Eleion's page

So last week in my campaign our CG gnome cleric (who worships the CN spirit of Fire and Trickery) stood up to a powerful shadow demon and managed to impress it with his bravery/stupidity. This meant that the party didn't have to sacrifice the evil wizard to the demon to suffer about an eternity of suffering.

I want to give the character something interesting in response to this act. An ability he can use every now and then, or something along those lines, that suggests that this powerful outsider left some sort of mark on the character. One of my ideas was giving him darkvision, but that seems a little boring. Does anyone here have any ideas that might be more interesting?

Thanks!

This idea was inspired by multiple sources. The first was this thread, which I both agreed and disagreed with. I've never liked the idea that Dwarven clerics were inherently better (on average) at casting their divine powers than, say, Elven clerics. That idea was always a little jarring to me. However, I like the concept behind racial stat modifiers (one of them, anyway): to add a little more character customization, and I think taking that away would be a shame. While reading a thread where someone wanted to make 36 different races based on all the different [+Physical Stat, +Mental Stat, -Physical/Mental Stat] combinations, one response was to make one of the races based off of a caste system and give them different bonuses according to their societal class.

And thus this idea was born. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar has been done before, but I think it will work pretty well in the game I am planning to run, so I am happy with it. Essentially, players choose a background concept at character creation. They can fluff this in any way they like. Perhaps their mother/father was a certain profession, maybe they were trained this way, maybe they just have a natural affinity for the role, what have you. Any race can choose any background, and as it stands now these backgrounds only give you stat modifiers.

Here is the list I have come up with so far:

Artisan - +Dex, +Int, -Con
Bandit - +Dex, +Cha, -Wis
Captain - +Con, +Cha, -Str
Hunter - +Dex, +Wis, -Int
Merchant - +Dex, +Cha, -Str
Noble - +Dex, +Int, -Wis
Official - +Con, +Int, -Wis
Peasant - +Con, +Wis, -Int
Priest - +Con, +Wis, -Str
Scholar - +Dex, +Int, -Str
Soldier - +Str, +Wis, -Int

Right now the only thing I'm a little wary about is the +Str that the soldier gets, because Pathfinder has seemed to shy away from that in the past (changing the half-orc racial modifiers from the beta). Is +Str a little overpowered? Additionally, I'm debating on having a background that gives a +2 to any stat (like humans). With so many different stat modifier combinations, is such a choice as useful/desirable as it was before? What could I call such a background?

Suggestions? Comments? Criticisms?

Thanks for your help!

So I'm planning on running a Pathfinder game with my friends over the summer, and I've been tossing a few house rules about in my head, but I wanted to post them here first to see what people who are much more familiar with the rules than I am think about them. This is not a comprehensive list, just the things I'm thinking about now. I will probably post more later.

The first thing is that I don't really like the way magic items work in D&D. I know it's something of a staple for the system, but something about a bunch of people running around the countryside completely decked out in random magical gear and strange artifacts bugs me a little. I don't want to get rid of magic items entirely, but I do want them to feel much more special and unique than they currently do. Essentially, I don't want them to be things to add to a character build, but rather items that draw them into the world around them and make them feel a little special to boot. I'm still working with the specifics of how I'd make these changes, but the one I know I'm going to do is to get rid of the items that give bonuses to stats. Instead I would like to give the players more options to increase their stats as they level up. Does anyone have any suggestions to implement this while still being balanced? I'm not entirely sure what stat-increasing items a party would reasonably have at certain levels, so I feel uncomfortable arbitrarily deciding where the new stat increases would go and how many.

The other thing I'm currently thinking about, changes to the monk, is a little more minor, especially since I don't think any of my players will create a monk, but I was considering making the following changes to make playing a monk feel more accessible and more fun in comparison to a fighter:

HD to d10
Full BAB
Dexterity (or Wisdom, not sure) as the to hit/damage stat for monks
Flurry of Blows (and Two-Weapon attacks in general) as a standard action, rather than full (multi attacks from high BAB would be as normal)

What do people think of that? Good? Too strong? Not enough? I'm not really good at figuring out what's balanced or not, but those were some fixes to things about monks that been bothering me.

Well that's about all of them for now. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Edit: Oh, one thing I forgot about. I was planning on implementing Unearthed Arcana's spell point system. Does anyone have any experience using this? Thoughts/opinions about using it in Pathfinder?