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Motorcycles were available around the turn of the 20th century. If you saw Big Jake, they had a motorcycle and cars too. It's not too much of a stretch to think that motorcycles and motorcycles that change into power armor would be something that mages would come up with.
Fake Healer, I think one of the problem is the item goodies that you are giving them. Crystal armor? Some orb and rod that they bought? All pre 6th level? Since their saves shouldn't be too high why not have a trap that pulses Mordenkainen's Disjunction on your two cheese monsters? Sure you'll still have to deal with the maneuvers, but, that's what range is for. And if they have a pretty good attack bonus a -4 shouldn't be too bad especially after the MD trap. Oh yeah and if the crystal armor for some reason is not magical in nature, then Shout ought to do just as nicely. Also, when you had that log trap you should have had things ambushing them right after the logs fell. Kind of hard to attack a bunch of logs when there is something trying to hit you. And as for the vampire, why didn't you have the bat swarms attack with the vampire waiting in the wings? And didn't the vamp have charm person? Heck if you HAVE to attack the barbarian why not with something that takes a saving throw that guy doesn't have a chance in heck to make. Then the party will have to deal with one of their cheese monsters.
My brothers and I really like Asterix. We first got introduced to him through the cartoons (translated in English, one of the few dubs we really like). One of my brothers liked Asterix so much that he did get the books, and the live action movie with Gerard Depardieu as Obelix.
I'm not sure if Red Phoenix actually became a goddess (unless she is a representation of Guan Yin). I know west White Tiger is the Tiger General. If you need help with the wiki, look for the Directional Guardians of Chinese mythology. It might not be the exact name, but it might be close enough that you might get suggestions as to what they called it (Wikipedia gets fussy about exactness).
Actually, you might want to check it out. I know that it took a while for comic book artists to be formally recognized as owning their own work in regards to established comics. Since comics and magazines might be considered the same medium, you might just have a case.
I had thought that the submission agreement had any submissions belonging to Paizo. WotC only has the rights to the Dragon and Dungeon trademarks, well and of course the Dungeons and Dragons game stuff that isn't open content. An original map that was not connected to the worlds they do hold the copyrights for, would therefore belong to Paizo. And with the making of the Lands of Mystery, you have certainly declared that this is new turf. Of course I could be wrong, I hadn't read through the complete submission guidelines. And if WotC wanted to lay claim to it, I guess they could say it was part of all those terra incognita bits on the map of Aebir-Toril.
Or Red Phoenix the guardian of the South from Chinese mythology. I know they have a write up of the phoenix in one of the Monster Manuals, and you could give her a human form with the flowing scarf thing of Chinese angels.
A bard does have a role in the party. They are buffers and secondary healers. Heck they are more versatile than Defenders in City of Heroes, since they can engage in melee, or fight at range, they can buff the party or they can heal someone. And if you really want to they have some Controller-ish aspects too, if you take the enchantment/charm spells and make quite a bit of use of the fascination song. Taking that into consideration they could be very good in outdoor missions. Although it would be best if the characters stayed at an inn, since the spell preparation is a little noisy. About the only thing that is "wrong" with bards is all the choices that are available.
The books I'd recommend are in the young adult section of book stores. The author is Tamora Pierce and she has quite a few quartets in two separate fantasy worlds. Set in Tortall (in this order): The Song of the Lioness Quartet The Immortals Quartet The Protector of the Small Quartet Set in Emelan (in this order): The Circle of Magic Quartet The Circle Opens Quartet (this one has slightly mature themes in that a crime is a major part of each book) The Will of the Empress (a single book, and again has some mature themes)
If I remember correctly that used to be a standing joke for Greyhawk. Want to name something quick? Spell a friend's name backwards, presto instant odd sounding name fit for a fantasy milieu.
Okay... that is weird. A halberd is an interesting weapon to use, since it allows for double damage against charges and allows for trip attacks. And if it's not even a reach weapon you don't have to worry about the Short Haft feat. But the glaive sounds cool too. And I don't mean the Krull throwing bladed disk (although that is cool too).
I'm not so sure about best. Combat in 3.5 favors the ability to move around the battlefield and use the odd rules like trip. Remember the thread on helping a fighter beat an 18th level wizard? And there was an earlier thread where someone was complaining that the monsters were ignoring his dwarven tank and how because he had gone for ultra high ac and maximized hit points his movement was ridiculously slow. Something to consider is that equipment is also a factor in the overall power of a character. Should the two weapon fighter use two swords of wounding and Spring Attack, it could be as devastating as the 2H bastard sword user. True, he won't be able to hold a doorway like the tank. However depending on the DM, that situation might not come up often. Another thing to consider is if there is a feat where a fighter can "choke up" on a reach weapon so they can actually fight someone within the reach of their weapon. If there is one, then I'd say that going with a halberd would be one of the better choices.
