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I doubt you will find one (apart from using a single prestige class, spell or feat). If they made an adventure using special rules, they would have to make a side bar explaining the rules to people who do not own the book. I do not know Heroes of Battle, but I think the really fun stuff (biig battles) has quite extensive rules. Although, this is just a good guess, I may be wrong.

Thanks, this helps a lot!

Yes, your players have to decide, what they want; if they want socializing(sp?), maybe switch to board games, there off-topic discussion does not disturb most of the time. If they agree, yes we are sometimes a bunch of guys with hornets in their trousers, but we want to change, that is a good start: make them put away everything disturbing: like mobile phones, gameboy, unecessary game books, CDs and so on. Look for a location for playing where there is as little diversion as possible (so, if there is no CD player, then they cannot listen to CDs). On the other hand: like said before, give them time to talk about off-topic stuff, maybe in the beginning, while everyone is finishing his Pizza, doing leveling, buying stuff etc. Then make clear: now we start. Maybe make the players recount last time's events, so its them doing the talking and they start focusing on the game; and they won't interrupt themselves, right?
If there are people picking on each other (by writing on documents, etc.) do it like a teacher: seperate them! Of course only before they sit down in the beginning.
These are just some ideas, how to change things, I wish you, that your players really want to play D&D and are sensible enough, what is necessary for this.
Someone said, just leave: maybe you should do this one time and do not offer to play again (but without any grudge, if they are your friends, just meet to do something else), if they really want to play, they will come to you (at least then you know, they enjoy D&D by itself).

Well here we are again ranting, but I hope there is enough crunch in it for you.

I will start TFoE next week and have some things which are unclear to me:
-In the cathedral (room1), are all the doors locked (and which locks do they have, I did not see any information)
- In room 3: how many cultists are there? (EL3/CR 1:3 means 9 cultists?) and why do they have Atk+2; I thought +1: Com1 +0 Str +1
- how did you treat resting in the complex, what about resupplying; I think for a group of this level it is quite dangerous, if they do not have the possibility to buy fresh healing potions etc. or is this no problem in the end?

Thanks for your advice.

How many players are there at your table? In my experience, if you have more than 4-6 characters/players things bog down considerably, as you as a DM cannot pay attention to everyone, so there are some players leading the action, and the rest wanders off with their thoughts or physically, thus disturbing the game (maybe with off-topic talking).
What I start doing in combat, if no one thinks ahead of his turn what to do and then starts thinking long for tacticts when his initiative is on, I count down loudly from 10, you will see how quickly the player decides on what to do (works every time;-). But don't be too harsh especially with novice players, if the player says, I cast this spell, now how does it work, he should have the time to look it up.
If it is not combat, but planing, give your players some time to plan, but if they just discuss the same point all over again, just say: "so now, what do you do" and repeat this in shorter and shorter times. One warning: if your players are forced to act by you and they get a horrible beating, they will insist on planing even more next time, so build up their confidence in their ability and in yours not being their enemy building too difficult encounters. And if nothing helps, bring the action to them either by having the enemies discover them, or by wandering monsters.
Sorry I also started ranting, but I hope it helps.

Thanks for your help. It will be great!

Gaseous Form does not allow a vampire to go through a solid wall.

SRD wrote:

It can pass through small holes or narrow openings, even mere cracks, with all it was wearing or holding in its hands, as long as the spell persists.

Yes, I know, I just figured that a cave-in would leave such wholes.

What do you think of this solution:
Kenewor also wove a spell which hinders undead and anyone carrying the fiendish foot from exiting the crypt, so the thiefs could not leave and killed Berwim for retribution. The good thing if there is no wall of stone in room 5 (or at least no longer), one of the goblins could stumble through it out of riosity, break the silver circle on the floor and thus the PCs arrive just at the moment when the first vampire spawn sucks him dry, drops him and goes after the PCs for more blood. Additionally the vampires are free now and the PCs have to kill them (maybe ally with some hobgoblins, if there are still some alive). I have to add, that my players only know the basic rules of D&D, so they probably will not question this arbitrary spell.

