frustration a little for yourself. The DM is allowed some comfort too! And not signing the contract has clearly angered the Titan Assassin's Guild. Awww yeah chase session.

[Nikose Tyris]

The player that Red Mage Black is talking about is the worst kind of player. He goes out of his way to ruin other people's fun and to just generally be a dick to people. Like, the example in the DMG of that one guy that you just need to kick out of your party? THIS IS HIM.

He's just an all-around bad person, in every sense of the word. Also important to note: He went around and blabbed and complained to other players, despite the fact he was already going to withdraw from the game because he has no time to play it.

Like, all my sympathy at Black here. :/

[Meister]

See I completely agree, but I don't think it's fair to say all that and nothing about how railroading your players and planning a "gotcha" moment is also, completely independently, bad DMing.

Like this isn't a situation where you can point at anyone and say "he started it," it's just two players doing stuff that friends who play D&D shouldn't do.

[Meister]

Addendum: what it comes down to in the end, from a player's perspective, is:

- if my PC finds out, entirely in game, that the contract he has to sign has a geas on it, he's gonna be all like "HELL no," and I believe with justification
- if I as a player find that out, because the DM let something slip or whatever, I'd say "I dunno if I like that, sounds kinda iffy, I'll go along with it but the payoff had better be really good"

[Red Mage Black]

FULL STOP! When you say that kind of thing, it's what's true in your own mind. Regardless of whatever else you've placed in your post, take yourself down a peg. This might be true, but don't look at it that way from the get-go, because otherwise you'll just end up having bad blood where none is necessary. Short version: get over it, and let them off the hook.

Now, let's continue.
Okay, it's partially true for both parties, myself and two particular players. I had been accounting for everything they tended to do in games. Like... muck off and literally TRY to ruin my games. I have a horrible time with improvisation and this is what they try to make me do all the time, even when I already have a story. Only this time, they did it far earlier then I expected.



Okay, man, there's something pretty important here... a fundamental question: why did you feel the need to "dupe" the Cavalier? Why dupe them at all? Was it a plot point? What was up? What I see happening here is a serious lack of trust in both the GM and the party/players, and a serious breakdown of communication and of intent.
Plot important? Yes, actually it was. It was also the NPCs(LE Alignment) intent. Yeah, it wasn't so much lack of trust as I was told 'it's just like you'.


One: so tell me why its necessary to put them under a Geas? Honestly, if there's a healer in the group, a geas isn't all that big a deal. I mean, it will be for a couple of levels until they can easily survive the damage cap, but it's not really that important. Lesser geas will mess you up something fierce, though. Tell me what's going on and what was the story idea. I'll see if I can help you out.
The geas was a plot point, yes. The book the NPC was looking for was very important. As in housing a greater devil important. The aim was to have them bring the book back and the geas was to keep them from running off with it or quite possibly destroying it and setting the damn thing free. As I said, I kind of slaved over details and even to the very pages of the book they were after and what it could do.


Two: magic aura (the spell) is your friend. I know you (as GM) can't think of everything, but that should be a go-to spell for anyone who's trying to trick a mage into doing anything magical in Pathfinder. I also get it's a bit late for that, but ah well. Now you know! For the future! (*the more you know* song goes here)
I couldn't remember the name, but it was Nystul's Magic Aura and the wizard wouldn't have figured it out even if he tried. (Yes, I'll use SOME 3.5 stuff in Pathfinder, so long as it doesn't break anything within the game's limitations.)


Further advice/clarifications and questions:
> Why/how did the wizard "metagame"? By using detect magic or was it something else? Detect magic is not really metagaming... it would be more metagaming to use detect magic, realize what was up, and go for it anyway because he wanted to play your story. Which brings me to...

> Metagaming isn't necessarily a bad thing, despite how it's often portrayed. Metagaming can be good for a story, and in this case, it might have been a good thing if they did (as I'm unclear on how the wizard knew). You might want

No, he didn't use detect magic at all. Even though as I stated above, he wouldn't have found it anyway. Pretty much as Nikose said, that particular player is pretty bad. He's an average GM at best, I'll admit. Far better than me, but his games still lack a good amount of imagination outside of getting from point a to point b. He is a HORRIBLE player though. Expects everyone to play what he wants, expects to lead the party all the time and pretty much likes to take first dibs on the nice things to be found. That out of the way, he simply assumed 'that's what I would do' and decided to avoid it, true or not. Proof? Have it:

10/25/2011 23:11 Xero Alan Anyway, I tried to save things by telling Norrie our plan.
10/25/2011 23:11 Xero Alan And he just said "Nah, wouldn't let it happen."
10/25/2011 23:11 Xero Alan So if you want to continue that game, it'll have to be without him. Even if we started over, the same thing would happen.
10/25/2011 23:12 Xero Alan Because that guy was a fag, and I knew his contract had geas shit on it, or something akin.
10/25/2011 23:12 Alan Xero The problem becomes...
10/25/2011 23:12 Alan Xero You aren't getting anywhere without it... and no, don't tell me it's bullshit.
10/25/2011 23:13 Alan Xero Actually wait
10/25/2011 23:13 Alan Xero There is a way.
10/25/2011 23:13 Xero Alan Not really. Norrie knew where it was. and nah man. This just, doesn't feel like the right campaign for these characters.
10/25/2011 23:13 Xero Alan Save it, and run it for someone else. Maybe have Eva and Xavier rework their characters, or let her use her oracle.
10/25/2011 23:14 Alan Xero >create characters for the game >suddenly they don't fit in the game they were meant for?
10/25/2011 23:14 Alan Xero That makes zero sense.
10/25/2011 23:15 Xero Alan >Evil party, only one character motivated by greed
10/25/2011 23:15 Xero Alan You're wanting a game for goody twoshoes chaotic good guys in it for adventure and gold.
10/25/2011 23:15 Alan Xero No
10/25/2011 23:15 Xero Alan And I just don't really have the time or want to play this shit anymore. I'm too tired when I get home.
10/25/2011 23:15 Xero Alan Play with Eva and Xavier, bring in that one homo friend you had before.
10/25/2011 23:19 Xero Alan Norrie, Eva, and Xavier. There you go.
10/25/2011 23:20 Xero Alan Though I'd love to help with writing shit. That part was fun.
10/25/2011 23:20 Alan Xero >Norrie won't play if you're not in it
10/25/2011 23:20 Alan Xero Even you know that.
10/25/2011 23:20 Xero Alan Well then he's never playing anything ever again. Unless I decide to do something occasionally on a sunday or something.
10/25/2011 23:21 Alan Xero I do know more people I could run this with, but I'd probably have to bring it back to a familiar world, since no doubt someone out of the people I'll have playing will want someone that worships someone.
10/25/2011 23:21 Xero Alan Or, you could just flesh out the deities.
10/25/2011 23:22 Xero Alan It's not that hard, Alan.
10/25/2011 23:22 Alan Xero We only have two done.
10/25/2011 23:22 Xero Alan THey don't even have to be too original. They're fake, after all.
10/25/2011 23:22 Xero Alan I gave you plenty of ideas for god types.
10/25/2011 23:22 Alan Xero It was a good guess on the contract thing.
10/25/2011 23:23 Xero Alan It wasn't even a guess. I know you, and I know the situation. Not exact, but you know. It was a little cliche.
10/25/2011 23:23 Xero Alan and Norrie confirmed it for me.
10/25/2011 23:23 Alan Xero I figured it wasn't incredibly original, but it's not always the first thing to come to mind.
10/25/2011 23:24 Alan Xero Then again, the only reason I did it in the first place was you guys' habit of going off places I haven't thought of yet.
10/25/2011 23:24 Xero Alan All it did was make me want to take the book for myself, and then eventually burn down Snowcrest.

[Azisien]

Addendum: what it comes down to in the end, from a player's perspective, is:

- if my PC finds out, entirely in game, that the contract he has to sign has a geas on it, he's gonna be all like "HELL no," and I believe with justification
- if I as a player find that out, because the DM let something slip or whatever, I'd say "I dunno if I like that, sounds kinda iffy, I'll go along with it but the payoff had better be really good"

I don't see how the singular act of entrapping PCs in a plot is an example of bad DMing. Like so your PC finds this out. More violent PCs might react by wanting to MURDER this Lord. So be it! Next few sessions planned. Lord is rich, so plenty of loot. Need a new Lord of the town once he's dead, too. Oh but killing him has caused a grudge with his heir, etc etc.

Like my NPCs lie all the time, and they'll cast sneaky spells too. It's up to the PCs to pick up or call out Diplomacy/Bluff/Perception/Whatever opportunities. If not, and they get partially screwed, too bad, learn better next time. But the end result is that the "story" morphs based on their reactions.

[Meister]

Why are you even talking to this person in any context.

THAT SAID
It was also the NPCs(LE Alignment) intent.
this as a reason makes me cringe hard. A DM's supposed to make things feel like there are people with their own agendas acting in the world to a certain degree, but he always remains in control. When something like the geas thing comes up that is objectively a bad idea, going "it's out of my hands, it's what the NPC would do" is just, ugh. If you absolutely can't compromise that idea, the least you should do is give the PCs a good chance to find out what's really going on.

e: good timing: I don't mind when an NPC is out to screw the players over, and they realize it in advance through smart use of skills or magic or logic and react accordingly, or don't realize it even though they could have. Like you say, the story can go both ways, that's cool. I only take issue when there's something the players must do, or else there's no game, but oh that one option was a trap.

[Nikose Tyris]

I'm gonna steal some limelight, and just mention how I'd forgotten how much fun playing a Paladin can be. With a mage you're defined by your spells, with a melee warrior you are defined by your character. It's nice to be the charming leader of the party again.

