Jonathan Drain's page

Fake Healer has a good point. If you're a commoner, a sword stab might kill you. If you're an exceptional fighter, the same sword stab will translate to less actual injury. You can only block, dodge and roll with hits so much, though.

Another good example is the episode of Fullmetal Alchemist where Ed fights a sword-wielding suit of armour. Initially, Ed successfully blocks several hits or takes only minor cuts, but each hit tires him out a little bit more, reducing his ability to keep defending hits. The final slashes deal significant injuries, to the point where at the end of the fight he's perhaps one or two hits away from being killed.

My current campaign is level 11, so AP3 will have begun by the time I'm ready to start my new campaign, probably in Eberron. It's online, so my players prefer a little less dungeoneering (combat is slower online) and a little more roleplaying (it's impersonal so nobody's embarassed to roleplay).

The question is, should I run Age of Worms, or Savage Tide?

To be honest, I can't see what you can do with Craft and Profession that would be particularly heroic. The only things I can think of are a hero forging his own weapons and armour, and a hero with a humble background profession. Both of those are already available as options.

I know someone who played a half dragon (temporal drake) and wore a Ring of Two Wishes, that is to say a Ring of Three with one used. Whenever he died, another of him suddenly appeared with a full ring and used one wish to bring himself back to life before returning to his usual spot in time.

Thauglorimorulus the Black.

I have finally come to a realization on this whole topic, which is that half-orcs aren't underpowered -- the problem is that dwarves as written should have a +1 LA.

No, hobgoblin gets +2 Dexterity extra and doesn't suffer the Charisma penalty or speed penalty in light armour. Compare that to the elf which gets +2 Dexterity and suffers -2 Constitution for it - Dexterity is valuable. It's getting +2 to two ability scores, without even any penalties, that puts hobgoblin over one of the the limits of what a normal race can have.

+1 level adjustment isn't exactly a death sentence. You're at most suffering from -1 to some saves and one less hit die of hit points, which is somewhere in the realm of being able to take one less hit.

If it increases sales, I vote to change the magazine's name to Drow-gon magazine. Drizzt's stats will be reprinted each month as a regular issue with a different picture each month, along with reader-submitted Drizzt fanfiction wherein he defeats something like a CR24 shadow dragon single-handedly.

Two years or so from now, re-release the game as Dungeons & Drow, 4th Edition to coincide with a video game release on all platforms involving Drizzt Do'Urden walking through the shadow plane to Eberron and manifesting the Mark of Death. The magazine will split into Dungeon and Drow magazines, and Dungeon will suddenly go on indefinite hiatus soon after the release of the Drow Manual XIV.

(Seriously, throw Drizzt on the cover maybe once a year.)

I can see a system working where fighters get more damage, and if I was making my own RPG that's what I'd do. However, to simply throw that into D&D third edition as it stands, I think it would jiggle too much with the balance of the game.

Even with the game's system of hits, it's still a simplified abstraction. I might strike your armour, your shield, you might parry, I might miss entirely, I might mean to swing but not be skilled enough to find an opening; all these are just termed a simple miss. Even when I successfully hit, the number of hitpoints you have determines whether or not it "actually" hit you or just tired you out a little.

We can make it more complex, but it will probably either increase time (making combat less exciting than it should be) or upset the game balance, or both. For example, two-handed fighters deal more damage than the wizard at low level, but that's okay because the wizard's spells can ignore armour and have other effects. Wizards deal more damage at high level (and can use instant kills), but that's okay because the fighter can take a ton of damage and can strike consistently three or four times per round, and his ability to deal that damage never runs out.

I'll probably subscribe (based on Stebehil's feedback) when AP3 comes out.

Make sure you subscribe earlier rather than later - I made the mistake of missing the first in this Adventure Path, but luckily my newsagent is slow at gettin in Dungeon magazine and so had the previous one in stock :)

"reportedly inspired by?"

"Reportedly" is something of a weasel word, if that's the right term. It implies "this information came from an authoritative source" without citing the source, and shifts the responsibility for the sentence's accuracy to this anonymous source.

