Nathen Kross's page

personaly i have trained myself, i never use longer blades i dont like them i am a "Short-sword" user a blade no longer then 12" for me thank you >:).. i never took any classes i pratice with 4 of my friends never with live steel, Ren fair allows me to play a little more roughly but i normaly use padded blades or wood, as far as the TWF rules i changed them:

Ambidex makes you have no off hand, meaning you HAVE NO OFF HAND!!!! none of this 1/2 Str stuff anymore takeing the whole set of TWF feats also grants you the right to buy a few TWF only feats i made up because i wanted people to use TWF evewry now and then.

i never start a game below 8th unless my players ask me to, i hate low level games, one shot can kill a unlucky player so i stopped starting at level 1 and 2, then all the really fun adventures happened between 6th and 10th so i started players at 8th and started rocking, As for how long do the games go? i have had 3 partys get all the way to 27th level, i love the epic games because it really is "Oh no if we dont stop that man the world will be destroyed!!!" as for the rules? meh, if i wanted realisum i would play Cyberpunk.

i dont set rules on the PvP in my games at all, heck if the PC's want to kill each other that is their problem, i just run the world and make sure rules are followed i will never tell a player "you cannot do that" when his/her charactor would in reality have no problem doing said action, will it screw up my adventure? God no, i try and plan for those kinds of things and if a player dies, oh no better look for another "Enter class here" or hey look i have 5,000GP worth of dimonds in my back pocket, i am just saying when did Roleplaying become the GM plays the game and the players are their for the ride? it just seemed to me that anyone telling my OOC "You cant attack my Charactor" is like telling me in real "You cant eat that taco!" or something like that, i have never had a problem like what was talked about above, but then my players know i would not only allow it but i might join in with a NPC.

Well i have read alot of this post and i see alot of things that suprised me, it seems to me that alot of people "fear" the PvP aspect of the game to the point of not allowing it or makeing players agree to it OOC... all i ask is WTH is that about? when i am Roleplaying i am doing just that i am playing this person i made up and following his/her "alignment" or what have you, had a game where a Rogue assenated a NPC and my paladin saw it, i demanded she give herself up, she tried to run and in the prosses of trying to stop her she attacked me i fought back and she died, it was sad really not for either of us but our charactors where kinda sad, as for PvP being banned, i feel that once you ban something completely or have to stop the game to discuss it OOC you have lost some of the "magic" or "game immersion" that alot of people look for in a RPG, the only time i made PvP stop was when it was egtting personal and no longer had anything to do with the game, then all you do is take a short break and chat about why people are yelling at each other find the in charactor reasons and if none are there then talk it out OOC so it does not effect the game. but it seems kinda loco to flat out say, "There will be no pvp in this game"

But just my 2 copper :)

of corse didn't you know that D&D was the spwan of satan? in a christian contry like this where that faith makes all the laws anything outside that ideal is wrong and guilty!!!!....

But seriously i kinda laughed, at least he challanged him to a duel i mean the guy ran like a coward anyway, and the psyco dude was not a paladin hell yeah chop his neck when his back is turned!! :P

i remember the old Feild plate... reduced the dame by 1 from each die... those were the days. but i changed the system for armor a bit and added a "AR" for you Rifts players to the armor so there was a chance to hit the armor and not the person and thuse doing less damage. ( kinda kills your gear fast but lets you live longer )

it was not in the PHB, it was a suplument i think, but i have no idea where this table came from honestly..... it still scares me though. but yeah i was wondering, has anyone compaired these spells to the "Spell creation" from the epic level handbook? i was told by one of my players that that system could recreate the standard spells and if that where the case i think we would find our answer there, As far as the orbs go.

my 2nd Ed revised editon had crits and all our GM's used a Crit table oh god the pain.... but as for the ranged touch attack that was mostly a 3.X question.

yeah i saw things like that i was just looking to see if anyone remembered the effective level and how many levels, this PC group remembers the last adventure there years ago and i want to suprise them muwahhahaha

i dont remember being a 2nd ed player and all, but cant Ranged Touch spells crit? that may not seem like a big deal but i remember crits being a big deal at one time, and i cant check the books right now... but i was under the impression that a RTA could crit. anyway i may be wrong.

