Zorajit Zorajit's page

A bit of a positive request here, I hope. I'm looking for some input on how I can make sure the party is getting enough treasure, and, how to keep the hauls interesting. One thing I've struggled with getting enough meaningful loot into the party's hands, they're presently level 4 in their current campaign, and while I haven't closely audited their character's I suspect they are trailing the "wealth by level" chart.

There are a couple issues I'm having that I hope to work through.

First, I've always found treasure taking a long time to generate, even with random tables available in different publications there are still multiple rolls to add into the time spent designing each encounter. This is compounded when items like scrolls and potions need spells assigned to them. Additionally, there is the narrative issue when items would belong to creatures that can use them.

Second, I try to avoid dumping wheelbarrows full of currency and trade goods onto the players. Their current position largely prohibits them from shopping for whatever they like. Like holiday presents, I'd rather present something tangible than telling someone to pick out what they want, though I may be in the minority here. I will play fast and loose with rules for applying enchantments though, to keep the party's existing weapons and equipment relevant.

Third, during a session, I find the process of distributing treasure to grind a game to a halt as I read off a list of items, give page citations, explain what they do, and make sure that the players have things in order. One work around to lessen this delay I've taken to is informing the party that most magic items found while adventuring need to be studied at their base of operations before they can be used.

Whatever advice you have to inserting and awarding treasures is appreciated, thank you.

Looking forward to downloading this tonight! Amora Game remains one of my favorite 3PPs!

I think what we have is a fundamental difference of opinion on how to go about world and campaign building.

Some of us use a scalpel to carefully remove bits and pieces that are disruptive. The default assumption is to allow it, but the willingness to remove it if necessary.

There appear others of us here that instead place items we want carefully with tweezers. The default assumption is to disallow it, but the willingness to consider adding it if desirable enough.

Pretty much spot on. If I'm writing the content, then I'm in the latter group. I understand the appeal of the former, but I am going to produce better content if I have a more restrictive toolkit to build from, by focusing on the palette that I choose to employ.

Oookay... This got hotter than I'd expected. I hadn't really planned on doing this, but as I've been following the thread I felt it important to try to develop some understanding of the theory being debated here. I don't want to talk in terms of "DM-vs-Players" or fall back to "Find Another Game," I don't think those are productive solutions. I don't intend for my critique to cover all cases, and I don't intend to change anyone's mind to my preferences. But, I will be seeking to refute several specific arguments.

One reason I've waited to post is that I had a game this Monday past, and I wanted to give the theory so far discussed some practical application time. I said yes to everything. This being the logical conclusion of the argument that the player has the right to design their character as they see fit. Predictably, the party is total clown shoes. The party is: A Human Cleric/Fighter, A Halfling Oracle, a Human Inquisitor, a Half-Dragon Vanara Monk, a Catfolk Monk, a Half-Dragon Minotaur Barbarian (taking custom meta-breath weapon rage powers), and a Half-Drow (custom race) Magus Bloodmage (custom spell casting system) with Half-Catfolkm (custom race) Qinggong Monk companion. I asked some of the players how they wanted to incorporate their character into the game, given that no one was "typical" in this cast. While this is anecdotal, the players playing core races described to me how they might be a fit for the cast; the players with gonzo characters were less concerned, they "just wanted to play X." One "typical" player actually objected on the grounds that, with no guidelines at all, there was little reason motivation to be attached.

Now, I want to stress that this case is an anecdote. It's not representative of Pathfinder players in part or in whole, and certainly not of anyone's particular table. But, it is illustrative of why I prefer what could be called the "exclusionary" approach, or alternatively, the "player's burden of cohesion." I'll answer three questions: When is "inclusion" preferable? What is an exclusive burden of cohesion? And, who has the burden of cohesion, and when?

First, the discussion the importance of player race, and to a lesser extent, class. The point has been raised that, there is no narrative distinction between player's selection of race and class. However, I think that, as evident by the spirit of this debate, there is some manner of distinction. Class represents a character's aptitude. Classes are less often the focus of scrutiny because we accept that a character may have the capacity for any aptitude. A character's race, however, represents their innate traits, and their cultural heritage. This combination of aspects means that exotic races represent a bigger change to a setting than atypical classes. If there is gunpowder and one gun, there could be a Gunslinger; but if there are no dragons, then introducing half-dragons means shaking up, at the very least, a character's possible parentage, up to an entire heretofore unconsidered civilization. Ironically, if I was a bigot, I may have an easier time permitting sundry other races, that is, innatenesses, and instead be more concerned by the player that wants to play a particular character's origin subversively, i.e. a race played with a gonzo class.