I love cats, but I rent a room, and both my landlady and her son are allergic to cats. I do love it when I catch sight of the ferals in the neighborhood though, they are so cute. While I don't mind some dogs (mostly the working types) I am highly allergic to them.
As for anime and manga, it would depend on which ones they took as examples or inspiration.
For India, there is RG Veda. The Heroic Legend of Arslan is based on a Persian story. All in all, about the only thing I do NOT wish to see is an Eastern Setting which was done in the Saban sentai fashion like Hengeyokai by White Wolf. Not to say that a sentai style game world wouldn't be interesting if done correctly... but that would take a lot of work and would be far too specific to be placed in any pre-existing campaign.
Actually there is a supplement that was published by Expeditious Retreat Press which covers how to add the Silk Road into your campaign. I found it to be very informative. It's called A Magical Society: Silk Road.
Well there are two campaigns that I can see someone doing that could greatly expand the Eastern Setting. (as one person I know said, "Oriental is for rugs and salads.") 1.) The Silk Road Campaign: the information could span from actually establishing it to how the DM can use it as a campaign setting. 2.) The Star Fleet: China once sent a treasure fleet on a diplomatic mission to start relations (tribute system) with other lands across the ocean. Using this (perhaps in journal form) you could greatly expand the information known about the lands around the Eastern Lands. If you go with one man's ideas about the original Star Fleet, the fleet managed to circumnavigate the globe.
The Animagus would have to be a prestige class. Not all wizards are animagi, but all animagi are wizards.
Possibly. During the first year they were able to cast Knock, Levitate, and Hold Person. Although you could say that it was mostly Hermione who did Knock and Hold Person. She simply used Mending (a cantrip) to fix Harry's glasses. And as I said earlier my long post with the class features was eaten up by the internet.
One of the first things that comes to mind with a wizard/sorcerer based on the Harry Potter novels is the fact that the casting system is intrinsic to the setting. Young wizards and witches are first taught at the age of 11. They are not allowed to cast spells outside of school until the age of 17. So theoretically if you were to start the campaign at level 1 or even 0, the PCs will in fact be children and will remain so for quite a few levels. OWLs and NEWTs are also something that you can add to the game to bring the flavor of the Harry Potter world to your own. It is an obstacle that you can have the players roleplay. If you were to go with the idea that one year at Hogwarts equals one level (and given the idea of Cedrick Diggory's reputed ability at 17 that's not too far off), then the PC would have to take his or her OWLs at 5th level before advancing to 6th. This is much like Dragonlance except that the PC is actually much more powerful in this system. As for that system, I'll submit another post. For some reason the internet likes to swollow long posts that I write.
I can see where a permanent bonus to Intelligence can add to skill points based on level. As it provides a deeper pool with which the character can draw upon past experiences. The suddenly gained points would have to be distributed among skills already known (unless they are completely maxed out), or you could argue that the new points represent sudden understanding in things that were explained to him earlier. "If I have two beans and I add two more beans, what do I have?"
You can also limit the newfound skill points to class skills, as that would represent the things that the character was exposed to during training. It also prevents things like the sudden ability of Fighters to Tumble, especially if the fighter is between levels and has no one to learn from.
I'd like to point out that "Su" was the Druid-Who-Stayed to try and help the woman and child. While she might have been one who complained at the beginning, it does seem that she has found her niche. I do agree with the previous posts as to the misplaying of alignments. Chaotic Good is not giving a damn about the law when trying to do good things. Such as the Peace-Tie law that might be in a town. If a raider is attacking a helpless woman and child a chaotic good person would say, "Forget the law, I got to save those people!" Then rip the sword out of his scabbard and attack. Or... had a fake peace-tie in place as a just in case measure. As for the true alignment played, I'd go with Chaotic Neutral or Neutral Evil. CN would be "Not my problem, I don't want to deal with it." NE would be "It doesn't benefit me. As a matter of fact there is a good chance doing that will get me hurt, so (sing song voice) I'm not going to do it. Now where was that merchant?"
Well, I guess the first thing you need to figure out is the main goal(s) of the Dark Faction. I say goals, because there is the stated goal the one that would be easier to find out since most of the members of that faction knows it, and there could be a "shadow" goal that only a select few knows about.
You also might want to flesh out the Big Boss of the Dark Faction and his motivation. This way you can get a handle as to how he wants to run his faction and who he might reach out to for allies. The name of the group, a symbol to represent them, and maybe a costume piece that is unique to them. This will help provide clues for your players, and will help cement them as part of the setting and story. But just to be odd let me toss out a few blurbs of some ideas: 1. A Luddite group who seeks to bring down all of civilization because it's based on technology. 2. A group of housewives who kill inconvenient husbands, as they see it as their right to live as free women. 3. An Evil Overlord of in full Pulp grandeur who has actually came up with his own version of "What would I do if I became an Evil Overlord."