Well i still use the system from old 1st / 2nd ed i like the system it allows monsters to be slightly more frightening and at the same time i never allow my players to buy magic items witch is an idea i personaly find crazy. but anyway. the "+1 or better to hit" made it so some monsters where stronger then others, a great deal stronger in alot of cases and players had to do intellagant things to defeat said monster... Vampires may have had +2 or better to hit, but that wont save his toasted undead butt from the flameing oil they poured on him. Fact is i cant stand the 3.5 system.... with out changing it to ways mentioned here a silly noob adventure with a +1 sword could hurt any DR/magic creature out there. if that where the case in 3.5 every single household with a ok job would eventualy have +1 magic items around... but anyway enough of my rant, i choose to stick with the 2nd ed / 3.0 system for my DR since my players and i liked it. and as to the improvised melee weapon thing, sure i'd allow it. that bonus is only for overcomeing DR in the first place and i allow my monks Ki strike class feture on any Monk weapon if it is unenchanted.

Hey guys i was wondering if anyone here knew much about this place... i just spent the last few hours talking it over with another GM and checking the net, i cant find much at alkl... alot of back story, i knew most of that info what i am looking for is what level do you think a party of 4 or 5 players should be to go there... In the game i am running i am sending the party there due to the members of House Dlardrageth are getting into some stuff and my players found out and there info leads to hellgate... kinda... so if someone has some info on the pllace that would be great, i dont mind drawing the place from scrach but i dont want to take too much away from this place.

When i run games with one other person i buff them a bit, mostly so i dont have to waste alot of time altering mopnsters more then i allready have to. when i came to bard i grew up playing with a 1st and then later 2nd Ed bard... i am used to them being VERY tough and able to fit in to any encounter and end up being really useful.

in 3rd ed i had a player level his bard to 10th along with a party of a Paladin Fighter Rogue and Cleric the bard was the new guy on the block and was really kinda a 5th wheel i did give him a few chances to shine but i kinda felt bad. so i altered the class a bit ( as per my last post ) and now i am much happier with them as a whole... they are not yet the 1st ed bard i love so much... but i am gonna end up makeing that bard again one day...

Well i started to topic to see if i was out of line calling the class overpowered, then went on to see if i should continue the topic into "How would you alter Warmage?" so i could see what everyone here thinks. i never NEVER make a 100% judgement unless i get another one or two people to check on the ( in this case ) class before makeing a ruleing. i like the idea of haveing input from more then one source. :)

So if anyway has a way they would alter Warmage, let me know.. it might be more useable then the one i am toying with... i wish i didn't just move. all my books and notes are in storage and i cant post things with 100% accuarcy ><

i am still used to the 2nd ed bard... man that was a monster class... i altered my bards in 3rd ed and made them more soloable they work well in my groups but it might be due to the hi powered games i tend to run. But Bard compaired to the other classes to me seemed a bit underpowered. i added a bit to their skill points and gave them a few extra feats ( i think like 3 over 20 levels ) to make them feel like more of the "red mage" or "jack of all trades" that i allways saw them as

Persoanly i didn't see any reason to allow classes outside of the ones i have made up over the years and the ones in the Core books, But in all honesty i have very little trust for things i did not create simpley because of how i have altered the system at large.

