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Nope, this smurf did not.
:)
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In 3.5, arcane casters could learn spells not on their spell lists, but required roleplay, finding the spells and specially studying them. Strangely, that fact seems to always be missed or forgotten.
I’m in four games and starting to run one. I’m in a Reign of Winter campaign, so NO SPOILERS MIGHTYPION! My 16 year old Winter Witch is an arcane prodigy, and on paper should be decent with a longsword and guns, not that she actually ever hits anything. She has however invented and used new spells, so she probably one of the youngest spell creators ever. Eat that Bigby! :) I’ve got a kobold in rise of the runelords with side project of restoring one of the early found ruins to turn it into an inn. Then I’ve an orc raised by elves set to deal with a lizard god cult. And a blue kobold raised by elves (wait, how did I get two “raised by elves?” Hmm, I should pick dwarves next character), that has gone back in time to prevent the fall of a great elven nation. Just started basically, but making contacts. And the game I’m fixing to run is going to be a game where I keep the rules mainly hidden behind the dm screen, in part because I’m testing some hefty modifications, but also to help players focus on the in-game world instead of the mechanics. We’ll see how that goes. I’ll have everything ready to start with two characters next weekend. Oh, and I’m trying to find a job because the part time one I’ve got is seasonal and unless I’m lucky or blessed, will end in January. And lastly, I’m programming a simulator where a bunch of AI agents will compose a village and live by the rules of the dnd 3.5 ogl. In part this is to show my ability (or lack there-of) in programming but also to show my alternative AI design (which was the focus of my degree). I’ve got dots running around the screen already.
Do you mean Knowledge(Arcana) skill, or like Knowledge(Evocation) instead Like Spellcraft (Evocation).
The discord link will be pm’d.
@Xasay You can always cast a spell from a higher level slot if you want to. You don't need to know the spell at a higher level. My understanding since dnd 3.0 has been that higher level slots can be used for lower level spells, whether for spontaneous or prepared casting. PFS or errata might have altered that, but not to my knowledge. There is even an explicit mention somewhere in dnd about epic characters that wizard progression still grants higher level slots and that while no spells higher than 9th can be cast, those slots are still usable for lower spells or for metamagic adjusted spells. I remember it specifically mentioning lower level spells. But that was dnd days.
** spoiler omitted ** The empire where we will be playing would not do such things, but some of the surrounding nations might, so I can work with this background, except your character has come to the empire rather than stay in the nation that all happened. At least if you want to party up with other players.
Seems good. If you are fine with joining a discord game, buy stats (26 point buy, 3.5 rules), and pick six skills to be full invested in. You can also trade one full skill for two moderately trained skills, or for six apprentice level skills. You’ll need skills to cast spells, one for each school of magic you intend to use. You also need to buy equipment, standard 3.5 rules will suffice.
Just checking, am I correct that this is using 3.5 rules? Heavily modified, but recently decided to keep most of the mechanics behind the GM screen. Though if you read the document I linked in the OP post, you’ll get an idea of just how modified it is. The basics are there though, so you’ll still get to roll dice from time to time and the basic combat structure will seem mostly the same to you even without seeing all the mechanics in play. I’ve always seen the role of mechanics as being for communication, consistency, and adding risk without the gm deciding whether those risks pan out or not, plus dice can be fun. Except for communication, the mechanics don’t actually need to be seen by the players for any of that, and well, players tend to not use mechanics in any of these ways these days anyway. This is mostly so I can see how these concepts work anyway, so keeping things out of sight allows me to make adjustments as needed without affecting the players, and also keep players focused on the world and not on their character sheet. I am also looking to run this on discord so I can include a coworker in the game. Wasn’t my original plan, but once they expressed interest, I decided to go that way.
I’ve got two things planned, first I’ll be setting up a discord server to run a campaign where most of the mechanics are kept hidden, both to help players focus on the world (since I don’t want “playing the mechanics”) and also because I’m testing out various mechanics and this way I need less buy in from players and less explanation about them. They are supposed to be simulationist anyway. The second thing is that I will be working on programming a game, a sort of mix between minecraft and dnd. This first iteration is mostly just a simulation sandbox so I can test out my AI designs and such, but it lays the groundwork for building and playing your own character. The end goal will eventually be a mix of minecraft, dnd, and breath of the wild, where the terrain is alterable, you can climb and glide and fly, use skills, cast spells, etc. The sandbox simulation part will be using the 3.5 ogl as I saw a paper once where someone supposedly ran a simulation to see how common various levels of magic items and spells would actually be, but I think I can do better.
