Turin the Mad's page

Turin the Mad wrote:

Well, prequels (levels 1 to 5) are hardly necessary for the Red Hand of Doom, although a good number have been discussed on other posts in this forum.

Follow-up materials could go the way of the earlier post (with the Azaar Kruul or whatever guy coming back with some devilish backing) or any number of ways. The catch is how open the ending chapters of the module are, which would have to be resolved prior to any sequel starting up.

Link ups to existing story / campaign arcs are certainly doable, albiet on a home-brewed basis. Wouldn't be a bad way to let them get comfortable in one of the other campaign arcs. I have to admit to not come away from Shackled City with any kind of distinctive impression that I would want to either play or run through it for the better part of a year or more. Age of Worms or the Savage Tide, perhaps. It would preferable to have it more " personally " tailored, although I imagine that it would be easier to do and faster to publish a "plug-in" / "conversion" booklet or equivelant to provide carrying veterans from the Red Hand of Doom into any other story arc.

Oooo, look, four more legs to eat ...

Turin, I see you've escaped the asylum again. Good to see you out and about :) I'm hoping for a few less dragons in a potential sequel. Those foul beasties were nearly the death of me on several occasions...

*Looks over his shoulder warily, ever aware that the nice young men in thier clean white coats could come to take him away.*

The potential sequel I have in mind would have the primary antagonist in tow, with half-fiendish and otherwise buffed up versions of the smaller dragons throughout the RHoD scattered throughout. Against the party of the level that the module is intended to result in (12th), the original antagonists could come back along with, oh, say hordes of abishai, the nastier dragonspawn critterbeasties, and other fine fiendish entertainment of the baatezu / devilish persuasion to torment the PCs who survived.

In our case, we'd actually have to pick up with the 3 characters (out of the original 11) who survived the meatgrinder that the Siege of Brindol became and go after Mr Hobgoblin Cleric of Tiamat himself...

The DMG outlines (p106)how high a cohort or follower can be and how many a PC can have. Remember that a PC needs to have the leadership feat and be at least 6th level. The rules are quite good and I agree that cohorts and hirlings are under valued/ used. Something else to think about might be the use of a cohort mount.

I'm afraid I would have to disagree with the general usability of familiars, critter companions, henchmen, hirelings, mini-onions and cohorts. With the only vaguely acceptable ones (to me as a player) going to druids and paladins, the rest are gold and experience sinks waiting to happen. I'd rather cashier the familiar et al and get a nice general feat at equivelant to what the character could qualify for at 1st level than deal with the hassle of such hindrances.

The primary reason is simple : I can sink the rather valuable 6th level general feat into Leadership and pick up ... a 4th level character with 3,300 g.p.v. of goodies. If the character has a really really high Leadership score at the same point ( theoretically as high as a 14 or more as early as 6th level ), you will garner an additional 5 to as many as 20 1st level NPCs and *perhaps* 1 or 2 2nd level and maybe even a 3rd level follower horde. Which has to be fed and paid out of that character's take from adventuring. So, instead of a close-knit group of friends heroically risking thier kiesters to [ insert suitably heroic deeds here ], a small army comes into being - joy...

No, the perversity of the feat is a simple one. Let us suppose that the a group of 4 PCs all elect to assign a 14 or 15 ability score to Charisma. They work diligently to establish themselves as fair and generous critters in the land. The stick to cohorts and followers of thier alignment but - as an average - wind up with, at 6th level - a Leadership score of (6+2 CHA +1 reputation) 9. This gives each character a 4th level mini-onion / cohort to boss around and take point ... er, a new 4th level friend and sleeping bag warmer. Each character, with a Leadership score of 9, doesn't have any followers in tow. 7th level rolls around and now they, at least, have 5 1st level followers apiece and thier own 5th level mini-onion. Instead of dealing with 4 PCs, the GM instead is faced with 4 7th level characters, 4 5th level characters and at least 20 1st level followers laying siege to his campaign. The bad side : those followers and cohorts are considered, by my understanding, as part of the character's CR and thus are not in game mechanical terms a significant change in the party's fighting power. The good side : one or two well-placed fireballs and the party now needs a couple dozen body bags, more if the saving throws for the cohorts and PCs are bad.

