Randall Jhen's page

Helpless: A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (–5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus (equivalent to attacking a prone target). Ranged attacks get no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.

Also:

Regular Attack: A helpless character takes a –4 penalty to AC against melee attacks. In addition, a helpless character is treated as having a Dexterity of 0, giving him a –5 penalty to AC against both melee and ranged attacks (for a total of –9 against melee and –5 against ranged). A helpless character is also flat-footed.

Do these stack, or are they intended to be different representations of the same thing? In other words, is the attack made at 8 points to the defender's detriment or 4?

Thanks.

1. I'd love to see a lot of the "specialized" classes be statted out as advanced (not prestige) classes that you can take at level 3.

For instance, a bard could be a sorcerer 1/rogue 1; a pally could be a cleric 1/fighter 1; a ranger could be a druid 1/fighter 1.

2. Feat masteries and skill challenges from Iron Heroes.

Edit: Strike 2. I'd love to see that, but I'd rather see the magic system from Arcana Evolved.

Randall Jhen wrote:

The last game I ran, I had my players decide their race/class, then assign 15/14/13/12/10/8 to their ability scores, then roll 3d6 in order and take either the rolled value or the previously assigned number, whichever was higher.

This meant players could create a character that wouldn't suck at what they wanted to be able to do while giving them a chance to be better at things that weren't core to their character.

Example:

INITIAL | ABILITY | ROLLED
8 | Strength | 15
14 | Dex | 14
12 | Con | 12
15 | Int | 8
13 | Wis | 11
10 | Cha | 14

Thus, the wizard had Str 15, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 15, Wis 13, Cha 14.

Overall, the point value is pretty high (29), but the biggest gain, Strength, isn't likely to affect the character much.

I do have to say that I really like the assign-as-you-like-plus-hubris method, though.

No racial mod?

Well, yes. I just didn't include it as it has no effect on the point value of the build.

When I run games, I also skip the one-point-per-four-levels adjustment, and instead give characters one point per level, but they purchase points at the same cost as to buy them at creation, so to go from a 17 to an 18 costs four points, but to go from a 10 to an 11 only costs 1.

I bought Ultimate Combat yesterday. After looking at the feats in there, I think I'd make my next character frickin' Nightcrawler: Qinggong monk that takes Dimensional Agility/Assault/Dervish/Maneuvers/Savant.

Swap out Wholeness of Body for Gaseous Form.

Swap out Diamond Body for Shadow Step.

Swap out Diamond Soul for Shadow Walk.

Take a bunch of movement-related feats (Acrobatic Steps, Spider Steps, Cloud Step).

I think I would pay actual money to have a small book of stuff like this for Inquisitors of every major deity. Some deities are obvious (Pharasmite Inquisitors would hunt down and destroy undead and necromancers, for example), but most really aren't. For example, what would an Inquisitor of Erastil do?

+1

20 strength fighter wielding a +2 flame bursting sling with all the fighter feats and the rapid shooting stuff would be kind of ridiculous in the end, wouldn't it? Hurling flaming sling stones that deal like 1d4+10 and a 1d6 fire damage would be a little strange to see. Plus it'd be like that times however many attacks they'd get.

I want to do this now.

Characters are balanced on the assumption that they have X amount of gold invested in items at any given level. Stat-boost item prices are calculated by figuring (bonus)^2 * 1,000. Thus, a +2 stat item costs 4,000 gp. A +4 stat item costs 16,000 gp. A +6 stat item costs 36,000 gp.

Additionally, you can make an item slotless, essentially allowing you to wear seven pairs of slotless gloves and gain the bonus from each of them, but slotless items cost twice as much as standard items.

Given this, you could wear one slotted +2 item plus two more slotless +2 items for 4000 + 8000 + 8000 = 20,000 gp, significantly less than a single +6 item. If you were to wear those items in different slots on your body, you'd save an extra 8,000 gp.

The game is balanced on the assumption that you will have spent either 16,000 or 24,000 more gold than you are proposing with your methods.

Let's try something. A wizard 20 has 880,000 gold to spend. If he could spend every bit of that on stackable, slotless +2 Intelligence items, he would have 880,000 - 4,000*15 (number of item slots on the body) = 820,000/8,000 = 102.5 + the 15 slotted items = 117 items of +2 Intelligence. This puts him at +234 Intelligence, or a +117 DC to all of his saving throws. If he crafted these items himself, he'd have twice as much. On top of this, he'd have ridiculous numbers of spells, which lets him prepare for very nearly any situation, and he would think up any possible contingency, since he'd have an IQ somewhere around 2,500.

Yeah, that's right. Two-thousand five-hundred. Now, consider the equivalent of that as Strength. With a two-handed weapon, someone with a Strength of 250 deals +125 damage with a light or one-handed weapon, +187 damage with a two-handed weapon. This character can kill a great wyrm gold dragon in one round -- guaranteed, since he will only miss on a 1. Additionally, for this person, a light load will be 4,644,337,115,725.82 tons. So never mind hitting that great wyrm red dragon with a sword; just pick it up and smash it into the nearest piece of planet that you can find.

Ridiculous much?

But I feel like I'm repeating an argument here.