Padan Slade's page

Name: Matthias Dun
Class: Warlock 3/fighter 1
Adventure: Three Faces of Evil
Location: Caves of Erythnul
Catalyst: Grimlock chieftain

After making their way to the rope bridge in the grimlock caverns, the party battled the three guards there and dropped two of them. The third ran to warn the others, with the party in hot pursuit, and a pitched battle ensued with the 7 grimlocks in the area, and finally the grimlock chieftain himself emerged to join the fracas.
They gave the 'locks a hard time of it, but were slowly whittled down, and in the end a badly hurt Matthias wound up face to face with the chieftain. The chieftain raged and swung his greataxe, and I rolled a nat 20 (I use RPTools, and I keep all the rolls open, so when that 20 came up, everyone said "Nice knowing you, Matt."). I confirmed easily, and rolled damage, but I used the wrong expression to do so- I rolled a 10 on the d12, but it only multiplied the added +6, which wasn't nearly correct. I decided to roll again, hoping to get a low roll this time and give Matt SOME chance at living through the encounter, and what do I get this time?

A 12.

54 points of damage, and Matt was on the floor, cleaved nearly in twain.

Name: Jendy Coline
Class: Fighter 4
Adventure: Three Faces of Evil
Location: Battle temple of Hextor
Catalyst: Disobeying the high priest of Hextor

The party (which as of yet has no name) entered the Dark Cathedral and dealt with the two guards there without triggering the alarm. Afterwards, they entered the Hextorian wing, triggering the skeletal guards within and alerting the complex. After a long and pitched battle, they finally slew all but one of the fanatics and all but one of the skeletons- Jendy became separated from the group and was dropped by Beast. The fanatic then kept a watchful eye on her, ready with his longspear, but the cleric managed to heal her with a spectral hand. The fanatic attempted to put her back down and missed, but the remaining skeleton dropped her again while Beast kept the rest of the party distracted. She was then dragged into the battle temple by the fanatic, and when the party entered in order to save her, they were locked in by Theldrick- except for their "paladin" (secretly a warlock), who was locked outside. Theldrick ordered their surrender, but the paladin refused to cooperate and cast fog cloud to cover his hacking through the door. Theldrick then ordered the fanatic to dispatch the unconscious fighter before joining the fight, who made a coup de grace and rolled max damage, easily snuffing out what was left of her life force.

So that's the story of Jendy- killed by a 1st level commoner. :-D

Maybe I'm only speaking for myself here, but I die a little inside every time someone cites the "fluff" (which usually means cosmology, setting, pantheon, etc.) as a reason to hate 4th edition. Who cares? If you want to keep Heironeous and Hextor in your 4th edition game, buy a 4.0 PH and hack out the "Religion" pages. If you want to run the Great Wheel in 4.0, buy a DMG and hack out the planar description pages. The only important changes about 4th edition will be the mechanics- I'm betting the effects of fluff on the mechanics will be negligible. Unless you're running RPGA games, who cares if WotC wants to call succubi devils now? Call 'em demons if you want. Call 'em shibboleths if you're feeling frisky.

To sum up, the only way the so-called "sacred cows" of D&D are dead is if WotC comes around and sets fire to all your old books after 4.0 comes out. I personally was more upset when Dragon told me that St. Cuthbert was an LG deity (but we've already GOT one of those...!).

That said, I have yet to hear anything really persuasive about 4th ed. mechanics. Use my CON to swing a hammer, you say? Dragons can crit on breath weapons now, you say? Whatever...

While we're posting rules variants, here's my turn undead variant.

A cleric may turn an undead creature of a maximum number of HD equal to his cleric level plus his CHA mod. To turn undead, you take a standand action as normal, and roll 1d20 + 1/2 your cleric level + your CHA mod. The result is the total number of HD worth of undead you can turn. For example, If you're a 2nd level cleric with a CHA bonus of +2, you can turn a 4 HD undead. Let's say 10 zombies get all in your face, each having 1 HD. You attempt to turn, and you roll a 4, plus 1 (half your lv), plus your CHA (2), for a total of 7. 7 zombies are now lurching away, but 3 remain. All other aspects of turning are the same, including range, effect, and conditions for destroying undead. Rebuking/commanding works in a similar manner as turning. Turn resistance works the same as before.

