Rhavin's page

are they looking for apprentices? if so and you have time act like a "novice" mage looking for help from the masters, keep your weapons and armor in a secret, yet easy to reach location and sometime in the night... yup those pillows shure are fluffy. I wonder if a mage can do the vocalization through them.

Yes, thats right, the paladin prestige class.

Personally I dispise the Paladin, why does a holy warrior have to be a paladin? why is someone not a good enough holy warrior if he is not a paladin? why is the "holy warrior" class reserved for LG?

oh and heres my big question: Why is the blackguard a prestige class and the paladin isnt? The greatest holy warriors for evil must be uber strong (relativly speeking) before gaining the blackguard prestige class while paladins can begin at 1st level.

Solution: a good-variant blackguard named the "paldin" smite good, cure disease istead of neak attack, divine grace, lay on hands instead of poison use... etc

comments?

in a completly unrelated issue the monk class has been disintegrated and "monks" are now pacifist clerics this was due to nothing other than tat they didnt fit into my campaign.
if a character insists on the monk they better have good backstory

I use the group "Barrage"'s music as a backround, only downside are the lyrics which are sorta random, one song has another doesnt...

Id say that darkvision should b described as heat-vison for ease of descripton to players and believeability, it also solves the "why is the sight limited" question. Varying degrees of senstivity to such "heat signatures"

Im thinking of making the "characters" in my campaign all buy their own ph with me covering $10 the cost per person

anything above and beyond is their issue but I forbid MMs of any kind being brought to the table except by the DM (me)

My un-humble, quite vitrolic opinion:

the MMIV is a piece of garbage.

I say this for many reasons, the first being... IF I WANT STAT BLOCKS ILL MAKE MY OWN BLOODY STAT BLOCKS not pay $40 for half a book of them.Plus custom-mades are always more interesting than pre-packaged unload here creatures. Most stat block monsters will only ever be used once, how many drow ninjas can there be (that idea is such **** in and of itself) before the characters wonder why they drow are reknowned for their wizards or clerics.

as for lairs. Lairs??? in an MM??? wtf? do they think ive lost my creative spark to be unable to draw a cavern room on a piece of graph paper? It takes 5 seconds, maybe if they made a book called "monster Lairs manual IV" and compiled every publiched monsters lair into a sigle book id buy it, but they have no place in what is known as a MONSTER manual.

my two, or more cents

btw, lets go OOTS... fiendish/half dragon/were-wolf/specter/snail

There is nothing wrong with playing a standard or archetypical race/class combo. It only seems "vanilla" to jaded players who have seen it all. I've been playing since the mid '80s, and I'm more likely to raise an eyebrow at the Tauric Fey-touched Troglodyte Swashbuckler/Lurk/Totemist/Master Basketweaver than I am at the Human Paladin. A strong background is what makes a character compelling, not a bizarre race or class.

A "sexy elf druid" sounds just fine (although I would hope there was a little more background than that). It is neither mechanically nor conceptually inferior to any other character.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm....

master basket weaver you say... tell me more, that sounds like an excellent prestige class ;)

This is off topic, but in one asian society a dead person is considered "alive" untill the signs are right for burial. They take this custom so far as to take grandma/grandpa meals and dress the corpse up to take out occassionally. Note: this is a real world society (forget wich specific country)

an interesting take in d&d would be to animate "grandma" untill the signs are right whereupon they are cleansed with healing spells and the now inanimate corpse is then laid to rest.

Fatespinner wrote:

Power Word: Kill

Utterly untraceable by forensics and I can guarantee you that there is no one in the real world that has more than 101 hp if one hit with a longsword is 1d8. ;)

Remind me never to get on your bad side!

When I actually think about Power Word Kill it kind of freaks me out. It's a pretty horrifying concept.

or wierd... or disintegrate... or finger of death... or wail of the banshee... or implosion (ewww...)

as "useful" real world spells Id agree with what others have said, add darkness as well

or, theres a spell called "awaken undead" in savage species

1d6+4 intelligence to all undead in a large radius at the low low cost of 200 exp

thatd go a long way to making a "living" socially acceptable zombie

if you want ill type up the entie spell for you... or would that be illegal?

I considered that alternative but came to these conclusions:

1) This thread is about the "morals" of golem building
2) That creeeps a little to close to robots for my liking, even if thats what they essentially are I like to have them a little more complex than magical electricity running through magical circutry

Indeed, in the campgain I am a player in, my character is an elf wizard. It's his personality and spell choise that make him interesting not his class. whos up for a dose of necromancy and emotional instability from the nice little elf?

Or people could simply trash the "it must be an elemental" and offer an alternative for good characters to imprison demons... an interesting twist would be that in order to do this they must hunt down and personally bind a demon on the prime material plane for use in the golem, thus making the "easy" moral answer harder to accomplish than the "easy" effort answer.