There are times when it makes sense to permit everything-under-the-sun. Or at least, everything written and documented. While it seems tautological, if the DM permits all resources, then the players should feel free to use all available resources. Understanding this is important for understanding why I prefer exclusionary cohesion. But, if the table sets no standards, then we can agree that there is no obligation to propose a particular character. This is why the proposed "Barsoom" campaign, et. al. are theoretically the same as a "core only" game. If the expected characters are four armed gorillas, then the elf is just as unexpected as vice versa.

Which brings me to the exlcusive burden of cohesion. In brief, this is the idea that "If the DM Doesn't Say Yes; Then No." I suspect that for many tables, this is largely an unremarkable concept, though, the auspice of this thread makes it seem necessary to explore it in detail. Consider the following critiques which have been raised.

1. The players have control only over their character creation.
2. Rejecting some things is not the same as rejecting (almost) everything.
3. The DM has an obligation to accommodate the players.

To the first point, it should be evident to any game that the characters are in control of their actions; and the narrative of the game is driven forward by the action of the characters. To suggest that the DM has greater or less control than players during the game is a topic for another time; but I think few DMs would suggest that players become passive participants once play begins. To the second, without establishing standards, an exclusive burden of cohesion, then allowing the DM to veto characters become arbitrary. In a game with certain guidelines for character generation, the DM establishes that if something falls outside his or her initial judgement, that the DM is then not generally obligated to permit it. Last, as discussed, the DM has no duty to permit everything, once a standard has been established. If the players know they will be joining a game of courtly intrigue in a low-magic setting, then it should be clear than the foaming-at-the-mouth barbarian Half-Dragon Centaur would be as unlikely a character as for James Bond to call upon Captain Picard for help; this violates the establishes rules of the fiction.

I take a broad approach to this. My personal setting has no catfolk, and I would not consider adding them (though I would consider allowing a player to use the mechanics) not because the setting is inviolate or not big enough to handle the addition, as has been suggested, but because it operates on its own internal logic. That the standard is "because this is my setting" is not inherently allied against the players. It provides a baseline for them to work within. Many game books include phrasing similar to "Ask your GM before using these options..." because by understanding what is impossible, the players on either side of the screen are engaged and immersed through understanding of who, what, where, when, why, and how the game happens.

In the first game I ever played, D&D 3.0, when I was 12; I included a god-tier, Mary Sue DMPC. He was a half-dragon half-elf ranger/sorcerer that wielded a falchion single handed and had fire breathing gloves given to him by Bahamut. I DM fiat killed him in the last session to raise the stakes.

This will probably be my last post here, because I think everything that has been said has already been discussed. If you're having a good time in your game, I'm thrilled for you, too many gamers don't have the opportunity. Everyone has their own style, and probably has as many or more thoughts on what an ideal game would be. The rough consensus is that the GM has a greater duty to accommodate the players, than the player has to accommodate the GM. I.E. We talk about railroading, and GMs that shouldn't insist on core characters; but the language doesn't exist for a player that wrenches a campaign to fit their character; it's the GMs responsibility to include that character and make the game interesting for them.

The player at my table that asked to play a minotaur has now also asked to be a half dragon minotaur, meaning that the table now has two half dragons, (the other being a Vanara), and a chatoic good half-drow dual wielding bloodbending magus with a pyrokinetic catgirl cohort, and several other undecided characters. This is not the sort of party I'm comfortable with and have decided to change the campaign to be more accommodating. I recognize that this is exactly what I did not want to do, so, I'm sorry, but this experiment has failed. If I was a better DM, my home setting would be able to seamlessly integrate these characters and the rest of the party together, but I don't think I'm good enough to make that work.

I wouldn't describe my preferred style as "grim and gritty." It's certainly less spectrum spanning than Golarion, but its very far from GRIMDARKness. But, I can't rectify the hard scrabble characters and settings I enjoy with the demigods my players want. They won't be having fun playing sellswords and tomb robbers that are lucky to get home to the pub for a pint. I feel that I'm in the wrong here, I'm the "No Fun Allowed" guy that can't see the joy in being super awesome.

Thank you all for the input, and happy gaming!

First, thank you for also being a Farscape fan. Please take the Farscape analogy with salt. I'm trying to detail ways in which a character we identify as being typical can make other character's "uniqueness" more prominent.

