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I think the state of the corpse would make it extremely difficult for the spell to work. YMMV. But I think the concept itself is reasonably sound. Question is, what was inhabiting the corpse? A corrupted or damned soul? Or some sort of malevolent spirit?
Jademan comics had a character who had no arms so he used his queue not just for fighting, but also for movement like "brachiating" though the trees.
I got one a couple of decades back. I scanned through it until I came to the statement, "Who the hell wants to play a Hobbit, anyway?" (paraphrased, but pretty close). Came to the conclusion that the author didn't actually understand why people play fantasy RPGs and shelved it. Still in a crate with all the other odds and sods though.
That was probably me. I bought a used one there a couple of years ago and gave it to a friend as a birthday present. Did it have some adhesive plastic sheets on the cover?
Very nice. Awesome contribution. If you ever need an alternate site, I will gladly host or mirror this for you. I have a domain/website that solely for hosting open material and it could use some additions. Right now, except for some forums I use for collaborative game design, I haven't populated it with anything. I've a book on design patterns in RPGs that a friend wrote under Creative Commons that needs to go up once I track down a current copy.
I adjusted the tables based on the target race so that the greatest percentage is based on the current race. The more common races are clustered around the primary race as well. I also allow the caster to tweak the roll by their primary casting stat bonus. I'd post an example, but tables don't come over very well.
Can't tell you how many times I've uttered very nearly these exact words. "This isn't Neverwinter Nights. You can't just squat down in the middle of the street and get your spells back" is actually how I think I usually put it.
I don't get to play as a player much, but I did enjoy a short run as a Dalbaen Pike, a human psionicist ("Pike" being the designation for the illigitimate offspring of military men in the region--perhaps the only nod to Martin I will ever grant). We used some obscure back-ground book to generate his particulars, and my choice when all was said and done was to take it or leave it, and taking was by far the more challenging option. Born in the local prison to a prostitute and a city guard who was later framed and exiled. At a young age (6, I think), he was sold off to a local guildmaster as, well, a catamite is about the best description. He was eventually rescued by his father who uncovered the guildmaster's corrupt and wicked operations. Raised among the city guards and later "adopted" by them when his father was exiled, all despite the fact that he was terribly unathletic and not much skilled at weapons. Since I didn't want to play a loonie, I chose Neutral for his alignment and gave him a rather insouciant outlook on life (figuring nothing could really compare to what he had already experienced). The one difficult thing was I had to choose some belief that was orthoganal to what most folks believed. Since he was a psionicist, I chose a disbelief in magic. He was unshakably convinced in his own mind that magic was a group delusion or simply a misunderstood manifestation psionics. Got a lot of strange looks from the sorcerer and the wizard in the party, especially when he would patiently explain to them how misguided they were and that their abilities couldn't possibly be real (at low levels I could basically emulate most of what they could do so I could make a pretty good case). Of course, his psicrystal facet was Single-minded. Due a weird synergy of the telepath discipline skills and feats, he had a monstrous diplomacy skill and the dice loved him (at least far as diplomacy was concerned). He regularly rolled above 25 on his checks (and not even 5th level yet). The only thing he really held a grudge against were gnomes. The gnomes in the campaign were basically gully dwarves, and were so insufferably stupid and obnoxious, he was more than half convinced that allowing them to be wiped out would be a favor to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they were protected by the dwarves, and he actually got on quite well with dwarves, having been tutored by a dwarven champion in the language and the use of the dwarven waraxe. Alas, real life interceded in the DM's life and we weren't able to continue the campaign. Fun character though.
If your game doesn't have changelings, Hats of Disguise are probably the best investment you can make for your brothel and will allow your girls to keep working long past regular retirement age. OK, that's just...just...a truly admirable idea. My hat's off to you, sir.
Actually, I did allow my players to create what they called their "worry stones" based on cure minor wounds-use activated (I think it was in the same price range). Of course the difference from the item above was it required a standard action to activate for each point healed. At 10-12th level for the party, I didn't find it overbalancing, and freed up the priest to do other things, without really tipping things too far (my priests can't spontaneously heal for the most part). Really game in handy during grueling dungeon crawls like Nightfang Spire. Continuous True Strike though, is right out, except maybe as a salient divine ability or something truly epic.