In the utmost extreme example of this, I can see a party deliberately willing to build themselves around rampaging across the land with thier own army at 8th level, be staring at the GM with this (presuming 4 PCs all with identical Leadership scores of {8 + 6 CHA + 4 reputation = ) 18. This suddenly means the party of 4 now has : 4 8th level, 4 6th level, 4 4th level, 4 3rd level, 12 2nd level and 140 1st level followers at thier disposal, numbering 168 warm bodies all told.

In essence, I am not fond of the 3rd / 3rd-and-a-half edition rules regarding mini-onions and followers. They clutter up play, slow down combat and can force a GM to simply vaporize the small army just to keep the game from getting mired in dealing with the actions approaching that large a group. This is not really fair to the player who - upon the loss of anything resembling a large body of followers has no real chance to replenish thier numbers - has essentially wasted that 6th level feat. The PCs and thier familiars and critter companions and special mounts are bad enough.
Summoned animals and monsters can do the same thing, but at least they're not permanent.

delveg wrote:

What's the character concept that demands SR from the start?

No character concept involved. I've recently redelved into my d&d revamp, where I'm turning all class features into feats. I got to the monk's various abilities and saw that they don't get Diamond Soul until 13th level and couldn't decide if this is for balance reasons or just to give them an ability at that particular level.

Thanks to the various posts, I've decided that it's a balance issue and so I'll require 13 character levels or so to buy SR 24 and then a feat every couple levels or so to raise it.

Actually, your best guideline is - I believe - within the Monster Manual. If memory serves, it rather specifically references that SR should be in relation to its CR, generally about 10 or so above its CR. The only problem with fixed SR is, in the case of certain modified Mind Flayers as one example, that any more than 1 or 2 levels past its CR and the critter's SR becomes worthless. I'd suggest SR start at 10 plus the characters' HD - and then permit feats (as have previously been published) which augment that facet of the character. The catch to that, of course, is that you cannot apply that principle to dragons who have an SR based on CR yet generally have HD, AC, attack bonuses and several other important facets *much* higher than many other critters of thier CR. 'Tis a touchy subject for critters vs PCs, easiest (oddly enough) for PCs. SR of a fixed value - or that is based on specific class levels - is a very mixed blessing...

A question for the Lords of the Boards:

One of my players (who has DMed in the past) is giving me a hard time about the wealth by level charts. He says that total character wealth should be calculated by what he can get for an item if he sells it, not by the item's actual value given in the DM guide. So, for example, if he finds a cloak of resistance +1, which has a value of 1000 gp in the DMG, I say I should apply 1000 gp to his character's total worth, and he says I should only apply 500 gp, because that's all it's really worth in terms of how much gold he can get for it. (I generally let them sell magic items at 50% value.) I'm pretty sure I'm doing this right, but I can't find anything in the DMG that explicitly says so. Can anyone help me out?

--Fang

Market value, unmodified by house rules, is the general rule of thumb. If the Rules Lawyer is unable to wrap his/her/its tiny little mind around the concept, you can refer to the DMG on page 135. Therein it makes two things fairly clear :

1. The general assets each player character is expected to have on hand to be reasonably able to succeed is what is outlined on that chart. It strikes me as being wise to take into consideration that consumable items - potions, scrolls and any item which doesn't have uses per day plus alchemical items and ammunition - are costly beyond the most basic degree of ability and generally have a constant need of replenishment.

2. Also made VERY clear on that same page as a specific warning to the players (many of whom inevitably wind up pawing through the DMG) is this : " Players should always remember one fact : There's always someone more powerful. " Not exactly the wisest way to run a campaign, given everything else outlined in that same tome, but it certainly gives you carte blanche to squash that PC flat should the intolerable persist - especially on such a blatantly greedy basis as that.

Finally, especially if his character is a spell caster, I refer you to the lovely little chart on page 129 of the Player's Handbook, specifically the one entitled " Spellcasting and Services ". If the characters want more gp and swag to start play with, let them empty thier spell slots for a time in game to rake in some dough and get some more stuff to go stomp monsters with. A first level cleric with at least the minimum Wisdom score for the bonus first level spell per day can sit on his butt and make at least 45 gp per day of game time.