Okay... Well that was a more ...vigorous... response than I was expecting. Thank you to those of you with constructive input. I hope these remarks won't be lost in the crossfire but I want to refocus and keep working on this issue. I urge further comments to work constructively on this, and consider how best to collaboratively tell a good story to everyone's enjoyment when each person at the table, DM included has different, sometimes mutually exclusive ideas about what's most engaging.

Before I go further, I want to share a little personal experience. I try to keep my posts setting neutral and not share too much about my table as a matter of courtesy and to keep the content applicable to other readers; but I think some of the allegations leveled at my DMing preference warrant response. I'm okaying everything that has so far been proposed for this game. One player wants to be a Fletchling Shadow Summoner, one wants to play a half-dragon vanara monk/sorcerer/dragon disciple, a third wants to be a Half-drow Dual Wielding Magus with Bloodbending (?) and a Catgirl companion with some kind of fire magic. Not one of these players has told me thing one about WHO these characters are, but they've gone all out on WHAT they are. And, if they're having a good time, sure, why not, I'll try to indulge them.

Also, I want to stress that I'm not accusing anyone of playing the wrong game. I started this specifically to examine other ways of playing the game that people enjoy; while these might be in contrast to the way I am most comfortable with, I'm not persecuting any other games.

But I digress. This is the crunchy academic part of this response.

One thing I focus on is narrative cohesion. I.E. the idea that each part of the campaign is working in concert with the others to form a bigger production. Some tables may not have a focus on this, or they may achieve it through means I am unfamiliar with or don't tend towards. This cohesion is an elastic sort of capital, the more of the party has, the bigger shake ups it can endure.

It's been my experience that an atypical character can be one of the biggest drains on the narrative cohesion. In a game of high castle intrigue, the mysterious druid strikes me as a plot hook, while the half-undead minotaur is the elephant in the room.

This is compounded as the party becomes more and more fractious. If that half-undead minotaur is the wookie, then the party can keep rolling, but if the party is indistinguishable from a furry convention [ASIDE: I am using this admittedly contentious term to give a general illustration. Please don't latch onto this. Please. By all the dark gods: don't.] then I find that I have to spend a lot more time incorporating all those disparate elements into a collective ensemble tapestry.

Last, if one of the player's big draws to this style of play is "being unique" by being exotic, then it occurs to me that much of that uniqueness is lost without something to juxtapose it to which is mundane.

I've asked one of my more experienced players to consider playing a sort of POV character to fill this role. In Farscape, for example, the crew includes a plant who is also a cleric and a two foot tall royal frog man on a hover chair, and a bear sized crab man fused into a living space ship. But, I love Farscape, in part because the POV character, the "generic" human, John Critchton turns out to be just as lunatic as the rest of the crew.

I don't want to be a stodgy, grognardian GM; which is why I'm opening this topic. I won't mince words, I cringe when a player tells me they want to play an exotic race. Heck, I have to keep my nose from scrunching up when I have a party that doesn't contain a plurality of humans (or the local population as appropriate.) Was the cast of Star Wars a Wookie, a Trandoshan, two ewoks, and a half-chiss? Did Gandalf's dwarves include a cat man and a winged tree person? I respect that there are times when an exotic race can add a lot to a character, if Chewie was just a burly guy with a speech impediment, he wouldn't have been as interesting of a character. The dwarves could have stood to be broken up by an odd character (although Bilbo fills this role of course.)

My first concern when a player announces their intent to roll up an exotic race is that the player is abusively optimizing. In many cases, this is a non-issue, and it's the least concern. My table has never called for absolute optimization, and I trust my players not to seek out ways to break the game. But, the concern is there nonetheless.

Second, is that the player is defining their character by what they are and not by who they are. This comes from a literary background, and I'm not expecting every member of the table create a Harry Dresden or any of the other wealth of great fantasy characters; but personally, I'd prefer even an archetypal grunting barbarian to a character that is only identifiable as "The half clockwork undead guy." (Aside: that would have some serious potential, but as evident, you need to marry that trait with other personality too.)

Last, that a player is seeking to be a "super special snowflake." Now, I don't make this charge lightly. It's contentious and I don't want to suggest I think badly of anyone I play with. I understand that one of the draws of Pathfinder is playing an empowering, unique hero. Even in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay the rat catcher and charcoal burner have the opportunity to make themselves great. But a player telling me they want to be bring a half-minotaur to the table throws up a red flag to me.

Please, talk me down. I want to engage my players and create the best game for all. I don't want to stuffily insist on boring characters.