I think this variant keeps turning undead viable at higher levels, and somewhat prevents the chance that you'll roll poorly on either your turning range or your turning damage and suddenly be unable to turn even a much weaker undead than yourself. I checked the calculations using the undead from the MM1 (reasoning it provided a good sample), and comparing their HD total to their CR (and thus what level your cleric would likely be fighting them at). Almost all of the undead in there can be turned simply by rolling well and having a average Charisma score. Having a good Charisma makes it that much easier, of course. (The exceptions to this are the mohrg and some of the larger zombies/skeletons, which I have compensated for by beefing the effects of the Improved Turning feat.)

A couple no one has brought up so far: Stir of Echoes and The Mothman Prophecies. Not the scariest movies ever (I have to agree with everyone who said The Ring was the scariest movie they'd ever seen- I had dreams about that one months later), but still good for a chill.

I don't see how people can stand to watch Audition though.

If you're up for some scary J-horror, I'd recommend Pulse (the original, also known as Kairo). Be prepared for a movie that is not only creepy but depressing as well, however.

3 words for high-level NPCs wanting to get around the ridiculous armor bonus (well, a good chunk of it anyway):

Brilliant energy weapons.

OK, I'm done.

*crawls back into hole*

I'm going to weigh in on the point buy side here. I have 2 main reasons, one of which has been extensively covered; the average playing field reason. People with higher stats than others are (in general) more powerful and thus get more spotlight. If your group is totally not like that, wonderful. I wouldn't say it represents the average experience though. My other reason is that (IMO) point buy lets you keep your stats from influencing your character concept too much. Let's say you have a character (doesn't matter what class) whom you conceive of as being being a little smarter than the common man, but not clever enough to keep his mouth shut about it or to decide what information is relevant and what's not. So you decide you're going to make his INT one of your mid-range stats (say, at least a 12 or 13) and your WIS your low. Then you roll stats, and it turns out your low is a 12. Doesn't really matter what your high is (it might even be a 13), your character concept just changed all of a sudden, because this guy must be fairly clever with a 12 WIS. On the other end of the spectrum, your low could be a 6. Now instead of being slightly indiscreet and a little tactless, he has a 50/50 shot of being able to find his shoes every day. I suppose what I'm saying is, rolling stats makes your character itself more arbitrary, not just his average performance.

Of course, there are those of you who roll stats and then make your character afterward. And those people are wrong.

(kidding)

Of course not. That's not what he was asking. He's asking if you can heal someone (or provide any other beneficial effect by TOUCHING them with your weapon. I believe the answer is yes, and I will now provide examples of why I think so.

Easy, tiger. I was kidding. You know, humor? It happens on the internet, sometimes.

Oh, for the record, I'm also not ok with healing arrows.

"Aww, I can't heal my party and axe a monster in the face at the same time, waaaa..."

Suck it up, sir. That's my advice. Because the first time you ask me if you can heal someone by hitting them with your axe, I'm throwing you to the wolves.

-your friendly neighborhood DM

So one of my PCs for Age of Worms is playing a favored soul and wants to take the Contemplative prestige class, which gives him bonus domains. I ruled that he would get access to the power and simply know the spells on his domain list; however, he could only cast a domain spell once a day. My question is, what if he takes a domain like Glory, the power of which is "turn undead with a +2 bonus on the turning check and +1d6 on the turning damage roll"? Does he get no benefit from the power, since favored souls can't turn undead? Does he gain the ability to turn undead? If so, is it as a cleric of his level, or should it be less (say, as a paladin)?

Any insights are welcome.

