In Complete Champion one of the PrCs has the ability to add Fast Healing 2 to every creature summoned. That's pretty sweet.
Search Posts
If you're a DM and your PCs aren't good, ask yourself if your campaign is heavily aimed at theft, murder, and desecration, i.e. "killing things, taking their stuff, and looting old graves." If you want good PCs, they need to have evil opposition and/or good origins. That will most often be either an evil overlord of some kind, if the PCs are independent, or evil rebels, if the PCs work for a good king/church/etc..
It has nothing to do with game mechanics for me. I find the idea of roleplaying a cleric distasteful. Real world zealots are bad enough; the fictional ones who have actual proof that their god exists seem like they'd be no end of irritation.
What if you had to roll to confirm the fumble? :) Then you only have a 1 in 400 chance of dropping your sword (stabbing yourself is stupid and nigh-impossible). I've seen students of western martial arts lose their grip (not necessarily drop, but lose control enough to have lost a standard action to reset) on their weapons from time to time, but it's much more rare than 1 in 20.
Very frequently what makes a character especially powerful is the gear, not the class, stats, or feats (everyone has equal access to all that). I find that keeping a campaign relatively low magic (I typically think of the Arthurian legends for this-- magic exists, and there are wizards, but you can't go to Ye Olde Magick Weapon Shoppe and pick up a vorpal). Keeping found magic items relatively low is a great way to ensure that monsters stay challenging. As long as you don't randomly place treasure, you should do all right.
Well, I think that grossly mischaracterizes what I'd said. I repeat: 1) Adventurers are regularly faced with life-threatening situations. 2) Adventurers don't want to die. All this means is that if you're playing a fighter in full plate, then spending a feat on Stealthy is pretty stupid compared with Weapon Specialization. Play all the Shadowcasters you want, but make it a *useful character*. One of my favorite classes is Truenamer, but I'm always, always going to take Skill Focus: Truenaming when I play one because I want the character to be maximally useful, i.e. I don't want my character to die. Conversely, I once played with a person whose wizard character memorized Greater Teleport *twice* and was without Disintegrate when heading into a dungeon. I doubt anyone would argue that wizard isn't a powerful class, but that guy turned his into a commoner with a pointy hat through lousy spell selection. A half-ogre spiked chain wielding fighter with improved trip is really, really good at one thing and one thing only. He still has bad reflex and will saves, and while he might be super amazing in a toe-to-toe fight, that's really just incentive for the NPCs to avoid a toe-to-toe fight with him. A big part of the problem some folks might be having is that most of the modern pre-fab adventures are heavily combat oriented as D&D becomes more and more like a videogame and less and less like the open-ended story that it has been (which is not to say that there haven't been vast improvements in the rules); the videogame mindset focuses solely on raw power and solely on "action" as a means to resolve plot points.
I grant up to a +2 circumstance bonus for effective roleplaying, but don't penalize them if they do it poorly. At least they made an effort. The best way to see the behavior you want is to create circumstances where that behavior is rewarded.
So, my PCs found themselves in a situation where there was no clear bad guy (if the killed the dryad, the islanders would have all starved eventually anyway, and killing the islanders was unpalatable for obvious reasons, though the dryad did say that she'd be okay with a simple culling to bring the population under control), and they had to figure out how to resolve the issue. They ended up doing it in such a way that sidestepped combat entirely ....Which is an excellent example of how things can go forward in a non-story manner. If one of the munchkins under discussion (thank you for the correction!) was sitting at that table though, he'd probably have been bored to tears and trying to provoke a fight. And the key is that if my group HAD decided to go that route, I was prepared. DMs make a mistake when they create a scenario and imagine only one way it "should" play out, especially if they become frustrated when the players' solution doesn't meet their "correct" solution. The better way to go is to create a situation where the players' dictate the direction of the outcome, and to have several outcomes prepared. Sticking with my above example, my players could have chosen to kill the dryad, or the islanders, or neither. They could have left. It was entirely up to them, and I had different eventualities mapped out, the only difference being that more creative solutions yielded more XP than less creative solutions. I could have had a party of 4 gestalt Monk/Driuds with Vows of Poverty all around and it wouldn't have made a difference in terms of balance, simply because the adventure was not one where combat was either the only or the most desirable solution. If you are going to rely heavily on "kill the bad guys" as a plot device, it's your responsibility to challenge the players, not ban feats and classes until they no longer challenge the DM. The key here is that at no point did I ever think to myself, "This is how they should behave." That's silly and pointless, and sets you up for failure and late-night Internet complaining. Really, if your main villain is going to offer an alliance to your party, you need to be prepared with what to do if they accept.