Mead is generally on par with wine for alcohol content. It also has a fairly high sugar content, which can contribute to a stronger reaction. It's definitely not something you'd want to slug if your goal wasn't to get trashed in a hurry. However, if that is your goal, it's a pretty good choice, because it's not nearly as harsh as whiskey or white lightning. It also doesn't have the super high tannins of wines so it won't leave you quite as hungover. There's a reson that meads were what the gods drank.

Could you posit what sort of themes or technologies you want to explore? It might be beneficial to work backwards, see what changes need to happen to facilitate those ideas, and how that comes about. For example, The Windup Girl isn't set vaguley in the 2200s somewhere, it's set well after peak oil and a genetic engineering revolution. it's not about the date, but the ideas.

But, if I was just futurism wanking, by 2050 I'd suggest some of the following:

1. Africa rising, maybe, rare earths and other mineral resources become increasingly profitable. But, Chinese infrastructure into exploiting these rights creates tensions.

2. Less nation states, or many more, but either way the nation state is a less powerful entity. The EU will hold together and eventually have a meaningful civil rights movement for immigrating Muslims, this will look a lot like the immigration of Latinos into the US. Kurdistan, Palestien, and a number of other small states come into existence, or are recognized by the UN as observer states (like Palestein is now.)

3. No energy crisis. Call this optimistic if you want, but I wager we avoid an energy war by the skin of our teeth. In 2050, we're transitioning to renewable fuels. Not to save the environment, but because it's cheaper than petroleum.

4. Flooding and desalinated seas wreck a lot of damage. Fish stocks face extinction, and this is the major crisis of the age because a dead ocean means a dead planet.

5. Asteroid mining isn't profitable, but is being pursued by multiple companies because it will be soon. Space has a population of a couple hundred at a time, but rotational gravity stations are regarded as the new flying car.

6. Fusion reactors are proliferating very slowly because people are afraid of nuclear power and the fusion lobby can't win the PR war. Transhumanists still claim the singularity is right around the corner, but while the newest Nintendo has really cruddy mental control through temple-mounted diode headbands, brain uploading isn't really a thing.

7. Carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes everywhere.

8. The farm lobby in the US keeps verticle and urban farming operations to a minimum, but in the UAE they're providing fresh foods to otherwise nutritionally challeneged populations.

9. AIDS is treatable to the point of a cure, a vaccine exists, but isn't widely distributed because of social pressure.

10. Mars has been landed on, there is a small habitat ready to recieve new visitors, but there hasn't been another trip in ten years.

This is more of a thought experiment, based on an account from (thankfully) someone else's table. It concerns certain bodily functions, and it may be found to be immature. Regardless, I feel it is worth considering, to head off its use on some unlucky GM in the future, and to contend for the gaming equivalent of the Ig Nobel Prize.

Test case: The party has been captured and restrained through mundane means. The wizard has been gagged, but still has his spells prepared. The player contends that the wizard can still cast spells with verbal components by farting. the player notes that since it had never been established how the character uses verbal components, the player was free to establish that this is how all of the wizard's verbal spells are cast. While the GM noted an immediate means of circumventing this, found the idea rather disturbing, and allowed the party to be teleported to safety, ending the scenario.

It can be argued that the player should not be free to announce this background suddenly. Henceforth the wizard would, presumably, be obligated to only use this alternative verbal component. Certain dietary requirements would need to be observed, but this would likely only be a formality. The spellcasting rules describe verbal components as "being spoken in a loud and clear voice" but 'spoken' and 'clear' and 'voice' are not defined terms by the rules, and the orifice in question was not (ahem) gagged.

I await your peer-review, critique, criticism, and hopefully, expansion on this thesis.

I'm all for monsters that don't have a strictly mythic or folkloric origin, some of D&D's originals have themselves crossed into popular consciousness too. But recently I found myself unable to ID the origin of a particular creature: the Raggomoffyn. As a monstrous sentient pile of laundry that yearns to control your body and glam out. The word "ragamuffin" is apt, at least (unlike, for example, the Lamia which has been represented more ways than I can be bothered to figure out.). But the only othe uses I've found had been a breed of cat and a Carribean space opera. Anybody willin to take a stab at where this creature originated?

I really enjoy playing with everyone at my table, including the player in question. However, of all the members at my table, this one, C., is significantly less active during the game. Which is to say that, without prompting, his usual play style is to stand in the background and to act when prompted. He's not disruptive to events in or out of game, but he represents lost opportunity when he has nothing to say and doesn't want to do anything.

