|_|83r p0n@g3, |\|008! TEH l33T!!!!11111
QFTLOLz!
Search Posts
Hey guys thanks for all you help! The problems I have with multi classing have been brought up save one: my DM says anylevel after 19 must be gained by doing a "Legendary" quest. . .im trying to pitch the idea that it shouldnt take a legendary event to take a frist level in anything. . .but if he stick to his guns i cant bring my slef to spend all this time, power, effort, thought, etc. for a first level wizard class!know what i mean? . . . . . . So don't do a quest for a first level in Wizard. Do it for, say, the first level in Tempest. Better yet, if you're anywhere near meeting the prerequisites, stick with ranger for another few levels and multiclass into Agent Retriever or Legendary Dreadnought. The former is basically the ideal class for a bounty hunter and treasure hunter, the latter is either an Unstoppable Force or an Immovable Object, when he chooses to be. For that matter, Horizon Walker isn't too bad once you get into Planar abilities -- Dimension Door once every 1d4 rounds? Yes please! Of course, just sticking with ranger for the bonus feats and continuation of your abilities isn't a bad idea either.
Yep. Thus, my typical AFK message when I go to grab a snack on WoW: "Blood Elf needs food, badly!"
I try to draw upon hidden aspects of my own personality. Okay, Lena is not so hidden, she's all me. But my fighter I'll be playing soon, she is going to be the hot, bad ass harley chick hidden deep inside everyone (okay, insert 'dude' if needed) It's great to allow certain parts of your self to emerge, sometimes I even surprise myself. That's how I form the core of a new persona -- I take three to four facets of my own personality that I'd like to explore in greater depth, such as Ambition, the Desire to do Good, Grim Perseverance, and Enmity toward the Almighty, roll them together and explain how that person came to exist and have whatever powers are associated with her class. In that case, it was my fledgling Dread Necromancer bent on achieving godhood because she believed the forces of light to be incompetent. Of course, you can also choose an interesting concept and then pick the core themes that you think will be appropriate. Picking aspects of yourself as the core, building around them, and twisting them around a bit makes it (in my experience) a great deal easier to get (and stay) in character: instead of asking yourself "what would my character do?" the question becomes "what would I do, if I were my character?"
Put oven mitts on your hands at night, you're wound up too tight dude, I'm telling you catnip and chammomile tea before bed, heavy on the catnip. I used to wake up with my jaws clenched so tight little flakes of tooth were in my mouth. Catnip and chammomile, ahhhh. That sounds incredibly familiar. I think I'll have to try that sometime, or at the very least the chamomile, which we ought to have around the house somewhere.
After a battle with a shade (ECL +4) sorcerer wielding fireball (meaning at least 6 character levels for an EL 10 encounter), I talked to the DM. Note that the ECL Modifier is almost invariably higher than the CR modifier. It was probably approximately a CR 8 creature, though I can't recall the exact numbers for the Shade template offhand. That said, a party of three level five characters is approximately as effective as a standard party straddling the level three to four crossover, so it's still criminally stupid.
Another option would be to model the item after the feat Improved Toughness, which offers an extra hit point for every hit die the character possesses. Now, an item giving +2 to your constitution is worth 4,000 gp, but it also modifies your concentration checks and fortitude saves (the latter of which is important to everyone) so you could reasonably price the item granting only hit points at 2.5k to 3k. If you wanted it to stack with the feat, but not with itself, the simplest way would be to state that it gives you an enhancement bonus to your hit points -- thus it would stack with constitution increasing items (which enhance your constitution, which in turn increases your hit points) but not with another instance of itself.
Auric the fighter, Khellek the wizard, and Tirra the rogue. Very odd. Nice recycling, though. Auric I could never take seriously. Ever. I could never even remember his name, even though I read the adventure to help in DMing it before I ended up being run through it by someone else, and I probably won't remember it five minutes from now when I'm done posting. I'll always remember him as "Pants". I have to award geek points for recognizing the characters across that much of an issue span, though.
