Yes, but the rules have hundreds of loopholes that get common-sensed away faster than you can say "house rule".
For example:
1) the rules don't require sleep for non-spellcasters. You're fatigued if you sleep in armor--the answer is, my fighter friend, don't ever sleep!
2) Buy a 10 foot ladder. Saw out the rungs, and proceed to sell your remaining 10 foot poles. Even selling them at half-cost, you make money. Repeat until you have as much money as you want.
3) Similarly, get a pile of quarterstaffs, which are free. Sell them as firewood for profit. Repeat until you have as much money as you want.
4) Per the crafting rules, you can make a quarterstaff (cost 0) instantly. So in passing by a grove of trees, you can transform it all into quarterstaffs (quarterstaves?). Then see #3.
Your characters hit the four basics (fighter, mage, cleric, skillmonkey) quite well, so I expect you'll be fine. Just don't give them silly feats or weapons (the evoker should not take Negotiator, and the Thug ought not fight with a siangham) and they'll do fine.
At the lowest levels, it's all about the die rolls and not about the characters' numbers, anyway.
Spell Compendium
Complete Arcane
Complete Adventurer
Draconomicon
Complete Warrior
Monster Manual III
Complete Divine
Tome of Battle or Tome of Magic (your preference)
Welby: Maybe because you have two items instead of one?
Possibly; but there's precedent for closely related items in the SRD (e.g., bracers of archery). I thought I was getting clever, but perhaps I was just getting disqualified!
At any rate, a very fun contest, and I'm having a great time looking over the winning--and the losing--magic items.
Can I get a sense from one of you patient judges which foul my item fell into? Perhaps the "Food"? The "Item of the Overdone Backstory"? The "Silly Cliche"? All of the above?
Spoiler:
Magister Reglynn's Restorative Tonic
This elixir is often sold by itinerant peddlers and grandstanding salesmen as a cure to aches, pains, and other maladies. Although an alchemist named Magister Reglynn initially concocted the formula for this elixir, other crafters are just as likely to include their own name as that of its original creator. This muddy liquid removes any fatigue effect on the imbiber and improves an exhausted condition to fatigued. In addition, the imbiber is protected by an endure elements effect for the next 24 hours.
Unfortunately for prospective purchasers, an inferior version of Magister Reglynn's Restorative Tonic with the same muddy color also exists, called Simulative Tonic. Simulative Tonic merely suppresses any fatigue effect on the imbiber for 10 minutes and has no effect if the imbiber is exhausted. This inferior version is cheaper and easier to make, and often passed off as genuine tonic by unscrupulous charlatans and quacks who intend to be long gone before the duplicity is discovered.
Faint necromancy and transmutation; CL 1st; Craft Wondrous Item, mending, touch of fatigue; Price 50 gp.
I'm chaning my mind. If we are keeping Erik's gloves of adaptive combat, we should keep this.
Now I'm curious about the "gloves of adaptive combat," which didn't make the list. Clearly, there was some "horse-trading" here: "I'll vote for one of the things you really like, if you'll support my vote for something I really like."
Interesting to get a peek in the judge's minds here.
I'm very likely to play the "Book Game" with my players.
I've found a real problem running non-WotC adventure paths: the adventures are generally limited to OGL materials plus a smattering of other monsters/feats/etc. If the entire WotC library is opened up to the players, they have thousands of options that the enemies can't or don't use and the adventures don't contemplate (such as swift actions, unlimited per-day abilites per the warlock, etc.). I know I can "update" my villains and encounters with the shiny new stuff, but that's not why I run adventure paths: I run adventure paths to make things easier for me as DM.
The "Book Game" is when we sit down at the beginning of the campain, and each player picks a book that all the players can use in the campaign beyond the PHB, DMG, and MM (and Pathfinder Player's Guide, in this case). If it isn't in one of the 5-7 books they pick, no player can use it at all in the course of the campaign. There is a great deal of discussion and negotiation among the players about their book selections. At least one of the spellcasters generally takes the Spell Compendium, and people otherwise pick books based on a class they want to play (such as PHBII or Complete Warrior) or a "theme" they want (such as Heroes of Horror or Draconomicon). I'm free to also take bits out of the player's books, but I'm unlikely to do a lot of that (if a player picks Heroes of Horror, I may use taint rules, for example).