Some history. C. has been a regular at my table close to ten years now, more than three quarters of the time I've been a DM, and almost the entire time I've known him. He describes himself as being less outgoing than others. He has been the table dead weight as long as I can recall. Two campaigns ago, his character had an interesting back story, which I worked with him to integrate into the game at large and his character ended up being one of the most important characters to the plot. He was more active in this game, but it took well more than a year of playing to get him invested. For my last campaign, I ran Rise of the Runelords (having not done so when it initially came out.) C. played a pistolero, and was regarded by the table as being a walking murder machine; but he had almost no plot or involvement with the any other characters. I gave him a side plot, but he didn't pursue it unless it came up, ultimately resolving it by killing his nemesis and departing without further character development.

In our current campaign, he's playing the group's primary healer and only cleric. In our last several session, more than half of his actions have been "I say a prayer and channel energy." And that's it. He has not interacted with NPCs or other PCs. He has explicitly said, "I'm just hanging around" when asked what each character was up to.

I intend to talk the player, but am looking for advice on who to guide the conversation, and for experience you have with similar players. Most importantly, I want to provide an enjoyable game for everybody that wants to play.

Dotting for later review

My current campaign takes some inspiration from Metroidvania games and megadungeons. I'll share some of my thoughts here, hope it helps. There are two main aspects that I wanted to capture, these are the different wings of the dungeon, and back tracking.

I've been told that this style of game doesn't work well in D&D because there it can be difficult to limit the party's progress (i.e. it can be contrived when the party finds a random tool to access a new area of an old region or, it is just impossible to limit them anyway.) For example, in Castlevania, a room may be blocked by a giant block of ice until the player discovers a fire spell to melt it. In D&D, this ice block would be melted right away by the first or second level spell caster. I've mostly cut out back-tracking segments like this, but still try to build on what they represent for the players, that is, utilizing old areas in new ways.

For the exploration portion of the game, I've got a big flow-chart / map of the whole megadungeon. This is broken down into each of the different wings, like the Graveyard or the Mine. Each one represents a dungeon with a different theme. This gives the players a sense of progress, especially as they start to see more impressive things, like an Arcane Laboratory. I also build each location with points of interest that are worth more to the party than just to hack and slash through. Things like NPCs that live in the dungeon and such often make their homes and lairs here and might be willing to barter with the party. This does admittedly make them valuable targets, so consider that.

Last, I think that backtracking is an important aspect of this style of game. It gives a sense of progress, that there are more things to be gleamed from areas that have already been explored, even extensively. In order to achieve this, I try to build things into the regions of the game. There is a circle of hags that visits one region once a month, they are designed to be a major boss fight, when the party is ready to fight them. Last, different wings are interconnected, an underwater reservoir flows out to the mill, and a certain room has a secret escape from the dungeon.

Hope it helps.

While I've provided a few options to make dwarves more attractive arcane spell casters in my campaign, dwarves seem to me to be the better fit for an arcane role.

Arcane spells are frequently portrayed as an art or a science. It has theory, and is governed by rules. It is frequently referred to as "craft" (spellcraft, witchcraft.) These are all dwarven concepts. This is also empirically backed up. "The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells" (The Hobbit.) The pointy eared ones seem to be overstretching to get a claim on both wizards and druid-y powers. So, I say go for the Duergar mage!

Thanks everybody, I'll address particular comments later when I'm not writing from my phone but in the interests of fairness I want to offer (as best I can represent it) the player's perspective. Since it seems most of the comments have generally found my GMing to be in the right, I don't want to get the counter point .

Player's perspective:

I established my character to the GM, and have demonstrated that he uses relatively little latitude in deciding his course of action. The GM chose to include a monster that he expected my character would fight to the death, regardless of the odds of winning. A noble death being one of my character's motivations. The party expended considerable resources. Later, when confronted out of character about the recklessness, I conceded to the party that if thy restrained me I would have stopped. The party expended considerable resources and won the fight. Afterward, rather than go back to our base, we found what we believed to be a safe house to stop and rest. Instead, the GM had placed another high powered enemy inside. He informed us we should run, we didn't believe it was fair for the GM to stack the game against the party.

The GM should have included a safer encounter, or none at all in the apparent safe house in order to keep the party safe. He asked us to act out of character in order to keep his game going. When confronted with either an unfair game, or a TPK, we required GM fiat to survive.