SKR's PC Shurrin stepped forward after winning initiative and rolled 3 d20s in a row, killin the thing with the optional (but in play in that game) DMG rule about instant kills. Guess who the DM was? Monte Cook. Is that incompetent DMing? No, clearly not. You're talking about something that had a 1:8000 chance of happening, which is wholly different from sending a villain with 40 hp against a party that has a character who has a 75% chance of hitting and deals 20 points of damage on average. Furthermore, non-combat options and roleplay are great-- but if the bard takes ends up with a +20 bluff modifier, it doesn't mean that player has done something wrong if he then tries to bluff his way out of everything. If your entire campaign can be undone by a guy with a huge bluff score, then yeah, you probably are pretty inept. To give an example, the last adventure I ran involved the PCs (level 2) landing on an island that the captain of their ship had visited decades before. The arrived to find half the island denuded, overrun by rats, with a starving population claiming the "forest spirits" were attacking them. The PCs suspected a defiler, and entered the forest to find a dryad and some treants, who explained that improvements in technology given the islanders on the last visit had allowed them to increase food production, which led to a population boom, which led to overfishing and overlumbering, which is turn caused the dryad to get mad. She told the PCs that she was going to wipe out the islanders before they did any more harm. So, my PCs found themselves in a situation where there was no clear bad guy (if the killed the dryad, the islanders would have all starved eventually anyway, and killing the islanders was unpalatable for obvious reasons, though the dryad did say that she'd be okay with a simple culling to bring the population under control), and they had to figure out how to resolve the issue. They ended up doing it in such a way that sidestepped combat entirely (which was good, because I had a whole riot ready to go that would have solved the problem in unsavory ways). That being said, my group has nothing but optimized builds and very high stats overall (12+1d6, 12+1d6, 6+2d6, 6+2d6, 3d6, 3d6), yet we actually took a week off gaming because the party needed more time to try and find a solution for the problem. If I had sent them against a bunch of orcs and an ogre or two, they would have blazed through it in a minute. As things played out, there were several combat heavy situations, a lot of roleplaying, negotiation, and creative problem solving. The DM has the responsibility of challenging the players. The players have the responsibility of working together to overcome challenges. A DM who has to hamstring his players is a DM who isn't being creative enough.
The real problem i have is that when there is one character doing all the fighting it takes away some of the fun from the other players. Like dealing out alot of damage at a low level and killing the would be boss in a single round alone. Is it not possible, at least, that the other players may need to simply cowboy up and play better characters? I find it very silly to suggest that a player should do anything other than make the best possible character they can. I think we can all agree on the following: 1) Adventurers are regularly faced with life-threatening situations. 2) Adventurers don't want to die. It seems to me that if you accept those two premises as true, then from a realism standpoint your character should either always try to maximize his contribution to the party, or should have plans for early retirement. What I see most commonly in these types of threads are complaints about people who run characters that do something "too" well, to the point where they overshadow the rest of the party. I think this is almost always the fault of the DM, and sometimes the fault of the other players. A good DM provides a variety of challenges that can be resolved in many different ways and villains that use good tactical sense. If all encounters are resolved by combat, then the fighter will excel. But the cleric shines when the undead are present, the bard can handle negotiations, and so on. Each character class will overshadow the others depending on the circumstances, and a good DM will find a balance. Similarly, if you have two characters of the same class, the better built one will excel at performing its job. If one fighter decides he wants to be a power-attacking greatswordsman in full plate and his ally decides that he wants to specialize in throwing axe and comes up with the character quirk that he only carries a single family heirloom axe, then naturally the more effective character will be more likely to survive. That is about the only situation when I blame the other players-- it's not someone else's fault if you decide to limit your own survivability. The bulk of the issue lies with the DM. I can't think of a single time that a main villain I've devised has ever been struck down in a single blow, mainly because my villains are not stupid. If you're a bad guy, and you are faced with a foe who can conceivably take you out in a single hit, then you have to be incredibly stupid to face them in face-to-face combat, especially alone. That's just incompetent DMing. The monsters aren't lining up to become an XP snack; they should be played with the same motivations the PCs have, or at least with the idea that not even an animal will die needlessly if it can help it. I'd really like to see someone make a post that said "I'm fed up with my players and DM. The rest of the party can't make a useful character to save their lives so I get stuck on the front lines doing all the work, and the DM can't figure out that low AC plus high HP equals an easy encounter for me."
