Sel Carim's page

First off, I like the idea of changing the favored class bonuses. The 3.5 version seems a little arcane, adds a bunch of book work and might not even benefit you depending on how much multi-classing you plan on doing. One simple universal bonus each level seems like a more elegant and simple solution. I'm just not sold on the 1 HP bonus. I think that a 1 skill point bonus might be better. First off, an extra skill point is universally useful regardless of class. Sure, so is a hit point but I think that a skill point makes more sense in light of what is being represented. The time spent by others developing the basic abilities for a class that comes naturally to your race can be used to build other skills.

First off, I think that making 0 level spells useable at will is a great idea. It gives lower level casters some more bite and high level casters some fun special abilities that are helpful at any level.

When I read the latest play test rules I noticed that Cure Minor Wounds had been replaced with a new spell "Stabalize". I know that this is what most of us used cure minor for, to stop a character who was bleeding from falling any further into the negatives. It makes sense to change the name and function of the spell to something more resembling what we all used it for. However, with the re-thinking of 0 level spells I think that it would be beneficial to keep Cure Minor Wounds as it is. Anyways, I'm not sure if this has been discussed yet but here are my thoughts on the issue.

1. It saves on down time. Instead of breaking between encounters to heal the party and decide which precious spells to use to get the groups preped for the next batch of baddies we can simply assume that the cleric takes the time to top off everbodies HP. After all, it doesn't consume any resources or spells per day. This also should cut down on the amount of times the party needs to camp. It's annoying to have to camp all the time, sometimes after a single encounter. With cure minor as a use at will ability, parties can skip a rather dull step and get on with whatever it was they were doing.

2. It wouldn't effect game balance. Allowing the party cleric to cure one HP per round at will isn't going to change to flow of any battle. I don't think that one HP a round is going to keep even a level 1 party afloat. In battle you need to use the more potent healing spells to keep people going. But if you just need to stabalize someone cure minor is still available.

3. It's kinda cool. The though of the cleric kneeling beside a wounded character and praying over them while their wounds begin to close is a fun mental image. Not the most compelling reason perhaps, but there you have it.

I was interested in getting a friend a gift subscription to pathfinder. Appart from just giving him the money, is there anything else that could be done? Please let me know.

Well, my school is into finals week once again starting today. My best wishes of luck to anyone who, like myself, still have to deal with these beastly things. My everyone roll the nat' 20 they deserve!

Is this the first post in this section? Anyhow, I'd just like to ask what games outside of d20 other people play, or have played.

My personal favorites outside of d20 are (in no particular order)

Legend of the Five Rings
7th Sea
Shadowrun

As it turns out, most of the players in my gaming group have tried World of Warcraft MMORPG including myself. Anyhow, after playing for a while I became intereseted in the backstory and history of the various characters and areas in the game. I went and read the history section on blizzards site as well as some other fan sites and was surprised and the depth of background the game had. This lead to the proposal among our group that a warcraft RPG campaign would be a cool idea.

I ended up with a copy of the World of Warcraft RPG book and have been reading through it. It's got some definate good points. There's some background info that you don't get anywhere else plus new spells, feats and classes related to the game. On the downside however, some of the classes felt as though they were more or less directly ported from 3.5. Though all in all, I'd say it's a worth picking up for anyone intereseted in the game.

Anyhow, to make a long story short, I'm currenty trying to remake a few of the classes using the abilities found in the warcraft games. This is an attempt to maintain the flavor presented in the warcraft setting. If anyone is interesed, I'd be happy to post what I have been able to do so far. I'd also be happy to hear comment from other folks on the boards!

I figured I would post this here, though this particular problem plauges all forms of story telling. I've noticed that lately there seemes to be more and more Cliche characters popping up all over the place. Seems that todays protagonists tend to fall into one of three catagories.

1. The brash, angry hero who has a problem with authority and is a prodigy in his chosen field regardless of any training or lack thereoff. He alwasy seems to win despite lack of forethought and rational judgment and never EVER learns from his mistakes.