Question for James Jacobs - The various types of "spawn" critters in Red Hand of Doom have no visual descriptions, just a stat block, so I have no idea what these things should look like. The needed info also is not in the Web Enhancement at Wizards' web site. Are they actually published in some other book? Or is this information available/forthcoming anywhere else? (Can you maybe give a single-sentence visual description of each?) Same question for the Bonedrinker, is it from some other source or can you say what it should look like? Any help would be appreciated.

By the way, this adventure is simply superb. It is imaginative, taking the characters in directions I've never seen in a published adventure. The "Designers' Notes" and the "Developments" sidebars both contribute tremendously. I highly recommend this module to anyone who hasn't seen it yet...

The critters are all in the MM, MM 3 and MM 4, which was released a bit after the RHoD hit the shelves. You'll forgive me if this is a wee bit late of a post...

Well, prequels (levels 1 to 5) are hardly necessary for the Red Hand of Doom, although a good number have been discussed on other posts in this forum.

Follow-up materials could go the way of the earlier post (with the Azaar Kruul or whatever guy coming back with some devilish backing) or any number of ways. The catch is how open the ending chapters of the module are, which would have to be resolved prior to any sequel starting up.

Link ups to existing story / campaign arcs are certainly doable, albiet on a home-brewed basis. Wouldn't be a bad way to let them get comfortable in one of the other campaign arcs. I have to admit to not come away from Shackled City with any kind of distinctive impression that I would want to either play or run through it for the better part of a year or more. Age of Worms or the Savage Tide, perhaps. It would preferable to have it more " personally " tailored, although I imagine that it would be easier to do and faster to publish a "plug-in" / "conversion" booklet or equivelant to provide carrying veterans from the Red Hand of Doom into any other story arc.

Oooo, look, four more legs to eat ...

My personal favorite one-on-one D&D encounter dates back to 1st edition AD&D.

My trusty middling-level (7th level if I recall correctly) thief decides (with his remarkably low Wisdom score) to sneak into the big castle with the permanent lights on to score himself some swag. Needless to say, he got caught by the magic-user, who promptly performed some kind of experimental transmogrification on the hapless thief.

The problem with his little experiment was, upon regaining coherence, said thief realized he was now a green slime about the size of a small bowl of jello, in a bowl on a chest of drawers in an unoccupied room. A bit of experimentation later, everything the green slime thief could devour got devoured. Said thief, retaining his thiefly skills, slimed his way via Hide in Shadows and Move Silently out of the chamber, down into the midden (cleaning the midden out rather literally) out into the moat. The moat became rather clean. *In this case, every hp of victim devoured became more of my own hp.* Cue to the drawbridge, where in the crafty thief slimes his way onto the underside of said drawbridge, eats all but about a half-inch or so of the wood and settles in the shade under the drawbridge a bit under the top of the water. The inevitable alarm sounds, the mage's mighty knights sally forth across the (normally) sturdy drawbridge ... and supply the green slime thief with a couple hundred total additional hit points. Slithering back up the midden, I patiently waited for the mage's kiester to literally make an appearance. Sure enough, he (and more importantly, his kiester) did, intent on relieving some of the stress from the day. Sadly, however, he did not have a prayer dealing with a green slime backstab, died horribly along with all of his remaining mini-onions and hangars on.

The GM summarily retired my character into a home-brewed (or Judges' Guild, I'm not sure) Dungeon of Death as a " monster of honor ".

This would still rate as my favorite single-player series of actions in D&D, in spite of the nearly 20 years since then.

Good times, good times ....

An Excellent idea for a post. Where do I begin...

Two come to mind. The first was what is known between my comrades and I as THE Hackfest, where in 2nd Edition: WGR1 (Castle) Greyhawk Ruins, our group of 6 PC's (known as the 'Walking Death Machine', went up against 72 Lizard KINGS, all with max HP. All of our characters were fighters, rogues, and 1 cleric without any area of affect spells. It took about 8 hours to complete the insane bloodbath which ended in victory, but with multiple characters unconscious and buried under bloody lizard king corpses. The second was in the Return to the Tomb of Horrors where my character battled the Lord Exultant Molian champion, and won when simultaneous hits put me at -5 and him at -10 or more.