Thank you, but something more concrete would be more helpful. With regards to roleplaying, the players are insistent that what I perceive as disruptive is in character. Concerning brute force, The whole table does not usually behavior like lawn mowers. Random, unexpected, or entirely telegraphed I feel the party has an obligation to respond to encounters.

And that's what I feel this comes down to. I feel that the party has an obligation to avoid failure. Some of the players apparently believe that to be solely my responsibility.

EDIT: Complicating this is that I don't want to kill everyone in the party. In the inciting incident I described, I felt I was in a corner and gave the party a free pass to keep the game going This, in turn, is why this has become such a quandary for me.

This has been an issue for my table before, but at our last session it came to a head and I'd like some opinions on how I can address this. Our last session had two particularly lop sided encounters that the party was intended, but not required, to out think rather than just straight up murder. Instead, some of the players, seeing that I had placed a token on the board representing a monster, decided that there would be no quarter no matter the cost.

After killing one character, and knocking out two more, I stepped in and reminded the party that their larger mission would fail if they were all felled by a comparatively minor monster. They protested, on character grounds, if they could not overcome this, then their larger mission would surely be doomed. Combat wore on and nothing improved for the players. I had had enough and informed them that if I TPK'd the party, we all would have done a lot of work for a very unsatisfying conclusion (to clarify: this was in no ways a climactic show down, it would be equivalent to Luke, Han, and Leia being crushed in the trash compactor.) The paladin's player relented, agreeing that not wishing to be torn limb from limb is not the height of cowardice.

Of the alleged players though, others dissented still. To paraphrase, they said that I should never include an encounter that cannot be won through sheer force. (In my defense, either of these encounters, if taken at full force were designed to be very hard, but not impossible; but back to back, as the party deigned to do, became nearly insurmountable. Additionally, the first, was meant to foreshadow the second. But I digress.) Moreover, they claimed that I knew the party was predisposed to act like a lawn mower and should only include meat for the grinder and not monsters that may have something to say.

I don't think it makes me a bad GM to be unwilling to completely kill the entire table at any time. But I was upset that the party believes that avoiding TPKs to be entirely my responsibility, that theirs is to kill and loot, and me to turn the meat grinder. Has anyone encountered similar player habits? Or have any advice on how to resolve this? I know I've been vague, I'd be happy to elaborate wherever needed.

Thank you for the advice, but if I might ask for a little more. I get that I can do things like have the players see plot elements even if these don't necessarily come to pass. But, I'm also concerned about making a haunt like the one I mentioned be a worthwhile encounter. A fair number of haunts and traps go off once and then are done for the day or longer. But this to me isn't a very interesting thing for the party to encounter. On the one hand, no, I shouldn't use many "gotcha" traps like this, sure, but when this comes up, how can I make this a decent event?

Chill energies gather around you, coalescing in your mind and grasping for control of your body! Make a will save. *Clatter* 28. ...The haunt dissipates and you make your way onward.

This has been bugging me for a while, but maybe I'm just missing something. Cases like those one above, where the party encounters a trap or haunt, which goes off, and the party doesn't even flinch. How do you handle cases like this, do you reward XP (especially in cases of traps that don't re-arm themselves?) What about a haunt that could provide meaningful plot details to the party if they had been hit with it? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Potions
This is just a personal pet peeve of mine that, in the middle of frenetic combat it's sound tactics to force feed your buddy a five hour energy. Similarly, pouring that down the throat of an unconscious, grievously injured person is more likely to make them choke on the fluid than swallow it. Just as an example, Pokemon depicts it's potions as coming in spray bottles to address this. I didn't, however, want to add too much complication so, keeping it in line with my change to the heal skill seemed like a consistent route.

Materials
Asking for peer review is an effort for fairness, one of my player's asked if he could use some personally written material. I told him that it would be fair to use if it was double checked by a third party. What he wrote was fine after some editing, and it seemed appropriate to extend the same to the table as a whole. But I do agree with the boards that this shouldn't be an appeals court and don't want to impose on the board. This will be changed to allow material cleared before character creation, but not after.

Party Composition
This game is about a party of dwarves preparing an abandoned stronghold for a siege. I'm letting three of my five regulars play other races if they want to, with the rest just being sort of semi-NPCs. But I will take it into consideration and clear it with the party.

Exotic Weapon Proficiency
This is really expensive as a feat, but as a trait it offers the player some incentive to use a peculiar weapon.

