Razic's page

Also, Sean K Reynolds has a good article about pricing feats with points (covering all the PHB feats, with rules to help you price other ones) at his website here.

Woooot! That is perfect, and exactly inline with my original thinking.

The second part of my plan is to introduce entropy into character building. PCs will be able to reassign a limited number of skill and feat points on level up. They won't be able to re-write their character, but it allows a certain amount of tweaking.

Imagine Bob the fighter who had 7 ranks of jump at level 3. He's now level 9 and has jumped a total of four times in the last few years. Conceivably he's not as good at jumping anymore.

I would like to keep the amount of reassignment random (to avoid over-planing at level one). Perhaps d10+5% of total skill/feat points. d20%?

Class Creation Tool.

Thanks. Got it. If anybody else has the problem I had I found it in http://www.dndadventure.com/dnda_classes.html. This might help - thanks.

Found it

The link will begin a download, it's a zip file that's 295KB. It should be what you were looking for

The link was dead for me. Do you know the name of the tool so that I can try to find it myself?

Its a neat idea but I think pricing all the feats would be a fairly long and involved task.

Agreed. I'm thinking of perhaps giving every feat an arbitrary base price of 20 then adjusting based on the relative merits. I haven't even begun this task yet and I already dread it.

I read a while back of a relative value document of class features for the creation of custom classes. Unfortunately I can't find the post - if anybody could direct me to it that could help as well.

I am dissatisfied with the way feats work in D&D. It bugs me that when creating a character one generally must be overly careful or risk 'wasted feats'... I'll skip to the point.

I want characters who make ration decisions about their immediate future. Perhaps feat X will be useless at level 20, but often it can really help get you through level 6 alive. Furthermore, it is terribly annoying to have to take non-wanted prerequisites in order to get the feat you really want.

Feats are not created equally, so doing away with prerequisites would be ugly. Thus I would like to develop/find a point-buy feat system. Instead of the current system, characters would gain a class-dependent number of feat points per level. These can be used at level up to purchase the feats they care about.

I'd leave BAB and Stat prerequisites, just remove the feat tree. Clearly some feats improve directly on others (great cleave) - they would be taken sequentially.

Has anybody experimented with this yet?

I think that if you spend more time casting Protection From Evil than Protection From Good you are at the very least more opposed to evil than good.

More accurately you are more worried about getting killed by an evil thing than a good thing. LG cleric casts pro-good to defend himself from CG cleric -> who's more goodly? Their dilemma is chaos/law not good/evil. Pro-good is just handy.

The concept of someone becoming evil/good due to spells cast is just silly (IMHO). Alignment doesn't determine behavior - it reflects it.

I have no issue with Necromancy as a school being neutral. I think healing spells should be necromancy not conjuration. I think a lot of the "necromancy" school of spells should not be considered evil. I think creating undead, of any type, should be left evil. You are perverting life and cheating the cosmology for your own ends . It is supreme selfishness, therefore evil. (And creating willing/free-willed undead, is still evil for the same reasons.)

Is resurrection evil? Bringing back dead things is easily in the realm of 'cheating the cosmology for your own ends'.

For the moral relativists out there, here is a thought experiment for you.

Suppose for a second that necromancy was possible today. Imagine that the local necromancer decided to dig up your parent/grandparent/child/spouse and through arcane rituals, animate their corpse. The necromancer instructed the corpse to maintain a particular intersection, holding aloft a flag so motorists would see children crossing the street on their way to school.

How would you feel about this? Would you accept the situation or would it revolt you? Would you feel your loved one's remains were being defiled or dishonored in any way or would you feel they were being put to good use?

Perhaps I would be all for it if it was the norm in my culture. Of course once I got over the ick factor it would be easier. Let the recently rizen work in the mines until all the flesh sloughs off before shining up the bones and giving them a traffic flag.

How would you feel if your parent's remains were hung in a tower to be eaten by vultures? I wouldn't like it either, but then again I'm not Zoroastrian (look it up if you don't believe me).

