Ghray's page

Ran a five year campaign. I blended rules form Pathfinder to Tomb Rules and MAN what a blast. My players had their characters temporarily leveled to 20 to combat some crazy powerful enemies (and one player actually turned on the party after accepting the powers of Famine from Death. Year, four horsemen Famine and Death. PVP drama!)

Has anyone experienced the end of a long, drawn out campaign where all the BBEGs are defeated and the good guys won? Or simply just finished a campaign and you feel that deep breath, "it's done!" sorta thing?

Just feel like posting, it's a great high right now (although I'm crazy tired).

When a player rolls a 20 or a 1, they reroll said the D20 again to confirm crit. If they roll another 20 or 1 then they roll the die again. If they get a third 20 or 1, then its considered a super crit (1 in 8000 chance). This generally results in something hilariously epic. I have two of these happen over the course of my campaign.

Here is my opinion on the title. I posted the source of this, it is an alternative ruleset called Frank K. Tome to 3.5 (easily convertible to Pathfinder). The problem with fighters is Feats, they just simply don't do enough. Anywho, read this if you're interested.

Feats were an interesting idea when they were ported to 3rd edition D&D. But let’s face it; they don’t go nearly far enough. Feats were made extremely conservative in their effects on the game because the authors didn’t want to offend people with too radical a change. Well, now we’ve had third edition for 6 years, and we’re offended. Feats are an interesting and tangible way to get unique abilities onto a character, but they have fallen prey to two key fallacies that has ended up turning the entire concept to ashes in our mouths. The first is the idea that if you think of something kind of cool for a character to do, you should make it a feat. That sounds compelling, but you only get 7 feats in your whole life. If you have to spend a feat for every cool thing you ever do, you’re not going to do very many cool things in the approximately 260 encounters you’ll have on your way from 1st to 20th level. The second is the idea that a feat should be equivalent to a cantrip or two. This one is even less excusable, and just makes us cry. A +1 bonus is something that you seriously might forget that you even have. Having one more +1 bonus doesn’t make your character unique, it makes you a sucker for spending one of the half dozen feats you’ll ever see on a bonus the other players won’t even mention when discussing your character.

We all understand this problem, what do we do about it? Well, for starters, Feats have to do more things. Many characters are 5th level or so and they only have 2 feats. Those feats should describe their character in a much more salient way than “I’m no worse shooting into melee than I am shooting at people with cover that isn’t my friends.” This was begun with the tactical feats, but it didn’t go far enough. It’s not enough to add additional feats that do something halfway interesting for high level characters to have – we actually have to replace the stupid one dimensional feats in the PHB with feats that rational people would care about in any way. Spending a single feat should be enough to make you a “sniper character” because for a substantial portion of your life you only get one feat. Secondly, we have to clear away feats that don’t provide numeric bonuses large enough to care about. The minimum bonus you’ll ever notice is +3, because that’s actually larger than the difference between having rolled well and having rolled poorly on your starting stats. Numeric bonuses smaller than that are actually insulting and need to be removed from the feats altogether. 3.5 Skill Focus was a nice start, but that’s all it was – a start.

Furthermore, the fundamental structure of feats has been a disaster. The system of prerequisites often ensures that characters won’t get an ability before it would be level appropriate for them to do so, but actually does nothing to ensure that such characters are in fact getting level appropriate abilities. Indeed, if a 12th level character decides that they want to pursue a career in shooting people in the face, they have to start all over gaining an ability that is supposed to be level appropriate for a 1st level character. Meanwhile, when a wizard of 12th level decides to pursue some new direction in spellcasting – he learns a new 6th level spell right off – and gets an ability that’s level appropriate for a 12th level character.

Source: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52013824/D%26D%20The%20Tomes%20v.0.7.pd f

I live and die by home brew. My villains, setting, history, and practically every monster I throw at the players is homebrewed in some form. My players have fun and so do I.

It all boils down to preference really. I wouldn't say homebrew is a dirty word but yes there are elitists in both camps that get quite nasty. I personally would not have fun DMing a preset campaign, but someone else might. All the power to them!

In short, D&D is not about homebrew v. preset, fighters v. wizards, or if that natural 20 appraisal check on troll poop will get you a few gold pieces, but if everyone has fun

If you do anything that makes it less fun for others at the table the rule of thumb is you dont do it.

