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If you want a good take on level drain, the book "A Wizard of Earthsea" (by Ursula LeGuin) has an excellent scene showing level drain and its effects. There isn't a lot of "forgetting", but the symptoms almost exactly match level drain's effects. We apply a negative level, rather than trying to roll characters back to an earlier state. Every negative level has the same effect (-1 BAB, highest spell slot, etc.), so you don't have them "greater effect" that you're worried about.
Mostly 2-- house rules should be few, and ideally written down. I do like to look at specific parts of the game and ask if WotC designed something in for reasons that conflict my goals. (Current character death rules are a big divergence for me. Action points and the like can be a patch...) I don't like house rules that come from GM ignorance, or perpetuating old 1/2e thinking. For a specific world, I'm OK with more house rules to convey a flavor. (For example: if Eberron were a homebrew, it'd be a LOT of house rules. New races, artificers and NPC classes, action points, dragon marks, etc. Because they're thought out and written down, and because they do a good job of capturing the feel of the world, I'd be OK with them as house rules.)
While we're OK with Clerics, and someone will usually step up, it isn't a coveted role. I suspect that's for a few reasons: a) Daily spell memorization is a pain. Magdalena thiriet's "SOP memorization", or taking a spontaneous variant like Favored Soul are the best ways around it. a1) Plus, half your effort in picking spells is wasted, since you have to use them to run standard healing instead. b) Tequila's comment about doing upkeep for dual roles (and their perceived greed at taking both Cleric specific and generic warrior magic items) is a drawback. c) You spend your effort helping others stay on their feet, ensuring that they continue to look cool. Rarely do you get to deal the final blow. (Kinda like being the fullback instead of the striker in soccer.) d) It has the same "alignment type" restrictions a Paladin has, but specific to the Cleric's god. You can wind up getting your spell memorization nuked if you disagree with the GM about your religious practices. e) Plus, the big flavor they get is about their religion. But most worlds have casual polytheism and people get impatient with "conversion speeches"-- religion's usually used as a divider, not the bard's easy schmoozing with everyone. f) The people who tend to play Clerics often don't have a lot of real life faith. It's hard to fake faith, and if you don't, you wind up as a generic support role caster. All that said, I've played and enjoyed playing a Cleric. Their abilities, especially on paper, are impressive. Still, there are a lot of hassles in taking on the role.
I think we'll allow them in the upcoming campaign. I don't know if any players will actually take them, but I don't have any fundamental objection to them.
A good and less annoying version of a paladin is Paks, from The Deed of Paksenarrion. If the GM has a dynamic clergy that's interesting to interact with, a Paladin who has to choose a few tenets of his religion against conflicting tenets, can be very interesting to play and watch. (ie: Give a Paladin a code of 3 absolute commandments, then have two of the commandments conflict, and see what the Paladin chooses.)
I hand draw new maps, or mangle existing maps with MS Paint. I've used AutoCAD to create a sewer system for a local town in a Shadowrun campaign, but that was just because it was a tool I'm already too familiar with.
I'm curious as to who decided that March 4th was GM's day? I think it started over at ENWorld a few years ago. Martin has a GM's Day post with a short history tacked in.
Puerto Rico is excellent, but I like all of the Euro games on your list. I'd avoid Monopoly, Kill Dr. Lucky, and Risk, but would enjoy any of the others. Descent: Journeys... is the only one I've never played.
For us, Rogues and Fighter/Rogues die quickly-- they're usually first on the scene for bad stuff, take on special risks others don't (like trap disarming), and lack the HP to tank. Otherwise, our party had relatively even deaths, though our sorceress didn't even get hit until 6th level or so.
I've played a current (3.x) Lankhmar demo and enjoyed it. It is lower magic, with class tweaks and replacements to differentiate them in a low magic setting. I join the chorus in suggesting that you read a few of the short stories for the flavor of the world... the cities are darker and scuzzier than most more recent fantasy settings. The cities and interactions with others in town are more important than many settings-- expect more urban adventures to capture some of the flavor.
A way to plan for a less linear campaign is to break it into bits. Instead of pre-planning the whole session, create a few NPCs with strong motivations. When the PCs act, think like your NPCs and react to what they'd see. It's much more fluid, though it can be harder to come up with solid twists, etc. Similarly, instead of planning specific scenes and events to occur, instead think up cool locations that you can use. Neither of these is necessary, especially if your players are having fun as it is. It's a way of altering things so that your players really do affect the storyline more than you're currently experiencing.
It's true. Here is An Open Letter by Peter D. Adkison about it.