As for whether or not making undead messes with souls - it's a cosmology thing. Disturbing the dead was very bad in ancient Egypt. I'm under the impression that Catholics believe the soul leaves the body immediately, never to return. I see no evidence that in the D&D world souls care about their former bodies once they leave them.

When is the soul completely finished with its body? 10 days? 100 years? Does it care about its constituent atoms once decomposed?

Why are we stuck on the Bard here? R_Chance hit the nail on the head - bards are great, but do not fill the fighter/mage gap. Sure they can buff and do all sorts of nifty party helping things - but they are not generally hacking up the baddies like a paladin would.

Some ideas to bat around:
-Personal buffs over group buffs.
-Buffs tend to bump damage rather than protect.
-Gives up a fighter's bonus feats in exchange for class skills.
-Moderate equipment or behavioral restrictions equal to ranger's or paladin's.

The pure fighter can beat up baddies all day long as long as she is healthy. The spellsword is weakened by her lack of feats in exchange for limited numbers of boss killers.

I like the idea of channeling spells through weapons. Fireball bad. Charged arrow good. If you want to throw lightning bolts like a wizard... take a few levels in wizard!

For the most part these are fine house rules. A few things that haven't been touched on much...

Instant Death
If a character rolls 3 20s in a row on an attack the victim of the attack dies instantly. If a character rolls 3 1s in a row on an attack the attacker dies. (Character must be vulnerable to instant death)

The odds of killing yourself on any given set of three rolls is one in 8000. Quite low, but I'd be damn pissed if it happened to me. Randomness such as this tends to penalize players, but if they like it why not.

Fumbled Saving throws
If a character rolls a 1 on a saving throw and the character takes double damage from the attack

Would this double effect duration as well? Does the lack of a save constitute rolling a one? Conceivably a prone character stands a 5% chance of taking less damage from a fireball than the non prone character who might duff his reflex save. Not broken, just something to think about.

? Critical Fumbles?
If a character rolls a 1 on an attack roll and fails to confirm the character will consult there roll to this chart
....
5-2 Loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and drops weapon and does max Weapon damage and all modifiers to your self, and do sunder damage to your weapon
1 Loses all attacks for the rest of the round and falls prone and drops weapon and does A critical hit to your self and do double sunder damage on your weapon

This is the only rule I would have serious trouble with. In short you have a one in 80 chance of doing max damage to yourself or worse every time you swing. Says the young monk to his master "Whenever I attempt a flurry of blows I end up punching myself in the groin! What am I doing wrong?"

I like the idea of a critical fumble, but I'd tone it down. Perhaps a fumble range tied to the critical hits. Give it the same spread but tone down the damage multiplier by one (you aren't trying to kill yourself, but got unlucky)
16-20 x2 --> 1-4 x1
19-20 x2 --> 1-2 x1
20 X3 --> 1 x2

*Bow rush: two teams, one armed only with shortbows, the other armed only with spiked gauntlets. Between them, a landscape not altogether unlike a paintball field, with numerous obstacles to hide behind. Last team with a surviving member wins. This is often the purview of professional gladiators.

-The spiked gauntlets are locked onto the forearms of the gladiators. It keeps the teams using their assigned weapons.

*Desperation: Starts out with two teams of equal size, armed with their choice of melee weapons. Once one team is defeated, it becomes a last-man-standing contest. The final survivor is usually shot to death by arena staff (typically while standing atop some sort of "winner's platform" to give the crossbowmen a good, clear shot). This is played only with prisoners or slaves who don't know what the game entails going in, hence the name. They're originally told that if their team wins, they get to live. Then the rules change while they're on the field.

-Wow. Evil. Remind me not to vote for you as supreme emperor.

Razic wrote:

R-E-A-L-I-T-Y

*STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!*

*STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!*
*STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!STAB!*
&c

*giggling self to sleep*

I believe the concept of class skills is valid to a point. For me they represent the things one generally learns while going to soldier school. Rogues do many different things and therefore may learn the skills of the trade from many teachers. I like to keep the base class skills constant.