Acrobatics
This is an extrapolation of the "move through threatened spaces without provoking," there's also precedence for a character leaping up from being knocked down in every action medium. I'll clarify it to make it clear this is a move action. On a failure of less than 5, the character stands up but provokes, on more than 5, the move action is taken, provokes an attack, but the character doesn't stand up.

Treat Deadly Wounds
Allowing this to be used on oneself at -5 is reasonable, agreed.

Thank you for all the support and please let me know if I should have other concerns. Last, with regards to the basic setting information; what would be considered the most important things to be included if you were given a one page "Welcome to Earth" pamphlet?

Thank you!

Naturally, immediately after posting this I realized what else I needed to include here. I've hashed out a fair amount of fluff information for the setting, but don't have a good way of conveying it to the players. Basic things, that the characters would know automatically, like the length of a day, week, month and year (they're not the same as Earth's), or important people, organizations or common superstitions? I will be including a timeline of both historic and recent events, but what about other topics? Can anyone suggest a good way to arrange a sort of "Welcome to..." primer?

I'm going to be running a new campaign for my table shortly, and have developing significantly more original material for this game than I have in the past. I've put together this document for the player's as a campaign guide and to put down all the house rules I'll be using for this particular game. This was put together from combing more "best house rules" threads than I can count, along with my own preferences, so I want to thank the whole community for their help in advance. Because of the crunch work involved I still have to include a custom race and the E6 feats I'll be allowing, but I would request feedback on the other house rules herein. I apologize for the redacted entries, this is only fluff information specific to the setting. The document can be found here:

Siege of Scholdenholm house rules

Thank you!

I might suggest that you could add an additional bonus at 5th, 10th, and 15th level on top of dropping an energy vulnerability. Possibly something like a free meta-magic enhanced spell once a day if the idea is indeed that the oracle is more susceptible and more empowered by magic. With regards to negative energy, I would add it to the list of weaknesses, but allow it to be overcome as with the others, leaving the oracle with two elements after 15th level.

Wow, thank you all for the quick and constructive response. I'm going to try to address some of the points brought up and make some edits, so I appreciate any further input.

--I agree with the criticism of granting the Ki Pool at 1st level, and will move the Ghost Touch ability to 4th without cost. This was really just a trial idea, and I recognize imbalance it creates.

--Disrupt Undead will become a spell-like ability useable at will, replacing Stunning Fist and restoring the 1st level bonus feat.

--Right now, I'd like to retain the Evoke Chakra (as Lay on Hands); this is partly an issue of it making sense for my table and partly my feeling that granting an ability that's better than Wholeness of Body is no game breaker.

--Regarding the Qinggong powers being redundant, I apologize, I added this in mostly for my own note keeping and to point it out to my players.

--At 6th level (keeping in mind this is meant for an E6 game) the class is slated to receive a bonus feat and a mercy. I would consider making "Extra Ki Power" available as a capstone feat.

Last, one thing that I'd like to incorporate is the ability to use ofuda, the paper talismans, but I don't have a satisfactory use for them. My initial idea would be to replace the 1st level feat with "Scribe Ofuda" as per Scribe Scroll, and give the monk a limited number of appropriate spells but this seems somewhat convoluted.

Thanks again!

Just to get this out of the way, yes, this is another Monk revision which I'm sure that everyone is sick of. It's also my first stab at peer review of any of my homebrew material. On top of that, it draws explicitly from the Paladin and also the Qinggong Monk. In the context of the game this would be appearing, however, it makes sense, so if this looks like troll bait, I apologize profusely. I really only intend for this character to exist in the next game I'm running for my table which will be an Oriental Adventures / Samurai fiction game. The setting is fairly low powered (and will be run as an E6 game, so this draft only carries the class that far) and features fewer than average divine magic users so one of the goals of this character is to partly fill this gap. Stylistically, this character draws from anime tropes of the "ghostbuster" monk such as the one from the series Inuyasha, or the old woman from Yu Yu Hakusho (just to date myself for the last anime I've really followed.) Last, I am well aware that the formatting and language isn't correct, I do intend to bring this in line with the SRD before the game begins, but I want to be set on the mechanics first, before getting the semantics right.

Spirit Gate Monk
Where the spirits of the dead cross from this realm into the next, a select few monastic orders guard and aid in the crossing of the troubled dead.

Ki Pool (Ghost Touch)
At 1st level a Spirit Gate Monk gains a Ki Pool as per the Monk's Ki Pool, and as long as she has 1 point of Ki may make unarmed attacks as though they had the Ghost Touch special property. This ability replaced Stunning Fist

Disrupt Undead (0 Ki)
At 1st level a Spirit Gate Monk can use Disrupt Undead, as per the Qinggong Monk's spells. This ability replaces the 1st level bonus feat.