This reminds me of studies that try to link videogames with violent behaviour, or any two things teenagers often do. They're teenagers, of course they're doing things adults don't approve of! The root cause of them all is the very nature of the transition toward adulthood. They're old enough to be able to do anything but not always wise enough to avoid it, and even those who are wise enough are often sucked into doing it because their peers are, and people naturally emulate their peers.

What I don't like is when people say, "People in category A are more likely to be in category B, therefore A causes B." Even educated scientists make this mistake. Rather, it may be that B causes A, or that A and B have a root cause. At best we can draw a statistical correlation - "people in category A are more likely to be in category B" - but it's entirely wrong for the media to report on that if they're going to assume unscientifically that it leads to a conclusion.

The simple solution is to add up the value of magic items each player has and compare it to the starting gold for a character of that level. Don't strain yourself too much, it doesn't need to be exact, but just be aware that if you give significantly less treasure than the guidelines the player characters may be weaker than the rules expect for their level, and if you give too much treasure the players will be more powerful than they should.

For example, the starting gold for a level 6 character is 13,000 gp, while a level 7 character would begin with 19,000 gp. If your players are approaching level 7 and only have 14,000 gp worth of gear each, then they're probably due for some nice item drops. Remember that treasure is split four ways so between level 6 and 7 the encounters should give something around 24,000 gp, perhaps a little more.

These are only guidelines, of course. Just remember that rewards get progressively larger as the characters rise in level.

Dungeons & Dragon? Why are there multiple dungeons and only one dragon? Have adventurers killed them all, and now they're all combing the world's dungeons looking for the last dragon, who's in hiding for fear of being slain? Perhaps he's gone made from the realisation that there are men out there more powerful than dragons, and is plotting to wipe out mankind with a series of natural disasters and curses!

At any rate, everyone knows that goths play Vampire.

Isn't it a little unusual to do an "ecology" article for a deity? ;)

If you slow XP, take care that your players don't mind levelling up less often for the same experience. Levelling up is a big part of the game for many players, and it helps them to feel that all this adventuring is making them better adventurers.

The rage ends at the end of the encounter. Once all of his opponents are gone and the barbarian sees that his allies have relaxed their guard, the fight is over and the barbarian doesn't have anything to rage at any more, even if he wants to.

Full-blooded orc is already quite powerful due to the +4 bonus to Strength; no standard race gets a powerful +4 bonus on anything. They don't get a lot of miscellaneous abilities, but they're still powerful. Their only disadvantages compared to a half-orc are a -1 penalty to hit in bright light and a -1 penalty on Will saves. That's still worth +4 Strength on something without a level adjustment, in my opinion.

I discourage players from picking full-blooded orcs; in my game, full orcs are particularly evil, crude and violent. The only orcs who aren't like this would be raised by non-orcs, and most races fear and hate orcs enough that they wouldn't do this.

The whole point of it is to increase costs to the players. I currently play in a game where we are paying through the nose for training every level and spending monthes training, I want to cut that and add something to keep players from getting too much money.

My own way of keeping the players from getting too much money - and I learned this the hard way - is to not give them out too much treasure in the first place. A 5th level NPC won't have the same treasure as a 5th level PC! If you're careful about how much you give out, you won't have to take it away.

I saw a Dungeon magazine that had a weapon charge system. Instead of paying 8,000gp for a +1 flaming sword, you could pay one fiftieth of that and get a sword with a single charge of +1 flaming. Each successful hit (or each hit in general? I'm not sure) drains one charge.

You could, basically, retain balance by giving them gems with less than 50 charges. So that it makes sense, the gems ought to change in appearance depending on how many charges they have left, perhaps glowing brightly when charged to maximum and looking dull, chipped and cracked when nearly empty.

Would someone please tell me the jist of Wounds and Vitality system, as I have no reference to it whatsoever

I wrote a blog entry on it:

http://d20.jonnydigital.com/2006/02/vitality-and-wounds-system-in-eberron

Nice spell! I may have to steal it for my own game.

