Another game dead
And another game dead
Another one bites the dust!
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With her mask situated, Laurelin goes on the prowl for something tasty to eat. Maybe they'll even have fruit? Sometimes nobles like to splurge...
"Klar? Bold choice," says Laurelin as she adjusts her pulp bee mask.
"So you feel a connection to the kirre?" says Laurelin to the patrician, as her hand hovers over the mask of a pulp bee.
"Ah, perhaps?" says Laurelin as she's craning her head about looking for the selection of masks.
Laurelin's curiosity is piqued by the arrival of the new tent. It's probably some kind of trick, she thinks to herself, but a pretty mask would make a nice souvenir... She approaches the tent cautiously, watching for pickpockets or scams, somewhat awed by the sight of all the color in the silk fabric.
Some significant updates to the wiki. All psionic powers for the Disciplines of Clairsentience, Psychokinesis, and Psychometabolism are now entered. Filling out Telepathy next, as this includes attack & defense modes and tends to be more common than Psychoportation. Also continuing to add Priest spells, starting at low levels and working up.
Laurelin doesn't have a mask, and she's not a noble, just one of the semi-locals who caught wind of a festival and had to come see (and try to get some free food). She splits her attention between watching the various socialites mingling, and watching out the window that faces the dunes.
Though patricians are in attendance, the promise of a festival brings out other people as well, one of them a rustic woman, simply dressed, who seems to gawk at the nobles and their fabulous attire. In contrast to them, she's clearly a working woman, with sun-darkened skin and rough hands, and a noticeable rural twang to her accent.
Always happy to help. Glad to see you. :) You have 3d8 Hit Dice, and 24 hit points. Leather armor with your Dexterity bonus gives you an Armor Class of 5 (lower is better). You'll need to choose a specific kind of bow with which to be proficient: short, long, composite short, or composite long. Since it looks like you bought a short bow, your proficiency should match. Your Intelligence of 12 means that you get to pick 3 more nonweapon proficiencies. Your club is not affected by materials; you don't have to specify that it's bone, stone, wood, etc. It has no modifiers to attack or damage due to materials. Basically clubs, spears, and a few other weapons are not affected by materials and thus your choice of material purely cosmetic. Don't forget to buy arrows. For 9 cp, you can get a dozen bone-tipped flight arrows, which do a base of 1d6 damage and have a modifier of -1 to attack and damage rolls. Bone is allowed to water clerics because it's a product of living, growing things. In 2nd edition AD&D, unlike Pathfinder, you can use a buckler without taking penalties on a bow or crossbow. A buckler would cost you 1 cp and weighs 3 lbs. It improves your Armor Class by 1 but only against one attack each round.
I've been slowly filling out the Priestly Magic page, I've included all of the Water Sphere spells up to 2nd level and I'm partway through the Cosmos Sphere up to 2nd level, but probably won't matter if CariMac has disappeared with her cleric. :/ I could always switch to making a cleric character so that we have some actual healing magic.
Looks like I'm soloing this one...
New week, new you! Who's ready to roll?
Oh, and for those who just want to read the books, there's purple worm. It's basically a reprint of material from the 2nd edition rules CD, under a specific legal doctrine.
I've added a Priestly Magic page to the wiki, that includes the DARK SUN listing of which spheres various spells are in. Obviously, if you're playing a Water cleric, you have access to the Sphere of Water and (minor, 3rd level spells and lower) Sphere of Cosmos. I'm putting up the spells that have specific changes or notes, or that are new to the setting, in order to flesh out the lists with stuff that might not appear in a typical internet search or in the PDF of the Player's Handbook.
There are so many spells that adding them all to the wiki is going to be a daunting task. For the moment, look here. You should be able to use the filters to look for only 1st level spells, only priest spells, etc. Note that in DARK SUN, priest spells are organized into spheres differently. Instead of having Spheres like Healing, Thought, Protection, etc., there are only the Spheres of the elements (Air, Earth, etc.) and the Cosmos Sphere (everything else). The DS main rule book has a breakdown of how those Spheres are organized; I'll get a page up on the wiki with that list.
Side effects aren't great for me but I'm still here.
I'm ready to go BUT I'm scheduled to get the second vaccine shot tomorrow, and I don't know if I'll have horrible side effects or not. I might vanish for two days if I get nasty fever, aches, etc.
Happy to help once you have your sheet up in your profile.