I think it's stone bones

maybe theres a "souped up" version of called iron bones though

I generally say a zombie is a zombie is a zombie; how else can i justify zombies wandering around a 1000 year old sealed up tomb?

(off topic i know)

moff, I like your allowance of "adjusting" magic items... In my campaign if a character has the right item creation feat and goes to to the effort of using the dmg to balance it I allow them to create magic items from their imagination. It allows for interesting variations from the simple cloack of charisma/resistance to even wackier variations.

of course they all have to pass by me 1st

In reguards to gentle repose.... there's a nifty little spell called permanency... it's in there for a reason

Short little post here:

In the issue of dragon that detailed boccob, there is a "fable" from his church in wich he binds a demon army; the moral as told by Dragon is that it is better to bind evil to do good rather than destroy it outright.

hope that helps considering it could be viewed as "official"

Im seeing part of the arguement against selling magic items as being commoner wealth gain, it stands to reason that if items like that are for sale in big cities there will be a major trickle down (not that im a fan of that type of economics IRL) thus boosting what commoners earn by a large percent. You own a car im assuming, how much did that cost? several grand if not several 10 grands, millions of people own cars IRL why wouldnt many people have the funds for these magic items. Also, tell me if im wrong, but last i checked a normal HOUSE in the DMG is like 1000gp, how the heck could commoners pay that with 3 cp a week? Simple; they dont they earn more.

As to the normal thread hows this:

+1=least enchantment
+2=minor enchantment
+3=moderate enchantment
+4=greater enchantment
+5=legendary enchantment

or even simpler:

+1=Better than standard
+2=sharp
+3=sharper
+4=sharpest
+5=cuisinart =P

another thing I wonder about:

why hasnt multiclassing come up yet? Rogue may be vanilla to some people and a fighter may be as well... but why not a fighter/rogue with more feats yet enough class abilities to suit anyone ad if you are a purely game-mechanic player it everages skill points out to a happy medium of 5 every level roughly withour INT added on.

Or how about the mystic theurge wizard/cleric, not only does that have game advantages but it also hasplenty of room for customization (why on earth would he sacrifice spell power for the gods or vice versa)

Multiclassing allows for incredable variation and role-playing

And i do try to act in character yet they only remember the truly outrageous ones

ex:

they remember Kasien, a thieves guild go-between who provides information for money, sells blackmarket goods, and speaks in a rasping whisper due to an improperly sliced throught.

and they dont even remember his name unles i supply it

always remember... "silence is precious, make sure noone buys yours"

theacemu,

I dont think they know any other way to play, this is their first rpg ever and they tend towrds 1st-person shooters in video games. And im NOT forcing them into anything its not in my nature and its d*mn unrealistic to say "you have to talk to him!"

I personally find the Fighter and Wizard to be Great classes, even the non-specialist wizard is easy to add flavor to. give a commoner personality and history and they have flavor. I agree that general wizards are probably stronger but why play just plain ol generalist when you could play a generalist with a necromantic bent struggling to remain morally true yet fighting against his desire for power over life.

Its even easier to flavor a fighter thats what feats are partly for; who says every fighter has to take weapon focus, then power attack, then cleave and wear full plate? Hows a master of arms ound, with every feat being a different weapon focus or wepon proficiency with every wepon slot filled with something new and interesting. Or play an Aiel from the wheel of time, leather armor max but a master of the spear with cross classes hide and move silently.

or the Clishe spell-sword fighter/wizard... this list goes on and on

EDIT: In fact i think it is harder to customize a barbarian or paladin, everyone knows what to expect and people find themselves caught up in the steriotype unconsiosly. Sometimes other players even crtisize a choice to customize one of the steriotype classes "what do you mean you playing a halfling paladin with a spiked chain and spiked hair?"

Thanks for all the advice, Ill try implementing these although its also diffcult to get them to do what they want, thats another big issue for me; it makes my life easy if they do what i want, but i hate it when they say "lets go here cause thats what he [me, not an npc] wants"

and its not as easy as having two groups, im understaffed on the one I dm and other than the group Im a character in ive never found others interested

Greetings everyone, I have been a d&d player for around 5 years now, untill last month however I never had a gaming group. This has changed as i am now the dm to several "noobs" who have never played before and i am also a new player to a long established gaming group.

With this basic information I now lay down my Dilemma: The players for whom I dm are not into it as much as I am, its very much a hack n' slash campaign with the only npc they remember being a downright scoundrel who acts as the tieves guild's go-between. I am wondering how I can get them involved in the role-playing aspects as well rather than "lets go kill things and take the stuff".

I would also like to have advice on how to get them into the campaign itself, it's the forgotten realms but none of them own the sourcebook and I cant let them borrow it when i worry about its dissapearance.

Am I asking to much if i also ask for advise on how to ft in with a group thats been playing for years with each other and I have never played a live group before.