Allen, it figures you still remember that bloodbath. It was immensely fun to GM you through it though. The resultant carnage probably still has congealing pools of gore in the bottom-most floors of the cleaned-out castle after all these years.

*Eats another leg from his favorite useless critterbeastie.*

Oh I hope so. It seemed to have been a lot of fun to play (despite racking up a body count) as well as having been fun to run.

However, the remaining elements within the module could certainly serve to serve up some xp for the players. All the ghosts as well as the Blighter-Lich for example - assuming that the party actually gave over the phylactery of course - alone could do that. Taking down the Aspect of Tiamat is a nasty fight but worth significant xp as well. Mopping up the Red Hand itself should serve to be amply entertaining if not necessarily generous on combat xp...

How to start the sequel is the question ... perhaps a Half-Fiendish Half-Blue Dragon Hobgoblin Cleric of Tiamat (gestalt-classed as, say, a Warblade) steps out of a gate in the middle of night on the next Night of the Blood Moon (after being suitably tortured by Tiamat for boning up the operation) to exact his gruesome vengeance ... not to mention being able to deploy the nastier dragonspawn critters ...

Perhaps on the first day of festivities celebrating the completion of a recently-restored Vraath Keep is when the PC's find thier scaly lighting-spewing "buddy" is back on the playing field when, say, 4 Bluespawn Gawdslayers wade into them at the hieght of the party ...

I'm allowing firearms in my campaign as well but the problem I came across was that 1st level characters can't afford to own and opperate a gun (per DMG rules) and when they get up a level they don't want to waste a feat on an exotic weapon proficiency.

Well, if first level characters do not mind sitting on thier kiesters a bit, they can actually earn some significant cash without leaving town. For example, albiet rather unpleasant, take a first level cleric with the Healing domain and his 3 1st level spells for the day. According to the PHB, said cleric should be able to - just on those 3 spells per day - earn 60 gp per day (10xcaster level for 1st level spells). Throw in an extra 15 gp per day for the 3 orisons. Not bad ... you can earn 75 gp per day as a 1st level cleric. Hmmm ... daddy needs him some full plate armor and hasn't hit Middle Age yet ...

They can earn the cash to pay for the gun - if you're willing to let them *earn* the cash to do so after the campaign starts. In some ways, it encourages them to cooperative play - or at least, it should in theory ...

10. The gold standard would be reinstated, with gold coins to weigh precisely 1/50th of a pound irregardless of currency denomination.

9. The National Institute of Mental Health is simply re-titled NIMH. Oh wait, it is already ... ooOOoo ...

8. The Cabinet are comprised solely of gamers as are virtually all Presidential appointees and Supreme Court nominees.

7. In the middle of the State of the Union address, the President asks everyone in the auditorium what the " doppleganger password " is ... those who fail the answer are summarily executed by the Secret Service.

6. The Joint Chiefs of Staff likely look at the new President strangely when he asks them about the secret space born weapons platform dubbed " Sauron ".

5. Air Force One is repainted in molten-lava red and dubbed " Smaug ", especially after the belly-mounted flamethrowers are installed for Presidential strafing runs on mobs of anti-gaming protestors.

4. The Seal of the office of the Prez is redesigned to incorporate an Elder Sign.

3. The Navy is tasked to verify that the Deep Ones have not recolonized anywhere in American coastal waters, including the Great Lakes. Hey, you gotta wonder about Lake Michigan ...

2. When addressing the U.N., or any other foreign persons of nominal importance, the Prez himself would go in and give them the " Tombstone Treatment ". [Anyone who doesn't know what the reference is, rent it, watch it and learn.]

1. The CIA is tasked to recover Excalibur (especially the scabbard), the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd, and the full original human set of the Teeth of Dahlvar-Nar. The First GameMaster needs body armor and some kick-ass toys fellas...

Well, the above suggestion for the undead two-handed adamantine weapon-wielding & armor-wielding Fighter would best be paired with a wondrous item that 2 or 3 times per day can emit an anti-magic field. You thus can wade into one's foes with impunity. Take an undead template of some kind that requires bludgeoning weapons to do full damage to you ... powergamers almost never pack a simple club as a back up weapon, and they almost always pepper foes with bows due to the rate of fire. At this point, your only remote worry (given your probably crappy Spot and Listen bonuses) are rogues ... a well-made rogue would sneak into your anti-magic field ... and slip the belt of your waist just as a buddy delayed an action to whomp you with an undead bane mace of disruption ...