When you want to build a philosopher, what you're really asking is, how do I role play a philosopher? I built a fighter once who had this connection with nature, and was often as philosophical as he was an ass kicker.

You just gotta make a character and build them around a school of thought, or an idea, or some way of thinking. Make them question religion, or embrace it. Make them believe in some way of questioning things, anything you think of. It's all about how you roleplay, not the character you build.

My 0.02$

Rape in D&D is weird, wrong, and immoral. It can make players at a table feel uncomfortable or down right disgusted. I had a similar experience when one of my female players raped a male NPC. I didn't play in that game ever again.

That being said, D&D had a lot of evil shit in it. Murder, torture, genocide, theft, extreme poverty, and so much other crap. It's very hard to quantify one crime over another because their all terrible in their own ways. Hell, in my campaign there is a evil Ultron like machine literally using Grey Goo to genocide and turn everyone into zombie machines.

I think, for future players and DM's, it might be a good idea to lay down some ground rules about what the players expect in a campaign. This is me speaking generally, not to the OP, if your campaign is gonna feature some gore, torture, genocide, unjustly murders, tell your players. Because some people might be uncomfortable with a R rated game. T

I, and the other player in this game have spent hours looking for spell, item, and feat combos that can give him the feel and effect that he wants.

I ran into something like this not to long ago. I had a player who just shrugged his shoulders and always thought my games were "meh", even when the other players were having a blast. I spent hours coming up with new stuff to cater to his tastes and even when I showed him all of this new stuff catered just for him, he said "meh". Everything had to revolve around him. The NPC's had to like him, all of his spells had to awesome effects & damage, and no matter how much of a dick he was to NPC's in game, they had to kiss his feet.

Point is, some players like to think the game revolves around them and them only. I recommend talking to him, saying that you're trying to make this more fun for him, but he also has to make it more fun for him. I would recommend simply telling him that this game is for everyone and that he has to find something he likes. Hell, maybe recommend him looking into new characters (starting at level 12 of course, like the rest of the party).

I know what it feels like to be underpowered to the rest of the party, it sucks, but that shitty feeling shouldn't have to ruin the fun everyone else is experiencing. Try making him understand that.

The ultimate question, though, is why is the witch stepping on the rogue's toes when he didn't need to do so?

Because the witch CAN.

But the thing is PLAYERS don't like to feel like a tag a long. Why do you thing people complained about the rogue A LOT... enough in fact to force Paizo to Re-release it in another Hardcover book.

Oh and that is all well and dandy in something like a Home-brew game.. but how does that work in APs and PFS? APs are often used as a standard for measure because there is little variance when it comes to how a campaign IS due to GM interference compared to a homebrew.

And, before you try and make up something else, APs are VERY popular... they make up the bulk of Paizo's sales...

I was a tag along in a campaign a few years ago as a fighter. It was an awful experience mostly because I was the only martial in a group full of casters, asides from one ranger. The first 6 levels were great but once the wizard got spells like fire wall, or the Druid could transform into a fricken dinosaur, it really killed it for me.

The problem with martials is that their options are so limited. Anything a martial can do, a wizard can do better and cooler.

Honestly, I think the problem is feats. While there are a lot of great feats out there, you need 3 feats to get to those REALLY good ones. A great solution to the problem of feats was how the Tomb Rules handled it where you selected a feat and it got better the more BAB you had.

Thanks guys! I think all of these are great answers and I appreciate the help. I'd reply to all of you, but suffice to say I've learned a little bit from every comment.

There has been some confusion with the rules, after speaking to some players and checking out their character sheets, which is only natural. A lot of this is also my fault for not being more careful with the rules and double checking things when I should have, and there have been times where I should have made sure something could have been done.

For those checking back at this, I will be

- Double checking rules more often. I know this slows the game, but sometimes it's best to be safe
- Spending some time to go over player character sheets. I already peeked at them, but I want to discuss them a bit more indepth.
- Paying better attention to wealth by level. All but one of my players are within wealth by level and that is only because the rogue is a greedy kleptomaniac.
- Most importantly is this point: I will be reading the rules, the books, and digging a bit deeper into what other DM's are doing to enhance their player experiences.

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice! Very friendly responses.