Though I imagine that Ultradan's eyes will roll and then glaze over as he reads this, I'll suggest it anyway. The snowball effect can be solved by giving NPCs as much wealth as the PCs, but without providing too much loot for the PCs. To make a portion of an NPC's equipment unlootable, I've come up with a few tattoos and elixirs. This is my approach until I hammer out the kinks in my own system of replacing the majority of passive magic items with personal enhancements applied directly the the character, which would be compensated for with a separate type of "points" gained simultaneously with experience. As it is, I'll frequently award NPCs unlootable "passive" bonuses as tattoos or just plain slotless enhancements, and pump their weapons up with elixirs of greater magic weapon, which renders the weapon devastating for the necessary encounter without breaking the bank.
My whole life is pretty much a "Whoa I'm a geek" moment. What comes to mind at the moment is walking around in a large store and finding myself whistling the Star Wars theme. One of my major life goals, actually, is to get small but loud battery powered speakers so that I can stitch them into a trench coat and stalk through the grocery store with the imperial theme from Star Wars playing.
"Daddy! we have that! Kah-thoo-looooo!" You, sir, win at life. My last geek moment was realizing that I was finally putting the physics class I'm taking to practical use just a few minutes ago in the thread about longbows... and then realizing the irony in defining the act of explaining the logic behind D&D mechanics as "practical". Before that it was when I got in an argument over whether or not a Klaive in Werewolf is in fact "dagger" sized to a crinos werewolf, and I got yelled at for incorporating D&D mechanics on sizing in my argument -- "well, it's a short sword for a human, and shifting to crinos increases your size from medium to large. That's a dagger."
For one thing, an artificer can use infusions to, for example, temporarily grant you Eyeglasses of Giant's Strength at a much lower level than you would be able to buy such a thing. For another, as was noted, they can use Metamagic Spell Trigger to do some patently absurd things with a Wand of Scorching Ray, and don't underestimate their ability to draw on any infusion on their spell list without preparation. Finally, they get some infusion at relatively low levels -- I forget what it's called -- which allows them to imbue an item with any spell by making a Use Magic Device check with a scaling difficulty determined by the level of the spell. Given the importance of the Use Magic Device skill for Artificers (approximately equivalent to the importance of the Truespeak skill for a Truenamer) it's reasonable to assume that they will be able to, with reasonable frequency, use a single low level infusion to emulate whatever low to mid level spell they happen to need -- particularly when they later gain the ability to take ten on the check. Basically, though, so long as he's given enough downtime and resources to make use of his craft reserve, he'll be useful. If you can keep him from abusing Metamagic Spell Trigger to burn through an entire wand in the first round of combat, you'll be able to keep your BBEG from being turned into a smoking crater before he finishes his monologue.
Yeah, basically what he said. Put differently, the longbow pushes the arrow farther because it pushes harder. The basic principle is that Force = Mass*Acceleration. For the arrow to travel farther before crashing into the earth, it must have a greater horizontal component to its velocity, which makes for a greater change in velocity on impact and thus a greater amount of force exerted on you. As Andrew Turner notes, if you're able to get higher ground (and thus put gravitational acceleration to work for you as well) your total velocity will be greater as well. If (as I've heard -- I don't know from personal experience) the arrows for longbows are larger than are the arrows for shortbows, that increases the mass as well, thus increasing the difference in force yet again.
Honestly, I recommend Rogue levels over Fighter unless you need the bonus feats to get into Tempest, as with proper tactics (admittedly, not a barbarian's strongest point) you would be able to deliver a stunning number of sneak attacks in a round and bring your damage output right back up to where it ought to be. If you do go fighter, picking up Weapon Specialization would be wise to help balance out the TWF penalty to attack and your inability to power attack effectively. Lythdrae is also a TWFer, so I know where you're coming from -- in my case I'm counting on the Swashbuckler's Insightful Strike to bring my damage output back up -- a constant +4 against creatures you have the capacity to score crits on is nice and, in my case, we have the ranger and Thanis' overcompensator to fall back on against the rest.
