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I was thinking about replacing the DCs of non-spell critical hits with 10 + 1/2 HD + modifier of the ability score that was added to the attack bonus, Strength for most melee attacks and Dexterity for most ranged attacks. For spells the DC would be the DC of the spell.

And regarding the quality of the weapon, it wouldn't necessarily be magical in the games I run. IMC, you're just as likely to be attacked by ordinary goblins at 1st level as you are at 5th, 10th, or 15th.

I didn't mean that mobs of creatures wouldn't attack. I just don't think that they would be much of a threat to the caster unless in very large numbers (16+).

This thread is too angry now. What follows is the only thing I could think of to fight it and is not meant to attack any of the previous posters.

Ahem.

If Kirk didn’t stop McCoy from saving Keeler we would be speaking German right now.

I am very sad now.

Would this be a bad time to mention greater wounding?

I am scared of groups of rogues with TWF and the crippling strike special ability.

Moff Rimmer wrote:

So they gain DR 15/magic for only 1 round? Seems kind of a waste to me.

Full attacks.

for the last 3 attacks they get 15 less dmg on each of them.

I think that the spell would usually be activated when an opponent moves and attacks. Unless there were other enemy creatures in the battle there would be no attacks, in this case, that would meet the damage reduction. The only times a full attack would occur would be when a creature with the pounce ability charges, the creature started it's turn in melee range, or the creature uses a ranged attack.

If it were a ranged attack I would assume it came from a magical weapon (from creatures that can threaten a 9th level character).

This would work well against pounce since creatures with that ability usually are animals with non-magical attacks.

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Another thought comes to mind. It sounds as if a wizard cast Kiloren's Retributive Ward and he had prepared a maximized magic missile he could cast it when the ward was activated.

Nothing really important but, I can't find any personal spells with saving throw or spell resistance sections (except for those that force others to make saving throws).

Aside from the size of the spell area the spell does not seem to be any problem, but even if the range were halved I doubt it would change how the spell worked in combat. The benifits to allies come from minor spells and are not overpowering for these level.

Even though I don't like the size of the spell (it doesn't force the cleric to move into position to cast it since it hits everyone anyway) it is not powerful powerful enough to say it is overpowered.

Selling TSR to Hasbro was the worst move in DnD history.

Really?

All right, dragging myself kicking and screaming back on topic, I'm distressed to learn that the barrel, sack and crate generator is even worse than I thought. My already low expectations of the online initiative continue to spiral downwards.

I don't believe people should look at the barrel, sack, and crate generator as a preview of the online initiative. Just a few months ago they released a dungeon tile mapper tool and before that they had a rod of wonder simulator. It is just a free random generator. If I were paying for it I would certainly be insulted by it's lack of quality, but I wouldn't say that this a preview of the online initiative. At least, I hope not.

I ended up downloading it just to see if it could be easily modified and it seems that it can be altered. Not easily (a 3000+ line HTML file with barely any comments ... yuck) but it is not impossible. Although I would be more tempted to start from scratch than build off of this.

I would certainly enjoy a modern adventure, but I'm not sure about a modern adventure path. However I would certainly enjoy a modern GameMastery module.

When look at this class the thing the concerns me the most is the full base attack bonus paired with flurry of blows. The penalty for flurry drops by one every time the monk's bab doesn't increase. Although you don't list the penalty drops I assume that they are still there, so at 11th level the samurai monk would have three attacks with his primary weapon at full base attack bonus plus two iterative attacks.

In comparison a 11th level monk would also have three attacks with no penalty (but the attack bonus would be three less with the monk) and one iterative attack.

Also a 11th level fighter (or barbarian or paladin) would have just one attack at the full bonus and two iterative attacks.

There are of other abilities that they have that help, but I'm not sure if they can match having two extra attacks.

Let me start by saying I agree completely with Saern’s above post.

I wouldn't increase or decrease the challenge because the characters had high or low stats. I would however increase the challenge if they consistently were not challenged by the toughest battles. Likewise I would decrease the challenge if, despite their good tactics and planning, they have trouble beating every encounter, even the easy ones, I would decrease the power of the encounters until there is a balance.

I didn’t exactly say a single character with all 18s would win battles without the rest of the party, but looking back I see that I was a bit … I think overzealous is the word I am looking for.

What I meant when I said the player with all 18 would smash though every battle not that they would single handedly win every battle, I would think that their abilities would only slightly increase the damage they do. However I think the increased ability scores would make it harder to make that character feel he was in danger.