On the flip side every individual is unique. Perhaps your instructor's brother was a mage. Perhaps you developed an aptitude for sneakyness. Perhaps... perhaps... perhaps. If there is a good in game reason for a character adding a class skill I'd go for it. Alternately you as DM can assign bonus skill points or list things as class skills based on back story. Players rarely complain about 'bonus' points. Can also help with the R-E-A-L-I-T-Y of a character when their maritime background taught them to use rope.

I imagine that a "find the weakness" feat would address this while still being believable. This feat allows a thief to do half sneak attack damage to anything on which a weak point can be found. I see undead as just another sort of construct. They don't have vital organs to poke but they do have physical structures that can be intelligently deconstructed.

Oozes, elementals, and purely magical entities should (IMHO) be permanently immune to sneak attacks. Their nature seems to be lacking vulnerable spots to target.

Of course I could just be lacking imagination. For me the applicability of a general "find the weakness" feat would be case by case and subject to DM approval. This works for story based roleplayers, but would probably cause more problems than it would solve for rule lawyers.

Perhaps those more familiar with nitty gritty mechanics could come up with a solid inclusion/exclusion list based on creature subtype or other features.

...makes them easy to remove as Shiny has posted...

Come on! Don't judge a man by his avatar - check the name :)

by the by - I know DR in 3.5 doesn't work by percentages but I really think this one should. A big part of an arrow's nastyness comes from pulling it out, but many a man has died with the thing still in him. Thus having a silk shirt make it possible to toatlly negate dammage from a dagger or bolt sorta silly.

Back to the shield - If you have a conceptual desire for one I think you'll have to come up with a magical reason why it works. Also note that if you somehow made silk rigid it would probably be difficult to identify as silk.

It is not that I want him to come back. I don't particularly care. I am enjoying Empire more than I think he did. I just want to know what happened. There is a tinge of something else too. I grew up in South Africa and had a close friend disappear in 1990. Having a missing person in my past makes me go through a whole gamut of emotions when someone does not contact or respond for longer than would be normal.

I hope you find the man you're looking for. Good luck.

My understanding of silk's use in battle was that it was more restistant to cuts than flesh. As such it provided protection from missle weapons in an interesting way. An arrow would still pierce the flesh, but would take the silk in with it. I'm not sure if this slowed the arrow down, but it makes pulling it out a hell of a lot easier. This is because silk is soft and smooth yet tough.

Laminating the silk would probably negate this effect by hardening it. I have no idea how it would work as a shield.

I would imagine that a silk shirt would give a nominal AC bonus - perhaps none. A more interesting buff could be something on the order of 50% damage reduction for small piercing projectiles. It could be worn under leather, hide, wood, or similar light weight armors (DM's perogative). I would imagine that heavy armor might not be compatable with silk underlayer.

I like the concept. Lots. I find the once per day thing to be rather clumsy. Unless you worship the sun it is an arbitrary mechanic... but I digress.

I would like to balance it by introducing some form of fatigue into the mix. It takes quite a bit of effort to gather your magical energies. Fatigue could incrementally affect the concentration DC, as well as add penalties to other actions?

On a related note does anyone know a good way of dealing with fatigue in game?

Remember all that CG is not goodlier than LG, it's more chaotic. Likewise CE is more chaotic than LE, not more evil. We tend to think of the chaos/law axis as being more of a compliment to the evil/good axis rather than its own entity.

Perhaps we just need to tweak what we think of the chaos/law axis. I like to think of it as a tendency to the random or to the ordered. I think we all agree that a fundamental aspect of paladins is that they follow some sort of code. A LE/LN/LG paladin could do all manner of acts that violate the legal codes of the land yet conform to the code they swore to uphold. Thus the evil paladin slaughter of a town, or the good paladin's murder of a suspected evil-dooer can still be seen as lawful acts.

The paladin holds him/herself to a higher law than that set by mere men.

edit: Thought of some example. Hexadecimal = Chaotic Evil. Megabyte = Lawful Evil. ordinary real-world priest = Lawful Good. medieval real world witch hunter = Chaotic Good.