I would be annoyed, and probably hostile. IF you're committed to making the choice, then I would NOT do it during the main session. Instead, I'd run the session short, perhaps up to the ancient city's revelation. Then I'd go for the reveal-- but setting aside D&D's normal system. Instead, play your ending out free form. If they have to die, let them know that they have to work it into their description. Let them die with dignity and heroism... not just the damage count from an empowered delayed blast fireball. You might find the way they choose to die is so inspiring that it'd makes sense they'd still tell tales about it well into the future. You know your players far better than we do. They're trusting you to keep the game fun. If you're sure you can end the game, keep them feeling positive about their dead character's hopeless struggles, and that they'll remain eager to return for future sessions, you might have a very memorable session.
We just roll the dice openly and trust the players to roleplay appropriately. That impedes a lot of "keep retrying", since we're on our honor... and, really, tripping traps every now and again makes the world feel a little more dangerous without killing many. On the other hand, those kill on sight Symbols of Death... For Spot and Listen checks, turn the player skills into static target numbers for the NPCs to roll against. (Example: if a PC has Spot +6, the target for NPC's Hide check is 16. Assume the rest of the party is passively aiding another, just by being awake to spot...)
You could do random dice rolls for character creation, like normal. Then have everyone calculate their point buy cost. Give all other players 1/2 the difference between their point buy cost and the leader's to buy up their stats. The random roll should give characters a unique "stat shape", that they'll blur a bit as they use their limited pool of points. You should get a lot less variation in stats (say... half of what your random roll gave you) and everyone gets compensation-- either cool stats, or more choice.
The Cloistered Cleric is an excellent skill instead of fighting variant. As far as Paladins go, one of the best that I've read was Paksenarrion, who does an excellent job of being good and taking on a lot of Paladin traits, without taking on "stick" aspects.
Andy Collins ran a low magic home campaign, called Umber, which might work well as a low magic template.
I often play same sex (male) characters, because it's easiest and I'm quite lazy. However, sometimes I'll follow inspiration-- sometimes the desire to run a character that is a book character with filed off the serial numbers encourages me to run cross gender. I do tend to play cross-gender more as a player in groups with fewer females. My girlfriend often plays neuter or male characters with people's she hasn't already played with previously, to avoid the female character issues mentioned above.
I thought there were some more in Magic of Ebberon, but since I returned it to the library, I can't verify that.
My father taught 5th and 6th grade and ran a D&D club at lunches. It was very informal to start, but it worked its way into an official option for the Friday afternoon "hobbyish time". (I don't remember what it was called, save that it was basically organized interests. Each of the 4-6th grade teachers ran a class devoted to some hobby/music/etc. The kids could select which class they wanted to go to.) He established the group in the early 80s, in Fresno, CA. I'd say more, but it sounds like you've got a good source of useful stuff in the response above. Good luck!
Rope was an excellent answer-- one of the first treasures we cherished was a spool of endless rope. Before that, we probably had 150' divided over 4 characters, because everyone took it when designing their characters. Backpacks and sacks are very important-- hard to haul away loot without it. When you can upgrade to bags of holding, you get to get away from the whole encumbrance balancing sub-game... which isn't one of my favorites.
Taking subdual damage might work well too-- say, do 1d4 damage per HP you sacrifice. (If so, I'd reduce the range-- or say 1 HP for a 30' cone, 2 for a 60', and 3 for a 90'.) That might mirror the "spend your own energy to power an effect" of some fiction.
Moff's answer is closest to mine. D&D is a game of people getting together and telling a story together, with some dice and rules to keep things from falling into a rut. WoW is a game where you solve cool quests and immerse yourself in a world that a whole design team worked hard on-- but your impact is limited to what they imagined/made possible. It is cool-- but while you can invent within the corners of the game, the core game is an impartially refereed experience. If your character vanished from WoW, the world as a whole would be largely unchanged. If one player at a table stops showing up, the texture of the game changes dramatically.
Yes, I'd allow Craft, or especially Profession, to fill in for it. If they're alchemical markings, he's seen them in his training and references.
We currently use the core 3 and the Completes, though the DM uses anything he can google as well. If we start a new campaign, we'll probably allow most of what we own, which isn't much more-- just adding PHB2 and Complete Mage. Though psionics would also be interesting, I don't think there's much demand for it yet.
They're also in the Expanded Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionics books. If you're going to use psionics anyway, you can find them here and not worry about duplicating MMs.
Back in College (and 2nd edition), we ran a round-robin campaign. Each person would run essentially an adventure (of a few sessions), then hand it off to the next. When I joined, they'd been playing in Greyhawk, but at the end of our first session we hopped aboard a SpellJammer. We wandered around the Forgotten Realms for a while, before eventually getting sucked into Ravenloft. We didn't alter the "core rules"-- we used the same version no matter who ran. NPCs were generally run by one GM-- different GMs would offer different quests through different NPCs, so the overlap was low. The PCs generally wandered the worlds, following up on GM provided leads... It can work very well.
