Okay, so I'm (finally) gearing up to run AoW (at least, I hope). But before I do so, I decided to hammer out a list of house rules for my game. No, I'm not talking about changes to the RAW, but rather... well, you'll see. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
AGE OF WORMS HOUSE RULES
Pre-game
* $5 for food or bring food for everyone worth the same. (pizza rolls, 3-liters, pizza, subway, etc.)
* $5 extra per house if you need transportation.
* Any extra $ toward the purchase of props, minis, books, etc. are appreciated and will be accounted for.
* Feel free to request certain food.Character Creation
* Make two characters minimum (in case of character death)
* Mutually Agreed Point Buy (25 recommended). Try to avoid power creep here, but I leave this up to you, as long as everyone is equal.
* Average starting gold. If you have enough ranks in the appropriate Craft skill to take ten on making an item, you may purchase it at 1/3 normal cost. (round up)
* Any alignment is okay, but don't be "Chaotic Stupid" or "Lawful Stupid." Alignment will be tracked moderately, and you will get warning 1 session ahead of time if I believe your character's actions do not match his alignment. (barring exceptions - exceptional acts might cause immediate change.)
* Backstory - You are stuck in the mining hellhole of Diamond Lake and are about 10,000 gp in debt to mine owner Balabar Smenk. You decide why.
* Game will be set in Greyhawk - Forgotten Realms deities are not available. Full listing of Greyhawk deities is available upon request, but any in the PH and most 'generic' D&D supplements will work just fine.
* Nearly any race/class allowed pending approval, but I need full access to anything before I will approve it.
* Races with racial HD & level adjustments (up to ECL 4) allowed, using Savage Species style progression.
* Intercharacter Relations - Your character must know and be on good terms with at least one other character.
* Action Points may or may not be used (to be determined)
* Regional feats may not be used.
* If you plan on taking a particular character build, let me know in advance. Also keep in mind that during the campaign, certain feats and prestige classes may become available.In Game
* Most likely time slot - 5pm - 1 am Saturdays. Game must start by 7pm and must end by 1am, barring some exceptions.
* Holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc.) are not game days. If any other days need to be taken off from gaming, you will (hopefully) be given at least two weeks' warning.
* I will attempt to use the rules as written for simplicity's sake. Any time I deviate from the RAW, I will put a note of it on the personal forum.
* I reserve the right to change any rule I deem stupid or unbalanced.
* Leave rules discussions for post-game. I will hear arguments on any particular subject once, then my decision is final.
* Death happens. Try to leave behind a legacy if your character dies, then get over it (that's why I had you make multiple characters). And remember, resurrection is available at higher levels.
* Players may use laptops as long as they do not become distractions, but must use actual dice rather than electronic generators.
* All player dice rolling is to be done in the dice pit - any roll that lands outside of the dice pit is rerolled.
* Every fourth session is open to optional (non-Age of Worms) gaming or discussion.Experience
* XP points will be generated at the end of the gaming session or when I feel necessary.
* Characters can have different XP totals.
* Session XP will be 10 x Level for all participating players.
* Clean up XP will be 50 x Level for all participating players if kitchen and gaming area are clean† after the end of the session.
* Journal XP will be 50 x Level for all players who post a journal of the session on the forum. No specified length, but reading the journal should be enough to remember highlights of the session and get a sense for the character's personality.
* Inspirational XP will be 10 x Level. Each player can give another player Inspirational XP once per session.
* Pity XP will be 15 x Level and awarded to one player per session by a group vote.
* Other bonus XP may be awarded at my discretion.
* XP might be able to be used to purchase action points (to be determined).
* Character Retraining, as listed in the PHB II, will be allowed on a provisional basis.† meaning, left in the same state they were before game began. Extra XP if it's even cleaner!
Smenk Debt Ideas
* He helped you cover up a crime.
* He helped you afford your home.
* It is a family debt.
* You have a gambling or other addiction.
* He knows a disastrous secret about you.
Looking forward to your comments,
TK
I see you plan on handing out a lot of XP, and that you may be implementing Action Points bought by XP earlier than the SoLS module. I think that will definitely work out in your favor – characters may need those APs to stay alive.
I’d like for you to elaborate on your Smenk debt ideas; IOC, two PCs were indentured miners, one was a landscaper, and the last one was a street thief. One of the miners turned out to be a compulsive gambler that got the party into hot water when he signed ‘markers’ on behalf of his party. It was awful, wonderfully awful…..
Anybody have experience with using adjusted point buys to allow +1 and +2 ECL characters at 1st level character creation?
For instance, a basic race gets a point buy of 32.
+1 LA races get point buy of 28, and +2 get 25.
Does that seem like it'd be enough of a balance?
I see you plan on handing out a lot of XP, and that you may be implementing Action Points bought by XP earlier than the SoLS module. I think that will definitely work out in your favor – characters may need those APs to stay alive.
Yup, that's the idea. I'd like to encourage more creative use of AP however; it seems like most (not all, but most) of the time, they get used for only the +1d6 to the d20 roll.