The "Book Game" also makes packing for the game much easier on the shoulderbag, too, for when we don't play at my place.
I'd like to know about long-distance travel in Golarion. Especially since you've set several adventures that are continuous in level spread hundreds or thousands of miles apart, I'd like to know what the designers think about getting characters across the world. The characters can always trek by foot or horse, but I'm not the kind of DM that likes to begin adventures with, "Okay, so you travel for several months and then arrive at..."
I'm not much of an Eberron fan, but the airships and lightning rails were good for travel in that campaign. Since Golarion is a little more tech-forward than your average D&D campaign, does something similar exist?
In short: do people (other than high-level teleporting wizards) get from Absalom to Osirion or Magnimar easily, or at all? And, if so, how?
I Think this is kinda lame every other class has a bunch of prestige classes that expand there class abilities and give them other abilities why dont Druids?
Unlike many other classes, druids continue to gain unique abilities at the highest levels of their class (10th to 20th). Most other classes (such as sorcerers, wizards, paladins, etc.) do not. Therefore, perhaps the game designers see less of a "hole" requiring druid-only prestige classes.
Along the same lines, I'm not certain that there are a wealth of prestige class options for monks. Like druids, they also gain unique and powerful abilities in the highest levels of their class.
I've seen hundreds of high-level characters in the Living Greyhawk campaign. At the high levels, the only single-class characters I've consistently seen are monks and druids.
It may also be that druids are considered by many (myself included) to be the most powerful class, so they don't need the "help" of prestige class powers.
I've got a player who is new to the game playing a Dwarven Paladin in my RotRL campaign. He thinks that a Heavy Warhorse is a stupid steed for a dwarf (and I agree) but he's maxed out his ride and handle animal skills and wants a mount when he's eligible, which is next level.
Any suggestions?
A lot of good suggestions already, but let me add a good RoRL option:
auroch (uses bison stats, or perhaps advanced bison stats)
I went with my wife and a friend, and we very much enjoyed it. It was merely a dungeon-stomping crawl, but a fun one. We remarked that we are used to a lot more roleplaying and moral decisions--from both home game and Living Greyhawk experience--and running pell-mell through a dungeon from time to time is a great release.
Coincidentally, our table had three men and two women--just like the pregenerated characters--and my friend and I ended up playing the dwarven brothers. That allowed everyone to slip into the "pre-set" group dynamics quickly!
Instead of mocking old modules, you might want to take a look at them.
Lets say the Companion modules for BECMI. That might give you a head start on strategic level playing, and concise writing.
This point allows me to make a suggestion to you, Haldefast: if you don't like the way adventures are written now, spend some time writing ones structured the way you like. If, as you say, there are plenty of people unhappy with the way things are currently written, you could really start a shift in gaming.
We've seen it happen in the last few years with adventure paths. Everyone seems to like the sort of "1 through 20 in a box" types of campaigns, which explains why mega-dungeons and prewritten campaigns are all the rage. I remember having to pick through adventures carefully, tying them together in creative ways in order to make a sensible campaign story running from 1st level to high level. Now I just go buy a book (Shackled City, World's Largest Dungeon), buy a boxed set (Rappan Athuk, Ptolus) or subscribe to a magazine (Pathfinder, AoW, STAP) and I get it. Very easy, and also very popular.
Probably it won't last: the industry will move in another direction, and 10 years from now we'll all look back and say, "Hey, do remember when everyone was coming out with campaign-long adventure paths? Man, those were the old days! But now we've got _____!"
Maybe this new thing is the tactical/strategic open-ended play that you support. The best way to get that is to write it and put it out there.
What doesn't help is just griping about how you wish things would be the way you like. If you aren't willing to commit to your belief by writing and supporting those kinds of adventures, you can't really complain when people respond to you with an attitude of "if all you're going to do is whine, take it somewhere else."
Many people in your shoes might find excuses, like "I don't have the skill to write" (then practice) or "I don't have time to write." This last one rarely holds any water with me: it's just a matter of being committed to doing it. I know people who have full time jobs, full time school, families, and *still* they find time to write adventures just the way they like.