'Course, most powergamers aren't specialized, so that might well be a firefrostshockthunder weapon they're swinging around ...

I've been running RHoD more or less bi-weekly for some time now. The party was enormous, but scaling up the encounters generally wasn't a significant issue. (There were 10 players at one point, we're at 9 or so atm...)

I've run it through up until very near the end of the Siege of Brindol. In the process of gauging the characters' capabilities (as well as a strong urge to finally get that nasty Staff of Healing out of play), in that siege, I elected to insert a single combat encounter instead of 3 of the ones delineated in the module proper. The party, at the start of the encounter, rightly constituted an EL of 14. Keeping with the desired feel of the siege (as the most memorable section of the entire module), I chose to deploy 4 bluespawn gawdslayers against them (also an EL 14 encounter) rather than 3 rapid-hit ho-hum encounters which accumulatively posed an EL of 14. The time allocated for the session concluded at this point : 2 of the four bluespawn gawdslayers have been felled, with the third very slightly wounded but stunned. One PC has been outright butchered, while that nasty Staff of Healing has been drained of all but 1 charge - with the party's sole Cleric (who had that staff) reeling and on the edge of a one-hit squish. The rest of the party is more or less in fair-to-mint condition.

With that party of six PCs you've described, my suggestion would be to keep in mind that they have enormous self-healing abilities, but less-than-optimal firepower at thier disposal. The Spellthief will be near-useless (as there are very, very few arcane spellcasters for the spellthief to go up against, let alone spellcasters in general). The druid and cleric provide the primary healing and restoration, the paladins hamburger everything else while the pointy-eared rogue kindey-perforates from cover and sneak attacks ... Basically, you can amp numbers of mook critters to keep the EL in line with a party of 6 rather than 4 with no trouble given the party you are facing. That party WILL have a difficult time in certain sections, especially relying on a spellthief. I would strongly encourage whomever is playing the spellthief to choose a different character concept - preferably sorceror, as the module's time frame allows NO significant amounts of time for item creation and spellbook scribbling, and that party has no higher-end firepower at its disposal.

Granted, with a Druid, firepower is not entirely lacking ... the druid can certainly start spewing forth hordes of critters to gnaw on the hordes of goblinoids, not counting a decent array of fire-based spells with which to incinerate thier many foes...

A 4th edition of d20 D&D is a given, the devil is in the details and the timing.

Presuming it goes the same way as the rather rapid employment of 3.5 D&D, from 3.0 D&D, we're looking at a continual release of 3.5 product right up until the release of 4.0, which will promptly render the bulk of the 3.5 materials obsolete. At that point, once again there will be three core rules books which are subsequently followed up for several years on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule of supplemental materials.

What will 4th edition (which I'd read as more accurately being 6th or 7th edition ...) be like ? There the possibilities are endless. It could be deliberately simplified even further, balancing the Wizard to a more even keel with the divine spellcasters and retaining the crappy skill points allocations. They could even dragoon the spellcasters into two generalized classes (arcanist and divine chaneller ?), with class abilities/options up front for refining the character concept in line with clerics, druids, sorcerors, specialist wizards, various "Cultural" variants and so forth. They could simplify the rogue type into a similar bent, with class abilities selected from a single base class structure to simulate becoming ninja, thieves, scouts, ad nauseam. They could also do a simplification of the warrior class, with class abilities chosen to become Fighters, Knights, Cavaliers, Bubbarians, Rangers, Paladins ...
They could even simplify the skills too, given how many skills are essential to survival that are not generally accessible to most characters. The basic premise of the skills system for d20 is sound enough - the # of skill points available with which to keep characters from getting ambushed is not.
Feats likewise are so numerous and prolific (with the interwoven webbing between the 2 dozen or so "WoTC core" books that interconnects the core PHB and MM feats with the "new" feats from the Complete et al books) that the standard advancement and selection process require a disturbingly high degree of character specialization ... and sole reliance upon that specialization in order to have a character survive and thrive. They could instead encourage a well-rounded character concept (attuned to the four core class concepts) that would enable long-term survival and playability in nearly all kinds of adventures and campaigns.