I started a thread with a similar idea here: Alignment Rules that as far as I can tell most people thought was crap, but it gives you an idea on my viewpoint of what constitutes good/evil behavior. My argument for those who hate alignment mechanics with a violent passion remains: that's fine, but there are existing mechanics that are intricately related to alignment, and not having any kind of alignment mechanics is a little like saying "your alignment and thus your abilities can be changed at my whim when I disagree with how you play it," which is not far of a step away from "I can have your character killed off at any time and there's nothing you can do about it. Tough nuggets."

The WoD system always was a decent way of dealing with it though.

Evil always has one major advantage on its side- its followers are willing to play dirty. Paladins can crank out massive damage against evil and make its save versus any magical effect you throw at them, but they don't have great defenses against having their encampment set on fire, their family taken as hostages, and their colleagues being stabbed in their sleep. That's the balance, as far as I'm concerned.

It is a matter of differing between editions of the game, anyway. In 2nd Ed (From the Ashes), his priests are allowed any weapon, with battle axe first. In the 1st Ed (World of Greyhawk), special weapons for his priests are not mentioned. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer states that he promotes the Longsword to attract more common soldiers. I honestly cannot fathom that logic - why is a Longsword a more attractive weapon to a common soldier than a Battleaxe? IMHO, the Longsword is more the weapon of knights and nobility, with soldiers using a wide variety of weapon, the Longsword being just one possibility.

As far as the common soldier goes, I would suspect that a longsword would be preferable to a battle axe simply because it can more reliably pierce vitals (read- higher crit range).

Technology-wise, doesn't the average battleaxe have a wooden handle? If so, then I could see switching to a sword simply because they're less likely to break, which would make the sword a more reliable choice for Joe Everysoldier.

Just some guesses. Heironeous is my favorite of the GH deities so I'm definitely going to pick up the issue with his Core Beliefs article in it. Maybe they'll answer our question, eh?

The sword/axe dichotomy might be a technical thing: It is easier to forge an axehead than a swordblade, so the axe could be an older (pre-migration) weapon, and the sword a newer development in its present form.

Stefan

I read somewhere that the battleaxe was Heironeous's old favored weapon (don't remember why), and he switched to the longsword in order to appeal to more followers.

Well, the duration of the spell is "60 days or until discharged". By discharged I assume they mean when you call the chest back- so I would suppose that creatures sent with the chest either come back when the chest does (always presuming that they come back at all) or after 60 days, since that's when the duration runs out.

Although you would think that the chest is lost as soon as the spell ends, so why have a cumulative chance to lose it after the spell is over? *shrug*

Having said all that, I will also say that I've never played a character who cast that spell, or even heard of anyone who did- in fact, I don't think I've even seen an NPC have it cast in a module of any kind, so it's probably not a very pressing problem, yeah? :-)

I call a vote to rename this spell "Schrodinger's Chest"- once you cast the spell, maybe the guys you put in there come back, maybe they don't, maybe only when they die, but come back alive, or dead, or unalive- you can never truly know until the DM has had a migraine headache for days and makes a snap judgment.

I looked it over, and I think the spell gets off on a technicality. It has 2 effects:

1) It sends the chest and its contents into the Ethereal Plane. It doesn't say anywhere in the spell description that that is a summoning effect, and indeed, in the brief description of summoning from the PH just before the detailed description you mention, it says "Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you (the summoning subschool)..." (emphasis mine) Since this part of the spell doesn't bring anything to you, I would think it thusly does not follow the rules for summoned objects/creatures. Living creatures in the chest at the time of casting haven't been summoned to the Ethereal Plane, they've been sent there, and so they can get hungry, die, and so on.

2)On command, it brings the chest back to your location. It does refer to this part of the spell specifically as summoning. So you've effectively sent something that belongs on the Prime Material Plane (or wherever you cast it) to the Ethereal and summoned it back to the Prime Material (or wherever you cast it)- it doesn't matter that it's a summoning effect, they'd simply be dead on the Ethereal and come back dead with the rest of the chest's contents.