The needlefolk are kind of weak, but maybe I leave them out and just say, the elves were surprised by the Hobgoblins and suffered much more casualties and now wait for reinforcement. But as they want revenge now, they will hire the PCs who are conveniently there.

By the way: where do the vampires and spawns flee to, when they are at 0hp, where is their burial site?

I will meet up with my friends from home for a weekend of DnD and prepared Fiendish Footprints (Dungeon #122). While reading I saw several severe inconsitencies:
Berwim and his gang: it says since the cave-in they cannot leave the dungeon (and are thus starving), BUT they are vampires they can use gaseous form to escape.
Needle folk and the curse of the orc druid:
The elves claim that they will not enter the woods as it is cursed by the orc druid, but what about Neperchil? He lived there and had hunting parties and also Kenewor went there, they did not have problems with these hundreds of needlefolk, did they?
Berewim and his traps (this is not essential for the adventure and the players won't mind):
It says, that Berewim built the traps in room 7 and 8 in his "spare time". But on Kenewors map these traps are evaded by the map on the wooden map, so how could he know about these traps which were created years after his last visit?
Long story short: did you make changes to make the story more convincing? Which ones? Thanks for your ideas.

You should check out the Castle Maure adventures in dungeon, that is what dungeon crawls are all about!

Seeing that there are lots of none-English-speaking players on the boards, did someone actually translate the flavour texts? I was thinking about doing this as translation on the fly is quite difficult (and sound sometimes awdkward), but do not have the time to do so, I am afraid, and my players are all very good at understanding English.

Several things come to my mind:
- Resident Evil -> ravenous Zombies
- RE4 maybe some parasite infecting people
- Doom, there is another dimension which is in fact hell, so that concept is not uncommon for SciFi.

Would you prefer real hardcore SciFi or did you also think about a Spelljammer-like setting?

I do not know d20 Future, but you might want to have a look at Alternity, the old SciFi core system by TSR/WotC; it is not d20, but I like it and it used to be the basis of Stardrive, GammaWorld and Dark Matter. You will have to look on Ebay or buy a pdf, though, as it is out of print. But there you get even Psionics as a substitute for magic.

It wil be a lot of work to transform STAP to SciFi, but I really like the idea.

Are you sure? Ray of Frost is a targeted spell, and swarms are not affected by them (see D).

*Blush!* Sorry, I read the swarm traits, but must have overlooked this. If they can use torches, there is no problem there: 5 PCs with excellent abilitity scores...they could do something for their money!

Just a short question: my players will encounter the acid beetle swarm next session and I am wondering how they could kill this swarm. I know the wizard does not have burning hands and the artificer, of course, is of no use as they have to deal with the problem immediately. So would torches work (how much damage would they do apart from imposing a -4 to hit, how about quenching them while fighting) or do they have to use lamp oil? I am really worried. Thanks for your short advice.

HOWEVER... a complete INDEX, updated annually would be nice... maybe just a PDF. List all the feats, spells, classes, equipment, rules etc, by book and page. I would imagine they have to have something like this already for in house use, otherwise they would need to have a GREAT therapy rider on their insurance. And so far there have been no rumors of editors and staff being hauled off to Arkham.

This list already exists on the WotC Homepage:

[URL] http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tools[/URL]

Maybe for April's edition (perhaps just a short scenario), if it is made with a good twist to the story, why not?

This is mainly a question for Eberron people:

One of my players wants to play a warforged artificer in my AoW which will be set in the FR. I like the artificer in the AoW as he could susbstitute for a rogue in concerns to finding and disabling traps (can he?), but he does not lose his most important combat ability due to fighting mainly undead. Flavor and background story is no problem, he fits in quite well (both artificer and warforged).
I do not have the rules, not playing in Eberron, but I had a short look on them. Is the artificer really balanced? He has a lot of abilities from many field. What about the warforged, I read that these infusions could only be "cast" on items, but the warforged can cast them on himself, is this unbalancing in some way?
I have to say, that the player is experienced, whereas my other players are not. So the artificer should not seem to be better and cooler than the normal core classes, so that they do not feel their PCs to fall short of this on.
Also this player is new to my group and I do not know him. He sounds like an adult and sensible player, but you never know. Could he play any tricks at me with this class (later class combinations, prestige classes) which make the PC overpowered and uncontrollable?
Thank you in advance for your advice.

