Jackanory's page

I kind of want to play this now. No-one would really take them seriously and then suddenly frog leg flurry of blows!

Would the strength be an issue for a monk?

Gamma Punk?

I don't think alchemy makes sense. I can't think of a game in which he actually makes the bombs and potions he uses.

How about the Boots of Springing and Striding as a substitute for the Pegasus Boots?

Depending on what iteration of Link you want to play you might want to look at getting some wands. You'll also then need the Use Magic Device skill.

You'll have to get your GM to make sure every dungeon has various things in your way that you can only get past once you've gotten hold of the next item hidden in that dungeon.

Not very fancy but could you just do it on squared paper?

If your party is in a dark place, do you ask them which way their lantern is pointed?

I would have thought that this was covered by the perception check. I.e. yes, their light source might have a facing (like a bullseye lantern), but it's up to the character to ensure they're pointing it in the right direction at the right moment. Unless the player specifically states that they're pointing it at a certain area, like at an open door or something, in which case they probably wouldn't be penalised for a perception check to spot something happening in the doorway, but they'd get some kind of negative against the creature that's coming at them from the gloom behind them.

Your GM made a fair ruling during your game and you then felt the need to come onto the forums to vent spleen after you didn't get your way. It sounds like you're the frustrated one mate.

Weslocke wrote:

Just because the rules do not say it does not mean that your DM was incorrect in making you use a free hand.

You are correct that the DM is free to make any HOUSE RULE, or HOME BREW rule set, that he/she desires. However I think we can all agree that it is poor form for a DM to institute such HOUSE RULES in the middle of a campaign, especially concerning a class that a player informed him he would be playing ahead of time.

I can agree with you that a capricious DM (ie a weenie) is within his/her rights to make up any HOUSE RULES for their game that they wish.

However, Rules As Written, *I* am correct.

The DM is free to make up a house rule that magic missile needs to roll to hit.

The DM is free to make up a house rule that dwarves are size small with Powerful Build.

The DM is free to make up a house rule that you need a free hand in order to clear a jammed pistol.

However, let's be honest and call these things what they are -- HOME BREW HOUSE RULES. And let's also be honest and admit that springing such rules on players in a capricious manner is the earmark of a poor (ie weenie) DM.

What you're suggesting is that the GM should come up with rules for every eventuality for every class ahead of time, rather than relying on their players to be mature enough to roll with common sense rulings as they come about. It's not a house rule, it's the GM doing their job and adjudicating on the fly for a situation that hasn't been adequately covered in the rules as written.

Lawful Neutral (taken to its extreme) - Judge Dredd. Upholds the law for the sake of the law, whatever the cost, irrespective of any benefits.

"I am the law."

Currently playing in a low fantasy anglo-saxon-ish campaign where the only playable races are humans, aasimar and tieflings. Mechanically I'm playing a human bard with the Perform (Oratory) skill but his character is that of a young adventuring guy who's obsessed with the old stories and recounts them in battle to Inspire Courage in his friends. He's pretty religious and fascinated by aasimar, seeing them as paragons of all that is "good" and "holy" and hates and distrusts tieflings. He also has the annoying habit that paladins tend to have of jumping head-first into battle.

I had not thought of your question KitNyx to be honest. I was thinking of all corpses to tell you the truth. However, your point is an interesting one and should imply that perhaps only NPC corpses should be subject to this. I'll have to think about it, as I have to lunch right now. Thanks for the responses.

All this corpse discussion worked up an appetite?

Definitely go for the Beginner Box! Really nice, easy way of starting out as a GM, especially if the people you're playing with are newbies as well. It kind of guides you through the game but with enough scope for the players to think about the encounters laterally. As the GM you'll need to read through the material beforehand but apart from that there's no necessary preparation. You'll learn the mechanics together, which is great!

Not a mechanical thing but I'd rethink his surname, especially since you mentioned that his draconic heritage comes from his mother.

Might not work/be too OP but what about randomised magical effects when it attacks, to represent the odd magic weapon being stashed amongst the hoard and being brought randomly to the surface as it churns.