My house rules have changed so much of the game i am normaly the only one who relises it is a 3.X game lol... But i feel that when it all comes down to it players and DMs should go through Character creation together and balance it so everyone has fun... my games personaly tend to be really weird. i removed the "ECL / Level Adjustment" system completely and just give basic races extra stuff instead... i personaly think the ECL system was a cheap attempt at keeping with game balance by nerfing races naturaly more talented then humans, but yeah anywho just my thoughts i looked at warmage again and Warlock, i think Warmage is a bit over powerd for what it has and i slightly altered it and like what i did. as to other stuff, well sometimes things get twinked really easy and i mistake it for being broken, and i just should have read into the class more before combineing stuff. anyway in closeing drink Mt Dew play rifts ( duh because it is the best ) and lets have some fun :)

Well here is my 2 copper:

I am a 2nd Ed kinda guy so i tend to use it alot; The Assissan out of that book in my House rules system had the following system : Must have Proficancy of the anotmy of the target (Ea: Humanoid ) and must be undetected once the Death attack is called for the system is as follows: base 50% + 5% per level of the assassin -5% per HD or level of target ( later we aded a 5% bonus for more specialized proficancys ) anyway as you can see it was kinda hardcore, and as to the range aspect our house rule is same as Sneak attack ( ranged if with in 30ft ) also we used a Crrit table for every time a arrow hit a target it was kinda mean but Arrows tend to do alot more damage on a hit then a sword in those days ( as far as i have read anyway ) so yeah our combat is insanely lethal as for 3rd Ed i buffed the save DC on death attack quite a bit Via Feats and adding more to the base ( i cant remember the system right now ) but i wwill try and find some notes

I'll let you all know how it goes. i got the go ahead to run the game this afternoon. prolly gonna start later this week.

So one of my players came to me today and he had a intersting idea, He does not get a chance to play alot so he is kinda inexperianced with alot of the classes and his idea was as follows:

Why dont we run a game that we make the players Switch Characters every hour or so of game play to give them a challange at "Role" playing and allow us to experiance new classes...

Personaly i think it is a neat idea and wanted to try it out so i started writeing a game up, i am gonna bring a egg timer and randomly have players shift one seat to the left every now and then.

If the Druid where going to the "Shifter" kinda druid i would understand the need for strength but i have to agree with the "why do you need that " idea, i love to RP that stuff out... though at the same time i have never had my party argue over loot mid dungen.. most of the time i have them to freaked out that they are all gonna die so they run like mad trying to get out. but normaly i let them fight over it, i got lucky and have very fair and understanding players... well at least as far as loot goes... the Above statement was well said take a short break let them fight then ask whats going on after words, they might get the hint and be more team like later :)

if you dont use the Metal to Wood idea go with Rusting Grasp on a weapon. i have done that before. sadly sometimes you have to teach a player a lesson... ALLWAYS carry a extra weapon... even if it is only a dagger...

HA!!!! i win i got him to change classes before it was too late!!! i dont have to deal with him being a warmage now lol...

i think you hit the nail on the head there with the way you are treating it. its how i would do it in my game. heck why dont you just Metal to wood or Rusting grasp it? let him argue with that...

Nathen Kross wrote:

Scrolls... that bastard... one of the other characters is a Wizard who is in love with the guy and she is gonna be makeing him the scrolls of spells he cant use... good idea too i kinda liked it.

That's about as viable as a druid casting magic missile. You can't cast a spell from a scroll, or wands or staves, unless you have the spell on your class list. The warmage cannot utilize scrolls of anything not listed as a warmage spell, unless he happens to have Use Magic Device. Period. A scroll of greater teleport is about as useful to him as it is to a fighter.

True true, sadly he has levels in Bard

Sat: game i am running ( homebrew )
Sun: we are playing that Savage tide game >< i am thinking of running for my life ( my character is a 11 year old boy rogue )

all this is hapening in Riverside CA but we have to move location again soon.

wow not a bad system... i might start useing it.. once i have my system written up i am gonna post it here and have you guys help me break it appart to see if it would work out well.... Awesome info. Thanks!

Well back in 2nd Ed i was a 13-15 level Wizard... cant remeber when this happened but my party got attacked by a black dragon and it wiped all of us out... except me.. thing had 80% of its HP left and me allmost out of spells... *house rule* any "Personal" spell can be cast on an unwilling creture if it fails a basic save

I cast blink on the dragon.. failed its Save and SR check.. then cast it again on myself ... you can imagin how hard it was for us to hit each other... god i love you blink spell....