Had a lovely 4 sentence conversation with Lareth (Not sure who the poster is) 'nother of mine. I'm like, ADD with characters or something -- I'll flip from one to another to another to another to another until I find one that catches my attention and then run that until the energizer bunny falls asleep at the drums and then go pass out and repeat. Made Lareth because I kept getting nice leather drops and so far as I know we are without a lockpicker anyway. Hope you have more luck next time you try to play.
An awesome story about a ridiculously cool character. Hmm... not to sound pushy, but perhaps you could consider (if you play with the Book of Exalted Deads) talking to your DM about posthumously retraining into an exalted feat and playing him as a Risen Martyr? It sounds like, in this circumstance at least, you were playing the definition of an exalted character. Personal sacrifice for the greater good, and all that. One way or another, kudos to you for roleplaying through the situation so well!
At risk of sounding redundant -- I haven't the patience or mental faculties at the moment to read the thread in its entirety -- here's my understanding of the situation and subsequent judgments on it: Paladin is being, even more than badly played paladins are wont to be, a domineering jackass. Elf refuses to obey a stupid order, Paladin flips out and kills him. Seems to me, that's a lawful evil act. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a caricature of the lawful evil alignment -- inflicting almost comically exaggerated punishment for a trivial infraction. I'd even go so far as to offer that paladin a free ticket into the Blackguard prestige class regardless of his skill and feat selection, because for him NOT to have second thoughts about the act reflects a degree of corruption and latent evil that probably has Bel tensed in his seat ready to spring on the new recruit and offer him all sorts of shiny toys for joining team evil. Now, if you don't want to run that sort of game, fine. The easy solution is to say that the paladin was turned into a pincushion on the spot, roll up a new character. As I saw pointed out as I scrolled down, new characters come in at whatever level you as the DM say they do. He can either take it or walk, and from the sounds of it your other players and you might be happier if he walked. He can argue all he wants that he was acting within the tenets of a lawful good alignment, but you as the DM are the final arbiter of what is and is not lawful and/or good. It's also up to you, as the DM, to keep characters with alignment restrictions informed on what your judgments are, but I'm going to assume that you gave him a warning and he went ahead and took the action anyway. I'll grant that, had the scene been roleplayed well with mature players who knew what was going on and were ok with it, there could be a lot of roleplaying potential in it, but it sounds like it wasn't. If the player whose character died is particularly upset over it I might even roll back the session and keep the Paladin around as a DMPC just long enough to remove him from the picture... or if you keep the player around, don't let him bring in a new character. Make him play through either the continuance of his fall from grace or his return. And give him a firm talking to out of character and explain that if he does something stupid, inconsiderate, and internally inconsistent like this again, he'll be on the curb before he even realizes that his ass hurts.
With all this talk of slow traffic on the boards, I'd like to invite each and everyone of you to the world famous Paizonian Chat Room . Where' y'all been? Was it something Jade said? Well, I guess your invitation worked. We had a regular party going for Aberzombie tonight.
I'd suggest a slightly more stringent approach: longterm, nonpermanent bonuses should be applicable -- a cloak of charisma, for example. Unless your cohort happens to also be your roommate you won't be dealing with them before you've gotten fully dressed. Or, at least, we tend to assume that you're running that kind of game unless stated otherwise. Truly temporary bonuses from spells such as Eagle's Splendor, on the other hand, I wouldn't allow simply because it's going to take a truly epic series of skill checks and roleplaying to convince someone to become your cohort before the duration of the spell is up.
I did that the other day, but I pulled a Marie Antoinette for lunch and the cake was gone before we left the house that evening.
Honestly, it seems to me that the simplest solution to the matter of sleep is just to say that while elves are biologically similar to humans in more ways than they care to admit, they simply need less sleep than humans -- they still sleep, though they conceive of their "sleep" as being fundamentally different, the only differences are in the duration and the fact that there is no lingering drowsiness after they awaken. In a game where colossal red dragons can live for centuries and fly through nonmagical means, the idea of a humanoid race that just doesn't need eight hours of sleep seems reasonable to me. Anyway, it's sent, and it's wordy. I'll try and have Lythdrae wake up in a nightmare stricken near-panic later after I've addressed my homework properly.