My assumption wound up being that anything listed for a DS Druid’s granted powers supplants and replaces anything in the PHB granted powers, so DS druids don’t get the stuff like dealing with woodland faerie charms.
Just finished recording another "Bone, Stone, and Obsidian" podcast episode! History of psionics in D&D! I'll post a link when it's out! Also wrote five new kits for druids, and guidance for using kits from the Complete Druid's Handbook!
I have most of my stuff bought now but I realized I don't see any waterskins anywhere. What is teh price on them? They're listed as "wineskins" with a price of 8 bits.
I recommend that your starter gear should include a pack, a waterskin (usually I recommend several, since each carries only half a gallon, but thri-kreen only need one gallon of water per week), a firestarting kit (in case you need to cook stuff), and any adventuring gear that you might want (rope, wooden shovel, etc.). You should have at least one week of iron rations. Thri-kreen do wear decorative clothing sometimes, though obviously not like what we wear, so you might want a belt or maybe sink some of the money into a little jewelry, like bangles with bone beads on them or whatnot. Jewelry is a trade good so you can always get full value out later, using it to trade for something else. Additional trade goods are also a possibility. If we're out in the desert and run into a potentially friendly tribe, giving gifts is a good way to make friends. Thri-kreen never ride mounts, so no need for one of those. Beyond that, psionicists don't have any specific needs. We don't use material components, and as a thri-kreen you don't use armor, so we don't need any special tools to work our skills.
@M'hael: Looks like your thief skills are not quite finished. Here's how it works. BASE SCORES:
You gain modifiers from being an elf:
And from your Dexterity score of 19:
Then, on top of that, you get 90 points to spend to improve them on a 1-for-1 basis. You can't spend more than half of that on one skill. Each time you gain a level, you earn another 30 points to spend (again, no more than half can be spent on one skill).
Human's certainly a decent choice. They're pretty common, especially if we wind up inside the city-state of Balic and having urban adventures. The down side is that you take a reaction penalty with humans in such a case, because they can see your unveiled contempt and hatred. If we wind up out in the desert, other possibilities include thri-kreen (elves hate them because kreen love the taste of elf flesh), scrab, or gith.
Also, the nonweapon proficiencies page should now be fully updated, with descriptions for every skill. I've added a wide range of proficiencies from various sourcebooks, though I didn't add the special proficiencies from Mind Lords of the Last Sea and Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs as those probably won't come up—if they do, I'll add them! Similarly, no proficiencies from other game worlds like Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, or Planescape. There should still be plenty of choices. :)
Laurelin's just here to see the festivities, as surely there will be some kind of celebration if a rich noblewoman has just moved into a new house in the area. (Also maybe she can find some off-season work.)
I, too, am very excited for people to be ready and for the story to commence. :)
Incidentally, that exploiting powergamer just showed up in another 2e game that I'm in and tried to claim that "multiclassed characters get all nonweapon proficiencies for their classes added together" was official rules as written. I had to pull out Sage Advice and the example of deconstructing a pre-generated PC from the DARK SUN adventure "Arcane Shadows" to show why this is wrong. The reason it rubs me the wrong way so much is, if a player is going to lie about something being "rules as written" and exploit a system like this, what else are they going to exploit and lie about?
The druid's power limitations are offset by their wider spell access. They have Major access to Cosmos, while clerics only have Minor. Also most druids will have two elemental spheres (one Major, one Minor), so they have a slightly wider range of spells even at low levels. Plus they can use any weapon, without all the rigamarole that elemental clerics have about using weapons of the right material type. The real hassle for DARK SUN druids is the inability to wear armor. Yeah, I'm gonna just wander around at AC 10. Of course, most people in the setting don't have great AC just because you can't really wear heavy armor anyway. By mid- to high-levels the druid is competitive because of their wider spell selection and the fact that some of their "operates on guarded lands" powers expand to be usable anywhere.
The "stay on your guarded lands 50% of the time" rule works with character trees though. You can swap to a different character while your druid is protecting the home turf. This design shows up many places in DS: when a dragon or avangion must spend time in an atavistic or ascended state for instance.