Actually I thought you were gone, but you’re still welcome. When it comes to rules though, I find the many times how hard they are often depends more on things other than the rules themselves, things like presentation, familiarity with similar concepts, and not least are the things that are easier to do than to explain. Thaco for example isn’t complicated, but it’s so different from what most deal with, that it seems complicated. There is another example, of a guy who came up with a dice mechanic that received a lot of bad feedback, complaints of how it was overly complicated, until the creator mentioned that it was basically a blackjack mechanic. Simply presenting this idea the others were familiar with turned many of them into supporters, because simply changing the way they looked at the mechanic made it seem way simpler and easier for them even there was no change in the mechanic itself. A warmage though isn’t really a glass cannon. First of all, for actually soldiers, magic is more about buffs and utility, and attack magic a sidearm equivalent or a specialist situational attack, not a normal attack. Sure you might get through a simple ambush attacking with magic, but any kind of longer term deal, like soldiers fighting in a war or more relevant to PCs, delving a dungeon, you can be a mage but you still need to keep in mind the resources. In my campaign, a first level character can cast plenty more magic than a standard dnd character, but it’s still not something they can do endlessly. It is more exhausting than melee. Second, warmages are supposed to be a blend of a wizard and a fighter, not artillery, hence being able to cast in armor and such. I think the actual class was meant to help those wanting to be casters but feeling overwhelmed by choosing spells to not worry about spell choice in character building, but that’s much less of a problem here as I am keeping things limited to the core books with only a few specific exceptions. Thus I’m concerned that your expectations for playing a warwizard might not pan out as you expect in play. Do you think you can describe what your character is and does without mechanics? And I don’t mean a simple gimmick like being a glass cannon, I mean something a bit more in depth.
I saw a video recently which gave me an idea for handling the new rules being many and possibly confusing… don’t tell the players the mechanics. Seems crazy at first, but the point of the mechanics is to model the world, not be a game unto themselves. One of the big things I seek is for players to make judgements like they do in the real world, and the video pointed out that simply having all the mechanics there leads people to establish expectations based on the mechanics instead of thinking in-character and establishing expectations the same way we do in the real world. Personally, I find myself an odd one out as I use the mechanics more as a language to describe the world yet still base my expectations on the world, not the mechanics. Yet in this recruitment, there has been a lot of hesitancy based on expectations of mechanics, and that’s not really the desired outcome. Thus, I figure I’m going to use the mechanics in the background, and have only a small number of mechanics shown to the players, such as the ability scores, and the skill list but just the points put into them rather than the actual bonus. Then play primarily through narrative description more like a freeform or rules light game, but with the mechanics in the background to keep things consistent, and to still allow dice rolls for many things, but many of the bonuses and penalties are handled on my end. Over time, I can slowly reveal mechanics one or two at a time to players, if they even have any interest in knowing. Thus idea would allow things to just start quicker as well. Thoughts? If you are still around, I think you are the only one, I think I’m going to make a new recruitment just for this simplified format, and you can join that, or if you still want to dig into the mechanics I can finish building your sheet and we can play with you learning the mechanics as we go.
I wasn’t trying to start a debate at all. There was no expectation of getting a response. And no I don’t think pf is broken, it just doesn’t go for what I want from a system, there is a big difference. And I can absolutely support other people playing in their own way too you know. It doesn’t have to be support only one way. There aren’t teams. It is not wrong to support multiple different ways of playing the game. I’m not the biggest fan of paizo’s rules, but I love their stories and art. And that’s enough for me to support them. I don’t have to like everything they do to wish them well and want to see what they put out. The biggest problem is that I’m autistic, so when people do the perfectly normal thing of reading a lot between the lines, it is highly misleading and inaccurate with me or others like me. Bigrin thinking I was being hateful when I was being dispassionate for example. If a comment seems dispassionate to me, then how am I supposed to know others are going to find it emotionally charged until I get a response?
You are missing the point. They are asking why people don’t gm pfs, but they are obviously assuming it is an issue of players not getting into gming (“… people who don't GM to take up the role…”) and thus me making a point that it is also gms who avoid gming pfs, along with my particular reasons.