Could have the probability set pretty low to represent the weapons being quite sparse. But every piece of artwork depicting a hoard has a couple of random swords sticking out of the pile!

More amazing ideas! I'm really going to have to sit down and write this now! :D This is all so good. I especially like the haunt/memories idea! They could even be compelled to act things out that were either not harmful or were even helpful! They could "find" things that the previous adventurers themselves had found like secret doors or useful items. Nothing too important to the plot so it wouldn't matter if they failed.

I like the idea of them walking into a room and seeing a decayed corpse or zombie wearing distinctive armour or clothes, breathing in those memory spores and then seeing a vision of the same person in life through the eyes of one of their companions!

I might throw some vegepygmies in there while I'm at it!

But seriously, I'm really glad this thread has inspired so many of you and you've come up with some seriously amazing ideas!

I was thinking that early on in the dungeon they might find some crude symbols depicting the mage in his casing (just a humanoid figure in a rectangle or something) and that they'd see more and more evidence of his worship as it went on.

All you people making bad puns lack morels.

Cool yeah, I should have mentioned that this would be aimed at Level 1 characters, probably just the pregens from the beginner box. I know they're super simplified characters but the guys who I'm aiming to run this for aren't really roleplayers and I've so far only DMed the first Beginner Box adventure.

There are some seriously great ideas here! I like the idea of the fungi having formed a full ecosystem down there, with different molds and mushrooms taking up different niches! I reckon it could totally open up future adventures if it works out, with the possibility of further infestations in deeper caverns!

Maybe if it takes off, the fungal queen could be used further down the line as some kind of big bad!

So Mark, with your idea for the familiar, are you suggesting that it would still be down there working away but it has somehow been addled by the fungus? Maybe the players could encounter it and it could be working away, they'd be able to speak to it and get some of the information off it?

I'm currently formulating ideas for a dungeon crawl using the beginner box rules for some of my buddies. They aren't roleplayers (though we do play a lot of skirmish miniature games like Malifaux and Infinity) but we ran through the beginner box and really enjoyed it and I think another simple, single-session hack and slash/puzzler dungeon would go down well!

I just wanted to bounce the ideas I'd had for the dungeon off the forum to see if the more seasoned DMs might have some cool suggestions for what I could throw at them.

The basic theme of the dungeon is mold and fungus. The backstory is that some strange zombies wandered into town and were killed and that the party have been sent out to investigate their source. The party have followed their tracks back to the dungeon where the adventure starts. Almost the whole place is filled with rot, and spores hang heavy in the air. I'm imagining that some of the enemies they face (and that I'd have to convert to fit the BB) would be things like toads, myconids, goblins wearing mushroom hats and yellow musk zombies (which was what started the whole thing). I had this idea that in the end of the dungeon they'd find a man in suspended animation in a crystal tube, the idea being that he was a wizard who contracted some kind of fungal rot. He attempted to cure himself and ended up putting himself in the crystal as part of the process. When they look inside the tube he looks completely clean, in stark contrast to the rest of the dungeon. Although he has been cured, he has now been trapped in his tube for years and fungal essence, empowered by his magic has seeped out and filled the dungeon. Maybe some of the dungeon denizens worship him as their creator.

Do you have any ideas for the kinds of encounters they could face in this dungeon? Maybe some traps or puzzles or roleplaying possibilities? Do you see any holes in my ideas? How would they discover what actually happened here? I guess they could find his journal to find out that he was trying to cure himself but how could they make the jump to realise that he's the source of the proliferation of all of this?

Yet another problem of the prequel movies, the man should have never drawn a lightsaber. It wasn't his strength. He plays people against each other like a chess board.

I totally agree! Far too much was shown in the prequels instead of letting us use our imagination. Same with Yoda! One of the things I love about the original trilogy is how inconceivable it was that Yoda was this great warrior. I don't want to actually see him fighting! Ruins the mystery.

Well I only really listen to the audio and tend to do so when I'm doing other stuff like working on my drawings or walking to work.