Added the druid class to the wiki. Unfortunately the DARK SUN druid is a mess: In the Rules Book it says "In all cases where the rules here don't contradict them, the rules about druids in the Player's Handbook should be used." This implies that druids should still have some abilities that make no sense in the DARK SUN setting, like learning the languages of woodland creatures (most of which are extinct in the setting) and having resistance to charms from woodland creatures. The druid's experience table is custom in the PHB and requires you to do funny stuff because of the hierophant levels, but the DARK SUN druid says that there is no druidic organization, no hierophants, and no Grand Druid. How this works is never explained! Even Earth, Air, Fire, and Water just reprints the rules from the DARK SUN rules book and doesn't clarify, and ends abruptly with a comment about high-level (20+) druids transforming into spirits of the land but never gives any rules about it. Anyway, I guess druids should have the abilities listed in the PHB that don't contraindicate anything from the DARK SUN book, so you can at least identify pure water and pass through overgrowth (probably handy if you're in a cactus field). Presumably druid shapeshifting works based on your guarded land stuff, not based on the PHB, as it wouldn't make much sense to give you "shapeshift into animals" at 7th level and then "shapeshift into creatures from your guarded lands" at 10th. The other interpretation would be "granted powers from your guarded lands supersede the whole granted powers section in the PHB" but who knows? As far as I know, nobody asked Sage Advice back in the day. I'll just assume that because it makes more sense than "DARK SUN druids have all kinds of forest powers!"
Mind Lords is actually one of my favorite underrated DARK SUN products, so much so that I did a podcast with Matt Forbeck about his work on it. :D
Thri-kreen can't learn to swim; you'll need to swap that for something else. Don't worry about it too much. DARK SUN is a desert world. Swimming is the sort of thing that comes up like... once in a campaign. (Unless you're playing Mind Lords of the Last Sea, which I don't think we are.) Dissertation on thri-kreen biology: The Thri-Kreen of Athas book has a big section about kreen biology. The upshot is that kreen are adapted to survive in dry savannah environments. Humidity causes them to risk fungal rot in their chitin, which can be fatal. Swimming is a non-starter both because of their shape, the fact that they don't have as much subdermal fat as humans, and because part of their respiration is through their exoskeleton. Going into water for kreen is like... a human thinking about going unprotected through vacuum. You might survive it if you're quick and you get medical help afterward, but it's not exactly something to look forward to.
Added the justifier kit to the wiki, so you have the actual full text for how it works. Also, I forgot to add the justifier's +5% stealth bonus; the character above should have Hide in Shadows 25%, Move Silently 32%.
Ok, making a potential character for @Rysky.
... huh. Interesting. Made a ranger for Rysky:
Human ranger (justifier) 3 Strength: 15
Hit Points: 33 THAC0 18 Armor Class 5 (studded leather + buckler + Dex bonus) Weapon Proficiencies (5 slots): Composite long bow specialization (3 slots), hand axe, spear Nonweapon Proficiencies (6 slots): Bowyer/fletcher, Direction Sense, Heat Protection, Psychic Defense (2 slots), Survival—stony barrens, scrub plains (free from justifier); Tracking (free from ranger), Water Find Hide in Shadows: 20%
x30 = 450 cp Starting gear:
Clothing:
Leftover funds: 29 cp, 2 bits
I tried to make a character that I thought you would find interesting based on what little I know of your playstyles! How this character works:
In combat, you use a bow, with a small number of precious broadhead arrows with metal points. (As long as you can scavenge the point from a kill, you can make a new arrow, since you're skilled in fletching.) If an enemy gets up close, you ditch the bow and switch to fighting with a pair of metal axes. The fact that you've managed to hang onto metal weapons indicates that you know what you're doing, though sometimes it means that people try to threaten you in order to get your stuff. That usually doesn't go well for them. The justifier kit (like a PF archetype) is a ranger variant that gets weapon specialization, and you're a specialist with the composite long bow. This gives you excellent range and the ability to automatically take a shot before anyone rolls for initiative if you have your bow already out and loaded. You also gain point-blank range, meaning you get a +2 on your attack roll when firing at a target up to 30'. The justifier can also fight unarmed, inflicting 1d4 damage on an unarmed strike, and has the ability to gain tactical advantage on enemies: If you scout an enemy group and watch them for 10 minutes and then pass a Wisdom check, the team is able to automatically surprise the enemies and then win initiative for the first round of combat. Unlike PF/3e, there is no penalty for attacking while you have a buckler on your arm. Your buckler is probably a small round shield made of wood or chitin with leather stretched over it. It only gives you an AC bonus against one attack each round, though (you're AC 6 against everyone else). Because you're a ranger, you suffer no penalties when using your paired axes to fight. Note that justifier rangers must always be Lawful Good alignment. If any of this doesn't work for ya, let me know and I'll rebuild it to something different!