A few guides that seem pretty good to me are Tom Brown's Guides: Wilderness Survival and Living With the Earth are good ones. His guide to edible and medicinal plants is all right, but really geared for more like the north eastern part of the United States. The one thing you should know before you read these is that he puts a lot of his philosophy into the books, Native American stuff his best friend's grandfather taught him. It's interesting but can be distracting if you aren't prepared. The books that I paged through but never got because they were hideously insanely expensive at the time, although Amazon seems to have newer books that are really cheap (in comparison) are the Foxfire books. These books seem to have a bit of everything on "how to be a pioneer." Like log cabin building, how to make moonshine... Although if you do look in Amazon for these be careful. Foxfire 1- whatever number they stopped at are the living like it was 1899 books. There seems to be a few books also called Foxfire that are stories. The Tom Brown guides I found in the Nature/Gardening section of Borders (if you go to normal stores). The hideously expensive Foxfire books were in the reference section at Keplers back in the 80s (okay so 50 bucks a book seemed really expensive to me).
No the rules DO state that you can stand and take a 5' step because your first move action didn't leave the square you fell in. I didn't post a word for word exact copy of the example in the PHB but it literally has Tordek standing, taking a 5' step towards his opponent and attacking.
Okay, like I said I don't know the new rules. I took a peek at 3rd ed WoD the normal tabletop rules and decided I didn't want to shell out for the LARP stuff especially since I was new person in the association and they weren't going to reset the power levels of the new characters. (I'd have to make a brand new character who is new to their powers, the old timers got to play near gods.) How much of WoD are you going to use? Are vampires, ghosts, fae, garou, and mages going to be the antagonists? Or are your intrepid players going to be fighting the government who want to put all the Gifted into the equivalent of concentration camps unless the work for the good old US of A? And what about other countries? Mexico is within spitting distance and will have its own supernatural and histories. Oh and I meant where an for how many are you going to be Storytelling for? A cafe is going to be a much different experience from say a cold windy outdoor mallish place at night.
Well if I remember correctly, she needed that much Karma to do the column shifts for hit and damage.
Why change most of them? I know Jedi don't have wings, so that will have to change, but the rest is fairly simple. Although on second thought why aren't you adapting the psionic rules? Well, let's see if this will work. Since you are making the Jedi into a base class instead of a prestige class the padawan and jedi knight (and the corresponding dark counterparts) will have to be incorporated into the base class. You might want to have Jedi Master and Dark Lord be actual prestige classes. (If I mess anything up, it's because it has been a while since I've seen the original three and only half watched the three prequels. Heck most of the stuff I'm going off of is from Ranma/ Star Wars crossover fanfics. Although I do believe that the writers were avid fans.) Game Information
Alignment: (Jedi) Lawful Good, and maybe Neutral Good
Hit Die: d8 Class Skills: Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Heal (Wis), Jump (Str), Knowledge (Force), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis)
Weapons and Armor
Class Features
IMHO, it really depends on your point of view. With tri stat you have to be really stingy with the points or the PCs will be able to do anything, especially if they take magic (like the divine power pool thingy). Making the character is probably the hardest part because you have to see if it all adds up, since everything (skills, powers, and equipment) is based on point buy. And there are advantages and powers that grant even MORE points for certain things.
d20 is fairly simple with the basic concept, roll the d20 and see if you hit the target number. However you can layer it with a lot of different rule sets that you can generally make any setting you want and have a core set of rules to point to if there is a dispute. The problem here is if you are making a homegrown setting with a hodge podge of rules from a bunch of different sources (D&D spells, the Book of Nine Swords stuff, Warmachine mechs and warcasters, and monsters from Call of Cuthulu d20) either you have to make your own game bible or cart around a truck load of source material to every game. Sharing it all with the players might be a problem too.
Erf... I played the LARP back before 3rd edition, so the rules have changed a bit. Well that and we had to change the sign for obfuscate because crossed forearms before your chest is a gang sign around here. Not sure if I can help much, but I might be able to be an okay sounding board. By the way, where are you going to play this? Settling in LARP is very important. Oh and while there was some story a lot of the vampire stuff tended to be really free form talk, talk, talk.
Heh, well what I remember most about MSH (at least in the 80s) was the Dragon magazine article where the author wrote how he hated the system. All because he found a way, with about 1000 Karma, for Aunt May (yes, Peter Parker's sweet old aunt) to kill Galactus with a butter knife.