One thing it seems many are overlooking is consistency. Consistency was one of the things that really appealed to me about 3.x. That is, anything the bad guy could do, a PC could learn that too (excluding monster abilities, of course). Think back to your earliest campaigns in AD&D or 2nd Edition. How many customizations did you have? I had all kinds little tweaks and add-ons that made my 1st Ed. game look very little like my neighbor's. And my 2nd Edition customizations were even more thorough, including a customized weapon system that presaged the 3E weapon sizes, a series of skill rank powered abilities called maneuvers that looked a lot like feats in retrospect, custom xp awards, different racial class limits, spell-casting rules, unique magic items, reorganized psionics, and more. My friends and associates to DMed games did much the same, but completely differently. It was non-trivial to to move a character between campaigns. With feats being built-in, there's an assumption of consistency in there along with some expectation that a given feat was built up from the same assumed baseline. Of course, I'll agree the copious plethora of feats can become a distraction and a burden, but then we could say that about just about any aspect of the game. Me, I hate new base classes for the most part and generally don't allow them (there are of course reasonable exceptions). But that kind of customization is for prestige classes, in my opinion. Fortunately, my players concur. :)
Certain folks like 3E, certain folks like 4E. No amount of system bashing is going to change anyone's mind. And certain folks like both. Not that I'm one of 'em, but fair is fair...
DM: "As you're walking across a open field..."
Background Skills - each character selects Int bonus number of skills as additional class skills (for all classes). Wizards Skills Points - 4/level Fighter Skills - add bluff, use rope, knowledge (nobility, engineering, history, local), and profession Remain Conscious - to -(Con bonus) instead of 0, standard actions still cause extra damage Alchemy is not a common craft skill (as with 3.0). Druids use Cha instead of Wis for spellcasting (druids evolved differently in my world). Considering (for next campaign) collapsing spellcraft/psicraft into knowledge arcana/religion/nature/psionics for the appropriate classes
I don't think a bite is a melee weapon despite being a melee attack.
Continue to use the paralyzing spit on them until they're all paralyzed, then its game over for them since he could drag them out of the field and destroy them one by one, or even coup de grace them in the field with his bite. As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.
Summon Earth Elemental spell-like ability. There's no usage limit listed for this ability in the class description in the hard cover. Is this really intended to be an at will ability? Being able to spam a 6th-level spell seems kind of powerful...
I looked at it for a PC character, but even with the fixes proposed by Ari, it just seemed like it was somewhat...broken. It seemed interesting at first blush though.
Great power gamers must think alike. Spoiler:
My players took out the boss with a maximized empowered searing light. Followed by an empowered searing light (if I recall correctly). Two rounds. Very disappointing after all the time I spent building up the threat.
As a more immediate piece of advice, keep an eye on the balance of equipment to PC level. Ironically enough, the official modules actually suffer something of a dearth of equipment. One of the reasons I added the side adventures was to boost the overall wealth level of the party. My players also tended to hoard equipment they weren't using instead of converting it into something more useful of liquid.
I did just that. The first several adventures weren't too hard to tie together. I got them through Nightfang Spire, though it turned into a bit of a grind. I diverted them into a side adventure as there was something of a level gap between NFS and the next module, plus that one just didn't sit well with me. There were a lot of errors in the first couple of modules, something to watch out for when converting over to 3.5. I did a lot of renaming and substituting to make thing fit into my campaign world, and made some adjustments base on player actions. For example, Spoiler:
reviving the dead NPCs as woody lesser vampires who became thralls to Gulthias after the players fed the healing fruit to the corpses. Also introduced another side adventure between the first and second to boost the party gear a bit, plus flesh out the links between the FoF and the later modules. That wound up having some interesting repercussions, some of which the players didn't fully understand by the time things wrapped up. Over the course of the campaign, I tried to lay out various encounters which foreshadowed events that would occur as the PCs progressed through the adventure arc. Spoiler:
I introduced a shard of metal infused with evil into the side adventure which was responsible for corrupting the temple and also was the source of the dark iron which the mad dwarf smith used to forge his masterwork weapons (the hook which brought the PCs into the adventure). The shard is a small piece of the sword from later modules (Iron Fortress?) which was scattered across the planes when it was broken. I also introduced some elements corruption from Heroes of Horror from carrying the shard with them. That lead to some interesting events down the road. If you're interested, I can hook you up with our forums where I posted the session summaries and would be more than happy to discuss how things seemed to go or what I did to string things together. Drop me a line at spamblox at netzero dot net. I got kind of burned out towards the end and stopped posting the session summaries, but one of my players took up the burden to some extent. I should probably get those posted. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow before my vacation is over.