They are running Characters with Class, focussed on very beginning characters, over on the WotC site. While it isn't a character sheet, it might help you remember what's confusing to a new player. When we introduced new players at a local library teen night, we made custom "cover sheets" in MS Word explaining key abilities. We also wrote out things like "Roll d20 and add 6 when sneaking" for a character with a +6 sneak. Use the cover sheet for the core elements and most frequent abilities. As they continue, they can delve down to the real character sheet and make the connections.
I know some people have done away with Identify altogether, but has anyone changed it to a generic 100gp worth of components that you would get in the same way as any other magical components. Am I just being too sensitive to the issue? ;) We've learned a version that demands 100 gp of gold dust, which has worked just fine.
Your idea is pretty close to the Unearthed Arcana Spellcaster class. (Just discard the last few sentences about multi-classing between arcane and divine spell casters.)
If the cohorts help a lot, treat them as helping with the encounter and use your Case 2. If they're just backup/moral support, use Case 1. If you explain that you'll use that system, the players will probably handle most threats themselves, but use the cohorts to save them when they're going down. That sounds win/win to me-- you don't have to make the normal encounters harder, because the players probably don't want the lesser experience, but the cohort's an emergency "we're going down, pull the ripcord" type of insurance.
The advice above gets better as we understand more about your situation. Here's my take... it's very similar to the above, but follows my tendency to try to entice people. First, I'd speak to the co-GMs. Tell them that you enjoy the game, but you're going to be working on a new campaign. Ask them if they'd be willing to pick up the extra sessions of GMing (the fun crazy game) while you prepare something new. Keep playing in the game-- be social, fit in, and don't worry about roll/role whatever playing. Enjoy it as a social but meaningless game. Next, I'd come up with a first level adventure. Because you probably haven't seen a good adventure that challenges everyone in special ways, I'd pick up a Dungeon Magazine that has a first level adventure the month you buy it. (Or buy a module in the store, whatever.) Study the module, try to work out the unfamiliar instructions... get to know it cold. Try running a group of characters (played by you) through it like a solo adventure. (I suggest picking our 4 NPCs from this DM Tools page, and not the critters, just the premade Fighters, Clerics, etc.) When it's time to make a skill roll, do you know what to do? How about when the enemy caster uses a spell? Is there anything that the adventure assumes that the PCs will do that you would never think of? Now offer to run a special adventure for your fellow players. Tell them that it's a chance to try out a whole 'nother side of gaming... is anyone interested? Make it clear that it's only one or two sessions. If they ask, tell them that there's an adventure that you've been studying, and that you think everyone will enjoy, but it's much too wimpy for your normal characters. If they agree to try it, have them make characters out of the Player's Handbook. Give everyone a few "get out of jail free" tokens to help smooth the transition to more complex play. Now you run your adventure. Remember all those parts where you had some trouble, or you didn't think anyone would think to do something like use a skill? Go ahead and say, "I don't think I'm supposed to say anything, but if you want to make a search check, I bet there's something to find." Hopefully, over the course of the adventure they'll catch on and you won't have to hint as much. If anything goes terribly wrong (a trap kills someone because they didn't search, a failed balance check drops them off a cliff), ask them to turn in a token, undo the bad experience, and let them try again. Again, hopefully they'll pick up the skills before they run out of tokens. Good luck!
For help on monster formatting, I suggest visiting dmstools.org. I linked directly to the CR3 critters page, so that you can compare your creature more easily to creatures of similar power. (The Drakin is another small dragon type critter, so look at it as a guide and a gauge.) I'd go with the other posters in advising that you pick a fantasy name for your critter's breath weapon: I like Molten Rock, but lots of other names would work just fine. I don't think you can pick ability focus and apply it to an attack roll-- it's probably better to pick something like Weapon Focus (Molten Spit), even though the bonus is less. (Though, by my math, you'd have +6 on your attack: +3 BAB, +2 Dex, +1 Weapon Focus. I'd give your critter a Special Quality: Extend Tremorsense (to 120') as a move action. That way, you get the "stationary tracking" feel you wanted... and you can still attack. Good luck.
Warhorn.net is your friend. There's a recurring game day in King of Prussia, PA, Pottstown, PA, and Conshohocken, PA. I don't know how many of these are close to you, but the Warhorn "recurring gameday" page suggested these. If they don't work, the convention page (the first one I linked to) has a few PA cons in the spring. Good luck!