I just don't like the fact that they don't sleep. Everyone else does. I don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way for some reason. Also seems to be the basis for their immunity to sleep effects, which I consider pretty weak, personally. That and the auto-search for hidding doors really don't do anything for me. I've tried several houserules to try and change elves, but I never like what I come up with. =/ Yeah, the auto-search in particular has been a longstanding irritant for me and I generally ignore it even when playing an elf because it takes a remarkably good group not to start calling out sensory checks the moment the DM asks for marching positions anyway. In one of the homebrew ideas I've kicked around I made them a bunch of plains dwelling nomadic warmongers with racial abilities to match -- I can email that off to you sometime if you want to try something different sometime (though obviously not in this campaign.)
If you're looking for an intermediate step between the handwavium artifact (which I have used once, sparingly) and presenting the party with a 22 foot tall demon in nose glasses and a brown trenchcoat, you could utilize a wish spell -- I've told portions of my gaming group that if I was a Pit Fiend my first yearly wish would be for my natural physical form to look like something other than a Pit Fiend. Something like an Elf, so that my suspicious habits of never sleeping, seeing in the dark, and not getting any older would seem sensible. I've used that approach once too, and Thanis doesn't get to know when or with whom. *Cue Evil Laugh*
In the interests of keeping things moving now that people have started themselves to sleep (or racially appropriate substitute), let's just assume that we arrive at some point, Daeman brings us up to speed, and we pass out shortly thereafter. It's been a long and tiring day.
Just to update, Vyrcinthex is up to level 13, healing-spec'd priest. Herbalist/Alchemist. It's going pretty well thus far. Good to know. I'll start mailing my old herbs your way then, rather than vendor trashing them for negligible gain. Belerose is now a level 25 Warlock with Alchemy in around 160 and Herbalism more like 180 I think.
Honestly, if the DCs as written don't work for your game, don't use them or (better yet) apply circumstantial modifiers as you see fit. For a human, trying to read that script that illithid use would be pretty much impossible without instruction in at least the basics of the language -- that the four lines have to be "read" simultaneously and all influence eachother. If you assign a +10 modifier to the DC for a complete lack of grounding the fundamentals of the language (for example, trying to understand classical greek when the only non-english experience you have is the rudiments of spanish) and a scaling modifier depending on the amount of source and related material they have, it ought to be more reasonable. If they happen to know a language that shares an alphabet but is otherwise unrelated (knowing elven and finding a writing in some elemental language that shares that alphabet) the task would likely be easier than, say, trying to decipher abyssal graffiti when the only "outsider speech" you've seen is written neatly in the holy scripts of Pholtus. On a (hopefully) related note, I've got a self-taught Dread Necromancer character I'll be playing at some point who had rudimentary training both as a generalist wizard and in a secluded temple to Boccob. She discovered her calling by chance -- she came across some "forbidden tomes" and after isolating the languages they were written in, persuaded some of the priests to show her how to translate and find her way through other books written in the same languages. For her and her entry level decipher script modifiers, the most sensible way to piece meaning out of those books was by gathering large quantities of relevant knowledge and then piecing it all together.
So, having been slow in posting lately, my location is currently undefined, I'm just going to ask for a DM call on this: Where is Keria? Am I with Genji, or Isaeldan, or somewhere in the middle?
Well, if you want to fill the bardic archetype without the inspirational abilities, your best bet is probably the Beguiler from the PHB 2. It offers Spontaneous Spellcasting with a similar (albeit it narrower) focus, large quantities of skill points, and class skills and features themed around deception and intrigue. I'm not entirely sure what it would take to strip the music out of the bard class, what with it being the defining feature... as a starting place I'd suggest comparing them with the Marshal's Auras and seeing how fair an exchange that would be. There's a ridiculous number of features that you could exchange it for, but most aren't on the same power level. Wandering into the realm of pure speculation, depending on what you wanted, here's an example of what you could do: drop all the bardic music abilities, offer "Grim Resolve" (the Corrupted Avenger's equivalent to Divine Grace) along with the Paladin's Mount (possibly with reduced progression), and add the following spells at the indicated level (either to the spell list or as bonus spells known, depending on your feelings regarding the power level): 1 - Deathwatch, 2 - Augury, 3 - Divination, 4 - Contact Other Plane, 5 - Vision, 6 - Foresight. The character is doomed to see the ending days night after night until finally they pass before his waking eyes. With the Oneiromancy chain of feats from Heroes of Horror it would be a really cool character, though I'm not sure where the exchange of abilities falls on the power sale.