Want some good ideas for a Evil game huh... hmm.. i allways watch movies to help me get in the mood... anything that is PvP ish... i dont know your players so i cant make assumetions but i love pitting them vs each other and not makeing it public knowlage... also i love to trap them in places with SUPER good people... you know those people that are so nice it makes your teeth ache? hell have them end up in a old dead elf city where all the people who died there come back as materialised ghosts and no matter what they do they cant get out till they solve the problem ( i like forceing evil people to do good muwahahah) and fix the place.

Ok well i like what i have read, you guys know your stuff. anyway here was the answer my expert mage player gave me to that last bit... Scrolls... that bastard... one of the other characters is a Wizard who is in love with the guy and she is gonna be makeing him the scrolls of spells he cant use... good idea too i kinda liked it. but honesty i still like the Wizard better. i plan on my next game going back to my Spell point system..

BTW.. anyone know if they ever came up with a offical Spell Point / Magic Point system for the game? not spells per day? i know alot of people made their own but i never really looked for a offical one...

man i cant even list the number of world i have used in my games... mostly FR for D&D ( i just love the world ) but i have made up alot of them i even like to do cross overs ( D&D guys find themselfs in rifts!!!!! "I told you not to put that portable hole in the bag of holding!!!!" ) etc... mostly i would be useing FR i enjoy the set up they have and love the drow... but the best thing ever is to have a Elf walk into Chi Town at 2 in the morning... poor poor elf. anyway yeah i tend to make my players make up our home brew worlds as i make the game >:) takes some stress off.

Wow thanks for the in depth posts guys, really awesome i got this kind of attention on my first day here, alot of my other bordes ignored you for like 3 months... anyway.. i saw that someone here is a rifts player... ::Insert evil laughter:: anyway man i am glad to have logged on here.

so as to the reason of my post. the enchant and what have you... i also noticed enchants like "Brutal Surge" would you add those as a +1 enchat to a weapon for Ego purposes? it is not a +1 enchat in any way but for intellegant magic items what do you think?

Well i got alot of ideas about other peoples play sytle here, kinda cool i allways wondered how other people gamed... i have played alot of characters too i just prefer to play one of the characters i have grown attached to... lately i have been going away from the randomly generated character and playing alot of my old ones just for kicks.

sounds like you have your work cut out for you man... i am sorry i cant ever bring myself to put Greyhawk over FR, i just cant and i am going through the Savage tide mod thing from that evil magizine... we have lost SOOO many players... lost 4 players in one game once... but yeah dude the above is right this is your game if he does not like it tell him to run.

the point is to have fun let him know that you dont want to run there till you get more info about the place again or something. i mean heck it is a very good world and alot of fun anyway but Greyhawk has TONS to offer players..

ok i have seen the term "gestalted" Fighter/Cleric a few times and i have never heard of this till now.. might be because i am not big on the new 3rd Ed stuff and wont have the full set till beginning of next year but where can i find the info at about this?

Ok i was reading this class for the first time the other day and i got kinda upset here is why.

First the spell per day they get is Sorcerer ( meaning 6 per level every level up to 9th )
it can ware some armor ( witch is a personal problem not really a system one )
and its spell list is pretty much every combat spell in the book... so it is just a overglorifyed Sorcerer really ( because every single Sorcerer i see is all combat spells with one or two others ) but it seemed to me that with all it gained it didn't really lose anything to balance itself with a normal starting class... i may be wrong but i allways make sure that if it is a starting class it has to be on par with the ones from the core books ( PHB DMG ) anyway it seemed to me that it was grossly overpowerd compaied to the normal casters in the PHB. anyway just how i felt looking at it the other day

Anyway mainly i want to know why it got Sorcerer Spells per day and Charisma based casting when it used its positive Int mod for the extra damage. seemed to me thta with what it gained it should be limited to the Wizard spells per day at the least...