Are you visualising your environments in your own head? If you've got a really strong image of what you want to describe it'll make it easier. Look at pictures of appropriate fantastical environments online to try to get into the mood and try to imagine how you'd describe them if you were there.

Also, if you're GMing you'll know about the places your adventure takes place in so there's no harm in making a note of some key descriptors beforehand.

Maybe try listening to or watching some games online with good GMs. Chris Perkins is, IMO, a fantastic example so you could look up some of the Acquisitions Incorporated games. It's D&D 4th Edition and it's mainly a comedy game but Chris Perkin's GMing skill is translatable.

You decide that your clumsiness with the scimitar is not giving such a noble weapon the reverence it deserves. You will continue to carry it sheathed to respect the traditions of your ancestors but switch to a weapon with which you feel more comfortable in battle.

Alternatively, would your DM be open to letting you switch up your weapon proficiencies from rapier to scimitar to reflect your character's upbringing?

The 14 year old should take this as an opportunity to practice some mental arithmetic, the rest of you should take this as an opportunity to exercise some patience.

Sorry I'm not answering your original question but it's not a great idea to just bypass his difficulties. You'll probably find that they'll get better as they go along.

there is a half-orc barbarian woman who is a black stereotype

Wow, you guys sound awful.

Why would you want to p*ss off your GM?!

It's time to deliver Wheaton's Furious C*ckpunch!

I'm not very good at visualising volumes so maybe I was overestimating exactly how much that was.
It didn't actually come up in a game, I'm just putting together some character sheets for beginners for a Legacy of Fire campaign I'm hoping to run and suddenly thought that Create Water was going to be a bit of a mad spell to have!

Is there a limit to how much water one can create in a day using the Create Water spell? It's an orison so it can be cast an infinite amount of times a day but surely it would get ridiculous if a 1st level cleric can just keep casting it out of combat. Its rules say it's a maximum of 2 gallons/level but is that per day or per casting? If it's per casting, casting it every 6 seconds (per round) they end up with 28,800 gallons over 24 hours!

And of course the Basic Corerule book and Bestiality (with a mini Monster manual they gave away at a con i was at.)

You've got what sorry?

Would you be able to used the beginner box iconic characters in a real adventure path (Legacy of Fire)?
The people I'm going to be playing with are all brand new to RPGs, apart from playing through the beginner box and the character sheets that you get in there just have everything laid out so nicely and clearly that it'll make things super easy to run. This will also be my first time DMing so I want it to be as easy as possible for me!
The idea would be to run through level 1 with those beginner sheets and then maybe once they've dinged level 2, let them customise things further, maybe even roll up brand new characters with all the options.

On another note, are there any other pregen character sheets out there that are laid out like that, with all the extra notes?

Cool, thanks for the help!

I'm a brand new DM about to start up Legacy of fire with some of my gaming buddies who are generally pretty experienced with tabletop gaming but relatively inexperienced with RPGs. I've played a lot of DnD as a PC but not as a DM before and I've always played in balanced parties (ie tank, stabby guy, spellcaster and healer). I'm a bit worried with how the party's line up is so far. We've got a half-orc monk, a drow swashbuckler (type of rogue), a gnome summoner, another guy who's leaning towards rogue or ranger and a final guy who I have no idea about yet (not sure if he knows either).

I'm just a bit worried that we're going to be creating a group with a really high damage output but not much else. We really need a healer of some sorts but I don't want to make people take a cleric or anything like that as I want them to make characters they're going to enjoy. If worst comes to worst I'll roll up an NPC healer of some sort to tag along with them but do you think they'll struggle through the campaign with this line up?

The final thing to ask is that the guy who's leaning towards rogue/ranger has a lot of really cool ideas for his character as he's really into fantasy writing but I'm not sure how to incorporate them. The main thing is that he wants his character to have the ability to spontaneously craft tiny golems out of anything he picks up. He also wants to be skilled and dextrous when he fights, which is why we were thinking rogue or ranger, and also good at talking his way out of sticky situations.