There is far more to this than just getting people to gm. GMing for pfs is a whole different thing. PFS is a whole heck of a lot stricter than normal and even normal has this ridiculous notion of GMs being limited by the rules, a notion that absolutely disgusts me. To me, rules are a tool to be used or ignored at need, and pfs would not only require me to take the opposite stance but to take it to the extreme. I still remember my worst pfs experience of being told I couldn’t do something totally within the rules because it required the gm to adjudicate something because the module didn’t tell them how to do it. The conversations after that included how paizo wants consistency in how gms run the game, which to my mind is like asking a bunch of painters to paint exclusively in the same style as Picasso with no room to be themselves. I understand why paizo wants that, but I still see it as stifling. It’s hard enough to gm when one can be themselves, but the need to perfectly emulate an abstract style makes it way harder. There is also the fact that’s is all free. If I’m going to gm for free, I’ll gm a game I find fun to run. I’d only consider running pfs if I was getting paid, because then I’d be getting paid for my time and thus it not interfere with my own games. Not exactly an answer readily available on your questionnaire.
Yeap... but without improved trip, they can AOO you on your own AOO! It’s not quite accurate to say the action provoking an AoO hasn’t happened till after the AoO, but rather the triggering action is in the process of happening when the AoO resolves. An attack of opportunity “interrupts” the normal flow of actions in the round. If an attack of opportunity is provoked, immediately resolve the attack of opportunity, then continue… PFS probably needs a more clear handling of it since they want more consistent rulings, but at the very least it informs how to describe the events once resolved, each step of the way is started and in motion when it gets interrupted by the counterblow. For example, narrating your example would look something like, Move, trip, sunder, disarm “Adam steps backwards but Bill hooks their foot in an obvious attempt to trip but Adam saw it coming and counters by striking at Bill’s weapon, and Bill steps up to grab Adam’s weapon while Adam’s focus is on the weapon…”
The simplified version makes it a bit faster to hit the max ranks and specialization ranks, but it’s simpler. Specialization ranks cost have nothing to do with base skill ranks. Thus the first rank of a specialization costs the same regardless of whether the base skill is at 2 ranks or 20. However, Specialization ranks have double the cost of buying base skill ranks. So the first rank of a specialization costs 2 points, the second costs 4, etc. This helps how quickly ranks can be achieved a bit and makes Specialization more of a later build thing to improve ranks. Specialization ranks are still capped to half the base skill ranks.
I was just realizing I need to fix that. Sorry to see you go, but have fun.
I realized that having needed to explain the skill specialization cost multiple times, that I should probably take that as a sign that I need to simplify. On my drive to work, I realized exactly how I could do that with minimal fuss. So after I’m done with work today, I’ll put that up. Hopefully that will make things easier and better overall. Note: You’ll notice I don’t have any specializations in the example character. I originally intended to post am example of doing that next, as advancing the character. Thus nothing has changed with making the example character.
Example Character Creation Step 1: Concept
Step 2: Ability scores and race:
Race should generally be considered with ability scores because, as an example, an orc wouldn't really gain much strength from being a soldier as their natural strength allows them to rely on inherent strength to ba able to carry everything without tiring and fighting with full gear, while a human would need to spend time building up their strength. In this case, Treeka is a kobold, but thankfully with all her time in the bakery, she managed to build up her strength, becoming decently strong, for a kobold. With 26 points, I buy this array,
Treeka is swift and lithe but like all kobolds weak and frail, though she is certainly stronger than most kobolds are. She is also smart and willful which has helped her greatly in studying magic despite spending much of her time helping out around the family bakery. Step 3: Class:
We are making Treeka as an adult character on the cusp of starting out on her own and no longer being a mere apprentice (what in normal DnD is called a level 1 character). There is no class that really represents a mix of tradesman and mage (and while her swordsmanship is better than no skill, it still lacks formal training and isn't significant enough for a class level), but as there are no classes with tradesman related class abilities anyway, we can take a class for being a mage and represent the baker trade with skillpoints. Her magic was learned from a hedge witch in the evenings, so her magic is learned with a spellbook and formulaic spells, though the spells she learned are varied and do not follow a central theme like might be learned from formal schooling, so I'll give her the wizard class as a universalist since she has learned a broad variety of spells across schools. Wizard can be of any alignment, HD is a d4 which I'll note for later, and we can ignore the skillpoints and proficiencies since those are handled by the modified rules. The skill list is still notable though, as class skills have their skill rank cap raised by one. She gets only Will as a good save. Thus Treeka has the Summon Familiar and Scribe Scroll abilities. In this case, to better fit the thematics of learning from a hedge witch, her "scrolls" are flavored as small fetishes, little bundles of herbs and goop and such wrapped to look like tiny dolls dressed in leaves and cloth with some writing on the cloth. She has a spellbook labeled recipes, and is smaller to suit her small size and thus has half as many pages as a normal spellboook. She gets all the common cantrips, but we'll choose master spells later. Step 4:Basic Stats:
Tier As a PC, she gets to start with a Tier of 2. Power
HD
Fatigue
If she casts magic or a similar large drain on her fatigue from using abilities, and it is higher than a certain amount, she will need to roll to remain conscious. The amount she can handle without a save is Magical power plus Cha modifier. (the DC for such a check if she did spend more than that many fatigue would be 10+the fatigue cost). Benchmark: 8
BAB
Saves
Thus,
Size
Step 5: Levels and Skills:
Gaining levels has a three level cycle of something extra gained each level, and our starting characters are starting at level 6. At first level gain extra skillpoints based on the Int modifier.