That's what I get from the description, at least- which means it really should have both teleportation and summoning subschools, but I don't think there are any spells with two subschools. Clearly someone at WotC just flipped a coin when deciding.

As for dispel magic, once the chest is "lost", the spell is discharged. There's not anything to dispel anymore (except for any magical stuff you may have had in the chest).

Hope that made any sense...

What Celeste really is, has been cleared out in the HC.

But what about her supposed background, besides that she is a noble from Sasserine staying in the Cusp?
I introduced her during the Demonskar ball, where she danced with the elven priest of the group. Unfortunately, he has become interested and want to know more about her.
Has anyone invented a background for her? Family name (Celeste who?), history, posessions like a mansion, etc....

Thank in advance.

That sounds like a really good way to get that PC hooked on part of the storyline. Let him investigate her and dig up nothing, let him run into her and have her be all secretive and mysterious about her past. He'll probably get more and more intrigued by her as time goes by. Then when chapter 6 is over, bam, she's gone seemingly without a trace. You now have a great reason for the party to do the necessary research for digging up the bad guys in chapters 7 and 8, after which she can reveal what she actually is and why she couldn't say anything previously.

My 2 cents.

Dude, I have been reading for pleasure for 20 years now, I've gone through the core books cover to cover, and I still don't always know what a ranseur is.

My point being, the language in Dungeon isn't much more advanced than the language in the Player's Handbook. If some words in the descriptions throw you and/or the players from time to time, hey, happens to everybody, skip/replace it, move on, and look it up later if you're so inclined; but I think asking new creative material to be less well-written than the "textbook" itself is a bit excessive.

Having said that, I should have been in bed a long time ago. *snore*

I always figured that what stops the average commoner from going to the local cleric is the gold cost for having a spell cast on you- they don't see a lot of gold. PCs aren't going to charge that though unless they're really mercenary. Healing attunement seems like the best route of those presented to keep PCs from heading into the hospital and hitting everyone with cure serious just to see what they know. I don't think you'd have to alter inflict spells- they may function similarly under the current rules but the intent is very different. Healing being more difficult than harming doesn't seem that bad.

Re: committing repeat corrupt acts- I either got the impression from the text in FC2 or simply assumed that they meant "doing this kind of thing is worth this many points, no matter how often"- but it isn't very clear. Possibly there could be an addendum saying that habitual acts of the type described gives you another point- i.e. humiliating an underling is worth 1 point, but if you do it all the time it's worth 2 points- not 1 point per instance.

Re: the chart describing deals with devils as a lawful act, but somehow not an evil one- I pulled that straight from the text in FC2 and left it alone for some reason. I added dealing with demons as a chaotic act simply as the opposing action. It should definitely go in the evil chart (worth about 4 points, I would think), but should it just be taken out of the law/chaos charts altogether?

Re: muchkinism as the root of the problem- yeah, to some extent, but I don't think there are many players who would react well to having their powers stripped from them unless the act that caused it was really, really blatant. Arguments about alignment are no fun in the middle of a game, and usually have the potential to offend somebody- no two people I know have the exact same idea about what is "good" when you get down to the specifics. I think the chart thing, while it does give a DM more to keep track of (yeah, I know), is a decent way of frontloading what's likely to warrant changes in alignment in games where it's likely to be important.

Of course, I've also considered disposing of alignments altogether- maybe no system is better than a somewhat vague, uncodified one.

Have you looked at the Taint rules from Heroes of Horror? They use a similar scoring system.

Yeah, I checked it out. It's an interesting system, but the one suggested in FC2 seems cleaner *rim shot* and has less to keep track of. Plus I think it has the potential to be abused to some extent- you know, "Hmm, I need a higher AC but don't want to spring for a ring of protection, so let me go stare at a dead animal for a couple hours and my skin will dry out. Natural armor bonus, here I come!" I guess it just works better for me in a specifically horror-based game.