I don't want to hijack your post, just suggesting that perhaps you can make your desired character by changing the way you think about law/chaos rather than changing a class.

Oh and a common one: "I'll just jump. The fall can't kill me. It is only going to be Xd6 damage." Says smug player.

HP is one of those mechanics which is difficult to justify but nearly impossible to do away with. Some argument can be made for folks getting hardier as time goes on, but a fall is a fall. You can fall out of an airplane and live. You can fall out of bed and dye.

I have been thinking of redesigning fall mechanics on a percentile system. Fall height, ground material, and perhaps encumbrance would give negative modifiers. Skills and circumstance give positive modifiers. 100+ = death regardless of HP. 0 = not a scratch.

As for the question posed, my answer would be context dependent. If it's a small fall and conceivable that someone might under the circumstance attempt the jump I would try to make it possible. If thy are jumping off a 100 foot cliff they be deadified.

I would assume the wall will take some amount of the damage the person should, especially if it is a wooden wall, people being thrown through the walls of the Kreegs house maybe?

The wall will take the exact same amount of damage as the character smushed into it. Equal and opposite reactions.

Less damage would be taken if the wall breaks than if it holds. This is because the deceleration of the impact is spread out. Ever see someone try to smash a beer bottle on their head that *doesn't* break?

As for damage I have no idea. Perhaps treat it as a slam attack? If thrown into a wall the size of the attacker has no bearing. If crushed than more mass = more force = more owch

Generic Player: "It's ok if this character dies, my next one will be even worse than this one, you'll see!"

Generic GM: "It's ok if your next character is even worse, since you're not starting out with cherry-picked magic items. The other characters will have to equip you from the items they have at hand. What? They sold everything? Oops." I think this is where the suggestions/responses might need to go from other posters. I've not come up with a good, reasoned, non-emotional response to this statement from a player yet. Well, other than the one above.

How about not gaming with vindictive players?

On the other hand I had a friend name a new character in a ridiculous manor in protest of a favored character and campaign being shelved for a while. The result was interesting - the name became a fun sort of hook for the character to build off.

Perhaps the new character will actually have some human faults like every good PC does. Maybe he likes to burn things for the hell of it or randomly scream obscenities at authority figures. It could be a way to show a munchkin that there is more to role playing than rolling dice and "beating" the dungeon.

My own scenario: One metagamer puts two PCs get in a situation where they would end up parting ways or killing each other if properly role played. This has happened to me and I resentfully guided my PC to not slitting the other's neck in the night. Bad for real world friendships. What would you do if you were the other player or DM in this situation?

I agree that metagamers can be incredibly annoying and hard to deal with. I think the right DM tactics can sometimes help teach a bad gamer how to think in-character by explaining the consequences of their actions. Rule 0 is an important fall back, but I think there are other ways to show the foolishness of a supposedly rational person acting in apparently insane ways.

Dealing with Meta-Gamers and players trying to get away with murder.

Joe Player: “Hey, I saw this wheel of cheese in Waterdeep for 2 gold a wheel, its only 2 silver up here in Icewind Dale! I’m going to buy 100 and put it in my bag of holding and go to Waterdeep.

Joe DM: “So, you want to retire the character and have him become a merchant. Ok, re-roll and make an ADVENTURER.”

Why not allow it? Imagine the difficulties you could face as a caravan master or merchant captain? As long as there is an in-character reason for needing some cash and the time to spend doing it this sounds like a very reasonable thing for a person to do.

Joe Player: “I Detect traps on this 5’ square… I take 1 step, I Detect traps on this 5’ square…ect”

Joe DM: “You pull out your thieves tools and pull out the pressure rod, drag the rod…..” This explanation should be long drawn out and boring. Indicating that this level of paranoia would drive even the most devout rogue insane.

Do you know what would bug me if I was a rogue? Getting hit in the head with a guillotine pendulum. It takes time to search for traps - that is penalty enough. To prevent the real world time drag of individual roles figure out a way to roll multiple dice, one check for multiple squares, or some such tactic.