Sixth level is also when the first class level is technically gained, but we already picked it out. So, for each level, I get to pick six skills, and at first level and fourth level I get to pick an extra two skills (because of my int modifier). Each of the skills chosen each level get one skillpoint that level. I get a feat at 2nd and 5th level, which is pretty much as expected though skill focus is different from the book. I took Negotiator because in helping out at the family bakery, she often had to go buy supplies and deal with people in a business sense. Then I chose Spell Mastery since she wasn't expecting to get a spellbook from the hedge witch that trained her, since spellbooks are really really expensive, so she learned spells from her teacher's book well enough to not need a book to prepare them. As for ability score increases, starting with your initial scores, they cost the same as skill ranks to improve, so since strength starts at 8 and dex starts at 14, it would take 6 points to turn that 8 into 11, or 6 points to turn that 14 into 17. I chose constitution for Treeka as her lifestyle is certainly tiring and would build up her endurance. Thus:
Feats
Ability score Increases:
For reference:
Magic Schools:
Advanced Magic Schools:
This is what I got done so far, have a look.
it is just a fantasy trope as IRL without good drainage holes in the ground(aka dungeons or crypts) tend to fill with water. A problem likely solved if dungeons are common. But while it may have become a trope, in a world of medieval technology or less with flying monsters and mounts, a real world style of castle is not sufficient as aerial defense would be just as important as ground defense, thus the creation of underground fortresses makes sense as the solution, which, trope or not, leads to underground forts becoming a fantasy world’s equivalent to the real world’s castles. Consider real world forts made during world war 1 and 2. Many were underground and most that were not, were concrete solid structures. And we had far more effective weapons than a medieval level of technology can provide. A few ballistae would not provide sufficient aerial defense. Oh, and don’t forget scouting and reconnaissance. A flying mount can more easily see what’s going on in a castle that would otherwise be hidden from the view of groundbound observers. Underground forts solve that too.
Pretty sure there’s a character that already does that. Now what was their name… :)
It’s one of those things that is quite simple when you get it, but hard to describe. I’ll be including examples in the example character build.
The 15-minute workday is an old argument about how players would face only one encounter and then in complete safety rest up before the next encounter. This was a done, and a problem, because it allowed players to use what are supposed to be limited resources for several encounters all in one encounter for every encounter. Because some groups just accepted the 15-minute workday, some would build characters that focused on blowing through all their spell slots and per day abilities in every encounter and that allowed them to turn spike damage into an every attack thing instead of it being used only at key moments. It is one of the things my rule changes are trying to address, but how I run the also matters. For example, the world does not pause when the party goes to sleep, so things might attack you at night, especially in dungeons or when facing a large group of enemies. The armor thing will be more clear with the example character build. As for working in the warmage, it won’t be an issue, but I noticed a lot of non-core spells which is why I wanted to warn you that it would be core only spells.
You could, but you’d only get the core rulebook spells, and need to find or “invent” any others. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it is a viable option for bring in a supplement choice. Just make sure you consider how the other rule changes affect things. For example, to wear armor, you’ll be spending skillpoints on that, which will be reducing spell failure chance anyway. The Edge ability is still good if you really want to focus on that damage, but I don’t do 15-minute work days so keep that in mind.
ok i fully don't get it, can someone help? Don’t worry too much. Early on I suggested a few options for generating scores, but that was settled to be just standard point buy, the 3.5 version with 26 points. We were discussing the system though as a point of interest. If you are still interested, I can give an explanation later. If all you are worried about is making a character, just use 26 points to point buy. At the moment, I’ll try getting some posts up this week to show the building on an example character.