This is one of the main reasons I don't use pre-fab stuff very often-- if you don't tailor the game to match the players, you get burned. Waaaaaay back in 2nd edition, I had a fighter who had gone with the archery kit from a Complete book. He was firing 5 arrows a round at maybe third level. It was brutal. He mowed down a wyvern before it even managed to reach them. So, I changed my tactics: ettercaps and giant spiders proved more of a threat to that party than almost anything before, because they were trapped in a web when attacked. It wasn't a TPK situation, but it scared them because all of a sudden their best weapons were useless.
So don't engage. If you have enemies with any kind of intelligence, they will employ tactics that don't allow the PCs to use their strongest abilities. A simple pit or net trap could give your monsters 1-3 rounds of free hits while the PCs scramble to get free. A rust monster can kill any problem items, as can simply losing them at sea during a battle. Sundering is an often overlooked option. I generally think banning books is a weak option-- the DM needs to be able to outsmart his players, not nerf them. The game is a system of controlled elements with dice as a semi-randomizer. It is quite possible, and easy, to be exceptionally good at one or two things, but impossible to be powerful at everything. Most classes have at least one weak save; attack that from time to time. If you run a videogame-style campaign, videogame-style characters will always win the day. A vampire with any kind of experience should never engage in a solo attack from the front unless assured that there will be no effective resistance. They're just too smart for that. Consider what a monster would do if *it* planned on winning, and then have it *do just that*. Run your encounters like the bad guys are out for a TPK, just like the PCs are-- it's your job to keep things fair, not to guarantee PC survival. A CR 15 demon against a 4th level party isn't fair, but an EL 8 that exclusively uses hit-and-run tactics under cover of night certainly is. Darkvision, if they even have it, only extends 60 feet for *most* races.
Wow. This only shows up in my group when someone hasn't adequately prepared for their character-- you get a standard action (commonly either a spell or an attack) and a move action. As long as you know what your spells all do, and have your character designed around a combat concept with which you are familiar (I took improved trip but haven't read the trip rules, woooooo!), I don't understand how that can happen. I can't imagine taking 3 hours on a single encounter unless it was designed that way. If buffing is the issue, have the players prepare a list of who gets what beforehand so you can just say "We buff according to plan alpha" and be done with it.
THAT I can go for, though I'd probably have the god demand some kind of quest as an act of contrition *without any loss of powers*. My reasoning would be that the paladin has now broken his code once, albeit with justification, and it will be easier to justify a second time. That scenario is so much better than "He's evil, but unarmed. Eh, I'll kill him anyway because it's the right thing to do." A good paladin (i.e. well-played) should actually have MORE moral dilemmas than most.
Yeah... no. Do you honestly think that a person can't be forced into a situation where there is no good option, and they must be forced to choose between two evils? Do you also think that a paladin, having no other options, might not be granted clemency by his deity later? Look at it from a storytelling perspective: the paladin makes a hard decision, hoping for the best. He loses his powers. He asks for forgiveness from his god, who grants it after a special quest in gratitude for years of service and out of understanding that the paladin is only mortal. And yet, the paladin has the potential to become unrepentant, possibly losing his paladinhood-- maybe even deciding the evil action wasn't evil because the ends justify the means, then becoming resentful of his god for punishing him "unjustly". Wham, you have a believable blackguard if you want. Entire epics have been written about that same concept.