2. The dark brooding hero who is also a prodigy of his chosen field (probably because the only thing he does to occupy his time is brood and train). He never speaks more than one sentance at a time and beats his enemies because he's badder than all of them combined.

3. The fated hero, who for some unknow reason is bequethed by a god/genetic experiment/uber powerfull alien race/whatever with some kind of super weapon of powerful ability that makes him unstopable. He usually doesn't want his powers and sees them as a horrible responsibility that he just can't avoid.

I know this is a bit of a rant here (sorry for that) but it seems like fantasy and sci fi are kind of in a rut. Most of the new books and characters that are out there revolve around the same themes. Some uber powerful guy who is just that much better than anyone and everyone who stands against him.

I don't have a problem with powerful and competant characters, they can be a lot of fun, but I would much rather the story be about a person who is powerful, that just about oggling at some guys awesome abilities. V for Vendetta being a example in my oppinion, sure V is powerful, but the story is less about V's abilities and more about the philosophy he is trying to show people.

Sure, we all like to hear stories about extrodanary people who are larger than life, but it's been take to extreemes. It's as if story telling is suffering from hero inflation, anymore stories about characters who can't crack the world with their nostils aren't worth hearing about. I think that is a shame. I can enjoy a story about a character who is deep and three dimensional who maybe has to struggle for his victories and maybe even fails on occasion.

I don't like this for the same reasons I don't like GM PC showboating. Anyone can give a character all the best abilities and specials in the book, that's easy. What's hard is making a character who draws you in and makes you love them or hate them, or who feels so real you think that you could meet him on the street, or who says something that makes you really makes you think.

Sorry for the long rant-like post. As always, I'm one man with one oppinion and I could be totalally off base here. Let me know what you all think.

After reading the post on ironfistedness I started to think about things that I as a GM am fairly hard core about. I tend to be faily lax on as far as race/class combos go, but I am pretty tight fisted when in comes to evil in my games. Now, I'm not opposed to characters being evil, I've run games with characters who ranged from saints to the most vile of villians without a problem. I just don't like to portray evil as anything other than evil.

If a player wants to murder the bar tender, go for it, but the world will react in a logical way. The guards are going to treat the character as a murderer not to mention the family and friends who are going to have a personal beef with the character. If a character wants to use hard drugs in a game, fine, but don't be surprised when you character winds up addicted and suffers accordingly.

I am currently running a shadowrun game with a pretty hard bitten cast of characters. I really don't have a problem because even though they are doing some pretty horrible things, none of the players would be upset if the natural concequences of their actions catch up with them. Infact, most of them would be pretty upset with me if I tried to soft shoe around things.

I think my feeling on this issue stem first from an advesion to glorifying evil. As I said, I don't mind dealing with evil, I just want to deal with it in a serious manner. Secondly, some of the early game I ran tended to be nothing more than sociopathic binges or death and destuction. Sure, we were all pretty immature back then (14 or 15, can't remember) but that kind of play left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Currently, I am running a Battletech game. On of the players (not a part of my regular group) is getting himself into trouble. Asside from the hard living (drugs and what not) he is starting to get himself wraped up with the local sydicate. So far, he hasn't had any serious problems. I admit that the game is taking place on Solaris 7, the drain for all kinds of scum in the battletech universe and that it's kind of in the spirit of the game to have a less than wholesome character. However, like in Cyberpunk, the game is just as much about bad things happening to you as you doing bad things to other people.

I haven't done anything to the character yet, but I am serriously considering it. I guess my question is, am I being to hard on him? Should I let him off easy or should I let him rot in the pit he has dug for himself? Am I taking this way to serriously and do I need to relax? Is Ironfistedness even a word?

honest opinions please

The wish spell is one of the most interesting spells out there. Not just because it is powerful, but there is often a great deal of ambiguity as far as how the spell effect will occur. Has anyone had any interesting or fun things happen when they use their wish spells?

I know plenty of gamers who like to collect dice, myself being one of them. Question being, do any of you have an unique or unusual dice that have come into your collection?