I tend to describe most hit point damage as bruising, fatigue, strain and small cuts. A 75% blow (20 HP of 24, or the like), would be described as a nasty gash, a leg that you're thankful is numb at the moment, hearing ribs crack. 20 damage to a 240 HP guy would be "he rocks you with a forceful blow, but your skill keeps it to a painful bruise", "a few long spikes poke through your chainmail, but you're basically intact", and the like. If a blow takes you to negative HP, it's described vividly, as long as it wasn't a 1 or 2 HP blow.
Wizards has come up with a good system to work in lots of ECL character types at first level, without disrupting things-- or having to worry about the corner cases that Frats mentioned. Level Adjusted Races has progressions from first level for Aasimar, Drow, Duregar, Faetouched, Half-Fey, Svirfneblin, and Tiefling. The whole series adds lots of other options-- fiends, ghosts, werewolves, and more. Add in Savage Species, and just about every race winds up with a progression, all balanced from level one.
I like the Drider Template; perfect for Underdark wanderings...
For your beginner, a 16 Barbarian works well as your meat shield-- and doesn't have too many tricky mechanics to keep track of.
We've debated a number of house rules-- about XP earning and expenditure, how to roll hit points when we level up, how to handle characters when their players are missing and more. D&D Thoughts are the posts where we've discussed these options.
What's kind of funny is that Amazon lists Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence by Dave Grossman as a good companion book to Killing Monsters... Well, if you were writing a paper about the debate, it's a great suggestion. You'd have both sides of the argument...
While we're speaking of him, did you see the Treasure Tables Interview with Wolfgang Baur?
While it's not an answer, the same question comes up when you're talking about Eberron deities, since worshiping the Sovereign Host (rather than one deity of the host) is common. Even quirkier... are the Dark Six the same faith as the Sovereign Host, or different? It's the same faith, just the "evil" gods instead of the good... and even good people make sacrifices to them to appease them. I doubt one instance is enough to take you out of the Sovereign Host's purview...
At our last RPGA game day, a player asked about a special ability. Her character was an Archer, and she wanted the Spell Storing ability to be part of her bow. (Rather than arrows enchanted with the ability.) While I ruled on the fly, I'm wondering what you think the right answers are. a) Can a bow have the spell storing enchantment on it?
This recently came up in a discussion I had with my DM, in the Paladin description, it states that a Paladin cannot knowingly associate with an evil character; however, my question is, if an evil character joins the group, or if a current party member turns evil, and the paladin continues to adventure with said character with the idea of redeeming him/her, does the paladin lose his/her status? And if so, why? To me, no. If the Paladin is intent on redeeming the evil character, they're taking active steps well in excess of not associating with the character. Non-association is a minimum bar-- if you're willing to do more, the gods certainly won't punish you for doing it.
Typically speaking, I just roll on the random treasure generator and don't fudge rolls, and trust the laws of probability to keep my party more or less on track with their expected wealth. The only time I fudge it is when I get something like an 8gp piece of quartz in a mature dragon's horde. Sorry, doesn't make too much sense, multiply that by 100... Though sometimes-- if it comes up early enough in your adventure design-- a result like that can spark creative ideas and subplots. (Like, within a moment of reading your sentence, I imagined the dragon had been forced to flee his old horde... and probably had plans to return. Plans the PCs might intercept and decide to implement, if they feel they could take on whatever drove this dragon away...)
I suspect you're best off custom building adventures to highlight the features of the classes they're playing. If there's going to be a need for a skill that they don't have (say trap finding if there's no rogue), make it clear early in the mission briefing and have a hireling available for the task.
I suspect you could trade it off for any other stat and not be too far out of balance. Sure, a few classes will like it... but not too much if it's balanced with any other stat penalty. So, pick whatever makes sense for the race you're thinking of.
Is that useful to you?
Have you seen Sean K Reynold's rant on infravision?
Other systems like Runequest and Burning Wheel build this advancement style into the system. There can be pernicious effects (like the Runequest stereotype of whacking a creature with several different weapons for advancement reasons), but they make for an interesting difference. For D&D, I'll stick with the current rules. I like the spontaneous little abilities that add flair and background... that this system would squash.
At home we do 4d6, reroll ones and drop the lowest. It works out pretty well-- our group doesn't have a huge spread in abilities. One player was disappointed in his PC's stats, but the character didn't last long and his replacement was better enough to satisfy him. For RPGA the characters are point buy, which works well as a level(er) playing field and uniformity across games. After a few levels, abilities seem to be less divisive. At first level, +3 to hit and damage is huge, since even a fighter only gets +1. At 10th level, the +3 still has an effect, but is swamped by the leveling process.
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