Eric,

Please don't think I was indicating above that your more indepth conversion was not a good way to go, it certianly is. I was just looking at two factors that I think would concern most DMs looking to convert.

1 - Time. The less work that is needed, the better. Your conversion do a better job than just porting things directly, but take more time. (God's would obviously need to be ported though)

2 - Player appreciation. In many cases your players won't even notice some of the differences unless they are FR-philes. If that is the case than it may be worth the extra effort... it just depends on your group.

Sean Mahoney

I agree fully that the conversion was really well done. But the aforementioned is exactly my problem: time and lacking appreciation by my players. But what did I buy my City of Splendors Book for;-)

I think I will convert, but I will leave Diamond Lake and Redhand as they are (I am also afraid that I will get confused over changed locations and NPC names/characters thus reducing fun of roleplaying them). And I think, I will leave out Bhaal for now and make Kyuss the reincarnation of Myrkuul, second step towards the reign of Jergal.

Also a question: what about Dargotha and the Cult of the Dragon? Would they not be very interested to strike a deal with such a powerful dracolich...

I do not play AoW yet, and in my other campaign the players have no cleric (although they are level 10). Additionally I have a house rule which says: whatever kills you (damage, death spell, etc.) the PC goes to -9HP and his allies have 1 round to save him and I am very lenient (no argument please, that is our way, as we play only very seldomly, it is not so frustrating). Even as no PC died yet, they are still afraid of dying (or at least they all act very convincingly).
Additionally death does not lose its threat completely:
1. still it is 5000GP per raise dead; for ninth level characters this is still a big chunk of money
2. one level is still lost
3. death effects (which become available around 9th level) cannot be countered by raise dead, you need resurrection (which is much more expensive (probably more than what the PCs could afford)
4. you still need a body, so dissolving the body in acid, disintegration, swallowing whole etc. cannot be removed by raise dead
So there is still something to be afraid of.

But bargaining for raising could also be fun, might become boring depending on death frequency in your game, though. And how do you decide which PC is raised in the end and who is not? Maybe players of PCs who are not raised feel to be treated with injustice...
Just my thoughts on this topic, hope it helps you to make up your mind.

Just an idea: Myrkul could be reborn in Kyuss, or Kyuss is just the larvae of Myrkul, like Xvim was for Bane. So if your players, in the end, cannot stop Kyuss himself, they could still keep the crown, which contains Myrkuls essence, out of his reach and maybe find a way to destroy it.

First of all, if this has been discussed already exhaustively, just point me to the right thread.

What I want to know is, did anybody run the AP (at least half of it) in the FR? What experience did you make, any caveats about handouts giving wrong names etc.

Furthermore it looks quite complicated to me to convert all characters and locations (esp. in Diamond Lake/Daggerfall) or is this just a wrong impression?

Last, what did you do about this Bane/Bhaal/Myrkul story (ok I did not read the conversion notes thorougly yet). It looks a little bit lame to me: Just stop Kyuss and all the other gods go away, so why not stop eg. Bhaal from rising?

Thanks a lot for your thoughts. Hopefully I will start AoW next month and I am still unsure whether to convert or just play it in a generic/Greyhawk setting.

I think the issue is that the prices reflect not game pieces but collectibles. In thirty years, who knows, they could be worth twice to three times as much.

In a similar eye-popping encounter, I missed the boat when Star Wars Hero's Guide was out on the shelves. Now that I'd like a copy, I see that they go for anywhere up to $140.00. (Second print WotC?)

I guess that there's always going to be someone out there willing to fork out the money. And hey - if they don't - maybe Paizo has an office pool where employees get the no sells? It'd be cool if you did. Of course, it'd be even cooler if subscribers got an occasional gift of one, too - perhaps through a random prize for subscribing.

I also spent more money on D&D minis than I would like to admit, but the aspect of collecting is irresitable (although I am not crazy, spending my last money on it and I do not have a single complete set, but anyway...)