Well, I think Ian's waiting on Lythdrae to say something so they can conclude their dialouge and then come back into the hall. Sorry about that, my internet had crapped out everytime I tried to respond. At the risk of jinxing myself, it seems to be better now.
I heard they were going to put out Complete Kobold. Well with Races of the Dragon and Dragon Magic out, I'd say they already did. The only people competent to put out the Complete Kobold at this point would be the talented folk would be the Department of Redundancy Department.
I like the idea, but I worry that opening up both Transmutation and Evocation will give you a spellcasting class that you would have to be daft not to take as unless you wanted to play a specialist in some prohibited school -- you're offering the schools with the widest selection of blasting spells and the widest selection of utility spells right there. Even restricted to spells in the PHB and ignoring the Beguiler's class abilities, good BSP, and armored casting, you could make a heck of a powerhouse just looking at the spell list. The thing that's going to hurt the class is in not having access to Lesser Wish and Wish. I'll try and come up with an appropriate spell list in a bit, but I'll offer my non-illustrative 2cp now.
Ideally, if my area were being invaded by zombies (fast or slow) my weapon of choice would be a radio used to coordinate the air strikes, and my backup weapon would be a holy water sprinkler. Failing that I'd settle for holing up in a Home Depot type store with a crowbar, a chainsaw, and as much piano wire as I could steal on the way there.
sorry I'm completely awful at making links, if someone could go over it that would be great {URL=www.dmtools.org}Really Cool Website{/URL} Do that, but with Square Brackets instead of whatever those squiggly things are called. And, obviously, your own URL and description.
Well in short, for what it's worth, I'd like to say what I told Fatespinner over WoW... I really with this whole Pathfinder thing weren't necessary, that WoTC weren't being so... well... stupid. That said, I trust you people at Paizo to make something good out of it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of this.
Yeah, what they all said. Having a proper litter of werewolves running around is great news to hear. I just hope that at some point they learn to appreciate their dad's awesomeness.
Hmm, I would probably play this character as scatterbrained fluke who talks a lot, someone who most people think as funny company, pretty little thing who is entertaining but not someone who is to be taken seriously...but if you listen to him/her you might notice that the character is actually quite observant, someone who regularly "hits the nail in the head" even while not necessarily being able to fathom the significance of the observation...popular character in detective novels of the Christie puzzle style... That could be fun to play, actually, and probably the way I'd try and run with it. I'd try to stay away from the character though, because I don't think I'd be able to resist the urge to make my key phrase "zoinks!"
... whoa. I just popped into this thread because it's been up for a bit and I was curious as to what the deal is, and I have to say that I'm (once again) really impressed by the honest and thorough explanations that you guys take the time to give us for things like this. I don't have a vested interest in the paypal thing, but I appreciate the consideration that goes into issues like it.
With regards to your jungle dwarves, there's a proposed environmental subrace in Unearthed Arcana which can also be found here. If nothing else, that might give you a starting place in figuring out what they can do and, by extension, how they get by in the jungle as well as how and why they've learned their traditional methods, and so on and so forth. As for the character, I tend to steer clear of overlapping classes like Paladin/Clerics and Druid/Rangers because the complementary and stacking abilities of the ranger (continuation of your wild empathy) don't really make up for the hit to your animal companion, wild shape, and spellcasting abilities. A Ranger/Scout or Ranger/Rogue might be interesting if the Ranger can't hold your interest, or if you really wanted to focus on the Animal Companion you might look into the Beast Master class in the Complete Adventurer, or even the Arcane Heirophant's Familiar Companion for Druid/Arcanists. Actual stats for the thing I can't really help you with, I'm afraid. Creating new monsters isn't among my strong suits.
