Ebonstone's page

I thought I read somewhere that the ACG would be available on Herolab during the playtest, but I haven't seen it yet. Is it not available yet or do i just not know how to update things properly? Hoping to do a playtest on Thanksgiving weekend and a quick build option would be awesome.

Having run a wonderful RotRL game recently, my one suggestion for future designs is to consider having a multi-stage boss fight at the climax of each module. It can be done by the clever DM but it would be even more helpful if it were designed that way. Often bosses and even interesting sub-bosses are presented alone or maybe in a pair. Even CR +5 enemies are not much of a threat to an optimized band of 4-5 players who may have had the chance to recharge or recover and have effectively 4 actions per round vs 1.

For example, the fight with Nualia might be really epic of she had some or most of her minions all with her, instead of picking them off one by one through Thistletop. I'm an old timer, and my favorite series was the 1e Slavelords. Best boss fights ever!

I made the final assault on Karzoug's tower a staged progression, with reinforcements arriving every few rounds. It'd be nice to see AP's include those kind of guidelines and builds. (Forgive me if they have started doing so more recently and I was unaware.)

Karzoug himself would be more interesting not as a straight fight but in stages as well, in which you have to use different stategies or face different obstacles/powers just to get him down to a place he's actually vulnerable. I admit a little influence from WOW here, but hey, it makes sense. In my game the Paladin tanked him while the Torag cleric worked on breaking the Soul lens, so it kind of worked that way, but it could have been better.

I've been mulling over the Sword and Pistol feat (and the related prerequisite feat snap shot)for the classic musketeer/swashbuckler build, and find it troubled. My main problem is the very expensive buy-in of feats.
First of all, i think i would drop Snap Shot as a prereq for Sword and Pistol. Why, because with most one hand firearms and all crossbows you're not going to get to shoot and strike every round because of the need for a free hand to reload (only a revolver does not require a free hand). (There are other threads dealing with tricks around this but none are particularly conceptually appealing and require magic item workarounds), so the feat is already extremely limited in application. Likewise even Rapid Shot is not particular helpful either for the same reason. Precise shot or combat expertise could be alternate requirements, since they deal with melee, or Rapid Reload, since it deals with crossbows and firearms.

As for Snap Shot, it seems to me it would make more sense to drop weapon focus out of the tree and replace it with Combat Reflexes and Weapon Proficiency (firearms pr crossbow). That way Snap Shot is more useful all around. The way firearms are built it's likely that as your character levels up they will want to use better guns or a mix and match of types. This feat limits them to only one specific weapon, which really doesn't make that much sense. The feat is more about reflexes than focus anyway.

Of course, Sword and Pistol assumes you want to also have Snap Shot, so my suggestions might make it harder to do both!

What do you all think?