I don't want to kill the characters I want to challenge them. I want them to think that if they don't fight they’re hardest in tough battles they might get killed. I want to take them to brink of destruction during the final battle and remember it as an epic fight. I don't want to disappoint my players with easy battle after easy battle.

Some have argued that point buy balances the power level of the characters. I say, why do we need to do that? We are not playing against each other, we are a team, we help each other. I could care less if my fellow party member has all 18s; if anything, his good luck will increase my character's life expectancy greatly.

Hopefully, but if the character with all 18s is smashing through each encounter with ease then the DM might want to make the monsters stronger so that they can present at least a decent challenge. Those strengthen monsters might then kill other characters while fighting the 18 character. So I doubt that your character would be living longer because there was a stronger/tougher/etc. character with him

I personally like the idea of randomized stats, but I've seen someone roll poorly on their stats while in a party with someone who got great rolls to dismiss point buy. It doesn't mean that the low roller will be useless to the party, but there is a difference between what the two are able to consistently do successfully. I would say that this is similar to having the players roll a six-sided die at character creation. If they roll a one then their character gets a +1 LA and if they roll a six then they get a -1 LA, causing them to lag behind or stay ahead one level respectively.

I don't want that. Yes, it is a little unrealistic for all the members of each party to be equal in power. But I like it better than having one roll the dice make that big of an impact.

Locate Creature, Etherealness, Greater Dispel Magic. Now I've dispelled your ethereal jaunt and you solidify INSIDE THE GROUND. This, of course, shunts you to the nearest open space... 150 ft. up. You take 30d6 damage (1d6 for each 5 ft. shunted, I think?) and I've barely done anything yet. Not the best idea.

Yeah, that would be the way to punish my plan, but I was hoping for a detection spell with at least saving throw to get me a few rounds of peace and quiet. I didn't think locate creature extended into the ethereal plane, but it doesn't matter if you are doing a plane by plane search.

I guess I was a little overenthusiastic when I made that post.

Hmmm.... MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay, ready for this?

Quickened Plane Shift

I'm on another PLANE, son. I have all the time in the WORLD to buff and do whatever with no hope of you interrupting me. Because it's Quickened, you can't stop me with a readied action (I think?). Then, when I'm all done, I just pop another plane shift and a greater teleport (if necessary) to get back to the arena. If quickening a spell does not prevent it from being interrupted, perhaps an amulet of the planes would serve the purpose just as well since I'm almost 100% positive that you cannot interrupt the activation of a worn magical item.

This borders on cheating, but damn it's evil.

I would suggest the fighter use an armor with etherealness for a quick ethereal jaunt, sink 150 feet into the ground, take a nap and see how long it takes the wizard to find me. Hopefully the wizard should be down several spells and missing several buffs.

Although I have a bad feeling that I misread something...

The Divine Prankster from Races of Stone has an ability called killing joke that functions much like a death attack.

I don't remember seeing the goals of the fight. Do you counted as winning if the wizard teleports away and doesn't come back?

I think that if you win on initiative you can easily kill the wizard with a barrage of arrows coated with poison on the first round (I certainly am attracted to the idea of an oath bow with +1 bane* shocking burst frost burst arrows coated with dragon bile).

If you lose initiative I would wait until he has cast several of his high level spells and attempt to stall until the durations on the more powerful ones have run out, using armor with etherealness and beads of force (targeted on self). I would hope I could avoid the more powerful spells.

I would also suggest a ring of evasion to waste any spells with reflex saves he casts on you.

*The arrows bane targets would be spread out between the various Player's Handbook races.

I noticed when I mouse over links to posts I can still see the spoiler text in the preview.

Is there an easy and efficient way to remove spoilers from previews?

*Sigh* note to self: The Cancel button is not the Preview button.

I believe Fatespinner is right. At the beginning of Chapter 4 in Complete Arcane it says that a sneak attack can be applied to any weaponlike spell and the start of the Weaponlike spell section implies that to be weaponlike a spell must have an attack roll and deal damage (either normal damage, nonlethal damage, ability damage, or energy drain damage).

Since ray of enfeeblement does not deal damage it does not seem it can be used in a sneak attack. Unless of course it was modified to deal damage (through a metamagic feat or another source).

Also it is used as an example of a spell that can't score a critical hit in the following section.