If it's really important to you, and it seems like this is, do something about it. Don't just gripe, write the kind of stuff to open our eyes and show us how things can be so much better than the STAP. If I like it, I'll be the first one to say, "Haldefast, you told us so!"
A couple notes about format, since the entry submission page isn't perfectly clear:
Don't include your name in your entry -- the judges' view of these is supposed to be anonymous for each round.
Use the name of your wondrous item for the "subject" -- don't put "RPG Superstar Entry" or "RPG Superstar Wondrous item" as a couple of folks have already done.
Yes, Gary, I did just that. *And* I put my name in the subject line (but not the body). Should I resubmit, or what? I don't want to submit a second time and get disqualified, but I don't want to have submitted improperly and get disqualified. What's a prospective RPG Superstar to do?!?
And to not be too much of a threadjacker, I agree that some LG mods (seemed to be a regional issue, though it was also creeping into Core when I dropped out) were very competition-focused. One of the things I liked about my region (the Yeomanry) was that RP, story development, and interesting module designs were in more abundance than hack-and-slash and dungeon crawls*.
* I hate dungeon crawls, generally speaking...I know it's Dungeons and Dragons, but I've played for 23 years and never once enjoyed just mucking around in some labyrinth whacking monsters to take their stuff for hours on end...
Hey, you're in the Yeomanry? I just submitted an adventure for them! Look for "Dark Gate Stalkers," by me, sometime next year. And it's not a dungeon crawl at all. Let me know what you think!
I have been an active participant in Living Greyhawk since 1993, and have also enjoyed Living Arcanis quite a bit. Based on what I've seen, I'd like to offer my opinions and suggestions regarding an ideal “Living” campaign.
Hard to believe, since the Living Greyhawk campaign began in 1999! :)
Sir_Wulf wrote:
Living Greyhawk had many great things going for it. The campaign’s division into geographic regions allowed the writers and players to develop ongoing plotlines and themes for each of the continent’s lands. The campaign staff developed detailed rules limiting character access to feats, classes, magic items, and spells: These ensured that the flavor of the setting wasn’t distorted by “broken” class and feat combinations. The campaign record system made it difficult for cheating players to illegitimately boost their characters’ power, ensuring that high-level characters in the campaign have truly “earned” their status.
Very true. Every "Living" campaign has to build in some limits to conform to the global play environment. Common restrictions include: no evil characters, players cannot own "evil" magic items, restrictions on the use of the Leadership feat, etc. One common trouble: XP loss in D&D is a *bad* thing, as it generally puts you behind the rest of your party power-wise. In "Living" games, however, it's usually a *good* thing because you end up with much more gear relative to your level. As there is a universe of players of varying levels, you can just go play a lower-level adventure with lower-level folks.
As much as the regional system had its advantages, I think it had some serious drawbacks, too. Most significant is the large number of amateur authors made for some pretty bad adventures. Also, overemphasis on regional plotlines sometimes made out-of-region characters feel hopelessly lost about what's going on in an adventure. The division between regions sometimes had a skewed power curve: kewl items or abilities given out in Region X (balanced because of other factors present in Region X) could be taken over to Region Y, where characters could run roughshod with them.
I'm starting to see that design of a "Living" game requires a lot of thought about the fundamentals of the campaign design in areas that deal with personal preference; there isn't a "right" or "wrong" answer for some of these. For example, a lot of people love the regional system--but I think it creates too many problems and would prefer to limit or eliminate it.
Sir_Wulf wrote:
Living Arcanis has a number of great features as well. Their system for crafting magic items and magic item certificates allows players to trade off items they find or make, but limits the abuses such a system can cause. The secret societies provide great fodder for roleplaying (even if they sometimes cause conflict between characters and players). Their adventure recording system works well.
These campaigns have their weaknesses, as well. Greyhawk’s system makes it difficult for low and mid-level characters to keep interesting magic items that they find. They can’t make magic items for each other or trade the ones they have. On the other hand, the numerous small certificates issued in Arcanis can be a nuisance to organize and manage. Party members sometimes try to get the most impressive magic items just to sell them off, depriving less fortunate players of cool items.
