dsan1's page

I am deeply sorry! :-)

Hi everybody!

Just a short question: When a char is allowed one attack of opportunity, can he/she only make an ordinary melee/unarmed attack or also make a grapple attempt? And what about tripping an opponent? Are the special attacks possible as AoOs?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the answer in a footnote on page 141 of the PHB. it's possible. Thanks anyway!

I played a lot of MERP and AD&D 2nd Ed. in Middle Earth and recently a lot of Neverwinter Nights on my PC on a server called MERP UK (which I strongly recommend everyone who enjoys NWN and ME!) and I agree with all problems posted here.

D&D's magic system is just not so ideal for that setting as for example Gandalf, one of the mightiest beings in Middle Earth is not able to fly, to throw fireballs and to teleport (...), so this would really need attention when playing in the Third Age.

One possible solution for this which would also avoid the collision with "The Book" is a first age setting, taking place during the Quenta Silmarillion. There you can find all kind of veritable "epic" characters. The first age isn't as low on magic as the third and the Silmarillion leaves way more room for the DM's interpretation and imagination.
For those (players) who have not read the Silmarillion but enjoy LotR this also would grand a nice "step by step" approach towards Middle Earth history and the backround of the War of the Rings. By asking your players not to start reading the Silmarillion before the campaign is finished you could really create thrilling plots.

I have plans to start a campaign like this. The only problem is the whole science the Silmarillion is. There's just so much in this book, you can hardly keep all those names and people in mind. But your players can't neither so that's no problem ...

dsan1 wrote:

Thanks a lot everyone! Posting on these boards for someone new (or in my case: back after 14 years or so) to D&D is a real joy!

Fourteen years? Oof! Why don't you come up on the porch with the rest of us and have a nice lemonade or mint julep while we talk about those days before these newfangled "feats" and "presssteeeege classes"?

*moves over and pulls out another rocking chair for dsan1*

Good to have you back in the game!

See? That's ecactly what I mean!

No there weren't any fancy feats and prestige classes in AD&D 2nd Edition back then. Fortunately i'd say, because by then I was about 14 years old and was about to learn english by reading RPG-rulebooks (Only 3-4 core-rulebooks were translated in german back then). I doubt I would have understood v3.5 back then. But now i must say that I find the system just excellent!

Unfortunately now I'm 28 and there's barely any time for playing . Way more easy to gather a bunch of pupils than some "i must work 50-60 hours a week and run a relationship aside" people. We have had 5 sessions since last september when we got back at it. Well, still better than nothing i'd say ...

Thanks a lot everyone! Posting on these boards for someone new (or in my case: back after 14 years or so) to D&D is a real joy!

Thanks a lot!

Do you think we could just take these few rules as they are or will this completely mess up every balance in the rules?

Hi everybody.

I'm planning to start another campaign, this time set in the FR. I never played FR setting campaigns and I skipped the v3.0 rules. I know them from playing Neverwinter Nights but not from P&P.

Does it make sense to buy this v3.0 rulebook? Or would I have to change too many rules for the new classes, feats and so on? Is there perhaps an announcement to a 3.5 version of this sourcebook?

The FR description still is the same, so it's only a matter of the "extra rules" covered in this supplementary.

What do you think?

Frankly, that's by design. Few D&D players find it much fun to have their ass handed to them by a bunch of mooks, particularly once they've advanced beyond the first few character levels.

Yeah of course it is. They're heroes after all. And most of the time it suits me (and the party) very well. There's just some moments in game (like the orc army camping the valley the party's got to cross the next session) where I think that some ridiculously unfair fights should be lost and not end with "great cleave, great cleave great cleave, great cleave great cleave, great cleave, great cleave, great cleave ..."

Of course that's exagerated but you get the picture.
But thanks for the input everyone, with these ideas i will be able to cook up a nice little soup.

Hi everybody!

Altough I like the D&D v3.5 rules very much i still miss something:
The +2 flanking bonus seems to be all that happens when PCs are outnumbered. So no matter how many orcs you send against let's say a 6th level party, the chance of losing the encounter is always close to zero.

