Michael Smith 140's page

I think this is a wonderful idea. I got back into roleplaying with my young sons, primarily because of Heroscape and Pathfinder which saved D&D in my opinion. My boys like playing on hexs rather then grids (I think because they look more interesting) so after manipulating pathfinder for hexes we started playing using the Heroscape hexes for complex scenes.

The upside is a really cool looking playspace. The downside is set up and take down time. So we keep it for some of the more interesting "grand fight" battles.

I would recommend keeping the pieces simple, solid colored (green, blue, brown, gray, tan, red, white). The ability to write on the peices would be great. Adding features like trees, walls, ruins that attached to the base pieces later down the line would be nice.

Also it might be helpful to have a large grid printed vinyl mat that can be wet marked useable for the layer zero. The pieces can then be stacked on that where height is needed (saves a lot of time). I like the idea of being able to write on the pieces.

I think the big selling point will be to find a balance between flexibility (allowing the GM to rapidly move the story along with out rebuilding the blocks every 10 minutes) and being able to add to the visual enjoyment of the game and the tactical feel of the battles.

Well there isn't one really. You can charge with any other weapon you like and besides doesn't chargeing with a lance provide enough flair as it is?

I was referring to the lance as being the only weapon which grants double damage in a charge, and the only polearm which can be used one handed in a charge. And being able to charge with a glaive seems pretty cool. But for a level 20 bonus I will admit would be pretty lame.

I like the idea of adding the ability to charge with a large weapon other then a lance (bastard sword or larger). It would be both unique to the cavalier and allow a lot of flexibility depending on his weapon in hand.

True it moves away from the classic mechanic of putting a lot of force behind the small point of a lance, but it does add flair.

I am just incorperating Cavaliers into an ongoing game and ran into a bit of confusion with the concept of Orders which I like. I have an Order of the Silver Dragon which was made up of a bunch of Cav type fighters and paladins. As I started to convert the new class into the backgrowned I noticed found the the NPCs into the Order would all have different "Orders". The "Order" concept is cool and I like it, but it might be wiser to call it "Allegiance", that way a cavalier could belong to an Order of Knights that pledged fealty to a king, but actually have allegiance to himself "Order of the Dragon".

It seems to me more could be done with both the mounted aspect of the cavaliers backgrown and the "nobility" aspect. I would like to see gaining an better (exotic) mount at the higher levels and maybe a penalty for using weapons and armor which would be considered "low class" in a campaign. This would help to seperate the cavalier from a fighter who would care less about image and more about functionality.