carborundum's page

Yeah, though a monk who's taken a vow of peace joining in a combat doesn't feel right either. Three of them chop bloody chunks out of their enemy, and the monk jumps around in the middle of the blood and guts, carefully making sure his blows are only to the temple.
He seems just as violent - though in the rules he isn't.

Am I really going to have to rewrite every single encounter in case the monk is there? Suspicious NPCs will actually be relaxed etc.

That's going to be interesting. There's a wizard who plays it smart, and a rogue who likes diplomacy. There are also two barbarians....

How exactly have you guys played the whole Aura thing? The whole group - if they're in the area - will also be constantly chilled out, right?

In the STAP, I'm wondering how to do the whole sea voyage...

I’ll be starting to run the STAP in a few weeks and am busy preparing the first few sessions, getting the characters to meet and so on. One player wants to play a Monk with Vow of Peace and Vow of Poverty. Fair enough, said I, let's give it a whirl.
The Poverty I can handle, but I’d like some tips on the Vow of Peace from DMs who have had experience with it. The players who find themselves in a zen-like state as Savage Pirates charge them will probably have plenty to say to the player, but I’d like some tips on handling the mechanics and descriptions and general keeping-the-game-flowing ideas.

During the trek across the Isle, if any of the PCs died, I would probably have them find an unlikely ally like an injured dino that when nursed back to health adopts the group during the trek, or a semi-intelligent golem that the pcs stumble upon in one of the ruins that has been trapped for centuries beneath the collapsed ruin, and have the player play these until they reach their replacement PC.

Now that's a great suggestion! We're finally going to start the STAP in a few weeks, and the group are working on backgrounds and the rest for their 'main' characters. Given the lethality of some of the fights I'm thinking of letting them roll up backups in advance. In Sasserine that's easily workable. Later not so. Mind if I pinch your idea? :)

I was thinking of keeping the backups at half the xp of the PCs to begin with. It's still going to be tricky wondering about how much time to ask them to invest in secondary characters as far as background goes. Any suggestions?

Wow - that was fast!

I'll have to get looking for that book - thanks for the rapid and very accurate answer, folks! That Shar certainly seems to be keeping busy these days - blimey!

In the FR conversion notes, the Scarlet Brotherhood is changed to the Brotherhood of the Dark Moon. Where can I find any info on this organisation and it's supposed aims?

I was Farouk in Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, a few other mmorpgs and plenty of forums until Asherons Call 2 came along and you could play a Lugian. I needed a good rock name and all the obvious ones were taken or too clichéd. I ended up picking Carb since I'd known the word for years but never really knew what it was. Hurrah for wikipedia :) It's a trade name for silicon carbide, which also sounds like great stuff - and is!

Anyhoo, it sounded good and to save typing in conversations, it shortened nicely to carb. And the chances that it's not taken are reasonable - always a problem these days!

I'm no expert and the edges aren't tidy, but how about this one?
http://www.misterjeff.nl/crimson_fleet.jpg

I can just imagine an investigation where an alibi is D&D related.You can wrap it up in no time :)

"Wait a minute, you say you remember the session and your wizard fireballed some goblins? But he's a Conjuror with Evocation as his prohibited school...."

One of the rules on Duskblades learning new spells is that you can "trade in" a spell for a new one. This starts at 5th level, though the spell must be two levels below the max spell level he can cast. So,, since the DB does not 3rd level spells 'til 9th level, this seems to imply that until level 9, only 0-level spells can be swapped around.
Now, am I missing something or is this a bit of a useless ability until 9th level? The Duskblade spell list only includes 4 0-level spells, and with a decent Int, my character already has all 4.

He just hit 7th level and it would be nice to get rid of Color Spray and get, say, Bigby's Tripping Hand but I guess that's two more levels away....or am I missing something?

Thanks for posting what you could - I know I've been checking daily for these guys latest adventures!

Good luck with your test!

sack full of baby Ewoks in the

then a half a litre of cream

back to bed. A big mistake, since

The True Ghoul in AGOW does have a ghoul-light torch. So zombie equivalents could well be corpse-light torches...

They give off a sickly green light in a 20'radius which makes the living begin to glow and feel clammy and cold - revealing invisible and hidden folk as faerie fire. Living creatures illuminated by it have -1 to Will saves and Charisma checks (including Turn Undead and charisma based skills). Undead get a +1 profane bonus to these checks.

This is fantastic!
I'll be running this in about a month and your journal is giving me loads of ideas and inspiration - thanks!