I’d like for you to elaborate on your Smenk debt ideas; IOC, two PCs were indentured miners, one was a landscaper, and the last one was a street thief. One of the miners turned out to be a compulsive gambler that got the party into hot water when he signed ‘markers’ on behalf of his party. It was awful, wonderfully awful…..
The idea here is that the players must make and expand on their own reasons for owing Smenk all that money. Then I take their idea and expand on it for use during game (one player has thought of a splendid intro - a warlock with baleful utterance who caused one of Smenk's mines to partially collapse, which was fodder for much evil plotting...). Love that gambler idea, I hope one of my players does something similar as well.
If you can think of other reasons to owe Smenk money (on the same generic level as those I've already listed), please tell. :-)
TK
Anybody have experience with using adjusted point buys to allow +1 and +2 ECL characters at 1st level character creation?
For instance, a basic race gets a point buy of 32.
+1 LA races get point buy of 28, and +2 get 25.Does that seem like it'd be enough of a balance?
That's an interesting idea. I don't quite think it would work in practice, however: Level adjusted characters already have less hp due to lower hit dice (in general), so giving them less points to put into their ability scores would reduce them to paper-bag hit points or a character with Constitution as their only good score.
One idea I've heard of is to have high powered races come into play with negative levels that put them on par with the party, rather than reverse engineering a race progression. This doesn't quite work if the creature has low hit points (or a high LA), but for those creatures that it does work, it works quite well. For instance, a gnoll rogue 1 with a Constitution of 15 would begin a 1st level game with 6 hit points (13 for gnoll, 8 for rogue, minus 15 for 3 negative levels), -3 on skill checks (which means he'll only really be good for Strength based skills at first), Fort +2, Ref +1, Will -3. His attack modifier will be +2 (based on base attack and strength, -3). Nearly everything else is determined as normal. When he gains enough experience to level up, he instead removes one negative level, until he's paid off his due.
TK
How far do you think you'll be by the first week of december? Cuz plans changed a bit on my end, and I'll be there december second.
For characters I'm working on backgrounds for a beguiler and a spellthief. Though I do need to ask if you have access to Tome of Magic? I might multiclass into something outa there eventualy.
Edit: Also, real quick, do you use the flaws rule out of Unearthed Arcana? The spellthief I'm making is based off an old character I played in second edition that never learned to read.
How far do you think you'll be by the first week of december? Cuz plans changed a bit on my end, and I'll be there december second.
For characters I'm working on backgrounds for a beguiler and a spellthief. Though I do need to ask if you have access to Tome of Magic? I might multiclass into something outa there eventualy.
Edit: Also, real quick, do you use the flaws rule out of Unearthed Arcana? The spellthief I'm making is based off an old character I played in second edition that never learned to read.
Well, I seem to have settled on running a biweekly game for 5-6 hours on Sunday (though I'm waiting to hear back from the other players still), with every fourth session running Saturday and Sunday (as long as people want to stay) with a non-Age of Worms option. Likely I won't actually start running the game until next weekend or the one thereafter, so that will be about 4 regular sessions and one either large or nonexistant session. I'm trying to weave the characters into the campaign as much as possible, so likely they will still be in Diamond Lake (or possibly just leaving).
I do have access to Tome of Magic.
I don't think I want to use Flaws at this point, but I'll give you a chance to argue for it if it's something you really want.
One thing I am working on including is racial traits for the different human groups in Greyhawk. I was reading through the Greyhawk Player's Guide from... 1st edition I think... And it listed optional racial ability adjustments for the various humans (Baklunish, Flannae, Oeridian, Rhennee, Suel). I briefly considered using them as is, but decided that humans should remain the baseline as far as ability scores go. So instead, I want to come up with some traits (an advantage and a drawback) that a PC may optionally have, based around the theme of each supposed ability modification. For instance, a Rhennee (+1 Str, -2 Cha) might have the DCs for Diplomacy checks increased by 5 (and perhaps a -2 penalty on Gather Information checks), but get a +2 effective bonus to Strength for the purpose of carrying capacity. It would be up to each player whether or not he wanted his character to have these racial traits.
But I'm still working on it, and it might not get used in the end.
Realy wish I knew more about Greyhawk. I've always liked the idea of different nations affecting game stats in small ways.
I looked through Tome of Magic last night and that wasn't the book I was thinking. Somewhere (at this point I'm guessing the Minatures Handbook) is a class called the healer (or something along those lines). If your not familiar with it, the base concept is uber healing cleric. I don't remember all the spells they get access to, but I seem to remember a fair amount of buffing spells along with all the cure wounds and heal spells. What I'm looking to make is a character ment to increase the abilities of other party members, as opposed to being a badass itself. In Ironheroes there is a class called the hunter, which gets a whole bunch of class abilities that affect everyone in the party, and reading up on that gave me a lot of insperation. So, short of converting over the hunter (which, as cool as that would be, would take a lot of effort), I think a healer will suffice (with possible levels of bard or marshal as well).
I think these are really sharp. You address all the necessary stuff that so many DM's forget to address (and then gripe about later).
jh