This response also works for:
“I cast whirlwind/hurricane/tornado (Or whatever) and I throw caltrops into the wind to cut our enemy to bits.”

Why punish creativity? If there was some kind of magical hurricane wouldn't it do what normal hurricanes do? Just remember that the players control their actions but *you* decide on the consequences of said actions.

Joe Player: “Hey guys, come over here and roll spot because I failed mine”

Make them explain it in character. A good group I played with explained a player rolling their own checks thus; you are a professional. A hero. Someone way above and beyond the normal person. You probably have a good idea of how well you are performing on a given day. Bad roll = fumbling with the probe / eyes just having trouble focusing / having a crappy day. Of course what the DC is is up to you, and they have no idea of that.

I don't want to rain on your rant too much. Metagamers bug the hell out of me as well. Particular annoyances are the evil acting CG clerics, the avaricious paladins, and anybody that refuses to do engage in any non-crunch behaviour. Sadly I know of no way to deal with the quasi legal munch-crunch characters we all run into occasionally.

Keeping himself cloaked/hooded/gloved when hanging out above-ground, it seems that everyone his PC ran into was magically able to determine that he was a drow, because as the DM interpreted things, the Drow's "long slender fingers" were a dead giveaway, and when that was debated, this whole concept of the Drow having an extra finger joint was then tossed up, and it was able to be seen, even through gloved hands.

I think I've seen this problem before...

Inigo: I don't mean to pry. You don't by perhaps have six fingers on your right hand?
Man in Black: Do you always start conversations this way?

The rules probably say no, but in the interest of having fun, a wise DM might say yes.

My thoughts exactly.

This guy will need a few house rules to be playable. First would be to allow spiders as animal companions and mounts. I don't see a huge problem with that.

The second is to allow the feat "penetrating strike" (from Tequila Sunrise's house rules). It not only makes sense that undead/constructs still have weak points, but this guy relies wholly on sneak attacks. I don't like the idea of a tiny character having a strength above 6 or so making his non sneaky damage almost nonexistant.

The third isn't necessary but I like it to give the guy some depth. He dreams of having a Phase Spider mount and teleporting with him. Depending on the DM this would require anything from a ring of blink to a unique magical item.

The more I think about this guy the more I want to play him. He identifies more with spiders than with his own race. He has no vocal chords and can only vocalize with clicks and pops (which are perfect for talking to his spidery friends) but has trouble relating to those who don't know sign language. A tiny rogue fits perfectly with a spider mount. Spiders are stealthy and mobile. Nothing like walking along the ceiling above the sentries, or dropping down behind them for some killer sneak attacks. Additionally I believe that maxing out Ride will negate a ton of damage, helping him stick in a fight even with low rogue HP.

I was thinking of being a dual weilding ranger but using precise shot and throwing daggers/darts/stars so he didn't have to wade into battle all the time. I would like to progress towards spring attack so that he could phase in with his spider to flank then pop out when things get dicey, but this would need some prior conversation with the DM to figure out the mechanics of such a tactic. In any case I think he would be a lot of fun to play, and powerful enough in combat to make him worth keeping around.

I'm looking for something (a) evocative of the culture, (b) more easily pronounced than any rude false cognates, (c) appropriate for a high-forest druid.

I wouldn't worry about something being unrealistic when it comes to Chinese names. I have had many students with odd names. Some unique ones have been Tarzan, Monkey, Pudding, Buzz Lightyear, and Shrek. I have had so many Apples and Nemos that I have lost count.

I would just pick something you like in English and find a simple translation for it. I would just translate the words directly. You will end up with a two or three syllable/character name that will sound real enough and should satisfy your three requirements.

Hello Paizo! First post here - be nice to me :).

I have an character idea kicking around in my head but as I'm alone in the middle of India I need some help fleshing out a key detail.

The character would be a ranger/rogue "thief-taker". The details aren't too important but I would like her to be able to use her animal companion spider as a mount. Any suggestions on possible races?

Cheers