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Hey everyone,

My party is currently running through RotRL; they're on Chapter 2, just about to go to Misgivings. I've been flipping ahead a bit, looking into the events of Chapter 3, and am strongly considering replacing Jakardros with the father of one of the party members. I just want to make sure before I do that he isn't more important than he seems at first glance.

I haven't dug super-deep into chapter three yet, but I can't really find anything specifically important about his character beyond "He's Shalelu's dad," and it doesn't seem like that's developed all that much.

Is there more to him that I'm missing (Shalelu-related or otherwise), or am I correct that Jakardros is, while potentially interesting, mostly just a guy whose role can be as big or small as you want without it actually affecting much of anything?

Part of the point is that spells, in my opinion, should not simply be given out automatically upon achieving a level, nor should you be able to simply select the ones you want off a list without regard to the campaign's makeup or despite the fact that the DM doesn't want to allow those particular spells in his or her game. And since selecting whatever spells you want is mandated in the rules, the rules have to be ignored or broken.

If you have players who will choose spells entirely heedless of whether it makes sense within the campaign or against the wishes of the GM, then the problem there seems more like one of a poor player-GM dynamic, not just "there's technically no hard rule restricting a wizard from picking literally any spell that has ever been published."

I'd argue for it being possible in a one-off or fairly short campaign, going off of what Nimon said up there, but it'd require some fantastic and ridiculously vigilant roleplaying on the part of the Anti-Paladin.

Anti-Paladins aren't against using deception to buckle the foundations of law/good from within. Where the Paladin's code forbids them from doing evil for the greater good, Anti-Paladins are explicitly allowed to do good if it serves a greater, evil purpose.

Assuming the Anti-Paladin is an excellent liar decked out with all sorts of protections from divination, he could absolutely lie his way into working with a Paladin, though the longer this goes on without either A: The Paladin catching on and trying to stop the Anti-Paladin, or B: The Anti-Paladin enacting his grand, evil scheme, the further you'd have to stretch your suspension of disbelief.

Don't TWF with this build. Wakazachis and shield. Don't dump your low BaB even further. Double weapons are good though because you can pull in 2 d8s and weapon focus applies to both ends. Plus if you only make one attack, I think you add 1.5 str... Need a fact check on that though.

Yeah, a double weapon can be used at 1 1/2 Strength as long as you're only using one end of it (you don't even need to be attacking only once, you just can't be using it to Two-Weapon Fight)

Also, "Ninja 4 / Metal Oracle X" sounds like it would be the name of some anime that everybody aside from a tiny cult following thinks is terrible.

If you're looking at things from a flavor, not mechanical, perspective, there's still plenty of options available to a good spellcaster. A handful that fit a bunch of settings I'm thinking of just off-hand include:

-Swearing yourself to a kingdom and serving as their champion and protecting against external threats/extraplanar shenanigans.

-Press onward into The Darkness; no more waiting for the forces of evil to attack, it's time to bring the fight to them.

-Open a school of magic to teach new, fledgling wizards how to wizard. Or just take on an apprentice; essentially, assure your art does not die with you.

-Similar to the above, go all Final Fantasy 8 and start training a force for the express purpose of killing you should you ever decide to not be such a cool guy anymore.

-Found a magical paradise, possibly on the grounds of some evil place your conquered, possibly in some pocket dimension you created just because.

-Or, if evil spellcasters' evil-specific endgame is to become liches, a good spellcaster could devote themselves to making them think twice before making that decision and regret it if they do.

I always figured the fact that there wasn't a proper good equivalent of a Lich was kind of the entire point of a Lich's existence. If there was a reliable way to gain enormous arcane power and immortality without sacrificing your soul and empathy to do it, there'd be a lot fewer liches.

I'm of the mindset that evil should be the easy, "quick way to make a buck" path, because otherwise the conscious decision to be good kind of loses its meaning. Evil is supposed to be tempting, because if there were no benefits to being evil that can't be basically matched by being Good, why would anyone be? It's the same reason the only way a Paladin can more or less retain their powers and not be Lawful Good is to fall so completely that they become the antithesis of what they originally stood for (An Antipaladin): Good should not be easy.

Finally, not to beat a dead horse, my major decision to place it at third was the lack of an AoE component to the spell. Agreed, 2nd level is too low for what i designed, 3rd absolutely, 4th level would be the spell i posted plus the ability to cast it on an undead minion <obviously the strongest> to give him a heal over time effect as an example. Then it becomes a DoT or a HoT which is a multi-purpose spell and thus rates a higher level to help balance it out.

I haven't actually seen this mentioned yet:

By definition, negative energy heals undead. It's one of the traits of the Undead type. It's not a question of whether or not a spell can do that; if it deals negative energy damage, that damage functions as healing against an undead creature.

Not going to make an argument about balance, because I'm not exactly an authority on the subject, but if you're saying that Slice of Death's ability to heal undead or not would be a factor in its proposed spell level: It heals undead unless you specifically state it can only target living creatures, because healing undead is one of the things negative energy does.

Appraise, Disguise, Linguistics (for forgeries), Perception, Sense Motive and Survival (for getting lost/finding bearings) are the six I keep on-hand, though I've been considering keeping Knowledges written down, as well.

One: Tyr has always been the Lawful Good god of Justice, not the "Lawful Neutral God of Laws".

Two: Orthos is correct in that "Lawful" does not (at least, by definition) refer to codified law. It refers to a general sense of order and predictability: The appropriate response to X is to Y. I mean, look at the description of Lawful Neutral: "A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her."

"or".

Not "and". A lawful person is totally within their alignment to break local law if it's directly at odds with their own code of ethics.

In response to the original topic, though, my question is this!

What good does the character's unwavering vengeance-code actually do? Every example you're giving is evil because that's the case you're making, but does the same code cause roughly as much good?

Because, to me, it seems like a character whose entire code of ethics is built around the concept of vengeance would be inherently LE, and the problem is that it doesn't really make sense for that concept to have been LN to begin with. EDIT: Also, I should note that "Has vengeance on evil guys, too" does not count as 'doing good'. A cruel tyrant isn't Lawful Neutral just because he deposed a different cruel tyrant.

I'm leaning toward Option 2, except with the 2-point full-round of Option 1.

It's simple, doesn't require you to keep track of too much, and doesn't render Improved Initiative utterly meaningless in a mythic vs. non-mythic fight at such a low tier.

You know there is an easy way to fix this.

Install two house rules (and stick to them):

...things things things things things...

3.5 Loyalist pretty much hit the nail on the head about why this is a bad idea. I can't see it solving problems, in fact, given the fact that the GM doesn't seem to be willing to take a hard stance on things most of the time, I can't see it doing anything except causing way more problems.

The biggest issue I'm seeing here is that Lune keeps saying this guy is an excellent roleplayer, except for this one huge and omnipresent issue.

In what sense, then, is he an excellent roleplayer? If you have a panini press that makes excellent paninis but gives you second-degree burns every time you use it, can it really be called a good panini press?