Well, after months of playing (before I even knew about Paizo) we got started on this game. Now its nearing completion, and it has been a great ride. I'm going to try and recount everything as accurately as possible, starting out with character introductions.

I named the thread how I did because most of the personal problems dealt with in the game revolve around questions of identity, thus trying to understand the image in the mirror.

The GM allowed us to make any character we wanted up to 20th level. He only asked that we make backstory sufficient fill our characters history. Anyhow, without further adue, here we go. (this is just the base introduction, more dirty laundry to be aired later)

Severel: CG male elven ranger (about 17th level) Left Evermeet in an attempt to escape stifiling court life. Knowing that his father will soon retire, this is his last chance to wander the world before his duties root him firmly at home.

Azelmare: CG female gnomish cleric of Gond, with some rogue and bard levels thrown in (about 15th level) Azelmare has a good heart, but doens't always fully consider the concequences of her actions, this has gotten her into trouble in the past.

Rhondel: NG male human wizard/marshall 20th level. Considered a bit of an eccentric by most, Rhondel is a peddler of oozes and other magical creatures. He lives on a small ranch out in the middle of nowhere, where he raises his children and breeds (well, as much as you can breed an aesexual creature) oozes.

Thorin Koteth(my guy): LG male human paladin of Torm 20th level. Thorin has been across most of the known world, always protecting a young half-elf girl who is his daughter and ward. Thorin is a bit stern and gruff, a trait his daughter Shaunali has come to accept, though she chides him on it regularily.

Well, more coming soon.

somehow I accidentally added this thread twice, I will be posting on the other thread with a similar title, so please go there for updates! If the admins want to delete this one, that would be appriciated.

I'm Pretty proud of my GM for this one. The game combines fantasy themes with 20s gangster, speakeasy themes which comes out to a pretty cool mix. A quick setting preface, mafia like guilds have taken power and fight over the manna trade, a magical substance that bestows magical power on its drinkers. The setting uses a fair number of homebrew races set into farly rigid social classes.

Anyhow, the characters

PC1: Elsia, a sphinx private investigator and intelligent and savvy proffesional who isn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty, for the right price.

PC2 (me): Tevin Michallini, the head of the tailors guild and handles all his families illicit activities (a job his high society relatives don't want to touch) He doesn't mind however, he loves his job. A mob boss with a sense of honor, he's good to his men, won't harm a bistander and always keeps his word. He's not a nice guy though, he's ruthless to his enemies and traitors.

PC3: Leds, a harpy tough guy and Tevin's cheif leg breaker and enforcer. Leds prefers to use a section of led pipe as a weapon, thus the nickname.

PC4: Rufolo, a rat man who serves as Tevin's eyes and ears. Tevin uses him to keep an eye on the other guilds and to, well, sniff out rats in his own organization. Rufolo has an ability which allows him to detect lies, a very useful ability in his line of work.

First session.

Tevin and crew are having an early lunch at the guilds resteraunt "Zerelios" during which time they intend to plan the day. Tevin has recently hired Elsia to investigate an old personal matter (Tevin was a combat mage during a recent continent spanning war, during which time he drunk REALLY bad shot of manna which left him with permanent magical side effects) He wants Elsia to find out who is responsible and whether or not it was deliberate. During their talk they notice that, John Wikelson, a personal a freind of Tevin and cop on the take is late. An unusuall trait for him. About this time a delivery boy shows up with an unexpected package for Tevin. A bit worried at this point, one of Tevins gombas opens the package and finds Wikelsons severed head. Tevin is furrious, no one does this to a friend of his.

After a quick intimidation session the delivery boys agrees to help Rufolo sneak into the post office to help him trace the package. Though the mission is successful, the return address is a bluff, nothing there. A bit frustrated Leds heads to his manna production base to check in a put them on the alert. There he is confronted by a snakeman who tells him that there is going to be change in leadership in the area, and that if Leds sides with him, he might find himself in a lucrative possition. Leds figures that this is probably the guy who killed Wikelson, and so attacks him. After a short fight, Sezme (the snakeman) is subdued and straped into the greasy old dentists chair in the basement, MUWHAHAHA. Tevin and Rufolo show up and begin the interigation. In not to long after they discover that Sezme had nothing to do with the incident (thanks to Rufolos detect lies ability). However, Sezme has been observing the area lately and knows a great deal of what has been going on it the city and is willing to share what he knows with Tevin. Tevin promises him that if he is useful, he might overlook his previous indiscresioin. If he tries anything funny, that his life will become a living hell. Also a promise.