Because I'd like to keep my players respectfull towards let's say a squad of 20 orcs I'd personally like to implement a rule that increases the flanking bonus by one for every additional flanking encounter or something similar. But this would immediately mess up the CR-rules, XP and everything.

What do you think? Any propositions?

i don't know much about ddo. i've been watching it's developement and came to the conclusion that it isn't worth spending loads of money month after month for a game that seems to ignore most of the d&d-rules when there's neverwinter nights 2 coming out some months later. this one

- will stay as true as possible to v3.5 rules
- has a toolset to create your own campaigns (the same set the developers are using)
- has a dm-client: you can actually dm sessions. this is the closest game to pen&paper d&d i've ever seen!
- will propably offer the same huge community-options its precessor offered: this means there will be tons of custom-mod-adventures and kilos of so called persistent worlds where up to 64 players can play in their favorite setting with heavy roleplay (or heavy hack&slash if they wish so)

my advice to those as sceptical envers mmos as i am: wait for nwn2! to the others: have fun!

so you let the pc and the npc each roll once and then you compare the two rolls with the applying modifier for sound and then for vision? a good method indeed! this is how i'll handle this!

i'm preparing my first d&d session for 13 years and my first v3.5 session ever so i keep on asking here on the boards for everything i don't understand. i must say that the www really really rocks when it comes to roleplaying. back in the early nineties there was no internet so we had nobody to ask questions. now you just post a question and get an answer in the same hour. simply great!

greetings everybody!

how do you handle the two skill pairs hide/move silently and spot/listen?

are you always making two opposed skill checks when the upsneaking pc could be seen AND heard by his victim? i think this would be the most realistic method but this would involve a lot of dice-rolling...

are there people who just unite the pairs to one single skill each (a move silently/hide skill opposed by a spot/listen skill)?

thanks! the "map a week" (well, that's funny!) from wotc was exactly what i was lookin' for! that'll do for some sessions!

see you!

Can anybody tell me if there's a site on the www where i can find

1. fantasy world/region maps.

2. castle, dungeon etc. maps.

i know it's great fun to do them yourself but as i am way too short of preparation time for my new campaign (my first for more than ten years - i am quite excited!) and as i spend most of my time working i could really use some ready-made maps. i tried to google it but i didn't find much yet...

thanks a lot everybody, now i've got it. i must have skipped the page 48ff. of the DMG without noticing...

see you!

thanks a lot!

The DMG rules that when facing several NPC encounters, doubling the number of foes adds 2 to the encounter level (page 37)

i have several questions about this:

1. is encounter level (EL) the synonym for challenge rating (CR)? if not, what does it signify?

2. does the cited rule only apply for enemy-npc encounters or for all battles against more than one foe of one "category". example: if one orc (without npc-levels) is cr 0.5, are two orcs cr 2.5 because of that rule?

3. how do you handle this xp-award question?

thanks ultradan! my first question can be found here: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dragon/dnd/general/whatSTheTouchAttack AB#31160

Can anybody tell me how i calculate the touch attack AB of a sorcerer or a wizard using a melee or ranged touch spell?

in the phb i found everything about the rules concerning the target's AC but nothing about the attacker's AB. Is it just the base attack bonus? or may he add the spell level, his INT-bonus or sth. like this?

Hex rules are presented in Unearthed Arcana.

mmmh. that's where the spell-point rules are presented too. perhaps i'll give it a try later, now i'll stick with just the three core rule tomes i think...

Well, welcome back to the world of the imaginary! I think the rules go for square grids, but nothing can stop you from using hexes, if you prefer them. For starters, I would suggest squares, because most rules are made for that.

Again, welcome back...

Ultradan

thanks for the kind welcome!

hello everybody!
after 13 years without roleplaying i just decided to get it on again with some friends and just bought the d&d v3.5 rules (excellent stuff compared to ad&d 2nd ed.!).
i found all i was looking for except the hex rules. aren't there special rules if you choose to use the hex grid? and what would you say about which system is easier for starters (starters to v3.5 in our case...)? thanks for your help!