I’m going to try GMing through StartPlaying again. They have an event coming up for the release of the 2024 dnd dmg. Who knows if I’ll actually get any players for it though. It’ll be my first foray into 5e since the first version of 5e was in playtest.Tell us how it went! It hasn’t gone yet. I’ve got like a week before start and it doesn’t end till partway through next month. So right now is job interview.
I’m going to try GMing through StartPlaying again. They have an event coming up for the release of the 2024 dnd dmg. Who knows if I’ll actually get any players for it though. It’ll be my first foray into 5e since the first version of 5e was in playtest.
I remember that. It was interesting. Also, it is a good example of why I think in a fantasy world, you have dungeons instead of castles. Active forts would be underground, maze like, and broken into defensible areas where only a few enemies can attack at once, should they get past one of the gates. Also works as reasoning for why there are so many dungeons in a world. If they are the standard defensive structures, then plenty enough will be abandoned and taken over by nature and monsters.
So one handed bastard sword specialization would cost 3 points for rank 1 If your Heavy Swords skill was rank 2, yes. You would probably be better off taking Exotic Heavy Blades as a base skill if you wanted to go in that direction from the beginning of your build, or if you didn’t already have heavy blades. But if you had heavy blades and decided you also wanted just the one exotic use, then doing it that way works. Exotic Heavy Blades is a base skill for all the exotic weapons in the heavy blade category. Sorry I took so long. I thought I already posted this answer and hadn’t seen any other responses yet.
Specialization and base skill stack. However, specializations are capped at half the base skill and anything applying bonuses treat the specialization and base skill as a single skill, so you don’t get double the ability modifier etc. Because specializations are capped at half the base skill (basically a specialization can add up to 50% of the base ranks), you need Heavy Blades rank 2 to get Bastard swords to rank 1. The weapon groups are the ones from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana, you can find the list here. Also, note that single handed use of bastard swords still counts as exotic, so an extra skill point per rank for that (better than needing a feat, yes?) should you take that route.
Your game is such a deeply, fundamentally hacked version of 3.5 that I'm having a great deal of difficulty absorbing it from the point of view of '3.5 with the following adjustments...' The whole 3d6-plus-dramatically-more-incremental-advancement thing, plus combat ability being moved to skills and there being defense skills, plus magic being strongly tied to a fatigue mechanic, reminds me very strongly of GURPS to the extent that I wonder whether you might just want to run a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game and not know it yet. I’ve played gurps and it is the only other system that comes close to what I like about 3.5. And while it does a few things better, such as how you can build powers, I still like 3.5 better overall. In the end, I’m creating my own system completely. Two in fact. One that is completely ground up and a second that is like something between my system and 3.5. My current set of rules here are hacks to 3.5 because I’m trying to leverage the existing material and work to make it easier to get more testing of my ideas. It’s not really intended to be the permanent set of mechanics for all time. Thus the hacky nature of it. Do you have a version of your Player's Guide that has some of the more heavily hacked rules rewritten with your version from the ground up, maybe with some examples- like an instance of a full character sheet of a legal starting character? Not at the moment. That is a lot of typing, especially as I’m using a phone, hence me trying to leverage the existing 3.5 material. I can work on getting better write ups as needed, but it’ll be a slow process. And I am obviously going to focus on the parts most in need.
Clearly I need to clarify that better, but it is in the write up. (Better organization is on my to do list) Character and class level use Power instead for most things. Exceptions should be rare enough to handle with rulings and common sense. A feat requiring fighter lvl 3 for example, would obviously still require fighter class levels because it doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Core rules plus my alterations, though I am open to include a small amount of other stuff on an ad hoc basis if a player is looking for something specific, but primarily core rules.
Just circumstance bonuses, and familiarity bonuses. But it is there for rulings as well and a general tool. But the largely the existing bonuses otherwise not affected by my changes will still be the same as they were, static bonuses. Do kinds of magic that don't work on a Vancian spell-slot system, like shadowcasting or psionics or invocations, still cost fatigue points? The fatigue system is the base system. All magic goes through that unless otherwise noted. Now, being core rules and a homebrew setting, shadowcasting and invocations are unavailable entirely. Psionics exist, but no mechanical options are available for using those right now. in any case, they are more of an alternate use of magic, and thus, like arcane magic, use fatigue primarily with a few special techniques to get past the limitations of fatigue.