The Draught of Life is similar in function to an item I believe is from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might, a red gem which gives a single use of true resurrection but must be coated in the blood of a slain NPC of equal or higher level.

There's a progression for many players that goes something like this:

Hm, I should have been more clear. What I mean by "an example of a creature that has more than one template" is an instance in a printed book or the like. I'm trying to see if there's a precedent for multi-templated creatures; if there's not it makes it harder for players to justify template-stacking.

With the exception of templated creatures who have acquired a template, has anyone actually seen a creature published that had more than one template?

The game wouldn't live up to its name without at least some dungeons and some dragons. I think the very point of the game is that the player characters step into an enclosed realm of monsters in an event that becomes progressively less like the safe world they know, culminating in the greatest challenge they've ever faced together, and all in the name of wealth, fame or justice. It's exciting, interesting and it lets you be a hero, a hero whose heroic potential increases each time he performs an act of heroism. The dungeon is the basis of "where the adventure is" and is a place that is heroic to enter at all, while the dragon is the epitome of a final boss fight, providing a massive challenge and massive reward.

I think that once players get used to the game, which is perhaps a lot of Dungeon's readership, they begin to want some reason to their dungeon - if it has no reason, then the players will find the underlying reason, "It was made up and placed here to give us something to do." If that happens, the dungeon goes from a heroic adventure to a simulacrum of one, a series of randomly generated straw dummies held together by excuses. That's not heroic - it's dull and predetermined.

I've not actually run much Eberron yet, so I'm still wondering just what "pulp" and "noir" are and how they apply to a D&D game. All I can work out so far is that it has something to do with old fiction magazines and old black-and-white crime movies.

The first thing you should do is read Chapter Nine of the Eberron Campaign Setting, "An Eberron Campaign". Start with the assumption that the adventure path was written for standard D&D or Greyhawk, and consider how Eberron is different and how to reflect that.

Something that sounds important is "Eberron isn't simple about dungeon crawls and wandering monsters. Instead, the player characters are heroes fighting to protect Khorvaire (or small parts of it, at least) from the nefarious schemes of villainous masterminds." In other words, the PCs must stumble upon the plots of the villains and have reasons to investigate and stop them.

On a more superficial level, completely take out any races that don't exist in the setting, and add in a few that do. If an adventure calls for a quaggoth, replace it with a shifter. If there are aasimars or tieflings, consider swapping them for other races unless you can explain how they got there. Replace drow with valenar elves, make some NPCs artificers, and so on.

You could do that with a character who gains a half-elemental template progression. I think Dragon magazine might have run something about that.

Celebrity D&D... I'd surely watch it. I'm imagining something like Celebrity Poker, except more character sheets and miniatures.

There'd be a special "character cam", a camera angle that lets you see someone's character sheet, and a special dice camera that zooms in on the result of someone's dice when they roll. They'd also have a commentary voice-over and after the game with Gary Gygax and some experts you've probably never heard of who were picked because their voices weren't too weeny.

Let me tell you about this invincible monster I built once. His name was a swear-word.

It's entirely the DM's call. There are two possibilities.

1. Vampires cast shadows when polymorphed, and are thus able to disguise themselves just as well as anyone else.
2. Vampires don't have reflections or cast shadows when polymorphed, and this can be used by perceptive adventurers to identify a disguised vampire.

Pick whichever you like the sound of better.

Players of mine kept buying up portable holes and bags of holding and thrusting them into each other in various permutations. Eventually I put a house ruled on it:

"If the player attempts to place a Bag of Holding into another Bag of Holding, the two simply repel each other like magnets, making it impossible to do so - or at least exceedingly difficult (DC 30 Strength check). The same goes for placing one Portable Hole inside another, or for any combination of Bags of Holding, Portable Holes or any similar items."

There have been a few other threads asking about the iconics.

In one such thread, I made my own comments on the characters.

I think that a problem that any major change to the combat system will face is that the game wasn't designed for it, and so the more you deviate from the standard system the more problems you might face. I like Wounds & Vitality because it's so similar to the standard hitpoints system, while solving some of the problems regarding realism.