[Red Mage Black]

Since I felt I left some information out, this is what it was about. The others had refused to sign it, fair and dandy. They still wouldn't have been able to do much in the city without the Lord knowing. The Cavalier signed it and he was going to be on his way. They planned on following the Cavalier to wherever it was. Truth be told and I don't know if this sounds like too much forward planning, but the card the Cavalier was given, which was also to act as a something that he could get a discount for whatever gear he needed, was also a sort of tracking device. As in, even running away after getting the book, it would act as a point that a hunting party could be teleported in to retrieve it.

Meister: The option wasn't a trap, it was part of plot. As I stated, it was to make sure they didn't set a very powerful devil free by being stupid and since the Lord was an ex-adventurer, at least before he took over his father's position, he knew just how greedy and stupid others could be. The situation for it wasn't 'out of my hands', as I planned as much as I could without trying to restrict the players too much. It's just that the second option of letting them keep something 'near' Earth shattering would be a very horrible idea. Which I agree could turn into an excellent twist if they had managed to evade the hunting party and set the devil free.

[Red Mage Black]

Since I felt I left some information out, this is what it was about. The others had refused to sign it, fair and dandy. They still wouldn't have been able to do much in the city without the Lord knowing. The Cavalier signed it and he was going to be on his way. They planned on following the Cavalier to wherever it was. Truth be told and I don't know if this sounds like too much forward planning, but the card the Cavalier was given, which was also to act as a something that he could get a discount for whatever gear he needed, was also a sort of tracking device. As in, even running away after getting the book, it would act as a point that a hunting party could be teleported in to retrieve it.

Meister: The option wasn't a trap, it was part of plot. As I stated, it was to make sure they didn't set a very powerful devil free by being stupid and since the Lord was an ex-adventurer, at least before he took over his father's position, he knew just how greedy and stupid others could be. The situation for it wasn't 'out of my hands', as I planned as much as I could without trying to restrict the players too much. It's just that the second option of letting them keep something 'near' Earth shattering would be a very horrible idea. Which I agree could turn into an excellent twist if they had managed to evade the hunting party and set the devil free.

[tacticslion]

I'm gonna steal some limelight, and just mention how I'd forgotten how much fun playing a Paladin can be. With a mage you're defined by your spells, with a melee warrior you are defined by your character. It's nice to be the charming leader of the party again.

I like paladins! It's sad and somewhat humorous, however, that I have never gotten a chance to play one for more than a session. Every time I've rolled up a paladin, regardless of the game, it has either never materialized or died within one or two sessions. :rolleyes:

[Nikose Tyris]

Soooo Kingmaker sounds interesting and I need access to the pathfinder books, but I am also broke and having difficulty finding a friend with hard copies to peruse. I know that paizo sells digital books, and if anyone might have such a thing in their possession, it would be wonderful if they could tell me how much it cost via PM.

[Ryong]

Friend o' mine has decided on DMing a campaign for some people who have played D&D a couple of times some 8 years ago ( everyone in my group is at least 4 years older than me ). He wants to only use "scary monster" races, like undead, werewolves and vampires.

I'm going to play Urist McShambles, a revenant dwarf spiritsworn - from a 3rd party book, forgotten heroes of the scythe & shroud, basically a warden that protects or avenges a dead civilization/city/family/important person and channels their power - who lived in a dwarven colony where everyone died "mysteriously". He came back to warn adventurers about dangerous levers and to find someone who can figure out how to disable them without trouble.

Also, I learnt that, as of sometime ago, you can be something ridiculous like a revenant badger hengeyokai werewolf hybrid witch/vampire. Heck, you can be a thri-kreen werewolf vampire.

[Meister]

Been considering something. I don't have the time to run a proper campaign with backstories and subplots and all that, but would any of you be interested in a semi-regular "tactical combat scenarios" 4E game? Just a super casual thing where I'd come up with a combat encounter, you come up with a character, and we put them together and fun comes out. I could test run combat ideas, you could test run character concepts or give 4E as a whole a try, everyone would win (in a metaphorical warm-fuzzy-friendship way because in game I'd beat your characters to a pulp, let's not kid ourselves here).

[Ryong]

I may participate. One thing, however: combat in 4e needs a grid. How's that gonna work?

[Meister]

We'd be doing it right here on the forums in play-by-post. I post a map once the battle starts, everyone takes their turn, and whenever I post I include an updated map. Been doing it this way for a while on other forums, and it works very well. It's slow, of course, but I wasn't thinking of a real-time session anyway, more like one post per person a day over the course of a week or so.

[Nikose Tyris]

@Meister: I'd be down for that.

[Nikose Tyris]

Pathfinder Issue:
Paladins receive Smite Evil 1/day at level 1.

Holy Gun, an Alt-Paladin, [Ultimate Combat] Gives me "Smiting Shot" at 2nd level, which replaces smite evil.

I do not receive any forms of smite evil at 2nd level.

is this a typo, and if so, which way do I build with it?

[Nikose Tyris]

From a fellow GM:
It means you don't get anything at 1st level, and get Smiting shot at 2nd.
essentially, it delays one of your class features.

So that's answered! Whee~

[tacticslion]

Miester: sounds nifty! I couldn't promise anything definitive, but I'd be interested!

Nik: It's not a PM, and we don't have any of the PDFs, but we do have Kingmaker. I don't recall for sure right now, but I think the normal books run about $25 USD, but the shipping is pretty high. The PDFs, if I remember, are like half the price or less. There's a completely free PDF Kingmaker Player's Guide if you go to their site (http://paizo.com/) you should be able to pretty easily use the search engine to find what you need. If I have time later, I'll post more links unless you get to them first. In fact, most of their Adventure Paths' Player's Guide pdfs are free, especially the recent ones - I have many, even when I don't have that AP. And when I say "free" I really mean it - you don't need any credit card info, or to sign up to receive or purchase anything. You do need to make an account on Paizo.com, their website, but again, that's completely free, requires no personally identifiable information (except, I think, the standard operating procedure of an email address to confirm), and that lets you purchase stuff online. I've only made two purchases from them, but I've been completely satisfied every time. They make excellent quality products and do well. The only downside is the shipping, and if you go PDF (which we don't for space/speed reasons on our now really-old computer) you not only get everything for less expense, but also without shipping. Usually, if I recall, various PDFs run from $5 USD to $10 USD (approximately).

Ryong: are you talking 4E or 3.X? 'Cause "Warden" makes me think 4E, but everything else makes me think 3.X...

[Ryong]

Talking 4e.

Play-by-post? Ehhh.

[tacticslion]

Nik! Actually, most of the "AP" (Adventure Path) PDFs were a little more expensive than I thought.

Here (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker)'s all of the Kingmaker Adventures. Clicking on each one brings you to a really nifty description and gives you the prices buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut:

0) Pathfinder Adventure Path: Kingmaker Player's Guide (PFRPG) PDF (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8dqh)
-- FREE (PDF only, no print available)

1) Pathfinder Adventure Path #31: Stolen Land (Kingmaker 1 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8dhc)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

2) Pathfinder Adventure Path #32: Rivers Run Red (Kingmaker 2 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8dml)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

3) Pathfinder Adventure Path #33: The Varnhold Vanishing (Kingmaker 3 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8e7e)
-- $19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

4) Pathfinder Adventure Path #34: Blood for Blood (Kingmaker 4 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8emq)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

5) Pathfinder Adventure Path #35: War of the River Kings (Kingmaker 5 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8fnx)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

6) Pathfinder Adventure Path #36: Sound of a Thousand Screams (Kingmaker 6 of 6) (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderAdventurePath/kingmaker/v5748btpy8fnz)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)

ALSO:
Optional A) Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderChronicles/v5748btpy8ief&source=search)
-- $ 49.99 (Print), $9.99 (PDF) (bold for emphasis!)
{This comes highly recommended, whether you're running Kingmaker in Golarion or not. Golarion, as a setting, is fantastic. It's a bit "choppy" in some aspects - it's not called a "Kitchen Sink" style setting for nothing - but it's fantastic nonetheless. I love this book.}

Optional B) Book of the River Nations: Complete Player's Reference for Kingdom Building (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/j/jonBrazerEnterprises/v5748btpy8kgr&source=search)
-- $ 13.99 (Print), $5.99 (PDF) (again, bold for emphasis!)
{note: this is a 3rd Party Product, and I don't have it, but its received mostly-rave reviews whenever I talk to someone who does}

Optional C) Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to the River Kingdoms (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderChronicles/v5748btpy8d50&source=search)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)
{While this is very nice to have and all, I'm not sure it's actually worth kind of high the price. Effectively, it's cool, so I'm putting it here, but it's probably not your best bet unless you have to be complete in Golarion and you have extra dough, which I don't think you do right now. Also, this is 3.5 product instead of PF, which isn't bad, but it's just not fully up to date}

Optional D) Pathfinder Chronicles: Faction Guide (PFRPG) (http://paizo.com/store/games/roleplayingGames/p/pathfinderRPG/paizo/pathfinderChronicles/v5748btpy8emo&source=search)
-- $ 19.99 (Print), $13.99 (PDF)
{Now this is completely optional, but it does come rather recommended, as it's all about organizations and how they work in game terms (gaining prestige and whatnot) and has a rather large number of organizations to choose from. It's not tied to Kingmaker, exactly, but it can be, especially if the GM ties the character to organizations to bring them into the story. It, too, is a 3.5 product, and thus not optimal, and also makes references to outside sources, but I'd just go here (www.d20pfsrd.com/) (the PFSRD) or here (http://www.pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Wiki) (the "definitive" PF Wiki) for most of those. You could also go to Golaripedia (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Golariopedia) (a Wikia wiki), but I wouldn't recommend it if the other wiki has stuff.}

EDIT: also, go here (www.archivesofnethys.com/) as a great tertiary free source that Paizo (the publishing company) is totally okay with.