"If I do not take action X, then Evil Y will occur. Action X is normally prohibited by the Code, but the Code is a directive for how to do Good. Meh, you can rationalize almost anything if you put it in the context of "the ends justify the means", which is effectively what you want to do here. If I were playing a paladin, and were placed in a situation where I had to do something prohibited by my god (and the code has to be divine, because paladins get magic powers from their faith) to prevent something catastrophically evil, I would have the roleplaying sense to suck it up and accept that I might need an Atonement later on, and hope that my god would be understanding. I might even pray for guidance or use spells to connect with my deity so the DM has a chance to interact and do something cool, like send a dream in which you're given permission to make your deal with the devil, but only if some fantastic quest is done afterward to regain your powers. That way you go in knowing that you have the opportunity for redemption-- which to me is much better storytelling than just "Oh, yeah, you can loophole your way out of every tough decision."
This is where you run into trouble. The Code is the "Lawful" part, and since it is a directive from a Good god, the Code IS Good. It is ALWAYS the Right Thing because that is what his god says is the Right Thing. A paladin doesn't get to make his own judgments and then hope it makes Pelor happy; he has to ask himself what Pelor's would want and then do that. When playing a divine character, you have to remember that moral judgments aren't made according to what you, the player, believes, but according to what your character, as someone whose prayers are *actually answered by an inarguably real divine being in whose good graces he wants to stay*, would believe.
Ba-dum-ching.
If they're going to fail to do The Right Thing because they follow the Code... then the Code was wrong. I think this is the core misconception. For a paladin to say that his code is in error, that is tantamount to saying that his GOD is in error. You just can't do that and expect to be believably portraying a holy character. D&D gods have some advantages over real world ones, specifically in that there is zero debate over whether or not they actually exist. D&D gods are real beings that give you magic powers-- do you really think that someone is going to say "Well heck, Heironeous, I disagree with what you consider to be the right thing to do here," and still keep the blessing of that god? Saying "My code is wrong" is exactly the sort of independent thought that has no place in religions. A paladin has, in no small way, surrendered some of his free will to his god. "The Right Thing", as you say, is not going to ever be "The Right Thing as I see it," but will always have to be "The Right Thing as my deity sees it." This doesn't mean you get to go around detecting evil and then smiting random folks in the street, but it does mean that you may have to take a hard stand on things that you, as a player, don't agree with.
Seriously, please read Le Morte d'Arthur, The Idylls of the King, and The Once and Future King before you mischaracterize my prime example, Sir Galahad, any further. Read book three of The Fairie Queene. Read Gawain and the Green Knight, read anything, anything at all that will give you some sense of the literary tradition that comes with the concept of a paladin, a holy warrior who is virtuous not only in theory but in reality. These figures are nothing like the "stereotype" you describe, any more than they are like the paladin-lite, with all of the powers and none of the sacrifice, that has been described herein.
D&D, while having a clearly middle ages theme, is usually held to a more modern standard of morals. I'm sure that any female PC would get pretty annoyed when her character was jailed for speaking at a public meeting without permission from a male, or having the local regent come down to "deflower" her to consecrate her wedding day. They were called the dark ages for a reason. Yet, not for those reasons. Pelor wouldn't have an Inquisition because that is not a Lawful Good action. The Knights Templar, while being historical, were not exactly Lawful Good either. In fact, if you want to bring history into this (and you are the first), then I'd make the argument that all major religions show strong evidence of being Lawful Evil-- at best. Historical figures have nothing, nothing to do with the inspiration for the paladin unless you start to count figures like Joan of Arc or other warrior-saints. However, the holy warrior of whom I speak is not a real person, and never has been. I spoke of Sir Galahad Using your Pelor example, if Pelor teaches that ALL undead are to be destroyed, a Lawful Good fighter might stumble upon a Chaotic Good mummy and let it go because it's not evil. A paladin (or cleric) of Pelor would not. The paladin would say "My god tells me to destroy all undead, therefore I will destroy this mummy." I stand firm that allowing players to make the paladin a moral relativist cheapens the class into a Lawful Good fighter/cleric of a Neutral Good god. It's an easy way out that hinders roleplaying and treats the character less like a real person who has given themselves over to an ideal and more like a person who wants special abilities and to play lip service to an ideal-- which may be the whole point you're working toward. A paladin working alongside someone who is a known thief should be a fighter in a hurry, no matter how much they try to rationalize the fact that they are not living up to their ideals. That being said, I don't like paladins for specifically the reason that if one person is a paladin and a competent roleplayer, you really need to have a divinely-themed party. Which can be a fun thing in and of itself, of course.