Oh, on the Good score point: I run good-based campaigns (or, at least, non-evil campaigns) so I didn't work up a Good scoring chart precisely for the reason that IMO, it would encourage stockpiling of Good points so that one could get away with that much more stuff without having to worry about his alignment being in question. Course, I could just put a cap on the points like I did for the others, but that's the same problem on a smaller scale. *shrug* It's a work in progress, that's why I put it up here.

I much prefer treating alignment as a filter through which the character views the world myself- like the DMG says (somewhere) "alignment is a tool, not a straight jacket." The only problem with that is when a character's class features (paladin being the easiest example, but most divine classes have a similar restriction, to say nothing of monks and bards and such) stop functioning or stop advancing when the character's not of that alignment- I've seen too many instances where PCs just pick an alignment at random, play the character however, and then when the DM calls them on it they say "well, he's still {insert alignment here}- he can still be a {paladin/cleric/whatever}, I'll just not flip off the town guard and torture people for information in the next town we come to." It seems like a more discreet way of handling the discrepancy between a character's actions and his alignment.

I think my thought processes on it were mostly born of the various threads on people playing "chaotic neutral" as "chaotic rips the faces off of children, but I did save the lord mayor from zombies that once, so it balances".

Thanks for the wording revisions, too, I'll definitely change that when I put this into practice.

I just picked up Fiendish Codex 2, which is a great, great book. My favorite thing about it was that it makes a start on adjudicating alignment with "Corrupt Acts", which are basically examples of acts that earn a certain number of "corrupt points" based on their severity. Once you have 9 corrupt points, off to Hell (or the Abyss, if you're chaotic, or whatever) you go, no redemption. I think it's a really good way to handle alignment through the rules without having to deal with the bickering when you say that because the paladin hacked the head off the evil henchman and showed it to his bound and helpless friend in order to get info out of him, he's taking an alignment hit. They've also got a section for lawful acts. It's good for what it does, but I wanted something a little more general-purpose that could handle any kind of alignment switching. Here are my results. Please, great Lords of the Boards, tell me how I can improve/refine it!

Good & Evil:
No character starts out with any corrupt points. (unless it's backstory appropriate, that is.) The scale goes from 0-9 points. When you've accumulated 4 points, you are officially neutral, but can still commit yourself back to the path of good. When you've acquired 9 points, if you die, you go immediately to the appropriate hell for your alignment, no matter how many orphans you rescue or minions of evil you vanquish.

Acts that earn corruption points (with their values):
Using an evil spell 1
Humiliating a companion or underling 1
Use of injury type poison 1
Stealing from the needy 2
Desecrating a good church or temple 2
Betraying a friend or ally for personal gain 2
Use of any non-injury type poison 2
Causing gratituitous injury to a creature 3
Perverting justice for personal gain 3
Use of any poison that deals CON damage 3
Inflicting painful torture for gain 4
Murder 5
Cold-blooded murder 6
Inflicting painful torture for pleasure 6
Murder for pleasure 7

Removing corruption points:
Characters can remove corruption points by undergoing a program of repentance under the guidance of a qualified spiritual advisor (a good-aligned divine spellcaster of some kind).
A character with a corruption rating of 3 or lower can reduce it to 0 through good acts alone.
A character with a corruption rating of 4 or higher must repent through good acts and also receive an atonement spell to ransom his soul back from the underworld.
To remove corruption points, the character must give up all benefits gained from the act of corruption (if possible), offer a sincere apology to those harmed and provide full restitution, and make a donation to either the church of the spiritual advisor or simply those more needy than the character equal to 10% of the number of corruption points the character possesses. In addition, the spiritual advisor must assign an active gesture of repentance such as helping another unrequited, fasting, a period of silent retreat, or a dangerous quest against the forces of evil, depending on the nature of the deity.