Added the Trader class. This is a rogue variant that has thief skills (not as good as a thief) + lots of ability to make market connections and to fast-talk through bargaining and difficult situations. Also starts with extra cash! A fun "adventure generator" class, because you're always buying, traveling, and selling.
That makes it easy, you get +1 for each class level. So, +4 now, +1 more every time you gain a level in a class.
Equipment page is up. @TheNine: You might want thieves' picks. Then again, locks are pretty rare.
@TheNine: Your hit points would be: Ranger, 2 levels: 10 + 10
Total = 32
+whatever your Constitution bonus is for each level. I don't know your CON score so I can't say.
K, that's got those updates done. Let me know what I need to do next please. You need to choose your weapon proficiencies and nonweapon proficiencies. For weapons, you start with 2 weapon proficiencies from the list in the Psionicist class. These are the two weapons you know how to use without any penalty. Any other weapon that you try to use, you take a -4 penalty on the attacks. You can use your claws and bite without any penalty. At 5th level (if the game goes that long) you'll get proficiency in the chatkcha, a special kind of crystal throwing wedge used by kreen, for free. After that, you need to pick your nonweapon proficiencies (like skills). You gain 3 from being a psionicist, +1 for reaching 3rd level as a psionicist, +3 from your Intelligence score of 12, for a total of 7 picks. The big list at the bottom of the nonweapon proficiency page has all the things you can learn and how many picks ("slots") it costs to learn one. For instance, Cooking costs 1 slot, but Mining costs 2. Since you're a psionicist, you can pick things from the General and Psionicist parts of the list. If you choose a skill from one of the other parts of the list, it costs +1 "slot." For instance, Survival normally costs 2 slots, but it's in the Warrior list; you would pay 3 slots for it. I recommend:
Beyond that, it's a wide-open field. Spend a bunch of picks to learn Survival skills from a different list, or pick up something illegal like Reading/Writing (all DARK SUN characters are illiterate unless they take this), or shove 5 picks into Power Manipulation (each extra "slot" you spend on a choice after taking it gives you a +1 with it). Whatever you think would be fun and interesting. (Note that skills don't improve automatically with level! Every 3rd level you gain a new pick, and you either use it to learn a new skill or to improve one that you already have.) Finally, your psionic strength total. As a psionicist, you start with a base score determined by your Wisdom, then you get extra points each level. Base score (Wisdom 18): 24
Total: 24 + 3, +13, +13 = 53 Every time you gain a level as a psionicist, you will gain another 13 points. Then you need to purchase equipment. You start with 3d4 x 30 ceramic pieces. I'll try to get general gear pages up on Monday. For now, you just need to buy weapons from whichever ones you picked proficiency in, like a spear (assuming you want to use weapons at all). You can't use armor, but you can use a small shield if you want. (If you do, that gives you a -1 improvement to your Armor Class, but only against up to 2 people who are in front of you.) You should probably have a pack, a couple of waterskins, and some food. (Note that thri-kreen are almost exclusively carnivorous.) You don't need a bedroll because you don't sleep.
Yes. You start with enough PSPs to activate each power once, and to pay for its maintenance cost 4 times. Zelimah has five powers and thus gets a lot of power points! When you get points to activate a power, you use the lowest cost to activate it. For contact, that's 3 points. So Zelimah gets: From contact: 3 (activation) + 4 (maintenance)
From being 3rd level: +8 Total: 101 PSPs This gives you a lot of raw power, so you can use your powers a lot!
Also @CariMac: With a wild talent you gain enough PSPs to activate it once and to maintain it for four rounds. Magnetize doesn't have a maintenance cost, so you get the minimum to activate it (2), plus 4 points per character level over 1st. Since you start at 3rd level, you'll have 10 PSPs.
You stop at the first roll UNLESS you roll a high score that tells you to roll again. The footnotes are for the entries from 88-100: There should be little superscript numbers at the ends of those, showing that if you roll, say, 91 on the Clairsentience devotions table, you need to consult that note at the bottom that says to ignore any subsequent rolls of 88 or more. That's to prevent someone from rolling a bunch of "roll again twice" results and getting a bazillion powers. I've added Magnetize to the wiki. (The tables in the book call it "magnetism" but in the power description it's listed as "magnetize.")