Yea, but A) poor wording perhaps but that is supposed to be fluent like a native speaker not only in understanding words and sentences but catching all the little things a native speaker would find odd despite being a valid sentence or phrase, and B) it is one of the imperfections of the system. No matter how a system is designed, you will get artifacts that seem not right. This is one of them and if it ever comes up I’d make some rulings, but it doesn’t seem worth it to me (as things stand now anyway) to add complication to improve it. That may always change of course, but remember, mechanics are guidelines not binding contracts. Also, of you could give a skill point cost for increasing a base skill and specializing, that would be great. I'm not clear on specializing cost. 3 points increase Perception to 2 ranks. It would cost 3 more points to increase Perception to rank 3, but only 2 points to increase Spot to rank 1. Thus, +3 Perception would be 6 skillpoints.
Now imagine you have 2 ranks in Perception and specialized in both Spot and Listen getting a +1 each. This would cost 7 ranks total. Next, consider raising Perception to +3.
If you have 3 Perception and +1 Spot and +1 Listen, the order you bought ranks matters. If bought Perception 2 first, then Spot and Listen, then bought Perception 3, that’s 10 points, but buying perception 3, then Spot and Listen is 12 points. But there is value in a unified cost so it doesn’t matter what order the ranks are bought in. To achieve this, I add the additional rule that the cost to improve should always be the cost it would be if you bought all the base ranks (Perception in this case) first before buying the Specializations, and use that as the cost needed to improve rank, thus Perception 3, Spot 1 and Listen 1 will always cost 12 points no matter what order you bought ranks. Specializing is cheaper in the short term or if you rarely improve the base skill. But if you are trying to get max ranks of a skill, it’ll cost the same in the end, but you have some strategy about how to get there.
Well, I’m getting plenty of areas where my document needs restructured and clarified. :) With weapons now being tied to skills, how do feats like exotic weapon proficiency, weapon focus, weapon specialization ect work out? Proficiency basically was a matter of whether you count as trained with a weapon. But if you have a rank in a skill, then you are trained in that skill and if you have no ranks then you are not trained. Thus with a weapon, you are proficient with it if you have a skill rank that you would apply to rolls to use that weapon. Implicitly this means the proficiency feats don’t anything anymore, but proficiency as a term may still be used, such as in feat requirements, in which case, if you would add at least one skill rank to a normal roll for using a weapon (aka, the weapon is part of a weapon group you have the skill for or you just straight up specialized in that weapon), then you are proficient in that weapon. I will add it to my list of things to change in the document to address them explicitly.
Everyone gets six skill points as a base, but they can only put one skill point in any particular skill each level. Or put another way, you can increase six skills by one skillpoint each level. Humans get an additional skillpoint and can thus increase seven skills by one point each level. I phrased it differently in the document in an attempt to be clear on that. Basically it prevents players from dumping all their skill points into one skill.
Yes. Keep in mind, skills don’t get more than one skillpoint per lvl.
HD is equal to Physical Power (Which is equal to Mundane Power unless you have a bonus specifically to physical power). Mundane Power starts at 1. The HD classes provide in the base rules still have some influence on the size of your HD. Base Save bonuses still come from class levels but are halved. This is because Power is added to saves as well. (Note to self, mention the generally static roll bonuses under the stat descriptions)
So feats, classes, spells and stuff are from 3.5Yes, or supposed to be anyway. Not sure where unchained rogue is coming from. Only one other player so I might allow the PF1 classes if everyone would prefer and there is good reason to like them. How is your character coming along? Care to share what you have so far? I didn’t previously think your point about going to thief was serious, but if it is, nope, we are using core 3.5 as a base plus my alterations, with some freedom to bring in a limited amount of stuff beyond that.
Class skills just raise the skill rank cap by one, so they do still exist but it’s a more subtle thing than standard 3.x.