However, since the bottom line (profit) is the driving factor for any business, I would be very surprised if they went to simplify class structures, skills and feats in that fashion. Granted, it is plain to see that the game is structured around the "classic four" core class concepts, with all other core and prestige classes designed around them as variants and specializations upon the "basic" four. I suspect that barring a truly HUGE change in the basic feel and nature of the game, a 4th edition would be built around the newer, money-making concepts that have come into play: core rules, regularly published supplemental play materials, "game official" miniatures [which, granted, is not a bad idea at all ... I like having a foot-tall Colossal red dragon 'mini' to klunk on the table at my disposal ...] - heck, maybe even re-absorb Paizo itself back into the fold in order to *gasp* produce adventures for purchase of the shelf to play on a regular basis as in the days of old. (More frequent, but how many people remember Against the Giants, the Tomb of Horrors, Expedition into the Barrier Peaks, the Slave Lords series, the Temple of Elemental Kind-of-Evil, the various other Letter-Number module series which all sprang from the fatigue-addled brains of Those Who Ran Tournaments at Conventions ...)

As the other five or six dozen posters have indicated, a 4th edition elicits all kinds of speculation. I just wanna know where to get in on the playtesting for it ...

Just been reading some of the post around an it seems the everyone(players and dm's)seems to always have problems with high levels games.

So whats the best level/s and why??

Im a low level type of guy, all my fav games have come from starting out at low levels and working our way up.
Between 5-7 is what i like.

Bluntly, it actually depends on the group of players. If they "munchkin"/"powergame" [which d20 rather candidly encourages for simple survival], when you hit the teens to near-Epic, let alone Epic, levels of play - odds are, you are running a large number of very short duration encounters. If, on the other hand, they actually Role-play [which d20 does not make, as a general "book" rule, remotely worthwhile to attempt to do] then the likelyhood of such monstrosities of characters wading through everything they do is lessened.

I have fond memories working years of play time to get to "arch" name level (around 17th or so in 1st edition) - and then dual-classing "back" to 1st level. Granted, this is not possible without house rules in 3.5, so ...

Presuming standard rules, I'd have to say that the most fun levels (with a caveat for "no krakens") would be from levels 5 or 6 all the way to about 18th. Epio level play is - bluntly - prone to stupidity past the mid-20 level range. Low level play is a matter of sheer survival. Once the fireballs come on line, however, the party finally starts getting some real firepower (pun not intended) as well as flexibility.

Hello. I know these messageboards have lots of love and support for Greyhawk, and I'm not "new" to the setting, but fairly 'ignorant' (in so far as being uninformed) about the finer points of Oerth and the Flaeness. If the players in my new v.3.5 update for Council of Wyrms want to explore "off the map" and say go west I've been considering where this may lead them, and I've been giving a lot of thought to having the Io's Blodd Isles be in an undiscovered "corner" of Oerth. (Does such a possibility exist?) Any help or suggestions will be great. (Just completed the introductory adventure, so the dragons are just wyrmlings...) Again thanks a lot.

I remember that boxed set, from the latter days of 2E, and it would be almost an unmitigated disaster to set that anywhere on the mainland continent of Oerth. Perhaps on the other mythical second continent. Otherwise, not even the might of the Suel and Flan Empires could have hoped to withstand the onslaught of so many class-levelled dragons and thier mini-onions of so many flavors and stripes.

Monster Manual 4 demonstrated a remarkable tie-in with the Red Hand of Doom module released a while back (I got to drop in 4 bluespawn gawdslayers instead of 3 of the lame encounters my party of 9 was facing) as well as *gasp* the War of the Dragon Queen mini's stuff. Party of 9 lvl 8s = EL 14, band of 4 CR 10s = EL 14. Even encounter in my book. So far, 1 dead PC, 2 dad bad guys and there will be 6 players present, or perhaps 7, for the showdown with the last 2 beasties.