The feat, Dead Eye, in Dragon Compendium allows you to add your Dexterity bonus to the damage you deal with ranged weapons (with a few restrictions). It states that it was in Dragon #304.

Alright, thank you.

I was looking at the Shadow dancer prestige class and was wondering if at the levels marked with "Summon Shadow" mean that you can summon an additional shadow. At first I thought they just indicated that your shadow improved, but the epic progression shows you gaining multiple shadows.

Thank you for your time.

Same with me, I haven't gotten issue 353 either.

I've been having the same problem.

I was using Internet Explorer (I can't remember the exact version number, but I do know it didn't have tabs) at school and was able to get on but many of the pages were cut off before they finished loading.

At home I am using Internet Explorer (version 7.0.5730.11) and it seems to start loading the page and then it switches to the "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" page.

I then tried using Opera and now the website displays fine.

I hope this helps.

My view is that the fighter class is an elite warrior, and I don't particularly like it being overshadowed by another warrior class.

If I look closely at warblade I notice that it has the same BAB and saves as a fighter, but only gets about half as many bonus feats (about 1 every forth level instead of one every second). However instead the warblade gets more skill points, better hit dice, a handful of other special abilities, and access to stances and manouvers that it can refresh during battle. To me this far outweighs not getting all the bonus feats of a fighter.

That was my initial response, but then I noticed it was a lot closer to another of the base classes.

Warblade vs. Barbarian
Same hit dice
Same number of skill points
Same save bonuses
Same base attack bonus
Both have a number of special abilities

(Also the Warblade bonus feats are far more limiting than the Fighter bonus feats.)

Sadly many warrior classes seem look overpowered compared to the Fighter.

If it were just improved invisibility I would suggest that they take cover behind tower shields until they think of a better plan. After they have come up with a better plan the ranger should no longer be invisible sice I can't imagine improved invisibility lasting much more than two minutes.

Then, like someone else suggested, I would think they could try burning down the forest. Once there is nothing for the ranger to use for cover or concealment they should be able to fight normally. At this point though I'm not sure how many will still be alive.

Maybe it was just me, but the wind didn't seem "that" bad until the power went out. Sure, the cable, internet, and power in general were flickering at that point, but I didn't think it was a very big deal. I wasn't even worried when I saw tree branches and branches with trees still attached blocking streets. I was even going out for a breath of fresh air when the power went out (Not the brightest thing I ever did, but still I didn't think it was that bad).

Still, I was happier being in my house without electricity than trying to get through the traffic the following days. Driving around Bellevue was more painful than getting my wisdom teeth pulled.

Although the feat Chameleon Crafting in #349 allows you to create a psionic burning hands stone it does not specify who can use it. Can psions, sorcerers, or the character who created it (since it is not on any psionic class list) activate it?
Also how do people suggest the implementation of psicrowns with magic spells or staffs imbued with psionic powers? Should I let spells in psicrowns cost 2*Spell Level - 1?

Dragon #310 has five paladin variants which cover all then non-evil alignments (except for lawful good) and Dragon #312 has three evil paladin variants.

They have modified skill lists, abilities, spell lists, and codes of conduct.

I like the shapeshift ability a lot more than wild shape. Although I would want to return the animal companion in some form way (maybe by replacing other abilities or adding it as a feat).
I prefer using the character's modified base stats rather that just replacing them with the animals ability scores. It made me feel as if you were punished for putting good stats into the physical ability scores. Also it made it seem pointless to give druid levels to naturally strong monsters like giants or lycanthropes since besides gaining different movement capabilities there was nothing for them to gain from wild shape.
Also I think it makes changing shape more special since with this characters will be less likely to remain in animal form all day.

It seems to me the advantage of the new alternate druid ability is in having no 'uses per day' limit. This gives the druid more freedom to use his forms for stealth, movement, and adaptation without fearing a loss in combat uses. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Until, you read through the alternate forms descriptions for the 'PHB2 druid'. The plant form is not a plant. The elemental form is not an elemental. I'm not sure about other players of druids, but when I'm changing into a treant, I want to smash things like a treant. I'll take that vulnerability to fire, just give me all the plant-type immunities. When I turn into an air elemental, I'd like to have the option of flying and turning into a whirlwind.

If I chose to use this ability or allow it in my game sessions, I would alter it to give back those losses. Gaining a creature's form without the special traits of those monsters is too weak a tradeoff, in my opinion.