Personally I think it works as is wonderfully for NPCs. For PCs though, I had considered setting aside say 5 points, just for this reason. A player could give themselves a great score, remove all the “too low” scores, or boost a couple more important ones. But the point is, these sets you rolled are A) all equal point buy, B) random or mostly random which can work for inspiration as well as being one of those “figure out how to work with what you got things,” and C) they look much more reasonable and plausible for actual people. An alternative though, is to mix this method with the boon/bane method, select one score to be high, one to be low, then use this method with D4s to build the remaining scores. There are tons of variations that can address various player concerns. In fact, our other brought up the only concern that simply can’t be addressed by any of my suggestions, a feeling of control. That’s a complicated subject that does not in fact require complete god-like control to resolve, but that’s a whole different topic.
Example, A player might roll this,
1s, 6
So strength is 8 plus six point buy, a score of 14. Dex gets 3, con gets 4, etc.
(As a note each point increase costs one point buy until you buy a 15 or higher, so it matters only if you get more than six dice to one score, which didn’t happen here. But if say, 7 dice landed on strength, that would be a 14 with an extra point that could be shifted to dex or con.
Each d6 is a point, the roll determines where it goes. So, if everyone rolls 10d6, everyone got 10 point buy points. Now, higher stats require multiple points, if you have dice that rolled for a stat with more than enough for one score but not enough for the next higher score, those dice can either be shifted around, left alone so less points are needed to improve those scores from leveling up (admittedly specific my rules for this campaign), or if a few player choice points were allocated, then the player can allocate them to finish paying for the next higher stat. In the end though, each die represents a single point buy point, NOT a full +1 to the score.
Oh, I’m up to a rough sketch of six encounters guaranteed to make for at least a 50% chance of a tpk each, and built with all low level enemies, so it’s the return of Tucker’s Kobolds. }:) I’m excited to see how it comes out. Once they’ve played it, I’ll post here the full evil glory of Silnyseoyl and her minions. I can’t wait.
Clearly it needs clarification then, as the whole point of it is that everyone gets the same point buy value.
I’m not sure what book, but probably nearing the end as we are lvl 14 right now. I’m a halfling too, though not by choice as that is because I reincarnated, twice now, though the first was just background history. My character is mainly winter witch, but with some arcanist, and the gunslinger level. I’m making her out to be a savant of sorts with magic, hence doing unusual magical things and spell creation. Figure my character will become Selena the one ever rejected by death. :) She has plenty in place to always recover from dying.
They would have been assigned as point buy points. I’m interested in your thoughts on the idea.That said, no one came by before last Thursday, so the other player’s choice on the matter stands, standard point buy rules in 3.5 with 26 points.
So feats, classes, spells and stuff are from 3.5Yes, or supposed to be anyway. Not sure where unchained rogue is coming from. Only one other player so I might allow the PF1 classes if everyone would prefer and there is good reason to like them. Just plain core 3.5. That said, you haven’t asked for any other supplements and pathfinder classes aren’t that outlandish. My love of 3.5 is mostly in the secondary mechanics and math anyway, rather than the class abilities, and the reworking of class abilities is my favorite change pathfinder made, so it’s not that big of deal, but with all of the changes I made I didn’t really want to complicate things further. Some of the classes stack numbers a bit too much, but that shouldn’t be too outlandish to deal with, especially with only two players. I’ll leave it therefore, to you two whether to use the pathfinder classes or keep it simple and stick with 3.5 classes.
I’m a player in reign of winter right now, we are having fun. I invented a new spell that makes cute little snowball creatures to zoom around and scout. I also took a level in gunslinger, for obvious reasons if you know the adventure.
I’m starting a campaign. Also, helping my cousin with some upcoming encounters. Pretty sure his players will ban me from helping him ever again. }:)
If the devs wanted the gladius to count as a shortsword in all things, they could have said so. They didn't. But they did, if indirectly. Though PFS tends to be it’s own thing, so contradictory rulings abound there. Not much concern of mine unless people start paying me to run it. But the writing describing the Gladius includes a reference that only works if the Gladius is considered a short sword. We know this because if you swapped out “gladius” for “mace” then the sentence sounds wrong. Why, because the comparison made is of sort exclusively used for same category comparisons, therefore sticking an item in that phrase from a different category makes it sound odd to a native speaker. That said, it is clear that the author felt it was so obvious that they didn’t think it needed clarifying. Happens a lot in writing. Interestingly, most people don’t read into a text on such a level. I do though, and even analyzed bits of the regulations for the sergeants in my unit in the army when they were confused (my god does military regulations make the most complicated game rules seem simple). So naturally, you get issues like this.
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