So, are there any English translations of DSA out there these days? My German is terrible. I would have to struggle just to come up with a "Donde esta el bano?" equivalent these days (and that's a ~n, not an n there, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to post non-English characters...).
I believe there was an old button/bumper-sticker/t-shirt that read, "A Sucking Chest Wound is the DM's Way of Telling You to Slow Down."
Hmmm I am just imagining a bunch of wizards sitting in a cafe debating their schools colors and nobody wants to be Mr Brown cuz it sounds too much like Mr S.....well if you've seen "Reservoir Dogs" you get the idea. :)"So why do I get stuck with the pink robe?" Because you're you, Cato, because you're you...
It just so happens that I have a chromatic-based alternative magic system. The system was strongly influenced by Andre Norton's novels set in the Witch World and Dales. Spoiler: 1. The Chord Arcane. Core magical abilities all chromatists have access to. 2. The Chord of Yellow. Knowledge, lore, scrying, divination, language, and informational, written magics. 3. The Chord of Orange. Shaping, altering, imposition of structure on the unstructured or unformed, desire, control of the inanimate, transformation of the external. 4. The Chord of Blue. Control, influence, domination, emotions. 5. The Chord of Ochre. Battle-magic, combat oriented, inflicted harm, or defending. 6. The Chord of Purple. Illusion, misdirection, chaos, confusion, deception. 7. The Chord of Violet. Summoning, invoking, binding, gateways, opening and closing of the ways. 8. The Chord of Indigo. Weather, storms, sky, winds, ordering of the natural forces. 9. The Chord of Crimson. Of the body, affecting the self. 10. The Chord of Green. Growing things, animals and plants, fertility, increase, nature, growth. 11. The Chord of Silver. Travel, motion, and movement. 12. The Chord of Gold. Healing of the flesh, of the mind, and of the spirit. 13. The Chord of Dun. Earth, stone, and underground. 14. The Chord of Grey. Death, the dead and undead, withering, fungi, decay. 15. The Chord of Runes. Runes, glyphs, sigils, and symbols -- the essence of magic made substance. 16. The Chord of Shadows. Shadowy, unreal magics, in-between. 17. The Chord of Song. The color of song and music.
Preach it, Brother Monte!
I did up a noble class that combined elements of the SW:SE Noble and stuff from Monty Cook's Hallowed Might Material. haven't had a chance to test drive it though. Would be interested in hearing results if someone wanted to give it a spin. It's primarily intended to be an NPC class, but I tried to spiffy it up enough that it might fit a non-combat role, especially where social skill skills were prized more than monster slaying. Spoiler:
Hit Die: d8. Alignment: Any. Class Skills The Noble's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (all skills taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Perform (Cha), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Speak Language, Spot (Wis), Swim (Str), and Survival (Wis). Skill Points at Each Level: 4 + Int modifier. Table: The Noble Level BAB Fort Ref Will Special
Class Features All of the following are Class Features of the Noble class. Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The noble is proficient with simple and martial weapons, with light, medium, and heavy armor, and with shields, but not tower shields. Noble Blood: The characters noble heritage is manifest in their ability to gain levels in this class. Bonus Feat: At first level, the noble gains a bonus feat in addition to any feat that any character normally gains. The noble must select their bonus feat from the following list: Business Savvy, Cosmopolitan, Diligent, Force of Personality, Imperious Command, Inside Connection, Inspirational Leadership, Investigator, Iron Will, Mercantile Background, Mounted Combat, Mounted Mobility, Multilingual, Natural Leader, Negotiator, Persuasive, Rulership, Silver Palm, Skill Focus, Smooth Talk. The noble selects additional feats from this list at levels 5, 7, and 9 of the noble class. The noble must meet all of the prerequisites of the feat. Accolade: The noble gains the Accolade feat. Silver Tongue: The nobles experience weaving through the ins and outs of court life grants them extraordinary skill with words. The noble gains the Skill Focus (perform (oratory)) feat. Abdoument: The noble gains the Abdoument feat Leadership: The noble's reputations begins to attract a loyal following of cohorts and henchmen. The noble gains the Leadership feat in order to select it. Rally: Once per day, you may rally your allies when things look bleak. As a swift action, any allies within your line of sight who can hear you and who have less than half of their hit points remaining gain a +2 morale bonus to saving throws, skill checks, and attacks and damage rolls for 1 round per level of the class which grants the Rally ability. Favored: The noble is recognized as a favored member of the aristocracy of the land. This recognition often takes the form of additional titles or grants of peerage, an offer of marriage between the character and a member of another respected noble or royal family, or possibly lands and wealth.