Bah, it ate my first post. An Arthurian legend tells of a knight who was given a choice: commit a mortal sin or allow some maidens to die. That knight chose to let the maidens (who later turned out to be evil and in on a ruse to make the knight fall from grace) die, since if they were virtuous they would go to heaven, but if he sinned intentionally his soul would be in danger and he would lose God's favor. It is very easy to rationalize committing the sin as being the "greater good", but that kind of moral flexibility is not what makes a holy warrior. That is not a paladin. That is a fighter who is also a nice guy. The challenge in roleplaying a paladin is that you must adhere to certain principles *no matter the cost*. If stealing is wrong, you cannot steal *even if it means that you starve* because staying in your god's favor is more important than living. Most people cannot understand the mindset that a paladin has, so they either rationalize away the unique flavor of the class with moral ambiguity, or they criticize it as "too restrictive". Paladins are a special, deep, and challenging class to play well. They often do not make friends easily or at all because the vast majority of people in the world are not holy. They might all be nice folk, but they are not single-mindedly devoted to upholding a deity's will.
Beguiler/Warmage/Dread Necromancer! Man that sounds like fun.
When I think of a paladin, I am reminded of Sir Galahad. Remember, paladins are *holy warriors*, not simply really lawful and good fighters. A holy warrior should view the world in a very black and white kind of way-- there is a reason the prestige class for the paladin many of you have described is called a "Gray Guard". Paladins are unyielding because they have the belief that their god's way (and their gods actually DO speak to them and give them powers) is right.
The Scout/Ranger feat is amazingly good, since you can get Skirmish damage to apply to undead that way. An 11 Scout/9 Ranger is a tremendous build. I really, really want the Rogue/Swashbuckler feat to be good... and it kind of is, if you take 3 levels of Swashbuckler and X of Rogue. The problem with a Swashbuckler with Sneak Attack is that Swashbucklers don't really get much after 3rd level to supplement that, and the difference between a 3 Swashbuckler/17 Rogue with that feat and one without it is almost nothing. I really like them as they give a reason to stay within 2 core classes and not go into a PrC. Reserve feats are, IMO, very cool since they give Wizards some options for fights that might otherwise leave them with nothing to do. "Okay, I know there's a boss monster around the corner, so I don't want to waste my spells on his underlings, so... I'll use my crossbow!"
How about Daggers reduce the TWF penalty by half, so even unfeated they are decent choice for adding an extra attack.I would not have a problem with that. I would probably balance it with the fact that daggers count as 'extra-light' and thus take an ADDITIONAL -2 penalty on Sunder and Disarm checks when used. Seems fair to me, and somewhat realistic too. Daggers would actually be really hard to sunder, simply because they are so light that they have incredible give in someone's hand and can be moved about with ease. I'd say that it is FAR more likely that a successful sunder attempt would knock the dagger out of the person's hand and send it flying rather than break it.
One of the real advantages to playing a diviner is that you get an extra spell slot and only have to give up one school. Divination magic is almost always very useful, but a lot of it is utility spells that you typically want to have... but don't always memorize because you also need a big, nasty spell to handle situations where you need to deal heavy damage. Divination sort of becomes like a domain spell.
Years ago, I was DMing a Ravenloft campaign, and my players were in Schloss Mordenheim, having just entered the domain. While guests of Victor Mordenheim, they were allowed to investigate the manor, though he warned them to be careful and to stay out of the lab. Naturally, they went into the lab. I went into a lengthy, detailed description of the books, specimen jars, and vials of chemicals engaged in an active experiment. One of my players asks "Is that poison?" Another character, having made a successful Herbalism/Healing roll (2E), replied with "That is definitely not poison." So the character immediately grabs a vial and drinks it down, expecting some kind of magical result. I hid a grin as I described how the acid he'd just consumed ate its way through his neck, spilling out on to his chest before he collapsed over, dead. The moral of the story was "Don't drink strange things you find in a mad scientist's laboratory."