Point is, I can actually run the critters with the advice of the tactics column - saves me the trouble of spending 15 minutes or so to look up unfamiliar feats and similar issues.
I DO agree, however, that a large chunk of the book is filler and fluff I can do without. The new-ish stat block format (the first time I saw it was in RHoD) is quite GM-friendly, for me at least. There's some nice stuff and some crud in the book. Of course, there's "crud" in the MM1 for that matter, and they haven't bothered retooling MM2 for 3.5 *yet*, and MM3 was a nightmare with templates mixed into the book like bird poo on my windshield, instead of tidely clumped together in the back of the book. (That's a big change from 3.0 that I find detestable, dribbling the templates in the main body of the book. Makes it considerably more difficult for me to do any prep work at all.) Not to mention that MM3 has - for me - far fewer useful critterbeasties, but was thoroughly infested with undead that - only in *that* book - got a nifty ability conveniently stacking thier CHA mod as a bonus to thier hit points ... yet a Lich - generally acknowledged as the biggest and baddest of formerly humanoid undead, gets poo poo 'd ? No, MM4 is not as bad as some of the drek from its 3 predecessors.

*Rips a leg off the four-legged oversized turkey roasting on a spit in the back yard* Aaaah, useless critterbeasties ... they still make good chow ...

Biggest world-altering decisions as a GM eh ?
I would have to use the example of the most recent one, in a GURPS campaign. The players had all arrived at GW Hospital in DC. One of the PCs is an MD, so she was rummaging for trouble in the morgue before proceeding to the ER. (Literally - the player said "I'm looking for something exciting at work.") Well, the Fed and the fireman went downstairs as well to observe her autopsy. The fireman failed his Fright Check, acquired a quirk : "Finds the dead fascinating" ... and proceeded to start rummaging through the drawers. The doc and the fed quickly leave for the ER after discovering that the victim [who was originally found as a John Doe in an alley in Southeast DC] had something eat several organs and then exit the carcass through the same entry wound above those organs. The other 4 PCs arrive, as they had more or less planned on going out on the town to party a bit (they had previously driven off a small pack of werewolves with battle rifles and hand grenades - that was what the werewolves had). The fireman, alone in the basement, totally forgetting the pervasiveness of closed circuit cameras in many modern institutional buildings, eventually hears the security guard enter the room. A brief discussion follows. Now, the fireman had already died once and had the foresight to prepurchase an extra life by way of reincarnation for his character. In this case, he came back with some fairly useful, albiet not full scaled, fire-and-heat related abilities. So, he shifts to "thermal imaging" vision while kneeling on the floor with an open door, bag freshly zippered open ... and realizes the guard, while animate and rather clearly unhappy with his presence in the morgue, does not have human-level body heat. He also feels some *thing* moving in the torso of the carass beneath his hands.

Needless to say, a scuffle ensues, a vampire security guard gets set on fire for a few seconds (before putting itself out with the fire extinguisher on the wall), the fireman encounters a second vamp guard in the hall, the second vamp critfumbles and starts doing the electricity-tango (his steel-rod reinforced nightstick went into a main electrical junction box on the wall - oopsth) and the first vamp sneaks up behind the fireman and literally knocks his brain out of his skull (with a critical hit to the head and double athletic human strength, well ...)

Generally, I don't smoke PCs in GURPS, and generally I run the game almost entirely ad-lib, with a general tendency to stick to consistencies I establish as the campaign developes. However, the hospital's power starts failing catastrophically, emergency lights are coming on ... and the cell phones come out and start failing too. Then the police and fire dispatch systems start malf'ing, failing altogether in a matter of hours. And I ask myself "what was percolating in the chest of the cadaver ?" I'd already had in mind to have something icky creepy this go 'round. The world-altering decision was to take it to "dawn of the dead" level. The loss of power spread worldwide, satellites (unknown to the PCs so far) have largely started dropping out of the sky like bird poo and tentaclecritterbeasties are crawling out of the carcasses of the infected. The PCs split as soon as they realized there was a Tentaclecritterbeastie in the hospital - as well as realizing that they'd almost fed four more PCs into a meat grinder. (One fatality and two serious injuries occured among the player characters, out of 7 in about 5 to 10 minutes' game time. The same vamp smoked one and injured the other two. The Fed currently talks like Christopher Walken, the gun bunny is delerious and rather badly in need of a blood transfusion at the moment ...)

See if that sounds like a sufficiently world-altering decision. <weg>