I pretty much recommend most everything (except the Guide to the River Kingdoms) very heartily, as Paizo doesn't make many bad products.

Also, as a player, I so-far recommend Kingmaker strongly. It's been a fantastic ride so far, and it's the single most popular AP they've made so far. I recommend PF in general 'cause it's so awesome. I mean, it's the system recommended by Clevinger himself!

Ryong: Ah. Thanks!
...
...
Also: whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...?
(As in, "Pray tell, good sir, how one would go about initiating such bizarre and unusual feats of gaming within the otherwise relatively straightforward system that is 4E.")

[Meister]

The good thing about this is, it can't possible be too late:

http://i.imgur.com/6A0H6.png

Use at own risk, I have no idea how balanced this is, I'm not sure at all about the way it handles effects and conditions and the breath weapon might be if not pretty strong, then certainly frustrating to players.

Notes:

As far as I could see, the time dragon's role in combat is defined largely by his additional actions, immunity to effects with a duration and imposition of effects in some way related to the flow of time, especially the breath weapon that shifts characters forward one round. Controller seemed a good fit. All dragons and a lot of solos actually already get additional actions, so I simply left that aspect as it was - it's largely going to be a matter of description. The same goes for ending certain effects automatically. Flat out immunity against ongoing effects is something not even gods get, but an additional saving throw (at +5) is very good indeed.

Immunity to slowed is a little unorthodox, but fits well and probably doesn't cause too many problems.

Wizening Ray is lifted directly from the Phane and makes a very fine representation of the 3.5 time dragon's line breath weapon. Again, vivid description is key.

The Breath Weapon has a huge chance of becoming frustrating for players as they're denied their entire action allotment. Use with care, maybe consider bumping it to recharge 6 or even an encounter power.

Temporal Fugue is just an additional way to rework the condition immunity. Actually now that I look at it you might want to add that the dragon can only use it to end effects that last until a saving throw or the end of someone's turn. That seems fairer. e: now that I think about it you might want to remove the part about automatically ending ongoing damage from Time Mastery, too. The additional saving throw covers that.

Super casual 4E PBP
So that's Nikose and tactics - Ryong, I take it you're not enough of a PBP fan to want to join?

My internet access for big projects like this is going to be sketchy over the next few weeks, hopefully not months, anyway, so don't expect this to go down very soon. I figure once I got my shit sorted out I'll make a separate recruitment thread, but I'd like to have four to five players for this.

[tacticslion]

Liquid awesome turned into gold paste for yayness!

That's... fantastic! Thanks Meister! Repped! (although you don't exactly need it!)

That looks beautiful. I'll take your notes into consideration when putting it into my own game later. I'll have to let you know how it goes, however, due to real life stuff, that particular game has been delayed... again... which is kind of frustrating, but that's how it goes some times. Nonetheless, it's a perfect fit for what I was looking for and into. Probably the only thing I'd change (if you think it's a good idea and they still do that in 4E) is grant it overland flight 12.

Basically everything about this is terrific!

[Meister]

Sure. I mean technically everything overland flight does, a simply fly speed can do better, which I imagine is the reason more recent monsters don't have it anymore, but on the other hand it doesn't hurt to include it.

e: you could also include some time-based terrain effects and benefits. Maybe the flow of time around a time dragon becomes unstable, and a character can benefit from that with an Arcana check and gain, say, a speed bonus, or avoid the aura effect for a turn. Spending an action point could be described as pulling your future self from in six seconds into the present to take an additional action, then disappearing (as you're pulled into the past, naturally). For that matter that can easily be the flavour for the dragon's additional actions, although hearing the description every turn might diminish the effect.

[tacticslion]

Sure. I mean technically everything overland flight does, a simply fly speed can do better, which I imagine is the reason more recent monsters don't have it anymore, but on the other hand it doesn't hurt to include it.

e: you could also include some time-based terrain effects and benefits. Maybe the flow of time around a time dragon becomes unstable, and a character can benefit from that with an Arcana check and gain, say, a speed bonus, or avoid the aura effect for a turn. Spending an action point could be described as pulling your future self from in six seconds into the present to take an additional action, then disappearing (as you're pulled into the past, naturally). For that matter that can easily be the flavour for the dragon's additional actions, although hearing the description every turn might diminish the effect.

Flight: That's cool. I'd thought of overland flight as kind of useless at first, but then figured it was to guesstimate long-distance travel (kind of like the difference between forced marching and a long walk) and for purposes of endurance checks.

As far as flavor: that's great! And yes, using it judiciously is important.

[Red Mage Black]

Okay, you guys know how I'm running a Kingmaker game, right? Well, one player who won't be playing anymore told me that (the arrogant asshole I mentioned before) wanted to have a 'civil conversation' with me. Being the nice guy that I am, I thought I'd hear him out. It turned out to be 20 minutes(or more) of a waste of my life. He insulted my players, my friends and me. Then he decided to drudge up ancient history to insult me. Granted, we didn't get to the first combat of the first book, but that was more the pacing with the amount of people in the group, but we have a nice start to the next session where combat will actually begin.

Yeah, I realize I deleted time stamps and only the first few lines have others in the conversation cut out. Xero is the epitome of arrogance and douchebaggery.
Xero Making them do no gear runs too?
Xero And it's not really the same, Alan.
Itzal And no, I didn't tell Xavier to start with nothing. I told him he wouldn't need it right now anyway.
Xero Six homos =/= six baller ass motherfuckers.
Itzal This is the shit I'm talking about.
Xero Hmm?
Xavier well actually we have two homos
Xero We do?
Xavier Yeah man
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Piero and Sean?
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal Gnome and his love partner
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Lol
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal They're so homo
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You call everything of mine shit and somehow your shit is solid gold, huh?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal but IC homo.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I didn't call anything shit. Only Xavier did.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Xero says: Six homos =/= six baller ass motherfuckers
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I just called your players a bunch of faggots.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Insulting my players, yeah.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Because Xavier told me they were.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero And am I expecting him to be a spy of yours?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal and Eva said she felt a little uncomfortable playing.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Why would he be a spy? He's not playing, lol.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero First I've heard of it, but it's not like he participated in the game anyway.
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal I was going to, but he never got back to me about being a local witch or not, or rolling for money, or... Anything, really.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Just ignored you, going on ahead with the adventures of DMPC and his band of lovebirds.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I said, "You won't need it."
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero We weren't even getting to combat that session.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero If all you're going to do is insult my group and my game, I'll take my leave.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Really? You weren't getting to the first fucking combat in Kingmaker? The one that happens within 15 minutes?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal That's a little unrealistic, Alan.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I'm not even sure why I didn't bother clicking the x the second the window popped up.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Because you wanted to try and not be an asshole?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Get over yourself bro.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Says the guy insulting my group and telling me his group is better. Practice what you preach, dude.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I do
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal My group is better.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Sean tickles balls.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Are you done yet?
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal why would you mention that
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Can I leave?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Because he does.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Done what?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I brought you in for a civil chat.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal and you get defensive
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Uh
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal and hostile.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Insulting my group was your opening shot.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Lolwat
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I only stated facts, Alan.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You initiated hostilities.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Facts Xavier told me, and facts I learned from looking at your Facebook.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal You took them as hostile.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >facts learned from looking at my facebook >haven't been on FB in over a 1 1/2 months
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero -a
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal >Still have a bunch of faggot friends
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Dude, chill out. It's okay to be homo.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >none of those people in the group
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Just look at Xavier.
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal what
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Every single one of your friends has been a huge homo, ALan. Including Eva.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Okay
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Tell me
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero This isn't hostilities?
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Insulting my friends, my group and me.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I didn't insult anybody
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero C'mon Xero, wars have been started over lesser things.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I said they were ridiculously homosexual.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Which is true
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You ARE the epitome of douchebag.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I am the epitome of awesome, and you could be too, if you tried.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >be an asshole and have a select few friends >be a nice guy and have a whole group of friends I can count on
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I'm willing to take option b.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Maybe if you were, your internet girlfriend wouldn't try to jump on my dick when I said hello.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Shit was gross.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Wanted me to rape her.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal >select few friends
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I have loads of friends.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Mirela still makes fun of me for it.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal "You could always go rub lotion on Eva's back. Lololo"
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Then I >: (
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Because that shit wasn't funny.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You wanted to have a civil conversation, but civil conversation doesn't include insulting the people one hangs out with.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal There was no insulting had.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I commented on your poor choice of companionship.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I could show this conversation to about 50 other people who would probably disagree with that statement and none of those 50 would be the people from my group.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I get it Alan, you have a lot of friends from whoring yourself out on Gaia pretending to have a vagina.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal That's cool yo.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal But keep it away from conversations about real shit
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Wow man.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You still use Gaia as an insult.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal You still use Gaia as a hookup place.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Oh, man
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Oneo f my new players
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal is Ryan's old player he wanted to play Saga with
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal When they joined the Hamachi that one time
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero No, it's from a place I went to even before I even TOUCHED Gaia.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Been going there for the last 7 years.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal You went to Gaia before you even touched Gaia?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I meant as a hookup place for online sex, bro. not players.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I haven't been to Gaia in ages.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero So long.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero No regrets.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal It would be understandable, with all the internet cocks you have.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal To stuff in your mouth
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal and wish you had a life.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You know.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Again
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You wanted to have civil conversation.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I am
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero And this is not civil conversation.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I'm only stating facts, brosef.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal You're coming back at me with insults and hostility.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Facts =/= uncivil
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero No, I haven't made an insult for a while now. You're insulting me with ancient history and made up facts, then adding your own little twist to make your group and you sound better than anything I could do.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal A little twist? What?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal They really are
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal They're a bunch of baller ass players who play in fun and unique ways.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal You should have seen how they dealt with today's penultimate encounter.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal It was great.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Alan, everyone has a limit. You've hit yours.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero This sounds more like you want me to come back because you have no one else to push around.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal It's alright
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Lol, what?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I wouldn't let you back even if you paid me.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Game's too full.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal And these people are interesting.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Suspiciously specific denial.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal >suspiciously specific >You just said it
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Good job.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Want a medal?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I know. I've got a great group. I bet they'd make me one if I asked.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero More like, "If I demanded."
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I don't demand anything from them.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Except initiative rolls.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >"Make a character for this game." "We're playing this."
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Demands demands demands.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Nope. I put up my ad on /tg/ and they all responded.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Willing and ready to fight.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >they all >despite the fact you've been known and hated on /tg/
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Lolwat
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Zhakuvaan is known and hated.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You've even said it yourself.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal whimsicalKillmachine is unknown.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Screenshot....
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Oooooh scary
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Ayup
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I don't even post on /tg/
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal or 4chan, actually.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Why don't you go search your backlogs for the time I said that burritos make me gassy, and spam me with pictures of burritos.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >xero contradicts himself within 2 minutes
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Xero says: Nope. I put up my ad on /tg/ and they all responded. Willing and ready to fight.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Yes, I don't post regularly on /tg/
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Your screenshot would do nothing.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero You keep contradicting yourself.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I could post as Zhakuvaan and people would respond, bro.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero How fun
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal It's called charisma.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal I've got it.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Right so....
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Where are people here who are permanent from /tg/?
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Everyone I've seen you bring in has left.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Wah?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Piero is chillin, afk. Everyone else is asleep, and Xavier is laughing.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Norrie's fappin
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero This isn't civil conversation, this was just so you could have someone to be a dickwad to again.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal They were tired after an entire day of gaming.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Not really, it was Xavier's idea
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Funny
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Xavier says: Hey bro. Xero wants me to invite you to a chat so he can "say mean things to him" Well okay then
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >Xero wants me to invite you to chat
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal He told you that?
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Xavier, that's fucked up
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal No wonder he came in hostile.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Well whatever.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal It's also
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal really funny
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal This is why my group rocks.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero >Xero is easily amused
Anyway
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal >Alan is easily threatened
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal >and quick to orgasm when anybody comes within 2 meters of his penis
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero No, threatened would be trying to insult your group instead. I never made a single comment to anyone you had assembled. That was all you.
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Because you know they're fuckin ballers
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal and shot callers.
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Right
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero Well
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal Piero could fuck anybody you wanted to fuck
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal right now
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal with his 10 inch venezuela dick
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal while claling them harry.
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal Piero is like, a latin love machine though
Xavier Piero, Xero, Itzal You saw the smooth moves he was workin on dat orc
Xero Piero, Xavier, Itzal So smooth
Itzal Piero, Xavier, Xero I'll be taking my leave now, since all you want to do is brag like an arrogant fuckwad.
This is why I stopped playing with him. He's an unreasonable douchebag that thinks he's King Shit and that everything he does is the best. Piero, the guys name mentioned in the conversation above, is actually a cool guy. Even he told me that the douchebag was acting like a child. He wants to get us back together to at least 'try and have a mature conversation'. I don't think Xero is capable of a mature conversation, honestly and from what I've gathered, I've been the only one in the group to really bring out the unreasonable and childish side of him. I appreciate what Piero is trying to do, but things had always been tense between Xero and I. He's just way too much of a dick for me to be able to tolerate.