Evoke Chakra (1 Ki)
At 2nd level a Spirit Gate Monk may spend 1 point of Ki and touch a target, functioning as a Paladin's Lay on Hands ability

Mercy
At 3rd and 6th level, a Spirit Gate Monk may choose a mercy as per the Paladin ability, when she uses her evoke chakra ability. This replaces Fast Movement.

Channel Positive Energy (2 Ki)
At 3rd level, a Spirit Gate Monk may spend 2 points of Ki to channel positive energy , she uses her Monk level as her effective Cleric level when doing so. This replaces Maneuver Training.

Ki Pool (Magic)
At 4th level, the monk's unarmed attacks count as magic as per Ki Pool.

Qinggong Ki Power
At 4th and 5th level, the monk may choose a Qinggong Ki Power, replacing Slow Fall and High Jump.

Sovereign Body
At 5th level, a Spirit Gate Monk is immune to charms and compulsions and cannot be forcibly possessed by a spirit, replacing Purity of Body.

Thank you for your consideration and criticism.

I use a good pencil and mark wherever there is an errata entry (that's more complex than changing a single number or deleting a word) with an 'E'.

As a holdover from the previous editions this makes more sense, and I'm going to give some thought to the idea of replacing it with a scaled /+X as suggested above. The only problem I see cropping up here is the party's access to such weapons would probably be basically on par with the enemy's resistance to them. On the other hand, this change would give more reason to want a +2 weapon over a +1 Flaming weapon (without getting into the math of course, at least my table is always more prone to the flashier stuff.)

Just from a personal design standpoint, I would say that if something is in the stat block, it is for the players. If I want the local militia to fruitlessly bounce arrows of the dragon's hide, I don't need that articulated to me. And for that matter, there aren't many NPCs that could do the 15 damage to overcome the example DR anyway.

This isn't concerning the function or mechanics of DR, but rather the purpose of its inclusion on certain monsters. Specifically, my party fought a CR 15 monster with DR 15/magic, the party was well equipped to handle the fight but it made me wonder: What is the point the monster's DR? Every character has a magic weapon, or exclusively deal magic damage, and I feel that only a sadistic GM would send a monster of this level against a party that had yet to acquire magic weapons. From a narrative standpoint, it makes somewhat more sense, that mundane weapons would merely bounce off the monster, but I'm not sure I accept "Protection from Hordes of Commoners" as a reasonable justification. Am I missing something here?

My party is, well, a little over the top. But, I'm happy to let the players play what they want. Thing is, with a table full of humanoid typhoons, keeping opponents alive for long enough to really call many things a challenge. Long story short, I'm looking for opinions a plan to increase monster HP perhaps up to the maximum that a given creature would have if it rolled the top value for its hit dice. Obviously makes large fights have a better chance of lasting, but would this be a drastic enough change to increase challenge ratings too?

I've found that my table doesn't make use of combat maneuvers in almost any context. Now, my party is much more the type to run through whatever problems they come across. But, I'd like to encourage their use, and, bluntly, I like a little more swashbuckling and a little less hacking and slashing. Additionally, the multiple feat investment to gain the Greater [combat maneuver], or to gain multiple Improved [combat maneuver] feats strikes me as markedly steep investments for characters other than straight fighters.

In response, I have been considering modifying the Improved and Greater combat maneuver feats such that, with "Improved..." the character is granted a single attack and with "Greater..." a full-attack can be taken in addition to the maneuver.

I'm aware that this is may be going to far, which is why I'm looking for help. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

One of my players is considering rebuilding his Cleric as an Oracle with the release of the Advanced Player's Guide. He would likely take the "Lame" curse, which reduced speed by 10 feet, in fitting with his character's back story.

But, before the issue comes up, I would like a second opinion on the interaction between the Oracle's Curse penalty, and other effects, especially a Cleric's Domain (Travel) which increases base movement by 10. As well as items like Boots of Striding and Springing with similar abilities.

Rules as Written would suggest that if the player splashed a level of Cleric or acquired a pair of boots, then he would negate the effect of the Curse. But thematically, it strikes me that it would be more appropriate to rule that such abilities would not benefit the Oracle, and in addition, the Oracle's Curse notes that the associated penalties can only be cured by divine intervention.

Help is appreciated!