Mine was on a 15 point standard deviation. It was a 159, professionally administered (i.e. not an Internet blog meme). Looking at a bell curve, for a 15 point scale an IQ of about 140 equals an 18. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8c/Standard_deviation_diag ram.svg/350px-Standard_deviation_diagram.svg.png I reserve the right to be wrong on the math since I haven't done anything more mathematical than balance my checkbook in ten years, unless you start talking geometry-- which is not of particular use here. :) If you want something with language, though, I'm your man. :)
I can explain how this applies to Very Hot Water. Ever been in a spa that was just way too hot? 105, 106 degrees or more? You get nauseous. You feel tired. You get most of the physical reactions associated with a high fever. In short, you feel awful, and the longer you stay in the worse it gets. So once you get out, you're tired, drained, and weak. You can barely move, much less dodge or lift a sword, so the next thing that hits you probably hits fairly solidly.
18 seconds *swimming* through boiling water? I wouldn't even rate for damage. I would just say that they drop to 1 hp the first round, -9 the second, and are dead the third. The thought of surviving immersion in water that is at least 212 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a moment is ridiculous-- having a chance to live at all is heroic.
Barbarians begin the game illiterate. Upon taking a level in any other class, they learn to read. All you have to do to learn to read in D&D is kill a dozen or so orcs.
Keep practicing with that longsword and I'll bet you change your tune. Some blades, of course, are clearly not meant to thrust at all, but that's not one of them.
Having swung a longsword around in the manner of Talhoffer and Ringeck (following the Lichtenauer tradition) with martial intent, I can say that the guards Ox, Plow, and Fool both lend themselves very well to thrusting attacks, and that the so-called "Murder Strike", which involves gripping the blade in both hands and swinging the hilt like a hammer, would do bludgeoning damage. p.s. A longsword in the real world is more like what D&D calls a bastard sword, and what D&D calls a longsword is more like an arming sword, as those are actually a one handed weapon. Longswords, or hand-and-a-half swords, are primarily meant to be used with both hands and become fairly difficult to wield with one hand. Sound familiar?
An 18 Int is a 1 in 256 chance, or about .5%. A 180 IQ is staggeringly less common than that. 10 x Int = Bad At Math :P
A spiked chain is a piercing weapon and can therefore be used under water without penalty.
I think the "nothing in the other hand" restriction is designed to prevent two-handed weapons and two-weapon fighting, as well as the use of a shield in conjunction with the feat. As someone who studies European martial arts, I can say that there is a difference in what you can accomplish with one active blade as opposed to two-- guards are different, and attacks and counterattacks have subtle differences in position and movement. There are also some moves that can only be done well with an open off hand, where not being able to open one's palm for placement or balance would make even holding a coin a nuisance. Sword and lantern is briefly touched upon in Domenico Angelo's 1763 L'Ecole des armes. Two plates and a few paragraphs are devoted to it, so it certainly has historical backing.
Don't forget, the guy wasn't pushed. He jumped on purpose. Why, exactly, should he be freaking out when everything is going according to plan?
Pshaw. "Doctor" is CLEARLY a prestige class. Multiclassing the core classes is more like double-majoring-- totally doable.
You could also just use Races of the Dragon to add the half-dragon template by taking the Draconic Racial Class on page 71.
The biggest, and IMO, the only, drawback to VoP is that it forces the DM to give out treasure to everyone else in the party on par with the PC's VoP bonuses. It takes control of the party's power level away from the DM, which is almost always a bad thing. That being said, if you look at the bonuses and think "Meh, not so bad," then by all means let them use it as is. If it freaks you out, chances are you give out less treasure than VoP makes up for, so naturally you'll resist it.