[Aldurin]

So that's the shit you had to put up with before the current game? Wow.

[Red Mage Black]

Yeah, for two and a half years while people around me were wondering why the hell I still played with him. After the game I blocked him, I told myself I'd had enough. I initially told Xavier that I didn't want to speak to him, but he insisted the asshole wanted to have a chat. As I said in that chat, "I don't know why I didn't just click x as soon as the window opened." What I think I failed to include in the log was him bragging about his '9 hour game'. Which kind of made me think, "Yeah, because you always pick the people who never do anything else with their time. You know, like go to college or have jobs." I also love how he calls his dickhead behavior 'charisma'. I've been on NPF for 7+ years now. I can tell the difference between someone being a dick for pure laughs and actually being a good guy or someone being a dick just to be a dick and act cool. As Nik stated when I posted the stuff for the other game, "This is the kind of player you don't want in your group." I could rant on and on about Xero, but I think it's better to try and forget about him now.

[Meister]

Dude's a huge cock no question but what's with the spoiler tags?

[Sifright]

I'd question whether Piero is a 'cool dude' if he can't see that the other guy is flat out a complete and utter cunt. I wouldn't even be able to be grouped with a guy like that. through out reading most of that log my gut reaction was to want to smash the guy in the face :|

[tacticslion]

RMB: That guy... uh... wat.

Seriously: who invites anyone to a chat and opens with an insult. It's peculiar that he uses a often-insulting slang term for homosexual (and in a manner that strongly implies insult), insists that there's nothing wrong with being homosexual, but never uses any term except a slang term that many find offensive. Also, he insists that his original statement is correct despite the fact you've made it clear that it makes you uncomfortable and is incorrect.

In short - he's a cruel, nasty person who apparently enjoys belittling other people; if I'd have to profile him (though I'm not a psychologist), I'd guess he has a small "ego"* that needs to be constantly bolstered by putting other people down, because that is really the only possible reason for behaving in such a way that I could see in a chat. It. Just. Boggles. The. Mind. See what it did? I wrote in all periods. In all periods! Gah!

Honestly, RMB, I don't understand why you continue to talk with him. I don't care who's friends with who, it's in your best interests to simply ignore him, cease any and all contact with him, and go about your life. If he invites you to chat, ignore him. He's a rather unbelievable jerk, but let it go and move on, and for your own sake never speak with him again, if possible. You've brought your grievances to him, and he's completely ignored you. If he trolls you, ignore it. Nothing more boring for a bully (read: "troll") than never getting a reaction.

There is a practical limit to the above advice. Infinite "ignore" button doesn't work if they actually harass you too much in places where you can't choose to avoid them, or if they are in places that it would be inconvenient for you to avoid. However, he sounds like a typical** troll from 4chan and the broader "internets".

I'm sorry you ever had to deal with a mess like that. The best way to continue deal with it in the future is: avoid it. He seems to thrive on needless confrontation and antagonism. Deprive him of it.

Ugh. I agree that you should just try to forget about him.

* Let's call it that.

** I use this term loosely, 'cause, man, that's some serious jerk right there.

[Ryong]

Played some Dark Sun yesterday. Broke two weapons in the same fight, another guy in the party broke two bows. ( Everyone carries 3 of the same weapon )

So we got our weapons "repaired" terribly by the party's rogue, using thievery for it. Probably not supposed to work, but hey, DM says it's okay, it is.

[tacticslion]

DM says it's okay, it is.

This is one of the most fundamental of important truths ever.

[Meister]

I don't know that I'd call it fundamental truth. For every DM who applies rules that, while technically not supposed to be applied in a particular situation, simply lead to a quick resolution of a situation that otherwise wouldn't be much fun, without larger implications for the game, there's got to be one who changes rules around in directions they're really not supposed to go and that can easily ruin a game.

Anyway. My party's up against the ruling class of a kingdom of undead, and they've got one radiant power between them. Should be fun. Anyone happen to have floor plans or, even better, RPG maps for a semi-large castle or dungeon or something? Room for 3-4 separate encounters is what I'm going for.

[tacticslion]

I don't know that I'd call it fundamental truth. For every DM who applies rules that, while technically not supposed to be applied in a particular situation, simply lead to a quick resolution of a situation that otherwise wouldn't be much fun, without larger implications for the game, there's got to be one who changes rules around in directions they're really not supposed to go and that can easily ruin a game.

Aw, maaaaaaaaaaan! Meister, c'mon! You're messin' up all my quips! :)

Anyway. My party's up against the ruling class of a kingdom of undead, and they've got one radiant power between them. Should be fun. Anyone happen to have floor plans or, even better, RPG maps for a semi-large castle or dungeon or something? Room for 3-4 separate encounters is what I'm going for.

Pssssssssst (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/4thEdition/mAPSINEEDMAPSUNDEADMAPS&page=1#1). I don't have anything for you, personally. BUT! Some people might, if you keep an eye on that thread. They might not, but that's about what I could do for you.

[Ryong]

The thing is, the group agreed that it'd be a good thing - given how much it sucks to be weapon-less. I get it that Dark Sun is supposed to be hard as fuck, but that's just dickery.

[tacticslion]

given how much it sucks to be weapon-less

Unless you're a monk!

[Ryong]

That actually came up a few weeks ago, because one of the players is a monk.

"Oh, crap, 1."
"Your weapon breaks, then."
"But I'm a Monk. I'm punching and kicking."
"...Well, fuck."

So monks give combat advantage for a turn. While everyone else has to get another weapon.

[Flarecobra]

I've seen a similor situation... only he breaks a finger when that occured, thus reduicing his attack power some.

[Meister]

Punishing players for an occurence completely out of their hands is the worst thing. Weapon breaking in 4E Dark Sun works, because it goes with the setting and it's not an insurmountable setback. Anywhere else though, it's terrible and all too often degrades into DMs handing out arbitrary and needlessly antagonistic punishments.

[Flarecobra]

Well, this DM was kind of ruthless regarding 1s. Besides, there was an easy out for that.

Any healing done removed the injury.

[DarkDrgon]

Since RMBs game is on hiatus for a while, I've been kicking around the Idea of a D20 modern game, if anyone is interested. I've been working on making an updated edition like what pathfinder did for 3.5, but its been so long since i've played I forgot what exactly needs fixing.

[tacticslion]

You might want to check out The Modern Path, a fan-made d20 Modern alternative. I don't know if it's still available for free, but it was for a while and it's pretty awesome. Google "Paizo.com, The Modern Path", because it's really good (though there's virtually no images).