Another preference issue: I'm among those that thing that cert-based systems (like Arcanis, Blackmoor, Living City, and early Living Greyhawk) are inferior to adventure-record systems because they cause arguments and are prone to substantial abuse. Others prefer the cert-based system, primarily for its authenticity and ease of engaging with other players (via trading).
Sir_Wulf wrote:
Both campaigns have had occasional problems with plots written to encourage conflict between party members: While some moral conflict is a good thing and encourages deeper roleplaying, major conflicts between party members can be very discouraging.
Again, a preference issue: I agree with you completely, but I keep coming across players that prefer the adventures with the potential to create strong intra-party conflict.
You know, I'll be honest, the idea of making warlocks 'core' seems a little odd to me, tieflings even more so. It cheapens the uniqueness of being a fiend-blooded and similarly lessens the impact of manifesting eldritch powers.
By making something 'core,' (i.e. in the PHB) you are making it 'common,' IMO. Whereas, in 3.5, a DM might say that there are only a couple dozen warlocks in the entire world and thus their powers are unique and largely unknown, when they become a basic class the population density is perceived to increase (whether or not it actually does).
Think about it. Most DMs will allow fighters, wizards, and rangers without batting an eye. They're common. They're basic. They're what most adventurers would legitimately turn out to be. On the contrary, warlocks and favored souls are a little more unique. Not every major city is necessarily going to have a warlock or favored soul floating around in it. They're rare (or they should be) and thus the idea of making one as a PC seems more legitimate. After all, PCs become heroes and do great things, so why wouldn't this unique person with these special powers seek destiny?
Now, having said all that, I have an easy fix to tieflings and warlocks being 'core' in 4e: Don't make them common. Treat them like you would in 3.5. If 3 of your players come up and say "We want to be tieflings!" say "Tieflings aren't that common, why are there three of you banding together? Work it out and get back to me." The same goes for warlocks. That should make the 'outrage' a little easier to bear. It will for me, anyway.
Looking back, I've had the same problem with paladins: they are specially trained holy warriors, and by my thinking should be fairly rare, but having them as a base class "cheapens" and "commonizes" them a bit. I've never gone so far as to adopt the "paladins as a prestige class" rules, but I've thought about it; at any rate, paladins in my campaigns tend to be special and rare. There's nothing keeping you from doing the same to warlocks and tieflings in your campaigns, just as you say.
What would people be looking for in a "Living Pathfinder" type of campaign?
--Erik
I have extensive knowledge and experience with Living Greyhawk: I was there playing when the campaign kicked off, I've written a dozen or more adventures for several regions (including a handful of Core adventures), and served as Triad for almost two years before real life made me step back from my administrative position to being an author again. I plan to play right up until the end of the Living Greyhawk campaign at Origins 2008.
I've also been in deep discussion with some Chicago-area locals about setting up a "Living" style campaign (like Living Greyhawk gamers in many areas, we're asking "okay, what can we do next?"). I actually suggested that we look into Paizo stuff, particularly Pathfinder, for that. Both Erik Mona and Jason Bulmahn have extensive experience with this structure (Jason was a Triad member for much longer than I was, in a neighboring region).
The advantages of a "Living" style campaign (and I keep putting the name in quote because I know we can't legally use it) are that you can play all over--home games, at your local gaming store, or at local cons--and play your same character over and over. You meet a lot of different people, while developing the personality and history of one character in depth. That is, your character isn't limited to a single home game.
Others point to the goal of shaping the campaign world through your actions, but this has honestly never been a very big part of Living Campaigns. Generally, only a small subset of players, if any, are able to nudge the storyline. This makes sense, because there is a key disconnect between the ideas of (i) everyone's actions matter in changing the game world, and (ii) lots of people are playing. If my character saved the duke and your character let him get assassinated, what happens the next time the duke is supposed to make an appearance? If he's dead, then my experience didn't matter; if he's alive, then your experience didn't matter.