Law & Chaos:
This works on a slightly different system. Characters of any alignment will have a certain number of both law and chaos points from 0-9. Your starting alignment determines how many of each you have. If you start as lawful, you have 4 law points and 0 chaos points; as chaotic, you have 0 law points and 4 chaos points; and as neutral you will have both 0 law points and 0 chaos points. At any time, if you have at least 2 more points in one alignment than the other, your alignment changes appropriately. If you have a number of law and chaos points that are within 1 point of variance with each other, you become neutral. If you have 9 points in either alignment, they can only be removed through formal repentance aided by a cleric of the opposing alignment.

Acts that earn law points (with their values):
Swearing fealty to a leader you know 1
Swearing fealty to a leader you've never met 2
Resolving a dispute through lawful process 2
Quitely accepting a legal judgment against you 2
Executing a lawful sentence of corporal punishment 3
Following a rule you consider stupid 3
Aiding a superior, to your own detriment 3
Swearing fealty to a devil 4
Obeying a leader you do not respect 4
Performing a lawful execution 5

Acts that earn chaos points (with their values):
Refusing to swear fealty to a leader 1
Violating an established law 2
Resolving a dispute through personal means 2
Loudly protesting a legal judgment against you 2
Refusal to obey a reasonable rule 3
Disrupting a legal proceeding 3
Failing to aid a superior, to your own detriment 3
Bargaining with a demon 4
Failing to accept a legal restriction placed on you 4
Organizing a protest of an established law 5

Let the criticisms begin!

I don't have the book here with me, but I thought that the lich only got the healing bonus from the nexus because he was undead and it was negative energy damage- the other functions would work for Kaurophon normally, but he'd still take the damage. Could be wrong though.

If I recall correctly there's a magic weapon enhancement out of Complete Arcane that allows a weapon enhanced with it to be used by anyone without a nonproficiency penalty. Wish I could remember what it's called, but that would free up a couple of feats for things like Weapon Focus and maybe Combat Expertise to crank up that AC a couple more points. Of course it puts off using said weapon until slightly later in the game, since I believe it's a +2 bonus total- slightly expensive for a 5th level character, but probably worth it in the long run.

Gray Guard is, indeed, awesome. I had a paladin that I was playing in the Sunless Citadel adventure path that would have been perfect for it- he was a paladin of Heironeous, but he was raised by Hextorian parents. Shame that game died.

Actually pretty much everything in Complete Scoundrel is great, particularly the skill tricks.

If you've got to eat people, it's good you have plenty of barbecue sauce on hand. I'll put barbecue sauce on anything and enjoy it. Chicken, pizza, tax returns, that Silent Hill movie...anything.

Except chocolate ice cream. That one didn't work out so well, I have to admit.

The only place I've ever seen the half-elemental template is in the back of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

The Alleybashers are supposed to be easy. They're not terribly high level and they're all drunk from revelling after looting the place and killing Sarcem. Tongueeater ought to be the only tough one amongst them, but if you're worried about them taking him down *too* easily, you could use the feralized version from these very boards. I didn't use it, but to amp the difficulty up a bit I put him out in the courtyard and stuck all the baboons out there as well, essentially to be used as shock troops/distractions.

But really, this quest is just supposed to point the PCs at recovering the wands of control water; the nasty stuff in that chapter is later. Oh, Triel, how you stole my heart, and many of the party's cleric's vital organs...

Cliche? Yeah, but you could do a whole campaign about how the whole town is secretly dedicated to the Elder Elemental Eye! Same (or at least similar) symbol if I recall correctly. Vhalantru? Secretly Imix, Prince of Evil Elemental Fire! Final baddie? Aspect of Tharizdun! Shopkeepers? All wearing ochre robes for no clear reason!

OK, I'll quit now.

I asked this question on another thread back in the day (of course, I no longer remember which one) and never did get much of an answer- I mailed it in to the Sage and also got no answer, so I'll put it up again.

A drunken master's improvised weapon class feature says that it deals unarmed strike damage plus its own extra damage- does that also bypass damage reduction as an unarmed strike would? i.e. if you were to hit someone with a tree branch, would that be bludgeoning and magic if you were high enough level monk to bypass magic DR? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ or errata to say one way or the other.