[DarkDrgon]

i'm mostly trying to find a rule set people know that I can use to see if my setting is even fun to play in. The next step is my own custom game, which I think I have good core rules for ( my playtest group likes them enough), but need more research

[tacticslion]

i'm mostly trying to find a rule set people know that I can use to see if my setting is even fun to play in. The next step is my own custom game, which I think I have good core rules for ( my playtest group likes them enough), but need more research

That's more or less exactly what Modernpath is. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in looking over what you've got!

[Azisien]

I own every d20 Modern book Wizards ever came out with and I just might be this forum's biggest junkie of it, so I'm willing to hear what you have.

I'm also well aware of many of its balance issues. Like Fast Heroes, or the entire book d20 Future. :|

[tacticslion]

I own every d20 Modern book Wizards ever came out with and I just might be this forum's biggest junkie of it, so I'm willing to hear what you have.

I'm also well aware of many of its balance issues. Like Fast Heroes, or the entire book d20 Future. :|

Do tell!

[DarkDrgon]

It may sound paranoid, but I don't wanna post too much custom stuff. I'm working on Getting art done to put together an actual core rule book. Thats the topic for another thread though, as my rule set is percentile based

[Azisien]

It's maybe an 8 out of 10 on the paranoid scale but I've definitely seen way more paranoid things, totally!

Tactics I...I'm not sure what to tell? Should I list...everything I thought needed balance in d20 Modern? :\

[DarkDrgon]

I hate the wealth system. It seemed way too schizophrenic with the different campaign settings (I like urban arcana best, btw), and class balance is worse than CoDzilla.

This is just from drunken memories though

[tacticslion]

Azisien: YES! (Within reason, alternatively, just the major things; also you could mention some things that are the worst offenders. I'm just a big game nerd and love these things!)

DrkDragon: Okay, that's fair. Especially if you're going to make a book! If you do make a book, make a pdf and post it on Paizo.com - you might even be able to sell it! That would be pretty sweet. I strongly suggest play-testing the heck out of it, though.

[DarkDrgon]

yeah, the book is about a year in development, and is ready for playtest if i can find a group. I'm trying to sell the campaign setting mostly, Urban Fantasy is a very underappreciated genre, that I love way too much.

[Azisien]

Azisien: YES! (Within reason, alternatively, just the major things; also you could mention some things that are the worst offenders. I'm just a big game nerd and love these things!)

I am still on detox from Skyrim, and very bored tonight, so I'll bite as best as I can. I'll even grab the rulebook! Yoink.

1) Wealth system. I bring this up first just because DarkDrgon does. It was an interesting experiment, with a solid logical foundation, but it was also too easy to break. Following the Wealth level rewards of the book, I found PCs could have the best gear without losing Wealth level in a staggeringly short amount of time. This is compared to D&D, where the expense of magic items roughly follows PC wealth. In game as it is in life though, the AK-47 is the most destruction weapon ever, and it's CHEAP. On the side FOR Wealth Levels though, modern financing can be a bit unwieldy. You can roll a campaign where characters deal in cash, but the modern world does have credit cards, mortgages, lines of credit, etc. As a DM, do you actually want to handle all that? I would rather focus my book-keeping on other matters. And why wouldn't a PC just grab a mortgage and buy a tank? (Hm, actually that's hilarious).
---> Fix? It's more of a use or don't situation here. But there is a lovely table that converts Purchase DCs to Cash Value, for estimating the prices of goods and services. This allows super simple house rule to a "cash-based" game where characters carry cash/credit as if it was D&D gold.

2) Hero system/Classes. I am in a super special camp here. I think d20 Modern has the best class system ever made in a roleplaying system I've used. I think Pathfinder was the most recent one to make me go "Whoa, awesome" on a similar level. It was the first roleplaying game I encountered that treated classes like a salad bar. You didn't order the "Fighter" meal, you dabbled in some Strong, Tough, Fast, Smart, etc, based on your ability scores and what you wanted your character to do. I thought basing the six base classes on the six ability scores was genius in its simplicity. What's broken, though?

Well, Fast Hero is. +3 Defense at 1st level? If the salad bar analogy holds, I think Fast Hero would be Bacon. Everybody tosses in some Fast Hero for quick, easy power-ups. That's just the one Defense bonus too. I'll keep it within reason, but almost everything about Fast Hero bugs me. Crazy good stat progression chart, too many skill points, overpowered talents, and the best bonus feat pool.

I won't get into Advanced Classes but boy does it have issues. Martial Artist is broken beyond belief. You could make a soldier Strong/Tough hero type who seems good or a Smart/Dedicated/Strong demolitions guy, and both seem like they would be good at taking out Abrams tanks when your campaign reaches that point. I'd put my money on the Martial Artist, though. Punching M1 Abrams tanks. To death. Easily.

---> Fix? I usually house rule some evening out of Fast Hero progression chart. It doesn't stop the Fast Hero whoring, but it helps.

3) PC Power Level - mid to high levels

As much as I love d20 Modern, I find it starts to fall apart beyond level 10 or so. Dungeons and Dragons kind of balances itself out because monsters progress in that game along with characters and gear. Orcs are a joke at level 10, but demons aren't. Magic weapon enhancements go from +1 to +10, and there's lots of room to grow. There's not that much room to grow in d20 Modern (unless you are powergaming a Martial Artist, bahaha!). You begin at level 1 with a gun. At level 10 you...have a gun. It might be a LITTLE better, but it's just a gun. And firearms follow pretty uniform standards in d20 Modern (handguns 2d6, rifles 2d8, rifles 2d10, snipers 2d12). This doesn't change too much. But each level, you get more HP, and so do enemies. Running a NON-magical game, you have Tough Heroes taking hits from RPGs and constant AK-47 fire and you start to go...hmmm...this isn't working like it used to.

---> FIX? Never really did. I usually just started campaigns at level 1 and ended them around level 8-9. However, Urban Arcana and to an extent Future campaigns can more easily go into upper levels, because you can make things, well, supernaturally/futuristically powerful.

4) Massive Damage. A very endearing quality of d20 Modern. This is the feature that makes the whole system lethal, and forces PCs to be really careful. But as great as it is, there's three problems I see with it. First, it greatly increases that "random PC death" factor that is honestly fairly rare in D&D. Second, healing is much more scarce in d20 Modern, despite the fact it's needed so much more DUE to Massive Damage rules. Third, it kind of gets muddy as fuck with the Power Level Problem above. At high levels you have dudes with HP in the 50-60s, capable of being riddled with bullets. And to provide challenge as a DM, you need to sometimes throw a lot of gunfire at them. At the same time, one lucky roll and the PC is dying or dead, because unless you're a Tough Hero, or you take Massive Damage feats, or you house rule stuff, even the super powergaming 60HP 50 damage per round Martial Artist can only take 12 points of damage in a single hit, or she is unconscious.

5) Armor. This issue has synergy with the class problems and massive damage and Fast Hero, because there's literally no reason to invest 3 feats into heavy armor proficiency when you could just take Fast Hero levels. Like, no reason at all, unless your DM is making up sweet, overpowered armor for PCs to use. d20 Modern didn't have alternate rules for armor, so it just handled it like D&D where Armor = Defense. In a game with the other factors in my above points in play, armor as defense seems to make things more dangerous over time because once that armor is finally pierced, PCs tend to die.

--> FIX? Clearly, clearly, CLEARLY d20 Modern was born to use Armor as Damage Reduction. The simplest house rule for this is "Defense Bonus = Damage Reduction," reading from the Armor table. This gives more DR to PCs that invest in armor proficiency feats, because non-proficient PCs only get the non-proficient DR bonuses. I've seen pretty complex, alternate DR house rules for this though. I am not sure if the WotC forums still house them, but there is a wealth of knowledge there, some of which I contributed/discussed/trolled in.

6) Guns Are Boring. Well, not really, but the variety in d20 Modern is. Despite having a whole book called Weapons Locker, with more information than I could ever want to know about firearms, it's all pretty much the same stuff. Handguns are 2d6. Blah. There's so much more variety of gear in Dungeons and Dragons, it's no wonder we make our escapism fantastical instead of geared towards modern life. Weapons Locker, as an additional point, tossed in a few guns that are OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR to their counterparts, to the point that there is NO REASON to not take those few, powerful guns.

7) d20 Modern Expansions - Mainly Future

Oh man I love d20 Future, and I also hate it. The majority of my contributions to d20M writing have been based on Future, because I love science fiction. That being said, what a horrid mess the book is. I could probably rant for twice as long on just this book alone. Starships are a complete mess from top to bottom, and need total overhauls. There are some quicker ways to fix starships, though I would actually have to take to notes to figure that out again, and I'm not doing that unless there's genuine interest. Whatever power gaming issues d20 Modern has, Future just spirals them more out of control. Now we have some alternate races to play with, and the Dreadnought class. Like, fuck me. To give you an example, I once rolled a Weren Tough/Fast/Dreadnought that could wield Gargantuan sized weapons (same size categories as D&D, for any of you non-d20Mers reading) and easily fight starships or Colossal Mecha, and win most of the time.

Vehicles aren't actually too great in Modern at all, and Future makes it worse. There is a third party supplement called d20 Mecha, I believe, with much better mechanics, if you want to depart the base ones entirely (a sane choice, really).

Urban Arcana I give a total thumbs up. Very fun expansion. That being said, Shadow Slayer advanced class is super power gamer material.

d20 Cybernetics was a neat, short little expansion book, but it kind of added more fuel to the fires of Future's problems. Is your Weren dreadnought not quite murdering the Enterprise yet? Here, have these cybernetic implants to give +8 to Strength and Constitution! Weeee!

I suppose that'll do for now.

[DarkDrgon]

Yeah, that all sounds about right. i do like the low level games though.

