Cazin's page

AndIMustMask wrote:

some MT builds i've made--look them over for some ideas if you'd like: neither are early-entry (though they can easily accommodate that with some level-switching), both are quite powerful.

ULTIMYSTIC THEURGE** spoiler omitted **

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MYSTIC THEURGE - NECROMANCER EDITION** spoiler omitted **...

nice one1

Yes, Wizards access spells one level earlier. There are ways of synergizing with wisdom and charisma, but not with intelligence. Here are three options for synergizing:

This makes a few builds:
1. Wisdom all the way: Cleric 1, Empyreal sorcerer 2, monk 3, MT 4+, use magical knack for sorcerer. You cast from wisdom in both classes and get your wisdom bonus added to AC.
2. Charisma all the way: Wood/Lore Oracle 1, any sorcerer 2-3, MT 4+. You cast only from charisma and charisma replaces dexterity for AC, so you can dump it.

The draw back to both of these builds is slower access to high level spells. These builds must be focused on level 1 arcane spells to be fun to play early on. Magic missile with toppling spell, snowball and shocking grasp are three good choices.

Consider:

A civilization shattering catastrophe occurred a few hundred years ago and all folks blame the magic users for it. About half of the land mass is in a state of anarchy, and the rest is controlled by a variety of organized civilizations. Martial orders including paladins and inquisitors exist specifically to investigate reports of magic users and hunt them down. These orders are based in the good and neutral dominated civs. In a few evil civilizations magic users are captured and enslaved. Also, each civ has a favored religion, and worshippers of non-state religions are likewise actively hunted down.

Consider some actual magic limiting rules:
1. No summoning functions.
2. No teleportation, dimension door, blink or similar spell accessing other planes or dimensions function.
3. Animating undead requires a tough caster level check unless the creature in question gives consent to being animated this way.
4. Limit spell levels available. Maybe no spells above 7th level work.
5. Consider identifying one or two types of magic that are particularly weak. All spells of the weakened schools occupy a spell slot one level higher than normal. (Examples: all illusions spells or all spells with the light descriptor.)

Whatever rules you settle upon, be sure your players know them long before character creation.

As for the ultimate goals of the world/game play, think about fantasy novels that you've read. Rip off wholesale any themes that appeal to you. Also, the theme that is appropriate will have to evolve in response to the game choices your players make. What they do in the first five levels will tell you which side of the power fault lines they stand on, and which direction your story line should bend.

Good luck!

I would like to respond to the subject of this thread, rather than the specific case which you pose and has been well discussed.

Taking the position that a player should be regarded negatively for having done the out of the game room work of building an effective character seems to undermine the whole point of the game to me. Knowing how to play a character at the table is half of the skill set that qualifies a player as effective, off table skills are the other half. As has been mentioned earlier, it is not whether the player is effective that matters, but whether they play to team success and fun or for personal success at the expense of others. "I killed the big baddie to save your life" is much different than "I killed the big baddie all by myself and you didn't even get to hit him, ha ha!"

In my opinion, almost all min/maxed characters have weaknesses to balance their strengths. What matters is that the players at the table have complimentary skill sets to deal with whatever comes up. As a Charisma dump dwarf Zen archer player, I am grateful when the party face saves me from triggering an unnecessary battle or when the blaster mage fries a whole boat load of baddies.

My point is this: min/maxing is not bad, playing selfishly is bad. It is just that poorly designed characters have one less avenue for bad players to ruin table fun.

We are negotiating the game world for our next homebrew game right now. So far we have:

4 gods (LG, LN, LE and N) created a little pocket dimension and stocked it with only one world, nothing else. This world is a hollow sphere, and all folks live on the inner surface, with the sun being at the center of the sphere. The sun is a disk bright on 1 side, dark on the other that rotates once every 24 hours. The gods made this world to be a little chess board to play with the mortals. As such, they wanted to minimize outside influence, and the potential for the locals unbalancing their game world.

We have agreed upon the following:
Planar Lock is permanently on the entire plane. No plane shifts, astral spells or teleports work.

Because of this, no summoning works at all.

Any creatures present that normally have an outsider subtype are instead modified to have the native subtype.

Gun powder does not work in this world.

We won't use any combat maneuvers other than trip.

Divination or other scrying methods from outside the plane will detect a solid, dead planet.

Divination or other scrying from inside the world will detect that the universe ends at the outer edge of their planet, and will not reveal the existence of other planes or dimensions.

Raising dead requires a skill check: D20 + CL + Stat versus DC of 15 + HD + months dead to create the undead unless the creature consents to being raised.

The world was originally stocked with non chaotic races, and any chaotic creatures that are present are small in number.A cataclysm of some kind occurred hundreds of years ago, destroying all high level casters and all known writings concerning magic. The world has civilizations separated by vast regions of frontier/wildlands. Most everyone is either wary of spell casters or outright hostile to them, since they were somehow responsible for the cataclysm.

We will use less than a complete list of races in this world, and less than a complete list or archetypes, but all races and all archetypes that the players want to play will be included in game world design.

We will probably start in a frontier area, weeks travel away from any major city. The town will be small (500 people?), isolated and struggling to get by. The flavor will be like any small town from a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. Since there is no functioning teleportation magic, the town really is isolated an on its own.
We do not have any names or any geography yet.

I plan to ask the players to each create a character who has lived in the town for at least two years, and to write an extensive character background working in traits and relating them to previous experience. Each player will also be asked to describe their characters motivations and short term goals based on these back stories. Characters with more complete stories will be awarded more starting gold on character creation.

Based on what the players write, I will create the hundred mile radius surrounding the frontier town. The story line for the first three levels will have to do with reconciling conflicts in their stories, and resolving short term goals.

Well, that's all we have so far, and we'll be posting ideas to each other for another week or two until we finalize the rules and create characters. I would love any suggestions folks have for this world, and I plan to read all the posts in this thread to see other folks' ideas.

Thanks, Meibellum, for starting this!

Cazin.