I generally go through a bit of a "hey, that sentence was weird... oh, linky!" thought process when a particularly subtle link comes up, otherwise it's generally obvious that there ought to be a link somewhere. If the links must change color I'd suggest just making it a bluer blue, rather than cyan (which would be difficult to read on a white background) or magenta (which would look garish placed next to the otherwise black and blue text of these boards.)
I'd be inclined toward just "Paizonians" for simplicity's sake. Lords of the Boards would be an amusing inside joke, so I'd be happy with that as well. After all, I got a fair amount of amusement out of a guy running by who belonged to the guild "Guild name doesn't fi".
I've been wondering, as well, whether Ian and Lythdrae might stumble across this incident while on the way to the Feast Hall.
There's no precedent for decreasing the DC by decreasing the duration, the basic idea being (I think) that you won't be using the spell until you need it anyway, so you would be giving up nothing to gain something. That said, if you can swing it past whoever's DMing, you could probably get "One Round Duration (Ad Hoc -4 DC)" without losing much sleep over it. You can burn 100 XP for a -1 reduction to the DC, to a maximum of 20,000 xp for a -200 to the DC. This isn't suitable to being a Ritual Spell (more than one caster contributing spell slots,) so that option is out. If you're open to options that involve tweaking the character build, rather than just casting a single spell, I think you could make the concept (if not the specific mechanic) available to lower level characters. One level in Archmage can get you Mastery of Counterspelling, and I believe that I saw an option somewhere that allows you to counterspell without readying an action. With both, and an Epic Spell in the vein of Superb Dispelling, you could emulate the effect you're looking for at a much lower level. I just can't remember where I saw the option of reactive counterspelling.
Actually, before any mitigating factors, an epic spell that can be cast as a quickened action and will reflect the single next spell thrown your way if it's ninth level or lower is a DC 215 Spellcraft check. I gave it an Ad Hoc +40 for immediate casting because it sounds about right. The thing the reflect seed is great for, really, is screwing up those who dare to attack you physically. Arcane Rebuttal Spoiler:
Abjuration
Spellcraft DC 227 Components: V, S Casting Time: One Immediate Action Range: Personal Duration: Until Expended or 12 hours To Develop: 2,430,000 gp; 49 days; 97,200 XP. Seed(s): Reflect (DC 27). Factors: Reflect up to Ninth Level Spells (+160 DC), Immediate Action Casting (Ad Hoc +40). Mitigating factors: None The next targeted spell of ninth level or lower directed at the caster is automatically reflected, as if the caster were warded by a Spell Turning spell. Your better bet -- at least until you're sufficiently high level that burning a Rod of Excellent Magic every time you research an epic spell doesn't really dent your wallet -- would be something like this, an idea I stole from Thanis: Moment of Peace Spoiler: Conjuration
Spellcraft DC 60 Components: V, S Casting Time: Contingent Range: Personal Duration: 5 Rounds Saving Throw: None Spell Resistance: No To Develop: 540,000 gp; 11 days; 21,600 XP. Seed(s): Transport (DC 27). Factors: Faster Time Stream (+8 DC), Contingent Casting (+25 DC) Any time that the caster of this spell is about subject to an effect that reduces him to a predetermined level of health (typically one quarter to one third of his maximum health) he is preemptively transported to a faster time stream, avoiding the attack altogether and gaining the benefits of a Time Stop spell for five rounds.
