drkem's page

Neonatologist (doctor in a newborn intensive care unit.)

(snip) does anyone know where I might find a listing for or a way to create magic armor that allows a caster to wear it with no penalty? (snip)

The closest I have been able to come to this within the 3.5 rules is a celestial chainmail shirt. I extrapolated from similar magic items that it would have a 5% arcane spell failure chance. I'm sure there is an infernal equivalent for bad guys, and a 1 in 20 chance of spell failure is small enough that your BBEG should be effective.

Good hunting!

In our run through Pathfinder#1, Voon (the owner of the Feathered Serpent, #44) has used his network of contacts in Magnimar to sell unwanted items too expensive to move easily in Sandpoint or to purchase certain items wanted by the PC's beyond those normally available in Sandpoint. (Of course, he must be given a few days to do so.)

This allows the PC's to unload unwanted items without selling them in Sandpoint itself. I also have established that Voon has relationships with a few smugglers and other shady characters that put into port from time to time; this will make for some nice plot hooks for side adventures between events in the Adventure Path.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Word of warning in this area.

I have a player that pretty much always takes a half-celestial and I've found this system to actually make this just too good an option for a player like that over the long run.

I'm not terribly surprised that this is true for a +4 LA race, but does it apply to the +1 and +2 LA races (which are much more common and probably more what the rule is contemplating)? The difference between a 12th level tiefling fighter and a 12th level human fighter seems fairly negligible given that the benefits of being a tiefling (darkness and the extra ability score bonus) just aren't that significant at those levels.

I have to agree with Sebastian here; the difference in effectiveness between these characters is small enough that the EP penalty for the character with the racial levels is far out of proportion to the benefit, especially at higher ECL's. Thus, the house rule I mentioned in my previous post.

My players and I felt that the ECL system resulted in an unfair and progressive EP penalty for characters needing racial level adjustments. As party average levels increase, the characters with level adjustments experience larger and larger EP penalties that can reach 70000 EP's for a 20th ECL character with a four-level adjustment. We went to a house rule involving negative experience points. All first-level characters started at 0 experience. Level adjustments were assigned a negative EP value (-1000 for 1 level, -3000 for 2 levels, -6000 for 3 levels, and -10000 for 4 levels) and earned experience went to pay off the negative EP values before characters could add positive EP's and class levels. This allows characters with racial levels to pay them off up front and keeps the ECL penalty from becoming 15000 to 20000 EP's per level for higher-level characters while still leveling the playing field at lower levels. The system has playtested well in our hands so far.

I started running DND campaigns in 1978 after nearly one and a half years as a player; several of my first players are still with me. I have dragged them through multiple game systems (several editions of DND, Traveller, GURPS, Cyberpunk, and even an aborted run using the excellent but unlamented Torg rules.) I thought we might consider 4.0, but my players have informed me that they are *done* with major system changes. We will stay with 3.5 and our system of house rules. I would be delighted to see Paizo continue their outstanding product lines under either the 3.5 OGL or a Paizo-issued set of changes to the 3.5 OGL professionally repairing some of the worst problems. However, I will continue to subscribe just to 'steal' their excellent campaign material even if they do change to 4.0 (which is beginning to sound more and more like a very different game than DND has been in the past) so count me as an ongoing subscriber regardless of system.

"No matter where you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai

I use the Parallels software to run massive chess databases and chess-playing programs on my Intel-based MacBook Pro under Windows XP. It works very well; unlike past emulation software it runs fast enough that sorting and searching operations on a 3 millon game database are not slower than my old Alienware laptop. I do not run RPGXplorer (yet) but I have had no problems with any Windows software that will run on XP. I find being able to run XP in a window on the Mac desktop to be useful; the Parallels software supports cut and paste operations into and out of the XP window, for example. Unless the Parallels software is incompatible with Leopard I will continue to use it instead of Boot Camp; if I wanted a Wintel box I would have bought one in the first place.

Anyone remember an old RPG called Space 1889? Victorian-era early steampunk setting with Mars at the center of most of the published materials. If this type of setting is to your taste there are plenty of RPG supplements as well as fan and third-party material available (web sites, eBay, etc.) that make great reading - or you can create your own stories.

Some of the older, non-Amber titles by one of my favorites, Roger Zelazny, are out of print. Suggested titles for Planet Stories would include Lord of Light, Creatures of Light and Darkness, Damnation Alley, and Doorways in the Sand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Zelazny#Other_novels

C
My core group of gamers and I have been playing together since 1978 (!) and have played all editions of DND (as well as just about every other major RPG at one time or another.) 3.5 has several major design flaws in our opinions (poor multiclass system, overreliance on magic items vs. character skills and attributes, bad critical hit system to mention a few) that are integral to the system and therefore difficult to repair with simple patches to the rules. (We've tried.) If 4.0 addresses these issues without destroying the flavor and feel of the game, we will switch systems at once and with gratitude. However, having lived through nearly 30 years of this 'time to make a new version 'cause sales are down' nonsense, my expectation is that we'll just be trading one set of problems for another. In that case, better the devil (? demon - stupid monster changes) that we know.

"The race is not always to the swift nor victory to the strong - but that's the way to bet."
Damon Runyon