Okay, from the PHB, you can take a move action and a standard action in any order, or take two move actions. Unless you don't actually go anywhere with the first move action (like standing up). The example they have actually has Tordek standing up, taking a 5' step, and attacking.
So since the Geo didn't move anywhere when it merged with the ground, according to this it was legal: 5' step, attack, merge. Unless the special power to merge is considered a standard action and not a move action.
Actually, Neville is "marked" in a way. He's always had to live with the idea of Voldemort due to what was done to his parents. The "mark" isn't visable, yet it is still there. As for Dumbledore, due to the nature of the heroic journey he had to die or somehow get removed from the action. The removal of the mentor is close to the end of the journey, but there are still a couple steps to go. Now Snape, is interesting. Unfortunately I am unable to comment much as I haven't read very far into the sixth book. I do know however what happens between Snape and Dumbledore, due to Entertainment Weekly putting the whole Good Snape vs Evil Snape in boxed text. In BOXED TEXT, gah... as a gamer my eye went to that first! Everyone knows boxed text is important... It also didn't help that their Spoiler Warning was in the corner on the opposite page. I do like the idea of the twist in the story such as, Neville or Hermione is the real hero. However as Harry has been the center of the whole thing and has pretty much suffered through the hero's journey up to now, it will seem sort of cheap to switch heroes on us in the last book.
<shrug> Like I said, the magazine article was written in the mid'80s so it might not be all that accurate as to how long those things last.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Matzos... They have a shelf-life longer than Twinkies. (I read that in a survival magazine back in the '80s.) And if you wait for Passover, you can get 5 lb. boxes of the them for fairly cheap, just watch out for the Jewish community if the supplier doesn't give the stores enough for them.
Inevitables are all about the rules. If The Rules say they can't, then it can be interpreted that while the Inevitable cannot they can help someone who can.
Well you have to realize when you are using Color Spray it's to get the higher more powerful ones. It also fits your theme. Actually, due to very nature of a small spell list of spells known, what are you envisioning your character doing? Defense and buffs, attacking with spells or the light crossbow?
I believe that the Dex-based blind swordsman was used with the idea that the best defense is not to be there. Most wisdom bonuses to AC are in the system already, and each is based on evading the incoming attack. You might also wish to consider that the D&D fighting system is geared towards movement in battle. Positioning and tactical advantageous movement is a major part of it. One way you can go for a blind knight sort of thing would be the mounted knight. Therefore you wouldn't have to see, your horse can. Of course this will not be as fun if your group is constantly going into dungeons or urban house parties where being mounted on a horse would be... awkward. All right, that was not a practical solution. I'll scour my rules books and see what I can come up with for a heavily armored blind swordsman. Although one thing I will tell you now, there is no way he's having a helmet. Listening is a major part of how they will be able to position their enemy.
Well, since it has a Resident Evil feel, you probably should have the green herbs and possibly the red and blue ones too. You might want them to find a file or diary or something that explains their use, as it'd be meta-gaming on the PCs side if they just grab a green herb and use it. Heh, if you really want you can even add the typewriter tape as an artifact that allows you to rewind time if there is a TPK or some other disaster. Again you'd need to introduce it before hand so they know they can do this. Maybe some sort of odd rant in a memo from a bad guy or something about how he's going to cut off the funding for such a stupid project.
As for possible spell-like abilities, how about Mage Hand, Mending, and Resistance (which gives a +1 to saves)? Or if you want a sort of super special little bit with a bunch of applications, why not Elemental Burst (neat level 1 Wu Jen spell)? I'd say since Elemental Burst is a first level spell which has an effect for each element you give that one spell-like ability instead of three cantrips. And the eastern elements (wood, earth, metal, fire, and water) really do work with most interpretation of gnomes.
To tell you the truth for the longest time I had never really found a use for gnomes. If you look in the PHB both gnomes and halflings are pretty similar to each other. Both are small tricksters... However things get interesting when you look at the Races of Stone for the gnomes and Races of the Wild for the halflings. Halflings are gypsies, look at the art in Races of the Wild, garishly dressed travelling traders with a penchant for theft. A gross stereotype to be sure (for both gypsies and halflings). But gnomes, ah yes, gnomes are different. Gnomes ARE Greeks, in thought at least. They are philosopher-artists. Much different than the carnies that I was going to consign them to, although I'll probably still keep that as well. I like the idea that they were the ones to invent the harpsichorde and the calliope (at least they do in my homebrew, which is still brewing). One source you can mine for ideas that might be interesting for your take on gnomes is the Dawnforge setting. There gnomes are fey creatures who have embraced the natural world and so have abilities that reflect that, but as racial feats. Uhm, a bit of a warning, Dawnforge seems to have a lot of "house rules" built into their setting, so if you do look at it (hopefully before shelling out any money) please keep that in mind. Previous Campaigns |