Leds and Rufolo go to check out one of the places Sezme talked about. Suposedly a group of hit men who might have had something to do with Wikelson's death. When they arrive they see smoke, the building has been gutted with fire, and the inside is full of bodies. Tevin and Leds approach carefully, inside they find that there are only bodies. What is odd is that each of corpse has multiple slahing wounds, many have been decapitated. The dead men have autobolts with them (think of a tommy gun that fire cross bow bolts) but none have meele weapons. Each autobolt has been fired, the spent rounds are in the walls, celing and floors. None are found in the bodies. Infact, there aren't even any unaccounted for blood stains. The bodies are fresh, not enough time for anyone to remove their dead AND clean up the sceene afterwords. It appears as if someone entered the building, killed everyone in it and left without taking a single casualty, even though many shots were fired. Neither Leds or Rufolo have any idea who or what has that kind of skill or power. Now the boys are nervous. As they are wracking their brains they see a fleeting figure on the roof. Leds, a harpy, quickly flys up to intercept. Turns out it is a elven detective who wants to know what happened. Leds says he was just investigating, the elf seems a little dissapointed and before Leds can say anything else, dissapears over the side of the building.

Thats session one, I hope I havn't missed anything. I'll make sure to post the rest of the sessions soon so that I am cought up!

Several months ago I had a debate with a friend. We talked about DnD. I had been a roleplayer for years, but had played very few of TSR's settings, and I had only used the D20 system a couple of times. Over the years I had gotten a bad impression of DnD in general over the years, anyhow, back to the point I argued that there weren't a lot of setting elements behind DnD. Just one dungeon to the next bashing a never ending line of monsters with characters who were ridiculously powerful. He offered to run a game for me, the setting would be Forgotten Realms and I could play any character I wanted from 1st to 20th level. The game would follow the rules as closely as they could, that was my demand. No augmenting the game with house rules, let it sink or swimm on its own.

Anyhow, I brushed the mold off of my statistics and probability skills and sat down to create to most broken and powerful character I could manage...and broken he was. I ended up taking a 20th level paladin. By the time I was done bying his feats and equipment with the gold alloted, Thorin, as he was to be named, was dealing hundreds, and sometimes thousands of damage in single rounds and was almost impervious to damage. To make things fair I gave him a pretty intesive backstory, even by my standards. I did my best to flesh out the character's personality as deeply as I had his abilities. Thorin was ready to rock.

Well, the campaign is almost done now. I have to say it has been on of the most, if not the most, dramatic, flavorful and story driven game I have played in. The characters were great and the story has been great. Infact, we have just finished perhaps the best sessions I have ever been in, and all it involved was three characters standing off in a room, hands on weapons trying to resolve our conflicting story lines.

I guess what I am trying to say is that my GM won the bet really. He and I still have our problems with the mechanics and will use some house rules in future game. Some of these ideas have been discussed in the "thoughs on the hit points system" thread. What really suprised me though was the world that I was inroduced to. I found the Forgotten Realms setting to be incredibly flavorful, indepth and imersive. Truely a fun place to explore, if only for a few hours a week. In the inbetween time I have also gotten my feet wet in a one session Planescapes game and Darksun game. Both settings were equally great to get to know. Looking foreward to the climactic conclusion of our Forgotten Realms game, I sincerely hope that my GM will post what I felt was a truely exceptional compaign.

Someone I know recently said that gaming is a waste of time, a useless hobby where nothing is accomplished except the use of time. I've though about this a bit, and truly, I can't agree with his assesment. Below I have written a list of the things that I think I have gained from gaming, not in any order of importance. I would invite anyone reading this to feel free to post what they feel gaming has given to them.