In all seriousness, I'd love to get a game of any non-D&D system. Who's up for Paranoia? Toon? Shadowrun? Dark Heresy? Exalted?

just not GURPS... I can't do GURPS

If you want to play it, I will run it.

[tacticslion]

If you want to play it, I will run it.

You know, I really don't think you want to promise me that.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Legend is out. (http://www.ruleofcool.com/)

Legend is a system based on the D&D SRD, and I can vouch for it's quality, as I've been following it since the beta.

They're currently running a pay-whatever-you-want (even nothing, if you're hard-up for cash) drive for Child's Play.

[tacticslion]

Well, Bookworm, Legends looks interesting, but a) I'm not able to read their sample pages, b) the "review" they link... isn't very good, and c) it's not looking like we're going to be purchasing anything soon. Nonetheless, it sounds like a nifty conceit!

(Seriously, though, that reviewer? "Oh, hey, I hated everything about the d20 open gaming license games, and really don't know anything about them, but this one is probably better from an over-night once-over glance" is not a review. I'm glad he was honest, but... as it stands, the reviewer didn't actually review anything, he only gave it a once over and his initial impression. If you have any sort of say, you might want to get the makers to forward a copy to Iron Liz at ThatGuyWithTheGlasses for another review, or at least a second opinion. She's a pretty big fan of the 3.0 and knew the system pretty well, so that might help things out. Also, I don't know anything else about her/him, but "DarkMistress" - or something similar - is a reviewer that hangs out at paizo.com and might be a good one to tap for looking at it. I don't know how much contact you've got with the guys that developed this, though.)

[Azisien]

Back in Pathfinder land, I had typed up a decent post a while ago about how I've been struck by a Pathfinder obsession. I've had probably four or five sessions with my group since I last reported in. The past two sessions have been totally awesome.

Awesome enough that I suspended my usual activity, video games, to sit down and write the "creation story" for this multiverse. I won't bore you with all the details, but it has really solidified the structure of this campaign. Now it's up to the PCs to influence, support, or stop the machinations as they see fit.

What I can report on is that my PCs have reached level 5, their party size has increased to six, and they just experienced their first "world-scale" event. Or rather, their first, big decision of the campaign. For the entire campaign so far they have been on the northwestern side of the continent, mostly helping out a small town called Thren'fas (I don't remember how much of this I reported on before). They negotiated with the panicking Shadowstalker elves to stop barring passage south and east through their sacred forest, and allowed evacuation of Thren'fas due to the arrival of a menacing and condescending orc spellcaster, with two thousand loyal goblins at his back.

Of course, the PCs were supposed to stay and protect Thren'fas. They did the opposite. They ran. A few even looted abandoned homes. Turns out I won't be needing to run a parallel evil campaign! This event will have a lot of consequences though. The goblin army didn't stop. They marched right up to the massive Shadowstalker Forest and set it on fire using a strange artifact the PCs were supposed to investigate. Most of the Shadowstalkers died fighting the fire and the army, withholding their centuries-old oath to the Forest.

So in total, the PCs have chosen to allow a monstrous civilization to gain control of a decent chunk of the continent (whether they can hold onto that chunk, future sessions will tell), to give up on defending the town about half the party had sworn to defend, caused a minor world faction and ally to be eradicated, and are now running tails between legs to the more urban central part of the continent. A wild ride! I am working on some maps and stuff, I might post them later.

[DarkDrgon]

Yeah, that all sounds about right. i do like the low level games though.

In all seriousness, I'd love to get a game of any non-D&D system. Who's up for Paranoia? Toon? Shadowrun? Dark Heresy? Exalted?

just not GURPS... I can't do GURPS

If you want to play it, I will run it.

I'm going back to this. If I were to start an NPF RPG game, what do you guys want to play? Finals are done, I have time and access to just about everything. The only rules are still No GURPS.

[Ryanderman]

My wife and I have been interested in trying out the Dresden Files RPG, which uses the fate system. I wonder how well that would work in long distance environment.

[DarkDrgon]

Ok, just on a brief runthrough of the SRD this seems like a system I can get behind. However, I have no experience with The Dresden Files at all, so that might be complicated.

[Azisien]

If we are playing something over distance I suggest two things:

1) A system you are very familiar with, so we aren't struggling with mechanics at any point.

2) A mechanically simple system. Whether this is forum PbP, a chat room, or real life, mechanics slow things down. But I have found only in the latter are they most manageable.

I've done d20 Modern in chat rooms before and it's totally doable, but you move at like 25% the speed of a real life session. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, just saiyan.

[tacticslion]

Anyway. My party's up against the ruling class of a kingdom of undead, and they've got one radiant power between them. Should be fun. Anyone happen to have floor plans or, even better, RPG maps for a semi-large castle or dungeon or something? Room for 3-4 separate encounters is what I'm going for.

Did you ever get any of those from that linked thread (http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz4qjs?Maps-I-Need-Maps-Undead-Maps#5) I made for you at Paizo?

just saiyan.

Kame-hame-ha!

Exciting stuff!
Nice! Sounds pretty epic! And, as for me, I'd be fairly interested in a more detailed telling!

DarkDrgon: I'd be interested, but I just don't know if I'm going to successfully be able to commit. Still, I'd be up for trying most anything. Azisien's note on mechanics is rather wise, I don't have the links to any SRD, and I don't know the system, so I can't really play that as it stands now. I'm willing to go with whatever, though. :)

[DarkDrgon]

Games i have run online are paranoia and D&D 3.5

I've played Exalted and Dark Heresy

I usually use open RPG, if no one minds

[tacticslion]

Welp, Dark, I'm not going to be able to get into a game with you during the break, though I'd love to. I've got some visiting to do!

In other fun news, however, I recently ran a mini-campaign (single player, for my wife) in which she played a Blue Goblin (straight out of the bestiary part of the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook - a terrible name, really, for a great book) in which her character - a little guy cleverly named "Blue" - set about to rescue the half of his tribe that remained alive after a Red Wizard-led group came in slaughtered half and took the rest hostage.

I called the thing "Red v. Blue".

It consisted of:
* Adventure 1 (PC level 1): a slightly-modified version of the 1st-level adventure "The Color of Ambition" found in the back of the 3.0 FRCS book
* Adventure 2 (PC level 2): a created adventure that involved assaulting a super-well guarded slave caravan with an inferior force while trying to not kill the slaves, facing down "super" or "mythic" monsters (like an owlbear) and one of the most powerful wizards possible (this was a modified "E6"-type of game world)
* Adventure 3 (PC level 3): a highly-modified (but not weakened, simply altering most save-or-die things) version of 16th-level adventure "Green Bones" (also found in the back of the 3.0 FRCS book!

It was a rousing success and, at the end, Blue - "the little goblin that could" - successfully rescued all his people, defeated the nasty Red Wizard (who'd done the whole raid illegally and illicitly), destroy a slave caravan, and prevent the diabolical scheme of a mutant bugbear (who called herself "the Baroness") and her "Worg Women" (variant lycanthropic hobgoblins with worg instead of wolf) and the two Snaky Sisters (variant high-powered monk/ranger Serpentfolk). He managed to make a super-powerful wizard his permanent thrall (Skeletal Champion) and gain the services of a mythcal creature (a Juju Zombie Owlbear) as well as finding the woman of his dreams (a blue) with which he had a daughter (a cute little blue goblin they named "Blueberry").

Also, they lived under the Thayan enclave and he gained some super-loyal humans to spread the word of how great goblins really were to the local town.

Also, for those who played in that adventure, this is totally canon with the Kitchen Catastrophe game we all played online a while back.

EDIT: this is my 1,000th post! Wooooooow, I talk a lot.

[TDK]

So I've been playing second edition AD&D lately. I'm enjoying it more than 3.5, actually, because its significantly more...I dunno, hardcore. Seems like the versions of dnd have gotten steadily easier, and I'm quite liking that 2nd is more like old school fantasty. Which makes sense, because each version of dnd pretty much reflects how fantasy is during the time period in which it is released. Yknow, like how 4th edition is trying to be WoW. And is absurdly easy.

I'm playing a mage, which I've not done much. We're running the Temple of Elemental Evil prefab, which promises to be awesome.

[TopHatAssassin]

Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you this evening with a question. I would like to make a character in Pathfinder, a system with which I am fairly recently-ish acquainted with and enjoying immensely.

I have a certain character in mind, but I am stumped as to how to go about putting him together. You may be familiar with this man:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/goemon/goemon.jpg

I've tossed some ideas around in my head, but nothing terribly solid is settling. So I ask, do you have any suggestions for how I might make a Goemon character?

[TDK]

Update about my 2e game:

After a session, we've managed to recruit another player, so I've been able to stop playing two characters (we needed a rogue, so I had a bard too)

Was doing this whole thing with my female mage and the male bard being husband and wife, and that being the justification for one being there, etc.

The new player rolled up a thief, so we wanted to get rid of the bard, but I didn't want to just drop him without a word. So we decided to handle it in game.


We're most of the way to level three (some more than others, of course, because of 2e's experience system) now, so when the bard killed a giant spider and got swarmed by baby spiders from its eggsack and poisoned, there was very little we could do about the poison. His spider bites were healed up and he, a bit blurrily, told everyone he was fine and we should continue on. The mage, his wife, begins to worry, but says nothing.

We march onward, encountering a few more encounters, the bard begins to spike a fever, and eventually starts hallucinating. We've not gained any more magic or items or anything at this point, so when he starts fighting a patch of floor midway through an encounter, there's nothing we can really do. He's been hallucinating spiders for hours, and as we finish the encounter to find the bard swatting at the tiny spiders crawling over him, that only he can see. He freaks out further as one crawls under his skin, and he claws at the open wound for a few minutes, panic escalating until he snatches a knife from his wife, pushes her away as she tries to stop him, and shoves it under his skin, frantic to dig out the spider burrowing through his body.