Sorry should have posted that the house rule here is that the spell failure is to any arcane spellcasting movement or not, the reason was two fold one i like the mage being a glass cannon and two i do not use Spells per day like normal i gave my casters Spell Points and a system to go with it that allows a bit more power,

as to game balance, yes it can be maintained... at the cost of fun and realisum at least IMO, i threw out the ECL system because it made no sense to me but i gave alot more to my basic races too. *shrug*

Ok in a game i am running at the moment i have a character who got ahold of a Evil intellegant weapon with an Ego of 27, the character is level 8 allmost level 9 and he is (Chaotic Good) so i was looking at the rules and what have you and i started to worry about what was going to happen to the party with this CE ( Chaotic Evil ) weapon hanging around. it dominated the character for allmost a full year ( witch i roleplayed out with him ) till he finaly was able to take control of the weapon and he is now able to reagularly make the save (due to some ingame stuff gained ) this characters main goal in this game is to destroy this blade but he does not want someone else takeing it because of what it might do Etc... anyway questiopn i had was there is a class in i dont remember what book called "The Anointed Knight" i think it was that at 10th level was able to create a intellegant weapon that matched his alignment and my player asked me if he where to go that path could he force the weapon ( or have a chance at ) makeing the blade Change alignments? i mean it is a really cool idea i like where it is going, but at the same time i worry that this weapon will end up destroying my party. at current they are in a Temple with a paladin who has a feat to give his allies his Devine Grace bonus to saves so he cant risist the sword much more easily.. anyway what do you think about that idea?

Hi all just wanted to throw in my 2 copper...

Anyway comeing from a 2nd Ed backround i had it explained to me like this "Iron interfears with magical energys so any armor with iron in it would cause your spellcasting to become a problem" well the example of other metals came up and the answer was sure why not. if you read alot of Arcane spells you will notice that alot of them have problem getting through Lead and Iron when taken into account that those materials are what most of the armor in game is made of it makes sense. lets say your mage could have any armor he wanted so you give him full plate i would personaly be allmost unhitable at low end i expect mages off most types to have a AC of about 12-14 ( in 3.X that is ) and for a level 1 adventure that is fine.. your mage should be protected at all times from direct attacks anyway ( monsters with a 1-5 Int should not be able to pick and choose targets anyway )
anyway i personaly thing with all the power mages end up with they have no need for armor in the normal sense ( magic items being what they are in 3.X ) giveing them armor just seems like killing a rat with a bozoka to me and in all honesty there has never been and never will be true game balance, its a illusion that is protected by ECL's and hidden by "Epic feats" and what not. but i say do what ever allows you to have the most fun, i allways made Renfored Robes of differing strengths that were low end armor for casters.

Ok time for me to rant a bit...

Ok the players i have in my area are just that "Players" good group of guys we have been friends for years.... but none of them are GM's i am the only one willing to put the work foward to get a game going... and the whole time all i hear is "can we game? whens the next game?" and i work a fulltime job ( i am a plumber ) and go to collage... i have VERY little time to get stuff ready so i hear that and tell them to run and i allways hear the same thing "i dont know the rules well enough to run"

*head desk*

ARRGGHH like i wouldn't help you? or hey here is an idea READ THE FREAKING BOOK~~~~~~~ and on top of that i allways get that one guy who HAS to play the odd character like a half dragon witch is fine... but why does he have to be such a #@%#$ about it? i mean come on... if you enter a dragon fearing town and you are a half dragon someone is gonna KILL YOU!!!! der? sorry you are the weakest link goodbye? uggh anyway i guess thats allmost it but i had to limit the classes to the main book so i dont get outstripped by these new base classes that are so grossly overpowered that not even god can understand who thought it was a good idea... also....

whats with the ECL system?..... anyone else think it is the stupidest thing you have ever seen? it is so messed up i wanted to cry when i started to try and figure out some of the "half-blank" templates ECL i mean i understand game balance but jeez... could you say nerf the strong any louder? i personaly dont understand the idea anyway ( other then to keep people from never playing a human again ) but it seems to me that if you wanted to keep the game in balance you could never have magic after level 9 cuz they could beat allmost anyone with the right amount of prep but hey i dont know i just make the dungens write the adventure... as well as rewrite about the whole book full of house rules to allow my players to have more fun.... yeah... anyway i am gonna go back to homework and makeing a dungen...