1. A greater knowledge of creative problem solving. Lets face it, if gaming teaches one thing its how to think outside the box. Unlike videogames (not offense intended) your only limitation to how to deal with a situation is your imagination. I think that after years of gaming I have come to be a little more imaginative with how I deal with problems in my day to day life.

2. A greater ability to understand others. When we game we often take on the persona of characters who are entirely different than ourselves. We do our best to get inside these characters heads and think like they do and act like they would. I think I've come to have a greater ability to empathize with other people and at least understand where they are coming from.

3. A greater appriciation for the art of story telling. Yes, I do belive that this is an art form, though it has taken may different forms over the years, from plays to books to movies and even just sitting around the camp fire spinning yarns, the basics are still the same. Humans are suckers for a good story and roleplaying is about telling stories. Action, drama, romance, comedy roleplaying is home to them all and after years spent developing characters, plots and settings I think that I've gotten a little better at this art form.

4. A greater ability to express myself. While this ties into number 3, I think it deserves mentioning. Years of GMing, describing sceenes and acting out characters has given me a greater mastery of my own language and greater powered me to express my thought and opinions.

5. Less fear of public speaking. The more comfortable I get with sitting around pretending to be an elf, the more comfortable I am with expressing my opinions about things that I really care about in public. Not that I don't still have fear of public speaking (who doesn't really) but I think I've gotten better over the years.

Setting: Shadowrun by FASA, for those of you who aren't familiar, Shadowrun is a setting set in the near future during a rebirth of magic. Technology is similar to cyberpunk, as well as the themes of urban decay and corperate control.

PC1: Wayward, a dwarven mage who has rejected popular culture and methedology refusing to act in the way society dictated he should, or even practice magic in a conventional method.

PC2: Stalker, a jaguar shapeshifter and shaman from what is left of northern South America. He was able to escape but is trying to save money to bring his family north away from the Azetechnology, a particularily nasty coperation that controls most of South America.

PC2: Katherine, A dwarven Rigger (someone who mentaly controls vehicles and remote controlled robots called drones) who has a love for technology, both building and taking it apart.

PC3: Jimmy, A young naive Coyote shaman from one of the Native America Nations which were formed from the midwestern USA after the colapse of the United States Government.

I took over from another GM who wanted a chance to play, the first part of the campaign involved the group getting out of Seattle to avoid some nastyness that was coming their way (literaly).
Anyhow, after droping off one of a couple of the characters, (my old character and the character of one player who couldn't be in the group anymore) the players headed north eventually leading them to Portland, there they stop in a bar to get some drinks. Wayward, who was not yet part of the group is approached by a young, partly asian woman who looks a little desperate. She introduces herself as Juliet and claims to be an employee of Aztechnology who is seeking enployment in another coroporation, however, since she was involved in some important research Aztechnology is less than willing to just let her go and their agents are looking for her to bring her back, or worse... She offers Wayward a rather large sum of money (about 150% the normal going rate) to take her to CFS, (California broke away from the USA becoming the California Free State) She said that she would be safe there since Azetechnology has little hold in CFS.

Wayward doesn't belive her story but the cash is too good to pass up. He noticed the other players enter the bar and can tell that they are travelers. Wayward approached them and askes them if they can take he and a friend of his to CFS. With nothing better to do Stalker and Katherine agree. With the deal made they take some time to relax.

Thats when trouble starts. Over their table the group notices three men who have just entered the bar, one of which is dressed in a green, shiny overcoat and a pair of shades modeled to look like an aztech sun hat. The three men slip the bouncer some money and start walking through the bar checking faces. Wayward decideds to use his mind controlling spell (If the target fails his save, the caster can dictate the actions of the target for a certain time period) He targets one of coporate goons. The guy fails and Wayward makes his take out his gun and shoot his leader, the guy with the sun hat shades. The leader goes down, a second later the third goon shoots the shooter for betraying their leader. Panic ensues, with shots going of and people rushing for the doors the party is able to slip out unoticed. Quickly getting into their van before law enforcement arrives they rush for the edge of the city.