He collapses on the ground, bleeding and gibbering to himself, and its all anyone can do to watch and feel useless for being unable to do anything. So his wife makes the hard decision, and asks everyone to give them some privacy, then puts him out of his misery. It effects her a lot, and she leaves the room, quietly telling everyone that the bard isn't coming. I'm still thinking about the precise ramifications of this on her, and considering some kind of obsessive hunt for a way to revive him developing, but I've yet to decide.

The whole scene with the bard, up to his death, I got to roleplay out, from both sides.


I'm quite enjoying this game.

[DragoonWraith]

Hi! I'm a playtester for Legend (http://www.ruleofcool.com/) (actually, truth be told, I was a playtester for Legend; at this point I've contributed a fair amount of content to them since my playtest), and since I loved 8-bit Theatre and Brian did an awesome review (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2012/01/03/nerding-it-up-with-legend/) of Legend, I thought I'd stop by.

Well, Bookworm, Legends looks interesting, but [...] the "review" they link... isn't very good, and c) it's not looking like we're going to be purchasing anything soon. Nonetheless, it sounds like a nifty conceit!

[snip]
Hrm? Which review would that be? Sounds like it might be the tekhammer one (http://www.oldschool.geek.nz/2011/11/25/legend-the-rpg/); tekhammer's the /r/rpg subreddit moderator, and so he carried a fair amount of weight with the Reddit community. They were a major driving force of early sales, and we're really indebted to him for that review.

Then there's my review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15453.phtml), which I suppose you'll take with a grain of salt, though it was written honestly about my playtest experiences, before I really got involved in any of the actual writing of the content.

And of course, the best review of all at this point (and for this forum) is the aforementioned review by Mr. Clevinger, which was just... stunning.


As for not being able to see the sample pages, that's worrisome! Is that still the case? If not, I'll try to poke someone to look into that.


Anyway, I don't want to derail this or anything; obviously this is a general RPG chat and I see you guys are talking about Pathfinder and even some 2e stuff, which is awesome. Mostly just stopping by to see what the forum thought of Brian's awesome review. I'll be happy to answer any questions if anyone has any! But otherwise, I hope I wasn't too intrusive about this.

[Ryong]

I'm going to play on a shadowrun campaign ( that's only using the setting, not the system because some of the players can't be bothered to read about it ) as an Australian megalomaniac Ork that punches things with magic. I was told that I get two NPCs as contacts and I have to come up with them.

One is an anarchist pyromaniac who may be some kind of hippie, I don't know about the other, any suggestions?

Also, that Legend system seems awesome and all but it may take a while 'til I check it out for real - because I don't know much about 3.5, I play on 4e - and it seems like a good system, but I'll be damned if I can get anyone here to play it, since most of the people I play with aren't very much into some general pop culture random stuff, so, yeah.

[DragoonWraith]

OK, first, I want to say that your Shadowrun character sounds awesome. Hmm... I haven't done a lot of Shadowrun, but I feel like some quick-witted, sarcastic, frail, and technically skilled character would be a good counterpoint to him and contrast with the other one. Shadowrun has a fair amount of technology involved, right? I'm thinking a nerdy hacker type, preferably from a small-ish race.


Anyway, since my stated goal is to clarify things about Legend... Oddly enough, despite having 3.5 as its "starting point", there are parts of Legend that seem more similar to 4e than 3.x to me. It's definitely not 4e by any stretch of the imagination, but there are definitely places where you can see that either Rule of Cool was taking a cue from 4e, or both WotC and RoC came up with similar solutions to the same problems. So I wouldn't let experience with 4e hold you back. In reality, it's somewhat similar to but not really quite like either.

As for "general pop culture random stuff", I'm not quite sure what you mean. Legend does have a rather playful tone in its descriptions, complete with lots of nerdy references*, but that's all just in good fun; they don't have a whole lot to do with the actual system or how it's run. It's actually kind of breathtaking how wide a variety of genres Legend can support if you want it to.

* I know I was trying to downplay them, but they're also a ton of fun. I couldn't help listing a few, like the items Useful Goggles ("At first glance, they look like any other pair of goggles and don't seem to do anything.") and Vera ("This is your very favorite gun."), and the feats Something of a Traditionalist ("You wield a less elegant weapon from a less civilized age," a feat for the Just Blade Jedi track) and To Pierce the Heavens ("Yours is the spear that shall not break, the line that shall be held," which is a reference, as I understand it, to some anime I haven't seen).


(and seriously, let me know if I get annoying about Legend; I want to talk about it because I like it, but I'm, ya know, involved in the thing and I don't want to become like an annoying salesperson or something. If I'm disrupting the thread for anyone, just let me know)

[tacticslion]

(and seriously, let me know if I get annoying about Legend; I want to talk about it because I like it, but I'm, ya know, involved in the thing and I don't want to become like an annoying salesperson or something. If I'm disrupting the thread for anyone, just let me know)
Nah, you're cool! I'd talk more, but I seriously don't have time at this moment. Peace (talk later 'bout stuff at you)

[Ryong]

Funny thing:

Campaign I'm playing on has taken us to an underground city, populated heavily by drows, so my character, a human, can't see shit. Another human character got some night goggles for a while, but they won't work for long and there's a gnome, too.

So I got a miner hat with a neverending torch, an unguent of darkvision ( 350GP for a hour! ) and a couple of sunrods, in case I need to blind some people. It'll be fun.

[Arhra]

Then there's my review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15453.phtml), which I suppose you'll take with a grain of salt, though it was written honestly about my playtest experiences, before I really got involved in any of the actual writing of the content.

Haha! I just read that review!

While I like what I've seen about it so far, I haven't seem much about how the combat side of things works. How do the fiddly bits like Attacks of Opportunity, tripping, disarming, sundering and, of course, grappling work out in it?

's always nice to have more options than 'hit with sword'.

[tacticslion]

So, uh, anyone heard the news (http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/316036-off-see-wizards-day-wizards-coast-showed-me-d-d-5th-edition.html) about D&D 5E (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109) (or whatever (http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/316069-wizards-coast-seeks-unity-new-edition.html))?

What does anyone think? I am, as normal right now, short on time, so I just thought I'd drop that off here...

[Pip Boy]

It does appear to be the case that Wizards are currently the only people in the northern hemisphere not making money off of the D20 system in some form.

Semi-related: A friend of mine wants to put together a tabletop gaming podcast. Im kinda iffy about it because it sounds like its been done before, but it could be fun so I'm in anyways. After a while, I'll get basic info up about all the participants and theme and stuff, and if anybody writes us a good skit we'll gladly credit them for it.

[DragoonWraith]

Haha! I just read that review!

While I like what I've seen about it so far, I haven't seem much about how the combat side of things works. How do the fiddly bits like Attacks of Opportunity, tripping, disarming, sundering and, of course, grappling work out in it?

's always nice to have more options than 'hit with sword'.
Well, mostly, "more options than 'hit with sword'" come from track features. And there are a lot of them. Iron Magi's a particularly fun one.

That said, AoOs return (more-or-less unchanged, except there is no Combat Reflexes), as do Tripping and Disarming (there's some changes to how those are defended against, IIRC, but no one in my group used either). Sundering and Grappling are both out (at least for the moment), as neither is particularly common either in games or in fantasy in general, and both tend to create rules headaches.

There are plans to do grappling, though, since while heroes rarely use it in fantasy, it's quite common for monsters.

[Flarecobra]

What's this I hear about a D&D 5th edition coming out?

[tacticslion]

Check the links in my last post for what I know. And now I'm away!

[tacticslion]

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS WALLS OF TEXT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

So, it's been quite a bit (earlier due to time constraints followed rather heavily by an enforced computer-driven hiatus), but I just had an interesting game, so I figured this'd be the place to share! Also, sorry for the double post. I'll fix it later. Color-coded and titled for your convenience and to break up the walls of text a bit that I warned about above.

THE EXCITING ORIGIN STORY (of the game, as in "how we got the idea")
Running low on time in general (when we first got this idead), and lacking a local group, my wife and I decided to play a one-on-one, but, since she's extremely busy with work, she's often been kind of exhausted. As a result, I got to be the GM, and she got to be the player. We were trying to think of an interesting take on how to play, and ultimately I decided to run a one-shot adventure with her using the published stats of a random creature "from one of our books". One roll of the dice later (d20), counting up to that number of books from the right side led to... Deities and Demigods. Huh. We'd forgotten that was there. A few dice rolls later leads to something from the Grayhawk Pantheon (Pelor was the only one she wanted to play)... in Faerun (the country Turmish in the Vilhoun Reach, to be precise)!

Thus the young female avatar of Pelor, named Basha, was born, and for the first session or so we just used the stats as-printed! That didn't last once she became a Chosen (see below).

THE PERILOUS BEGINNING (in Greyhawk, this is basically our first session)
We start off en-media-res, as, at the end of a great crusade, Basha (along with the avatar of Pelor's servitor goddess Mayahene - a number of high level servants of theirs are attempting to keep up as the goddesses brush through the deadly traps and defenses) crushes one of Vecna's greatest lieutenants (a monstrously powerful fiendish lich named Itolgue*, secret keeper of Vecna's knuckle bone), finally obliterates an undead plague he'd unleashed into the surrounding lands, and solves the "impossible" moral quandry of how to destory the lich's phylactery - a young, innocent celestial man named Erol* (3rd level commoner) who's neutral good - by using incredible power (and an epic spell) to forcibly switch the phylactery from being the Erol's body to a nearby vase and then smashing the ever-loving lich out of said piece of porcelain, destroying Itolgue forever.