Back to prices, yes they are ridiculous, especially as some kind of "investment". In former days I spend hundreds of bucks on Spellfire TCards, and was happy about the rare chase cards and their value, BUT what are they worth now? Nothing Nada, Niente Nichts Rien! Noone will buy them.
So I think when the D&D Miniature series will be stopped in the future, the value of the Minis will be their value in plastics (and as really nice and neat tools at the gaming table, these gorgeous little bastards, these ...;-).
Sorry for the rant anyway.

Check out the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, there wild magic zones are described. Basically you have to make some caster-level check to prevent a wild surge; otherwise something like the rod of wonder(?) happens.

I am no lawyer, but a good hint at "it is all free to take" are the things they do not give you, no beholder, no mindflayer, all the Mordenkainen, Rary, Bigby etc spells are replaced by "Mage" spell. So I think they really keep what they want to keep, and all the other stuff is free.

Maybe you were just too fast about it. As you say "summer out of college", you probably did a lot of long sessions in a short time. Try to spread out the modules over a longer time. I think, playing once a week for 3-4 hours (which is our pace) will at least delay this burn-out problem for a long time.

Sorry for bringing up Zyrxog again (although I disagree that he is only CR11, but no need to discuss this again, I will search for the respective thread), I was not around the board at the time. But thank you very much for this elucidation. Now I am confident, that my players could handle this with only some minor modifications (I already thought about the exact changes you mentioned!).
I cannot wait to play the AOW, but in the moment I am still running my own campaign, which I cannot and do not want to stop in favor of AOW.

Another thing I am surprised about is Zyrxog's CR. They say CR 11 and he is a 7th level Sorcerer Mindflayer, but in the MM a 9th level Sorceror Mindflayer has CR 17...
May it be that all those options apart from Core make characters in general much stronger and that PCs only created with Core rules have less chances to survive? i have no experience, but maybe someone played rather Core and had no problems/lots of problems whereas others who use lots of option have less?

Yes, roll behind the screen, everything. But be sure that your players do not feel betrayed. If you fudge the dice in the NPCs favor often enough, your players may become suspicious.
In case one of your players doubts a good roll, once in a while you could lift the screen without touching your dice and show him that you do not fudge. If they insist on you rerolling in front of them and you could not convince them that this is a bad idea for game fun, then reroll in front of them, but also insist on rerolling failed rolls, so they see that everything has two sides (and laugh out loud if the dice come up even better;-)
In regards to this metagame thinking, do not worry too much, of course your players will figure out after some attack rolls what the AC is, so if it is just some monster, I often enough just tell them the AC. Also if it is a save or die situation, like a save against some spell, I let the players know what they have to roll, thus tension rises while they watch the die coming to a halt and hoping for that number they need.

Just do not fudge the dice in order to favor your NPCs and Monsters (or at least only very very rarely). And yes, everyone should understand, that RPG is not player against DM, but DM for and with players.

I just read through the AoW AP and I wonder how any group should survive this. By what is planned in the rules a party of 4 can manage four encounters of their ECL, the fifth is likely to kill on PC. They of course could only handle fewer higher level encounters. Now just as an example take HoHR. Most of the encounters in Sodden Hold are EL8 or HIGHER!!, but the adventure is for level 7 PCs (at that point they surely did not reach level 8). If you want to be realistic, the PCs have no chance to rest, not in the hideout and not outside, as the doppelganger would see that something is amiss and would take respective meassures. So even on the ground floor, the PCs have to deal with more than 5 encounters higher than their ECL.
Now back to the Invisible stalkers, dungeon says they are EL 9, one of them is CR 7, two are EL 9, true, but this does not take into account that the PCs are on shakey ground (so they are probably flat-footed), that this shakey ground might easily collapse and that the water does also do lots of damage (1d4 times 1d6+4 and then while swimming still 1d2 times 1d6+4 for every 10ft swimming). So this could be at least a EL10 encounter, I would say rather EL 11.
So from what I read some people succeeded, but I am not surprised about regular TPKs.