First, and the one i think we all find totally irritating, is when a player tries to impress us by telling us what the character has for items/stats...instead of what he's done.

Hah, indeed. It's really not impressive to hear, "We're only level 11 and we got five million gold pieces from our last adventure!" I'd be much more impressed to hear of a party beating a certain encounter or dungeon by tactics or strategy.

It was fixed in <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/er/20040125a">the errata</a>, which was incorporated into later printings.

The other weapons changed were the fullblade (improved from 1d12 damage to 2d8, with some other changes) and the mercurial weapons (reduced to deal the same damage as their non-mercurial counterparts).

It's an exotic melee weapon, dealing 1d6 slashing damage with a 19-20/x2 critical. It weighs 4lbs and costs 30gp. This is from Sword and Fist.

It was originally 17-20/x2, but this was nerfed down to 19-20 when they realised how powerful it was in combination with keen and/or Improved Critical.

I still maintain that half-orcs got the very short end of the stick -- and that they do not even fill their intended role as well as a dwarf does; but if you hold up +2 Str as being the holy grail of melee (which I do not), we're just going to have to politely disagree.

The barbarian's role is offensive fighter, the fighter's role is more defensive.

I do agree with you, though the dwarf is better! We're just going to have to agree to agree :)

D&D is a lot about melee, at least when you're not an arcane spellcaster. It's not the best ability score for all classes, but it's generally good.

I used to think I was a munchkin, but then my players started showing me builds to take certain powerful prestige classes from level 2.

Ah, so the dwarf gets to make use of his +2 bonus to saves vs spells once or twice in an adventure, and even then it's only most important if he has to make a Will save. In comparison, the half-orc gets his bonus in every combat of the adventure, which might be twenty combats, of which he is afforded the bonus every single round.

Of course, all I'm saying is that the half-orc is superior in offence, which is what's most important for a barbarian. The dwarf is superior in defence, which is more important for a fighter but still important to any character. I think the dwarf is better overall, and the sheer number of abilities he gets makes him a more attractive choice, but for pure melee beefiness the half-orc is still a reasonable choice.

Again, you're equating "more abilities" with "better". How often do you actually fight giants to get that +4 to AC? Giant is one of fifteen possible monster types, so that's a rough average of one quarter of a point to AC. How often, above low levels, do you fight a goblinoid that's actually challenging? And how often is the party actually targeted by a spellcaster, and when they are, how often is the fighter targeted out of a party of four?

A lightly armoured barbarian's speed is 40ft for a half-orc, but only 30ft for a dwarf - admittedly, they both move 30ft in medium armour since armour doesn't slow a dwarf. Most of the dwarf's abilities are reactive, or defensive - most of the time he doesn't benefit from any of them.

Let us take two greatsword wielding barbarians as an example - 18 Strength, 16 Con, before racial bonuses. The half-orc rages for eight rounds with 24 Strength (+7 to hit, +10 damage). The dwarf rages for nine rounds with 22 Strength (+6 to hit, +9 damage). Assuming one hit per two rounds that's 40 damage by the half-orc, 40.5 damage by the dwarf. However, the dwarf is less likely to hit (reducing that to an effective 38.5) and also takes longer to deal the same damage (in the first eight rounds the dwarf's strength adds only 34).

This is even assuming that the combat will last at least nine rounds. It's also ignoring that our first level barbarian can only rage once per day, and the half-orc gets his bonus to attack and damage permanently, on every hit he deals. He is roughly 5% more likely to hit, and deals more damage when he does hit.

Shadows are always cool. I wonder how many people in that city would be shady characters with some kind of shadow template? ;)

Dragon magazine really needs to stop accidentally naming their feats the same thing as existing [url=http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#improvedWhirlwindAttack]epic feats[/i] ;)

I second the Vitality and Wound Points System - it might be just what you're looking for if you need your damage system to make more sense.

Essentially, it says that high-level heroic characters aren't actually tougher when they get run through with a sword - they're just better at not letting themselves be run through. A level 10 character dealt twelve damage from a sword swing might be better at rolling with the attack, or might move at the last second so that he only takes a minor wound, or might simply be luckier.