Probably because I'm not particularly familiar with the Realms, I've not seen much on the issue except for Elminster's appearance in the tail end of the Epic Level Handbook. That said, it would seem to me that being the Chosen of any given deity would be worth making a custom template for each deity as they come up. The thing is, there's not enough room in a book (or probably enough unique ideas between a handful of people) to come up with a distinct, flavorful, appropriate template for every god just in the Realms. As far as the how of becoming a chosen, I couldn't help. I'm assuming that you do it by impressing the deity in question, but that's just because it's the obvious answer. Regarding the templates themselves, I'd suggest just making one up if it's necessary and assigning CR or LA (depending on how you'll be using it) as seems appropriate. For example, a Chosen of Tymora might gain an additional modifier of (1d6-2) on d20 rolls, one or two bonus Luck Feats (from the Complete Scoundrel), and a number of extra luck rerolls per day equal to her charisma modifier. Given that (if you have the Complete Scoundrel) such a character would almost certainly already have levels in Fortune's Friend, tossing in the ability to expend a luck reroll to gain extra uses of certain class abilities (particularly Fortune's Favorite and Lucky Strike) would make for a character who is always in the right place at the right time and skates through impossible situations while onlookers just stare and say "there's no way I'm seeing this."
Shadowbane Inquisitor is great, but my favorite use for it -- turning all your actual paladin levels into Blackguard levels without losing the fallen paladin benefits -- is (I believe) a nonoption in Living Greyhawk. I flipped through the rules for LG once and I believe the basic attitude was "rahrahrah no evil PCs rahrahrah." Anyway, setting my quibbles with the thing aside... Other good Prestige Classes to look at, if you don't want to stick with Paladin, are the Cavalier, Justiciar, Knight of the Chalice, Knight Protector, and potentially the Hunter of the Dead from the Complete Warrior. You might also look at multiclassing into Ranger to take a favored Enemy or two and pick up some more skill points.
There was another proposed method for "randomized point buy" that gives every character the same power base but distributes it differently. I think it was Fake Healer who originally suggested it, but I may be wrong. In brief, you roll as many d6s as you have points, and group the results together. Thus, if you have 32 point buy and roll five of 1 through 4 and six 5s and 6s, your ability array will consist of four 13s and two 14s. If you manage to roll sixteen 1s, you'll have an 18 somewhere. I believe that excess rolls that fall short of the minimum for the next point are rerolled -- for example, if you roll fifteen 1s you'll have to reroll two of them because the jump from a 17 to an 18 requires three points. If you're up for something more complex, there's always the card reading method that was laid out in one issue of Dragon -- it's intended for use with the Three Dragon Ante cards, but included suggested equivalents for standard playing cards. That one takes longer but gives you a similar element of randomness and also gives you something to build your character off of it you want to explain why he has such and thus for his abilities.
Create a specialist wizard with barred school: Evocation. ;) Doing it. Focused Transmuter/Fighter/Eldritch Knight with banned schools of Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy. I may not be able to cast Fireball, but I have buff, debuff, and battlefield control spells out the wazoo -- Slow + Evard's Black Tentacles lets me stand back and smack the poor buggers with my Glaive; Mirror Image, Invisibility, Freedom of Movement and Fly give me all sorts of options if I decide I want to not get hurt... and let's not forget the versatility in relegating my bonus spell slots to Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer, or Telekinesis. Granted, I'm coming into a group that has a Dragon Disciple and an Arcane Trickster who are both focused on the "blowing shit up" aspect of arcane magic, so it's not like the group is actually losing anything.
Well actually I was just asking if Lythdrae in particular would have noticed that the ball had flared brighter when he talked about bringing an offering of light. I think you answered that question as well, then?
So, did Ian's use of his Daylight ability a minute or so prior have any noticeable effect? I wouldn't ask since it's kind of a small thing, but it's vaguely relevant to my next post. On a completely different note, I'm looking forward to seeing how Daeman gets out of being beaten into paste here.
Your dice are saving their luck, probably. They'll wait to get that 20 until we're fighting a red dragon or something, and you'll save us all. Mine? They're probably going to roll high on meaningless things, and then when we're in that dragon fight, what am I going get? 1s. You just watch- I know them, and I don't trust this new "lucky streak" one bit. Trust me, I know the feeling. I'm more than a little unnerved by the way my dice have been treating me lately. Perhaps my threats of introducing them to the skillet have persuaded them to play nicely, but I doubt it.
|