So do most of you play the same Character for a long time or change around alot? i was asking because one of the groups i gamed with changed characters 3 times in the last 4 months because of death or adventure ending and not starting up again... anyway i was wondering because i have been playing the same character for 27 levels now ( 2nd Ed mage AD&D) its been like 4 years in the go and it was hard for me to make a new character every other week and care about him enough to write a detailed history... anyway i was wondering because i love to hear about other peoples old characters who have been through years of game play and wanted to know if there was a place to post historys and such about those characters. anyway thanks in advance for the read :)

Sorry i am kinda distracted right now and i think i did not get what i was trying to say across correctly let me restart with an introduction

My name is Chris i live in CA and i have been roleplaying for about 8 years now the first Rol;eplaying i did was as a gamemaster for "Rifts" then second Ed D&D i have been playing allmost any game i could get my hands on for years i love to memorise facts and use them to better games... i hate when rules get in the way of fun but i also hate someone bending the rules due to a typo or misprint to become "twinked" i am allabout fun over rules and dont mean to come off as a rules lawyer ( witch i kinda am >< ) but yeah...

Anyway i was mostly upset because i have meet about 14 or 15 new players to the game who think this is all ok ( the whole DR to the damge on that enchat thing ) and many other twinks and i hate telling them over and over why it wont work.. i have a player who came to me with a charactor that was level 11 and on a crit could do 300 damge with one attack.... on a 15-20 Threat weapon it was insane... i mean i dont know what happened with the 3rd ed players in my home town but they all seem to be twinking themselfs for max damage... i remember my Theif in 2nd ed with a limp cuz of my 7 Dex... he was SOOOO much fun to play... but i posted that cuz i was not sure if i was looking to deep into the rules to stop twinking or if that was a common occurance... anyway guys i plan on being as helpful as possable on this message board :)

Ok so i played in a 2nd ed game a long time ago high level game when i joined it. i played a 19 Wizard we had a house rule system about enchating non permanet magic items so dont start quoteing rules at me :P

Anyway one day we where trying to get from one side of a lake to another and we could not go around it and we didn't want to chance a teleport so we went to the boat master of the city who tried to overprice the cost of a trip across the lake. so i decided to make an airship, the Theif got us a boat and i enchanted it but i failed on the "fly" spell so all i could do was make it float... so i recast the Fly on myself and pushed this now floating ship across the lake... anyway years later the gameing group got back together and we where talking about that adventure when my friend said "wait, you had the boat why did you enchant it? why not just use it as it was to get across the lake?" at this point i relised that i had done all that enchanting for nothing and was quite put out about it... we all had a good laugh and the rogue told me " well sometimes a boat is just a boat... but sometimes a boat is a flying ship of death."

i felt someone might just laugh at the whole thing and had to share it :)

Ok this is my first time posting on any non myspace site about D&D at all no idea what has been covered in here allready but i plan on reading up as i can.. anyway on to my post...

Ok i play a 3.5 / 3.0 D&D game every sunday, and the players there told me to post this because apperntly someone allowed this to happen and there are people who think it is ok...

Anyway... There is an Enchant in the DMG called "vicious" ( please i know i am bad at spelling please dont beat me up for it :P ) anyway it adds 2D6 to weapon damage and does 1D6 damge to the user... anyway we had a player use his Damage reduction on that effect and it GM allowed it ( for some ungodly reason ) anyway i wanted to post because people thought i should.it states clearly in the DMG under damage reduction that "energy" is not reduced and the "vicious" enchant classifys the damage as Energy... anyway it is kinda small fish compaired to some of the other "Broken"/"overpowered" crap 3.5 has released but i had to post it for the un-aware GM's out there... btw Down with Warmages