On what, exactly, are you basing your concept of a paladin? I am looking to Sirs Bors, Percival, and Galahad from the various depictions of the Arthurian Legend. I assure you that those figures would certainly *not* adventure with someone who would buy stolen or illegal goods, nor would they make some paltry excuse to rationalize what they considered sinful behavior. There is a huge difference between merely being lawful and good and being a holy warrior infused by the power of faith to smite evil and uphold morality. A paladin need not be heavy handed-- indeed, should be humble about his mission-- but make no mistake that the literary inspirations for the class would suffer no stain on their honor or souls.
Parties are already expected to be doing good things. Well, not really. Some parties are holy warriors, some are knightly and virtuous, but others are mercenary or thieving, some can just as easily be corrupt or merely beset by chance, accidental or reluctant heroes. Having any character with stringent alignment restrictions like those of a Paladin will force the party down certain paths, which is not automatically going to conflict with the desires of the players. It does mean, however, that you're probably not going to be able to buy goods on the black market, for example. Breaking and entering is right out, as is, arguably, espionage. Conversely, if the orphanage needs help, there's a good chance you're taking that job with a paladin on hand. Not a bad thing, but a thing nonetheless. Characters will always dictate what their environment can be like; a cleric of Lathander going for Hunter of the Dead will not mix with a Dread Necromancer. A full plate tank isn't a great option if the rest of the party is a rogue, a beguiler, and a druid. A druid isn't so appropriate for a city-based campaign, and a rogue in the forest should probably be a scout. Finally, you have to consider why a holy warrior would be mixed up with the rest of the party-- easily understood if the party is divinely based and shares a religion. However, it's pretty difficult to justify why this servant of a deity is going after piles of gold in an abandoned temple, possibly defiling it in the process, just because he found a map. Different styles to reach the same objective is fine and dandy, but if the objectives are different-- a group owes it to each other to make sure they're all on the same page. If three people want to be neutral cat burglars and the fourth comes to the table as a lawful cop, someone's stuck playing a game where someone else is dictating the choices.
One thing to consider is that if you have a Paladin character the rest of the party is pretty much railroaded in terms of alignment and behavior. If the rest of the party wants to be holy warriors it's fine, but check with your friends and make sure they're okay with having to be righteous.
You could always take 3 levels of Paladin and then switch over to Fighter-- the nice save bonuses and immunities, and four levels later you hit weapon specialization just in time to pick up a prestige class.
You're ten adventures in. Give him the first one. It'll take 2 months to get through on lunch hours alone. Big deal.
Oh no! The sky, she falls!
I think we’re being a little too hard on 8’s and 9’s. In most real situations, they would be difficult to distinguish from 10’s and 11’s. Even playing a 6 or 7 should be possible with a little imagination. I think it is tremendously funny that we're using the same evidence to come to polar opposite conclusions. I think the 10s and 11s are being overestimated. :)
You had me convinced at the Mr. Peabody reference. :)
1) Yes, an 8 is a moron. If the average IQ is 100, then an 8 represents someone who is probably in the 85-90 range. By my standards, that's a pretty dumb person. Maybe not obviously MR, but still really stupid. A 12 is probably an honor student, but I don't consider that to be very impressive. Lots of people are honor students. 2) I agree. I think someone who is moderately above average across the board makes for a mediocre hero, but that's just me. Unless it is my intention to do so for the purposes of an interesting character (and I have, on occassion, had a lot of fun with kobold PCs), I have difficulty wanting to play a character who I feel is worse than I am-- not that I have an 18 Str and therefore a 16 Str is unacceptable, but I mean that in a more generic "my heroic character should feel more capable than I am" way. I'll probably need to justify that statement to someone, but hey. 3) I do prefer to mold my character to what I roll rather than mold my stats to the character I want. I feel like that forces me to explore options I might not have otherwise seen, and hey, I *might* get lucky and roll 17, 17, 17, 17, 15, and 13 using 4d6 in front of the DM and another player like I did last year. And let me tell you, after that, point buy can eat it. It was FAN-tastic. I was also fantastic playing a wizard with a 4 Cha, and no stat over 9 but a 17 Int. Man, was that guy ever a know-it-all.
|