But to answer your question more specifically, Erik:
I'd like to see a series of adventures, of the high quality Paizo produces, available for me to play and run at large and small conventions. Preferably, these adventures should be thematically linked. There should be some sort of tracking mechanism to record the xp, items, successes, and failures that my character earns that I can take from game to game. The "shaping the campaign world" isn't important to me because, as I mention above, it is a nice idea but it isn't typically practical.
Note that this structure is already fundamentally in place: the Pathfinder adventures are already off and running, and thematically linked. I'd like to see the Gamemastery adventures thrown in, as well, in order to provide adventure variety and in order to have lots of different adventures of a lot of different levels to play. Although we could allow tracking to be handled on a personal, honor-system basis (just write down your XP and items on your character sheet), virtually all "Living" campaigns have required a more rigorous or genericized tracking system to prevent cheating from game to game ("Yeah, I came out of Burnt Offerings at 10th level with a +5 vorpal dogslicer!").
How about this idea, to crib a good idea from LG: Paizo produces a one-page "Adventure Summary" for each Pathfinder adventure and Gamemastery adventure they produce. Participants who are going to run an adventure as a "Living Pathfinder" game might be required to log on to Paizo in order to get these Adventure Summary sheets (or otherwise formally request them, so that Paizo can track play). Each sheet lists all of the XP, gold and treasure available in the adventure, as well as a few pertinent adventure outcomes (such as the variable outcomes from Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale). The DM runs the game as usual, and after the game he or she notes--on an Adventure Summary sheet printed out for each character--what each character did or didn't get, and what the party as a whole did or didn't do. Each character gets a sheet that they can take with them to the next "Living Pathfinder" game. A player's collection of these sheets shows the total xp, gp, abilities, and items that the character has obtained. That way, when you have a player sit down to play an adventure you're running, he'll say something like, "I have a third-level sorcerer wearing the Crown of the Kobold King." You can quickly look at his adventure summary and find out that he played CKK, earned 3,500 xp during it, and gained the Crown as loot. And off you go.
I would be particularly interested in getting involved in the design and administration of something like this, and I'd love to discuss it in more detail.
~grins~ Sweet idea. I was thinking about getting the Ptolus book. Is it worth buying? (~thinks about how many more books I can add to my house before the fire marshal cracks down on me~)
More so than anything else on this planet...
Seconded. Of the top of my head, I can't think of a better product I've bought for 3rd/3.5 edition. The price tag was high, and some of the stat blocks have minor issues, but this is a brilliantly done campaign setting.
So, I just read on another website that warlocks are definitely going to be in 4e. I don't know how others feel about this choice, but I for one can't stand it, and I'm dismayed about the decision to include what I believe to be a broken class (i.e., the warlock's ability to use eldritch blast).
As with most of the 4th Ed. hysteria, I say "wait and see." Most classes are going to get at-will abilities, I hear: clerics have at-will healing, wizards have at-will boom magic, fighters can swing weapons at will (okay, so that's already in the game). At any rate, the warlock's at-will abilities will fit better into that kind of system, so I imagine that their integration will go quite well.
For the record, I'm a big fan of 3.5 warlocks, too, so I actually felt a thrill of joy when I heard that they're going to be included in 3.5. However, since I'd already heard that wizards have some at-will boom magic, I'm not sure what the difference between warlocks and wizards will be in the new system.
I suppose people at the advent of 3.0 were saying, "I'm not sure what the difference between wizards and sorcerers will be in the new system", too, so then as now: let's wait and see.
I don't like long dungeons, so I was planning on culling the second level of Thistletop (I may save a room or two and put it on another level). I'm trying to figure out what to do with the Catacombs of Wrath. I'm probably going to shift the focus to dealing with the various goblin tribes and move the NPC leaders out of the dungeon and into the field.
After falling in love with the adventure on first read, I'm planning some pruning as well, particularly in the long dungeons. I think that using Brathzamus as an encounter on the way to Thistletop will work well; if the characters decide to interrogate him, he's got a lot of information to provide. I wasn't planning on using the human henchmen at all.
I'm reluctant to mess too much with the Catacombs of Wrath, as it's clear they're important later on. But you've got a lot of good ideas, and I'll be stealing liberally from this thread. :)
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