The table didn't come out pretty...sorry.
Have you read Zelazny's Lord of Light or (I think) Isle of the Dead? Lord of Light is a particularly interesting take on the Indian pantheon cast in the genre of science fiction (and not what you might think if you haven't read the novel). But, you might find some ideas about psionics therein. Please keep us posted on the progress of the develpment of this campaign. I am very interested in seeing how you meld it all together. I've tapped a couple of ideas for my campaign world, such as the concepts of Aspects and Incarnations, but nothing so elaborate as what you are attempting. I wish you great success. I wish I could play. :) I have Asoka on DVD, but I can't recall if that's one that I've had a chance to watch. I picked of a few movies of that ilk a while back, and the ones I recall were decent.
Yet again this thread has died short of it's goal. *sigh* 145) Make *awesome* smoke rings.
I think, technically, the player has it.* Personally, I would use a spell such as flaming sphere as a guide. The sphere stops if it enters a square with a creature and then does damage to that creature. But as a management tool, spells with ongoing effects deal damage on the player's initiative. I certainly wouldn't rely on the descriptive text of a lot of the later books to be particularly precise (even though it's supposed to be canon). The editing of WotC books significantly degraded over the years, to the point where blatant cut-and-paste errors are not even acknowledged, much less errata'd. In addition, if you're using Complete Divine (which is where I think it first appeared), you might check he Spell Compendium to see if its description was updated.
I use the word "verisimilitude" to describe my campaign world to my players and it is very much grounded in the concepts identified by the blogger. To elaborate, yes, the campaign is about the players. But the campaign is a lens on the campaign world, and the world continues beyond the bounds and scope of the lens. The people that populate the world are, basically, real people, motivated by the same emotions which motivate us--love, hate, fear, lust, greed. Personally, I've enjoyed many of the changes that 3E brought to the table, though I think it came with its share of warts as well. However, because my campaign world is grounded in almost 30 years of gaming history, it comes with a lot of baggage, baggage that's there because Gary Gygax inspired me to create it and then place it in the world. One of the things that I love about 3E is that it essentially leveled the playing field. The bad guys played by the same rules as the PCs and anything the villains could do (almost) could eventually be emulated by the Players. For me, this is one of the turn offs of 4E. In my eyes, the monsters have become more hollow, something less than they were before. They feel like a bunch of Lego-like blocks which are snapped together to create an array of abilities and effects (roles) and skinned with a name instead of being driven by an interesting motivation and back story and using their abilities to achieve their ends. Sometimes half the fun is figuring what a monster could do with their abilities and then seeing how it plays out in the campaign. With 4E, it seems to me like the meta-game elements are too heavy-handed (frex., in the enforced balance of the classes).
Do Want! *squees uncontrollably* While this is indeed good news, I think my ears are bleeding...
Well, we've given them a BAB as per familiar. Which hot patch?