Added the basic cleric class to the wiki. It will take a while to get up spells and the special minor powers from Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Fun factoid: Either Shane Hensley made a mistake in his draft, or some stuff was cut during development, because for some of the elements, there aren't enough special minor powers in Earth, Air, Fire, and Water for you to have choices at every level (you can get them all and still have picks leftover by 20th level).
So Punching to start and for now, I'll go with the one-handed style, until the benefits of using a shield outweigh the AC bonus. Maybe when the next chance comes (I assume when we level) I'll take the wrestling specialization For a gladiatrix, you gain a new weapon proficiency every 3rd level (6th, 9th, 12th, etc.).
Keep in mind that 75% of punch damage is temporary damage - what would be called nonlethal damage in PF/3e. This means you are more likely to beat someone into unconsciousness than to kill them with a punch. It takes long enough to recuperate that it doesn't usually make a difference in a small unit fight, though, like the ones that adventurers are usually in - if you're fighting half a dozen gith and you pound them all into the sand, you can then do whatever you want while they're out cold. Also, don't forget the rules under "More Than One Style": "A single-class Warrior can only specialize in one of the three unarmed combat styles when he is first created." So it's specialization in one of the three for ya, and the other leftover slot (assuming you don't take martial arts, which would cost two to specialize - one for proficiency, one for specialization) would go into a fighting style or special talent. Note that the AC bonus for one-handed fighting only applies if your off hand is empty - no shield. Of course with the AC bonus from the style you don't need a shield anyway! But at much higher levels you want a shield so that you can get the sweet magic bonus...
I lied, I did it right now. Fighting Style Specializations Punching, Wrestling, and Martial Arts In general, unarmed combat sucks, because you just knock people out. (Once they're out you could just keep kicking them until they die, though.) There are some advantages if you play it well. Against humanoids you have a chance to knockout on a punch. Also, with your enormous strength, you will do a ton of damage even if you score a glancing blow that normally has a base of 0 damage. Being a specialist in punching could give you some decent backup options if you're ever without a weapon (and it only takes 1 proficiency slot, b/c everyone is "proficient" in punching and wrestling). Wrestling can let you get holds on people, which is great if you want to keep someone from running away. Martial arts are a bit dicier because you have to spend a slot just to be proficient, but it uses a different hit table that can be more effective. You can spent a second slot to specialize. Martial arts are explicitly available in DARK SUN as they appear in the sourcebook The Will and the Way, and the sensei kit for psionicists is a psychic martial artist! Gladiators' +/-4 "table adjustment" lets you slide up and down the unarmed combat table to change the type of hit that you score, which lets you fish for more damage or a better chance at a K.O. Specialization increases your ability to table shift.
Banking the other 3 proficiency slots to specialize in a better weapon when I come across one (by level 5 I can choose two, or I can even choose a bow if I find one big enough) Unfortunately there's a pesky rule about that too: "The player must assign weapon or nonweapon proficiencies to all of these slots before the character goes on his first adventure." This applies to your 1st-level slots, so you have to either specialize in another weapon, or else find some other use for those two slots. You can bank the slot you gained for 3rd level. I'll try to update tomorrow with a few other options: Unarmed combat specialization: You can specialize in punching, wrestling, or martial arts. Could be useful if you're ever without a weapon, especially since it stacks with your gladiator ability to shift the type of hit that you score with unarmed strikes. Wrestling is great for takedowns when you wanna capture someone. Martial arts is decent if you are unarmed and still need to defend yourself. Punching has the advantage that anyone can do it, so spending slots on it makes you even better and you can occasionally knock people out. (Not most monsters tho.) Fighting style specialization: You can use slots to gain bonuses when you fight in a specific way: weapon + shield, one-handed weapon, two-handed weapon, two weapons, missile weapon. Each has its own benefits. I'll get these up on the page tomorrow. They're also from Combat & Tactics and The Complete Gladiator.
I'm still reading through the thread so this was probably already explained. Do you roll the stats and then decide what race and class you can actually play with what you rolled? That sort of sounds amazingly awesome. Yes, you roll first, and then this affects your choices. In this edition, you can't even play certain things unless your ability scores meet certain minimum requirements. Fortunately, you can arrange your rolls in whatever order you want, so if you really want to play, say, a wizard, you can put your highest roll into Intelligence. There's a little shuffling if you know what you wanna play ("I wanna play a thri-kreen druid/psionicist") but you have to look over your rolls to see if you can meet the minimums.
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