The best part is, one like that exists- I'm pretty sure it's in Magic of Eberron- don't recall the name of it, but basically it's a walking treasure chest homonculus that can produce items you store in it on request.

Off-topic: maybe I watch too much Full Metal Alchemist, but whenever someone talks about a homonculus I want to yell "WHO DID YOU TRY TO BRING BACK?! ALCHEMY DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT!"

I wrote up something like that for my SC game- if you wish I could e-mail it to you.

Some feats have prerequisites. Your character must have the indicated ability score, class feature, feat, skill, base attack bonus, or other quality designated in order to select or use that feat.

If you're really going to be that hardcore about using the RAW, then you can't do it. If you want to know how I would argue for it, I would say that you could simply take the feat and not be able to use it until you meet the prereqs. After all, it does go on to say that if you lose the prereqs somehow, you simply can't use the feat until you meet them again. It's kind of under the same umbrella, I'm thinking.

I think in that situation I would pull out my percentile die and say to the murderous PC "There is a 1% chance your character gets hit by lightning and dies before he finds the rest of the group." Roll them right in front of him, and no matter what number comes up, say "Oh look, that was the number for lightning. Your character dies. Now roll up a new one, have a seat, and play nice, or let us get on with enjoying the game."

Seriously, I would never allow such a thing to happen unless the other players consented to it (which it doesn't sound like they did in your case). If someone's taking their character death hard enough that they have to take someone else down with them, they're taking it too seriously. Heck, I killed one of my PCs just last week, and they simply said "My corpse sizzles as a full-round action." (Brought them back later, though.) That's my opinion.

I miss the 3.0-e "+1 trumps silver" rule, etc. It always seemed silly to me that in 3.5-e an epic +6 holy artifact sword can't defeat a lowly lycanthrope's DR. And don't get me started on characters who are forced to carry silver, adamantine, cold iron, obsidian, magic, lawful, and good weapons (does the DM turn a blind eye to encumbrance rules, just to keep them viable?). And every new book brings in a new special material. The "and" DRs make it even worse ("DR 5/palladium AND mashed potatoes"). Soon every character will need a quiver of Ehlonna holding weapons all known materials in all possible combinations.

Hmm...in my DMing experience I've found that DR really isn't all that unless you're talking an enemy with 20/something obscure and something else obscure. The melee types are usually doing more damage than DR 5 or even 10/whatever really helps with, and if nothing else they're at least buying your spellcaster of choice time to set it on fire.

On another note, does anyone else think that /magic DR is kind of useless once you get past 4th level (mainly for creatures, but it's still somewhat true for PCs)? Virtually everyone is going to have a magic weapon by that point unless you're running a specifically low-magic game. *shrug* Just my 2 cents.

I think I'll go ahead and send it in to the sage- when I get a reply I'll put it up here JIC someone else has the same question.

Here's another DR-related question:

I have a PC with the drunken master prestige class- he was in a battle with a lich last game I ran and he was using a chain as an improvised weapon. He says it should have bypassed the lich's DR (bludgeoning and magic) since he's high enough level monk to bypass DR/magic with his unarmed strikes. I thought snce he was using a weapon and not his actual unarmed strike it wouldn't. In order not to hold up the game I went ahead and said it did, but looking at the improvised weapon entry for drunken master I can see how it could be misinterpreted- it says, quote, "A drunken master's improvised weapon deals as much damage as his unarmed strike plus an extra 1d4 points."

So, which is correct? Does it bypass bludgeoning and magic DR or no?

Tips for replacing the dragons:

I kept Gottrod (the first red dragon). They'd been hearing a lot about the legendary red dragon terrorizing the hills so once they killed it (I didn't have it say its name) they were all like "woo-hoo, we killed the dragon!" So when Hookface actually shows up later to melt some faces it ought to be that much more entertaining.

I kept Dhorlot (the first black dragon), but I gave him the shadow template from Lords of Madness. Don't remember why, I just wanted to pimp his ride.