I ordered recently and picked mine up from the mailbox yesterday. Read through the first sections yesterday. Very nice. Weighty. You're certainly getting your money's worth in terms of paper. The print quality seems very good--no smeary magizine-type print you're seeing from some publishers today. Illustrations nothing to write home about, but they are relevant and appropriate, and at least they aren't animesque. I definitely prefer to get more material than some cheesy eye-candy, so I'll certainly not complain about the art. Initial perusal very positive. Well done. I pre-ordered Villains of Pact Magic at the same time I order this, and I have no doubt I'll be just as pleased with that tome. My only regret was that I was not able to purchase through my FLGS. Very impressive, overall. Keep up the good work, Mr. Nardi.
I've specifically asked to to take a look at the controversy surrounding psicrystals. Right now, as implemented, they get no BAB which means that delivering touch spells is effectively useless ability beyond helpless targets.
The Huntsman snd/or the Wild Hunt.
Torg had something similar in Dramatic Skill Resolutions.
I've toying with the idea of using the gestalt rules to address spellcaster multiclassing. Basically, a 1st-level only feat would be required and the gestalt class would become the character's base class with a level adjustment of +1 (a full progression in two classes is a powerful advantage). Also toying with the idea that certain races might favor certain gestalt combos and then maybe remove the feat requirement, replacing the race's "favored" class. It's a little like the racial multi-classes from Basic, and also has some of the flavor of limiting racial progressions from 1E and 2E without the actual cap. Rolling things around in my head, I didn't think branching into gestalt classes in a PrC-like way would work. But I might could be convinced. Thoughts?
Check 3.0 AoO vs. 3.5 AoO. I believe the restriction of one AoO was lifted in the latter. You now can take an AoO (if available) every time the an AoO is provoked. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/attacksOfOpportunity.htm#makinganAttackofO pportunity
Perhaps we all need to revisit our Ethos now and again. OTOH, as for today's education in the States, I would to see the average high schooler attempt a little Ars Praedicandi today. Without using txt shortcuts, that is.
That would be in keeping with how it was used against the Templars, which the only historical reference I can think of. They were accused (among other things)of worshiping a demon/idol imported from the Middle East called Bahamut. Edit: Or baphomet, as you like. I'm pretty sure I've seen it rendered "bahamut" somewhere along the line though...
Teh arrogance, it burnz us!Que? Old school reference to the revised bard class published in Dragon (or was that Best of Dragon)?
I wrote up a system for Path magic for 2nd Edition and sort of updated it to 3E (I probably should take another look at it). It was based on material worked up by A'Koss (from the old rec.g.frp.dnd days--unfortunately his old site is gone and I don't know where the new might be) who based it off of Baur's article. Link to 3E Paths. The original system had its own spell point system, but you could probably just use the spell point system from UA and treat them like a specialist.
Chalk up another vote in favor of your system from a SCAdian. (I was going to post a more detailed reply, but it would have been pretty much the same as the Black Bard's.)Woo hoo! SCA is joining the movement! The Once and Future Seneschal agrees. I wouldn't object strenuously to a Listen/Spot penalty equal to the armor penalty as well. Although, technically, leather armor (cuir bouille) is way, way louder than a decent set of metal armor if you're not flailing around a lot. Squeaky, you know.
If you'd like it, I can e-mail it. Just to warn you, there are some tweaks that may be necessary after some playtesting, but it is mostly solid. It includes the standard races and most of the MM races... If you can provide your e-mail I'll send it right over. I would like to see what you've done as well. Sounds intriguing. spamblox at netzero dot net danke
To address the initial question: No. WotC burned the bridge to this customer some time shortly after the "PR" blitz began, not that anything I've seen or read in the core books (or anywhere else) could have persuaded me to play or DM 4E. I had no 4E pre-order to cancel, but I did cancel my PFRPG pre-orders and subscriptions some time back as, in my opinion, one of the Paizo staff is a "dick" (to quote Eric), and I see no reason to support a company that will censor other forum posters while still allowing someone from within to come on the boards and spew their crap with impunity. It is amusing to drop by and watch the frolicking once and a while though.
I suspect that profit-wise, miniatures provide a far, far greater margin than the books.
Our conclusion was that they looked rather like hedgehogs.
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