It may be I'm missing something, but I can't find where it says you would gain the vulnerability to fire if you wild shaped or polymorphed into a Treant.

I am also having trouble figuring out whether or not plant traits or the damage reduction are a gross physical traits as described in the spell alter self. If they are not then I don't how the druid could gain them.

As a final note, if you have a world-trekking druid with this alternate ability, be ready to stick out like a sore thumb in tree form. The description says, you look -exactly the same- every time you use that form. There aren't many birch trees in the king's orchard, or the Generic Winterwood Forest, if you catch my meaning. My two coppers.

The second sentence after benefit states, "Each time you use this ablitity, you can choose the exact look that your shapeshifted form takes."

Thank you for helping me understand.

If a character meets the prerequisites for the prestige class at 6th level, then they could gain the ability to summon at 15th level. But the hound they summon (albeit for a limited time) has a CR of 15. The summoner himself would be challenged taking down the hound at that point.

Was the type of creature summonned a misprint, was it assumed that any character would be a higher level before getting into the prestige class, or am I over estimating the power of the summon?

While I can imagine kingdoms having assassins to take out leaders they dislike, I see this used much more by the evil kings. But I think this could be a possible choice left for a good king.

However, I don't think a good kingdom would have assassins ready to kill any evil leader that pops up. If only because it should only be used if all else failed and evil lords should not be showing up that often.

Also while I can imagine some good assassins that take out dictators, I don't think they would be incredibly useful against them. Since they should have the resources to defeat the assassin's abilities, armor of fortitification for death attack, delay poison for poison use.

I would have said that accepting money to kill someone is an evil act if it didn't have so often with adventurers.

I guess it's maybe an extra attack or some kind of extra action, like maybe if you're a cleric you can have one of yourself fight while the other one runs to the party member with cure wounds or something.

Just a clarification, when one dvati casts a spell, both of them must spend the actions nessesary for the spell. So if one cast cure light wounds both would spend the stadard action.

One cannot cast spells while the other fights.

However, I think it would be possible for both to use spell completion items, like scrolls, at the same time.

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IMHO the dvati feel balanced, however ... I believe that their might be something out there, that if combined with the dvati, might make them more powerful than they should be. One possible example is the Leadership feat. Since both dvati would get the feat both, in theory, should get a cohort. (Although this might just become annoying rather than broken as the player would be controlling four characters in combat, and more if he insists on dvati cohorts.)

My biggest concern about this race though is if the player playing the race will take up much more time doing so, which is more likely if they take a class that gives an animal companion or mount.

From the Power Attack feat description: "You can't add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks)."

Yes, that is why I said "it would deal 1 for 1 damage" and I didn't say "it would deal no extra damage".

I am sorry I was unclear on what I thought would happen.
However I still say that you shouldn't deal the 2 for 1 damage on a weapon you can also use Weapon Finesse with.

I thought all natural attacks were treated as light weapons.
Unless the tail slam stops being a light weapon it should not deal the 2 for 1 extra damage, only the 1 for 1 extra damage.

If you the take the example from “GAAAHHHH” (Invisible wizard sneaks up on a guard) how likely is it that the wizard is going to sneak up on a guard in the first place. The wizard would have to be aware of the guard before the guard is aware of the wizard (i.e. win surprise). Even if the wizard happened to be wondering around invisible (I don’t know too many players who use invisibility before they know they need it) she’d still have to beat the guard’s listen check (most wizard’s wouldn’t waste skill points on this cross class skill but they usually do have dexterity going for them so maybe its possible). After all that the wizard gets to do a whopping 2d4 damage with his dagger plus any strength bonus (not a typically high ability for wizards). Lets say this wizard get a +1 STR bonus and has a +1 dagger and does MAX damage: 10pts. The damage will definitely NOT kill your typical low level fighter guard. That makes a DC20 Fort Save...

I don't understand why you feel the wizard should be able to knock out a guard in a single hit. I understand that it would be difficult for the wizard to even be able to sneak up to the guard undetected, but I don't think a wizard should be able to take out the guard like that just because getting into that position was hard.

The wizard is neither a class that provides training for stealth or for melee fighting. Why should I expect a wizard to accomplish something he is not good at? Also I find it odd that you are using the weakest melee class for your arguement. (In fact I don't understand why the wizard in that situation wouldn't just cast a spell on the guard.)

If we put practically any other class in the wizard's situation the guard would would be taken out with that first attack.