Listening in to the radio they learn that trafic barriers are being set up at all roads leading out of town (yes corps do have that much power in Shadowrun). They arrive at the checkpoint just as dawn is breaking. The checkpoint consists of cement deviders and a quickly set up toll both. The party counts about 6 guards in Azetechnolgy colors with two summoned spirits. The gaurds are carefully checking each vehicle and running ID checks on the passengers. Wayward tells Juliet to keep her head down and tells Katherine to floor it when he tells her to. Just as the car infront of the parties van leaves the checkpoint Wayward uses up his summoned Earth Elemental (in Shadowrun elementals are summoned in advance and used as the need arrises) He and stalker then take pot shots at the surprised guards. A few gaurds fire at the van, scoring only glancing hits, while most are just trying to get away from the angry earth elemental. The spirits attack the elemental and manage to force it back to the astral plane, but not before the pary is able to navigate through the checkpoint and make a dash down the road.

More to come!

This thread is part rant and part suggestion. I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I guess I just wanted to give my thoughts on the issue.

My problems with the DnD hit point system is that weapons, or any kind of damage for that mater, do far less damage than they should at higher levels. The same knife that would kill a first level character will mearly wound a 10th level character and bearly scratch a 20th level character.

While I know that there are rules that try to compensate, such as the massive damage rule (if you take a certain amount of damage you must make a save against death) and increasing sneak attack damage, none of these really answer the core problem that characters can take rediculous amounts of damage before dying.

I've been told that hit points realy represent a high level characters ability to dodge and avoid damage, but this sounds more like an excuse that an explanation.

I have a friend who gives out hp by race and constitution bonus, which seems to work pretty well. I also like to use the BESM d20 idea of base defense bonus, as my brother has suggested, giving the higest bonuses to classes who relly the most on dodging like rouges and monks. This seems to work fairly well for us. This fills the gap that reduced HP tends to leave. I also prefer it because it more directly represents the fact that as characters advance, they learn to dodge and parry better, leading to a higher defense.

The one argument that I have heard to support the hp system is that DnD is a heroic fantasy game and therefore should be allowed to make some non-realistic adjustments for that sake of action. While I can see the logic behind this statement I think there are better ways that hit points to increase the cinimatic drama of high paced sword battles. (or axe battles for that matter)

If anyone has any thought on the matter(even if it is to tell me that I am an idiot ;) ), has a good way of explaining the HP system or house rules to deal with the problem, please post them.

Ok, this is what we game for right? That moment in the spot light, a chance for our characters to do or say something that is truely memorable, something that the players will be talking about for years to come. Whether it is a memorable speach, an opportunity to do the impossible or a heroic death, I invite you to tell us about your characters favorite glory stories.

Here's one of my own about a character I had in an Exalted campaign (white-wolf)
My character was a Dragon Blooded solder of The Realm named Cathak Steadfast. He had, through what seemed like pure luck become aware of an attack near the city he was stationed in. The attack was planed to take a manse in a strategic possition which would be almost impossible to retake. From here the invaders planed to stage their attack on the city, a plan that could easily succed. Steadfast knew what he had to do. He couln't allow the invaders to take that manse, however he was two days ride from the city, not enough time to return and raise the city garrison. Steadfast rode through the nearby hamlets and roused as many able bodied men as were available, about 72 and rode to the manse only a few hours ahead of the invading army of about 3000. Steadfast set a rider to get word back to the city as soon as possible, he would try and hold the manse, or at least make them pay as dearly as possible for it. Steadfast managed to stall the enemies through parlay for a little extra time, but before long the battle was on. Sparing you the details, Steadfast, though a combination of trickery, good tactic, guts, and a final all out charge on a foolishly undefended command post managed to hold the manse. When the invaders heard the horns of the incoming legion they broke and ran leaving the remaining defenders victorious. Steadfast, heavily wounded and bearly able to stand was able to report to the legion general that the manse was secure.
(I know my player have got some great ones, but I'll let them post for themselves.) Look foreward to hearing what everyone on the board has to say!