Que the strange events as a result, including Basha accidentally (to everyone's displeasure) "inheriting" the knuckle that no one knew was there, Vecna realizing this and, in a fit of fury (and epic magic) flinging her outside of all reality, and, in another existence, someone completing an epic spell in an attempt to become a god... and being interrupted and hit with wild magic causing said spell to be ruined, instead consuming all creatures' lives within an eight mile radius, and summoning Basha inside a sarcophagus originally inhabited by Auppensor deep within a mountain, surrounded by dead: a female human Red Wizard, a female human Harper/Hathran, a female gnome Divine Seeker of Mask, and a puddled ex-simulacra of a bard named Songbird (the original was long since dead). Basha was immediately set upon by the Dark Sleeves**, a convenient plot devi-, er, an artifact created by Shar that forces a lesser god to be unable to travel via the planes, filled with/tied to the power of shadows but stripped of them by daylight, and constantly tempts them to Shar's service.

THE EXCITING HEADLINE (This could totally be an add/blurb to sell you on this puppy)
In a world she doesn't know, in a culture she doesn't understand (Turmish is weird***), separated from her "Father" (i.e. Pelor, similar to a Jesus-and-God-relationship) and constantly tempted by a dark whisper to embrace her new destiny, Basha proceeds to discover what happened, where she is, why she's here, and the full ramifications of all that's occurred.

She also has to decide (if she ever gets those Plot McGuffins artifacts off, if she's going to go home or stay in a world she's increasingly becoming entangled with)

THE STUPENDOUS SUMMATION (of the game events)
What started as a one-shot, quickly become much more, as Basha more-or-less inadvertently (well, not too inadvertently) started a religious war between her new converts and the local church of Loviatar, ended up fighting off a Vecna who'd followed her to this world (with the help of Sharess), meeting ALT-Moradin, as well as a number of anti-Shar deities (who made her a Chosen/Proxy for one year for their own purposes - also, completely rebuilding her character, mostly from scratch), and descended into the Underdark to save a bunch of Eilistraeens (she was Chosen of Eilistraee, among others) from being sacrificed by Kiarensalee in a bid by the latter goddess (with the help of Talona and one other, secret god who appeared to be Szass Tamm... even though Szass isn't a god, as well as subtle backing by Shar) to reaquire Thanatos/destroy Orcus/get out of Lolth's web during her silence/become a greater god (or close to it) with the fragments of Vecna's divinity (scattered across the world in his defeat by Basha), and gain a servitor deity besides (the much-reduced Vecna).

Basha ended up leading a crusade into the Abyss-on-Toril; dealing almost 200,000 points of damage to the Abyss itself (this would later assist in the severance of the Demon Web Pits from the Abyss and indirectly assist Lolth's rise to the status of greater goddess, though Thanatos suffered terribly for it); stealing avatars of both Talona (a generic one) and Loviatar (a special one which had big repercussions for the wicked goddess related to no longer having a living goddess-contract with Kytons and Erinyes), weakening both, and imbuing the full divinity of both avatars into a servitor of her own instead; shattering the artifact responsible for the original rise of Orcus, Kiaransalee, and Velsharoon to divinity (though Orcus was no longer a god and Kiaransalee and Velsharoon had both been clever enough to escape Talos' clutches - and reliance upon the artifact - long ago), fundamentally alter the connection of Teneborous and Orcus, and (by the middle of 1373) take over all of Turmish as its goddess/elected ruler (the latter a title she didn't actually seek at all), and completely ridding Turmish of Loviatar's influence, and even Talona's (which, in the Vilhoun Reach, where Turmish is, is a pretty big deal). Oh, and also freeing herself from both sleeves she'd ended up with - she accidentally touched the one Vecna had been "gifted" with after she shattered him, and ended up getting that one too.

Oh, and she also blew up a mountain. With Sunbursts. (There is a forming cult called "Cult of the Shattered Peak" based on this event that melds some elements of Talos and Basha together and has a slightly skewed view of the legends surrounding her deeds. How this will interact with the other "Cult of the Shattered Peak" and Basha's actual worship has yet to be explored.)

THE FANCIFUL FINALE (I appear to alliterating now, just to do so)
Delightfully enough, I even managed to do all this and neatly tie up some loose ends into a campaign we'd already played (quite some time ago) set in 1374/1375 also in the Vilhoun Reach. So far all of our campaigns in FR have been able to neatly fit into a single chronology!

* Kiaransalee did manage to get a boost in divine power (as did her mysterious "Szass-like" ally, though Talona got very little, and lost more than she gained), though all Basha's enemies were eventually put down in some way or another (except for Shar who never personally showed up) and highly inconvenienced. Lolth, of course, was Silent during all this, but anyone who knows FR history knows she isn't going to be Silent forever. Kiaransalee and orcus are busy for quite some time, as all of the former's phylactery-towers, except the one in Thanatos were destroyed, meaning that she keeps regenerating there...

* Vecna's shards of divinity were scattered across Faerun by an epic-level deity-force Contingency-type effect, waiting to grow in strength and eventually "ascend" as Vecna again (though he'd be greatly weakened, as Kiaransalee did manage to siphon off a fair amount of his divinity by collecting/destroying the "micro-undead" he created in his death and consuming their tiny slivers of it during her ritual, just before Basha defeated her). Some of these are coming into strange effects with left-over Bhaalspawn (who weren't caught up in the crisis) or their children, and also some of the survivors of the Untheric battle between Gilgamesh and Tiamat. Vecna may be completely expunged from this universe if these extremely weak fragments never grow enough or are destroyed, or too much time passes and even they forget him. [Note: in Greyhawk, Vecna still exists... this Vecna is a parallel version, similar to how Moradin and Lolth have parallel, but different versions of themselves in Greyhawk and Toril. However, the GH-Vecna expended a rather large amount of resources in order to gain what he saw as a back-up phylactery... and fail.]

* The Underdark of Turmish became a reasonably safe place (if flooded with that faerzress-stuff) with a number of well-guarded and powerfully warded passages that bring non-evil underdark denizens to Basha's sacred plateau (the place she first appeared and where she battled Vecna... and seared off the top of the mountain by vaporizing it with the sun), which is basically a growing metropolis of Underdark immigrants. The city where Basha unhooked the Abyss from Toril is still there (it was a city before Kiarensalee turned it into an Abyssal pit, now it's lit as if by daylight, flooded with faerzress, and hallowed to Basha - the all of it), though emptied during Basha's campaign, is starting to fill its upper levels with non-evil refugees (many of whom quickly depart via the "safe paths" up to the surface).

* Basha finder her portfolio has changed somewhat from her father's, due to her local worship. She also becomes extremely busy in 1373 when, as she attempts to take on the portfolio aspect of crystal/gem dragons as well (and reinvent herself again), she runs into the very real challenge of the Dracorage mythal. But that is another story.

Anyway, it was pretty awesome, and getting to stat up various deities was a fun, if time-consuming exercise (although I admit I statted Kiaransalee a bit wrong... I'd given her a level or two of assassin, because I'd mentally mixed her legend up with one of another deity that Lolth had actually consumed and imitated. Whoops!), and its really neat to use the Pathfinder format to get things clarified, especially compared to the rather messy format that Deities and Demigods (and other 3.0/3.5 works) presents. It also helped me refine some of my thoughts on divinity in a d20 system and how it should work (something I've long disagreed with the 3.0 Deities and Demigods books about, though I do see some of their points and what they tried to do).

THE QUARULOUS QUERY! (no, it's not, but at some point above, I got hooked on alliterative titles!)
So what about you guys? Any nifty stories to share recently?

* Made up entirely by me, just for the opening part of this campaign! Unlike the names not marked with an asterisk!
** I'd created these minor artifacts for a campaign that will likely never see the light of day. They have a long and interesting history that I probably won't go into now. For the more mechanically minded amongst you: this takes a "lesser god" (any divine rank of 10 or less) and permanently "infects" them with the Shade template, Dark template, binds them irrevocably to the Shadow Weave (as if by all the feats), while simultaneously piercing their flesh in the fore-arm with spikes that have epic-level-variants of the daylight spell and a targeted dimensional anchor placed on them, meaning that the god so-bound can't go anywhere via planar travel, and can't access most of their nifty new powers... and also feel very extremely uncomfortable/in pain. As they are artifacts made of adamantine-alloy, they are nearly impervious to destruction and cover everything from the deity's fingertips all the way to their shoulder, with holy symbols of Shar - who can offer them an atonement-like affect at any time, that the deity in question can accept. Upon accepting this, they basically become a thrall of Shar's, and the sleeve vanishes elsewhere to do Shar's bidding.

*** It's okay. I know they'd think the same about us.

[Ryanderman]

Hey tacticslion,

I'm posting this here, because your PM box is full.

This is random, but I've noticed that you are in your 20's, married, play D&D, and live in Florida. I too am in my 20's, married, play D&D, and live in Florida.

You also just mentioned that you lack a local group. And as my wife and I just moved, we don't have a local group either. I don't suppose it's possible that on top of it all, you happen to live in the Tampa/St. Pete area, do you?

[tacticslion]

EDITING IN MY DOUBLE POST:
Hey tacticslion,

I'm posting this here, because your PM box is full.

This is random, but I've noticed that you are in your 20's, married, play D&D, and live in Florida. I too am in my 20's, married, play D&D, and live in Florida.

You also just mentioned that you lack a local group. And as my wife and I just moved, we don't have a local group either. I don't suppose it's possible that on top of it all, you happen to live in the Tampa/St. Pete area, do you?

Nay my good sir, but look in the Marion County area, and we're in that region!

It would be pretty sweet to hang with you at some point... though it would likely be a weekend. I'll try and clear my inbox. Give me a few!

...

NOW I've got ten slots open. I need to work more on it, but I've kind of run out of time to do so. I'll get to work more on it later. I'm going to edit my previous post above this one, so this stuff makes more sense. :)