I lost Vorkaire (the black dragon in Occipitus) in favor of a cadaver collector, since Vorkaire is supposed to attack the PCs while they're on the Plain of Cysts (which is a large battlefield) and cadaver collectors are also found on battlefields.

I don't know if I'm going to keep that pyroclastic dragon or not- I want to get rid of it, but I haven't thought up anything better to put in its place.

Really, I just don't like dragons much anymore- this whole Year of Dragons thing is wearing on me, especially once I came up with the idea of playing a dragonborn dragon shaman with levels in the dragon disciple PrC.

That's all of them.

The elder orbs are about as powerful as the hive mothers (who are CR 16) in terms of sheer combat- however, a hive mother can dominate them as a 20th level spellcaster could so they're the ones in charge.

There is a Sacred Fist PrC in Complete Divine that works almost exactly the same way as Arcane Fist does, if I remember correctly. You might want to have a look at that.

I think my players would agree that the toughest fight thus far (we're about to finish up Test of the Smoking Eye) would be Aushanna- the party wasn't set up to deal with flying creatures, and she basically just flew about the statue and shot people for 5 or 6 rounds, dropping 3 or 4 PCs into negatives. They cast wind wall but it didn't do much good as she just used unholy blight on people behind it. And they never thought to run and take a defensible position. The only reason they lived is because it got around to 6 in the morning and they still hadn't killed her so I had her land and a few full attacks later she was toast.

Nabthatoron ran a close second, but only because they sped right through Vaprak's Voice without finding Alakast, didn't fight half the stuff so they weren't high enough level, and hopped directly into the Starry Mirror. Didn't kill or even drop anyone (expect poor Alek) with him though, he didn't think it was worth the trouble.

Have you read Lords of Madness? The section on beholders is pretty in-depth and they have a lot of different types of beholderkin- the ones that come to mind are the Eyes of the Deep (underwater beholders with lobster claws, basically) and I believe there was an advanced kind of beholder, but I don't remember what its deal was exactly. Most of the beholderkin (like gauths and such) are less powerful than a true beholder.

As far as what types/how many, the impression I got from the book was that a given beholder tends to be xenophobic to the extent that it believes the way it looks is the best expression of how a beholder ought to look, and any other examples of beholders are literally offensive and to be disposed of as inferior, so clusters of these guys tend to be tenuous groups at best.

It has been a while since I read that book though, so I may be misremembering...

Disclaimer: This is all off the top of my head. I have no idea how well this is balanced.

Take the monk, remove flurry of blows, slow fall, and the speed bonus.

Add in nature sense, wild empathy, woodland stride, wild shape, and venom immunity.

Weapon proficiencies are as monk, plus natural weapons of assumed forms.

Add sylvan as a language option

Add Handle Animal, Heal, Knowledge (nature), and Survival as class skills. Remove Diplomacy, Knowledge (arcana), and Perform.

Hmm, how would monk's unarmed strike damage mesh with wild shape's natural weapons? I would think if they kept the monk's unarmed damage progression that might be a little excessive, but if they didn't keep it there wouldn't be too much motivation to use it.

Maybe instead of wild shape they just get access to druid spells (on a limited basis- say, up to 6th level) and keep the speed bonus. Thoughts?

Padan Slade wrote:

Or evil clerics, for that matter.

Nonevil alignment is one of the prereqs. :-/

Touche.

Yes, Lucky Number Slevin is wonderful. "My nose is already broken!"

...whoops, looks like there's threadjackers off the port bow...*disappears*

Or evil clerics, for that matter.

David Rowe wrote:

And here is the description I have of the 'Spontaneous Healer' feat.

That still doesn't help him. As a spontaneous caster, if he has a cure spell, he already can cast it whenever he wants, as long as he's got the spell slots.

Good point- unless you count having the spell on your class list as being able to cast the spell, and not necessarily having to learn it, which is the only way he'd benefit from the feat with either class. Although that does seem to make it a feat only worth taking for druids, eh?