Azrad's page

I was denied entering the Dragon deciple pretige class once cause the DM stated i had to show some afinity to dragons....

Throughout that game i had assisted in the killing of a young blue, stumbled, with my party, into a dragon graveyard and taken treasure from it, meanwhile the quest was to bring down some dragon cult.... What was i supposed to do... say "hello dragon, i like you and i dont mean to be in your graveyard stealing treasure and i dont want to fight back when attacked"

I think its all a matter of what the DM wants and doesnt want his players doing. A red dragon has about as much affinity to other dragons as a dragon hunter does... coincidentally thats the type i was gonna choose too :P

I also think that it is funny that he is tumbling with a glaive -- there should be a penalty for that...
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Or an automatic trip attempt against everyone in the reach of the weapon along the tumble path :P

Bowling for baddies... send in the scout.

Thinking about this, id toss in a house rule...
If there is a somatic component, it requires a hand.
If theres a material component, it requires a hand...
if both material and somatic, you need both hands, one to ready the components and the other to trace the spell runes in the air.
You could also rule that particularly complex spells with somatics require both hands and a partial to ready the components (if any) beforehand.
Even turning undead i think requires displaying prominantly your holy symbol, making it a one handed affair as well, unless you have it on a shield or something.

As far as defending onself with a weapon while casting, i would allow the bonus by expertise and other feats. Especially the feats, since they are martial training in handling your weapon for defense specifically. Two handed weapons require two hands to effectively attack with, but one should be able to pull a defense easy enough since the movements are usually tight to the body, quick, and the weapon can be braced with other body parts or the ground.
Other feats, like 'defensive throw' presented in Complete warrior could be usable since in martial arts there are many ways to arive at an oponent flying through the air and landing with an ungraceful thud, not all requiring hands or excessive movement. with a concentration DC vs the oposing attack roll to prevent spell disruption i think your wizards would get some more fun outta that skill and relieve the meat shield to do more hacking and slashing. Id treat such things as an attack of opportunity however and limit it in the same fassion.

its almost like the process of creating your own demiplane.... i read it somewhere once... details are foggy. but the process rips a section of the prime-material up and takes it for a ride.
I do say tho, its a might bit too powerful. Defeating a being with that staff would require moving the forces of heaven and hell if hes within his sanctuary.
The destruction of his shrines would no doubt piss him off, but hed be on to ya after the first one.

Seems a little excessive to me to create the possibility of such an epic villan...

My DM used to do 4d6 drop lowest 6 times and a free 18 to replace your lowest roll, arange to taste. He let us reroll 1s as well. Needless to say, we had some pretty spectacular character stats at times, but what is a PC if not special.

OMHO, Stat rolling vs point buying is superior cause it gives the chances of having a spectacular character. Minmaxing aside, i find it difficult to buld characters i like with point buys. Tailoring specific to a class with point buy, if my warrior is buff with 18s in str and con and can still speak in more than gutteral tones or has more personality than a cheeze grater its amazing. It may work for some but the more specialized classes such as paladin and ranger which are driven by 3 or more high stats, its almost useless.

Never been in a long enough campaign to get any artifacts, but my party once used my last wish in an amulet of 3 wishes to change the gender of one of the other PCs :P

How about bowling with dragon orbs tho ?

Did this once with a pal of mine back with old 2nd ed... we both wanted to play so i cut him a deal, he dms a game, i dm a game.... i had him thoroughly lost for over an hour in the cities sewers that i cooked up.

At any rate, my old DM used totake players off to another room and do mono-et-mono 'plot' sessions once in a while lasting only a few mins when they cropped up, or planned sessions with the player on a separate evening. A PC would be off on some tangent from the party achieving a personal goal or building some plot driving event while the rest of us sat around roleplaying a good time at the inn, chitchatting over the latest developments of the game or getting snacks, oblivious to what was going on in the 'meanwhile' scene.

How about trying large graph paper with a hand drawn aproximation of the dungeon, plop it on a flat surface, drop a large sheet of plexiglass over it and add details with dry erase as you go. If theres areas of the dungeon that shouldnt be seen by the players use some black construction paper as a 'fog of war' and uncover as they go.
I had an idea as well, of producing miniatures en-masse by hot-gluing printed to scale paper cut-outs to pennies. would work perfectly on a 1' x 1' = 5ft x 5ft grid.

I personally would love to have a well organized game using miniatures etc in this fassion to quickly work out positions and formations in combat.

I split with my old playing group cause of a dissagreement with the DM over the lack of tactical aplications in not drawing or tracking the players and monsters. in a rather immature display with his dice he set the PCs up and threw the rest of his dice at them representing the swarm of attacking goblins and said words to the effect of "theres your tactics"
'Im done crying now'

If your players are truly into the game, they will apreciate every little step you make to better imerse them into the game.

I suggest having it also suspend all undead traits granted to the undead subtype and nullifying any negative energy based abilities. With thier souls revisiting thier bodies they could also be vulnerable to the apropriate mind affecting spells, ie charm monster etc.

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Creates a great dilema for the cleric... do I cast and take out this group of undead.... or cast and risk making them stronger? OR... an undead newly awakened by this spell returns later as a central villian.... the PCs created him... now they gotta DEAL with the ramifications of what they've done.
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Well... thats certainly one way to create an army of litches :P

Most heroes are quite doable in d20 (D&D 3.5) ... though i dont think they can be done easily with standard classes. Batman for example, more likely a martial rogue variant (as presented in Unearthed arcanna) heres what id suggest for wolverine.
The template half would give him an approx Level adjustment of 6 or a ECL of 7 (using a standard race as base).

Template
Regeneration (5) no weakness
DR 5/adamantine (skeleton)
retractable Claws (1d8/adamantine)
Scent
+2 Inherent bonus to listen checks
Immune (poison)
Immune (disease)
Pounce
Rend
Str +4, Dex +2, Int -4, Wis +2
Notes
Adamantine skeleton (subject to heat metal and other metal affecting spells and abilities) makes him immune to death by massive damage and severing effects, vorpal for instance, unless accompanied by the adamantine damage type.
Wolverine displays great strength and prowess while fighting. He has demonstrated less than accute inteligence but is very well versed in survival techniques. His regeneration suffers no weaknesses because i simply havnt seen any, in X2 he was being decintegrated and still regenerated. It is unknown if his regeneration can restore lost limbs or allow him to reatach them but his skeleton makes it difficult to test this aspect. His skeletons rigidity makes him hard to hurt, giving him a damage reduction of 5/adamantine and immunity to death by massive damage. As far as hitpoints go, with regeneration he doesnt need that many to keep going, (1 bullit to the head knocked him unconcious for example in X2) Fortification implies a full armor or a protective force (Witchblade would probably get that) wolverine has no such things though the rigidity of his bones would impart a damage resistance to hits and displays as much in X1 in several fight scenes where hits that were dealt and landed resounded with a clank, leaving him relatively unaffected.

I dunno what classes he would have without further researching him but some of the following abilities and feats (and thier prerequisites) seem relevent.

Track
Skill Focus (survival)
Improved Two Weapon Fighting
Improved Critical (Claws)
Great Cleave
Improved Sunder
Combat Reflexes
Improved Combat Expertise
Defensive Throw
Prone Attack

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Survival