Something you need to remember with D&D, though, is that it's not unrealistic for a 10th level character to routinely survive a 100ft fall. It's unrealistic for a real-world person, because the real world doesn't have 10th level characters like that. The average real-world person is about equivalent to a level 1 commoner, but in D&D you play heroes who have better abilities and better survivability than most.

Dwarves not only make better barbarians (and better fighters) than half-orcs do, they make better EVERYTHING than half-orcs do. 0.o

Of course the dwarf looks better than the half-orc if you only go by number of abilities - the dwarf has more abilities. If you go by that, dwarves would be three times better. However, not all abilities are equal.

Half-orcs still make better barbarians than dwarves. They're the only race that can begin with 20 Strength. They can move 30ft in light armour - dwarves can move 20ft in heavy but barbarians can't use heavy. Constitution doesn't matter so much; their rage is one round shorter but they hit more often and deal more damage. In a quick fight, a longer rage is wasted anyway.

Half-orcs can make excellent fighters, too, because again, the Strength lets them hit more and deal more damage. They're evenly matched here, and it's a matter of whether you want more offence or more defence. For a lot of other classes, such as a wizard, rogue or ranger, I'd rather play a dwarf. In truth I prefer dwarves in general because they're cooler.

To be honest, I think the dwarf is a better race, but not massively better - just enough that you'll see more dwarf characters than half-orcs.

Haha, tarrasque of legend! That'd be dangerous.

Undead tarrasque wouldn't work too well. Yeah, it'd make a cool fight, but the loss of Constitution to hit points would weaken him too much.

While there's nothing in the rules to say that you can't use a metamagic feat or metamagic rod with Elemental Savant, as a DM I'd prohibit these options - you can't take the feat, and the rod doesn't work for you. It's because, as I said earlier, Elemental Savant grants you improved power in exchange for limiting yourself to one element, and it's almost like cheating to break that limitation.

Yeah I'd also like to hear the rationale behind 'cleric is best', as I have never considered them such myself. I vastly prefer the cleric over the druid but...being the best class PERIOD?

Offensively, the cleric is almost as good as a fighter. At higher levels with some magic and perhaps the War domain, he can temporarily become a better fighter than the party's actual fighter.

Defensively, the cleric is tough and as well-armoured as any fighter, sometimes moreso because fighters often forgo shields.

Spell-wise, again, toward higher levels he gets some damage-dealing spells such as flame strike that you would normally associate with a wizard. On top of that he gets all the healing spells and is always on hand to heal himself when he needs it. He also gets to save money on weapons and armour by casting greater magic weapon and magic vestment daily.

He lacks the sorcerer's spontaneous casting and pure offensive spell power, the fighter's combat techniques, and the rogue's skills, stealth and sneak attack, but overall he's certainly not a bad class if played well.

I require specific verbal spell components as well. I have always been partial to "now you see me, now you dont!" for the invisibility spell. Silly? Yes.

Silly, yes! We had a DM once who made up silly verbal and somatic components for an orc shaman, though. Was pretty amusing, although I wouldn't require it for my players.

It came up during a project for a d20 company. They said that a WotC rep posted on EN World that the stat block isn't usable by other companies.

I'd be interested in seeing if anyone could verify this, to see if it's an official company stance or not. Some the Dungeon staff on this board had suggested that the format was open for anyone to use.

Stats: 28 point buy. When I started one of my campaigns, all my players rolled and two of them rolled pretty low. They were hampered for the next 2 years while the other 2 players had to take up the slack due to superior rolls. This was not getting fun and realized about the time the 2 "weaker" characters were slain. I chnaged to point buy to even things out and give players an equal spring board.

That's similarly to why I don't have players roll for ability scores any more. Random luck makes the difference between your first level fighter having 15 Strength (+4 to hit, 2d6+3 damage) and 18 Strength (+6 to hit, 2d6+6 damage). I made the decision to switch when one player started with two 18s and two others had a 3 or a 4 with their highest a 16.