The General D&D thread

Thanks for clarifying that, I'll go for a Psion anyway (the abilities look really cool) and my friend and I can work on a dream walking/heist campaign together.

edited 10th Nov '12 5:15:14 AM by ShadowScythe

Telepath psions are some of the most OP shit in the history of shit.

Dishearten is your power-your only power!-from level 1 to 30, and you will spam it, giving enemies -A BILLION to hit.

I also like Betrayal though.

Just ran a completely awesome nine-hour battle between a horde of Demogorgon-worshiping pirates and the citizens of the P Cs' village. High point of the night for me: killing the druid from nearly max HP with a (deep breath) violated intensified empowered fireball. (Who says blasting is bad in 3E/PF?)

So let's see. Violated is +1 level ya? Then another +2 from Empower Spell, and finally +7 from intensify. So that's a 13th level spellslot.

Coulda used a twinned Meteor Swarm for that price, for 64d6 damage! Though, that's not violated, so I guess you have a point~

Intensify Spell is the 3.0 epic feat, which is hideously over costed. I was using Intensified Spell, which is a Pathfinder feat with a frustratingly similar name. It's only +1 and raises the damage cap on spells by 5 levels. (IE, normally your 13th level caster deals 10d6 on a fireball because 10th is the cap, but an intensified spell has a cap of 15d6, so your fireball goes for 13d6.)

So her fireballs were violated (+1), intensified (+1) and empowered (+2 normally, but she had a metamagic rod.) You could easily drop violated (it doesn't do anything, really, except add flavor and harass the P Cs in a long battle) and still get 15d6 x 1.5 for a sixth level slot without using a rod, which ain't bad. Almost strictly better than delayed blast fireball.

(The baddie also had the Orc bloodline for +caster level to damage and the half-Orc favored class for another +1/2 level to fire spells, which tastes great with Empower Spell.)

My second character nearly died, saved by other player's efforts to save him thawing the DM's frozen heart. Couple things though...

• The character was already subject to mutations from back story.
• Served a female deity and his resuscitation was a miracle.
• The DM kept mistaking my elf character for a girl OOC

Now my character is a woman. That is the price he paid to live.

Oh okay. I don't play Pathfinder I'm afraid.

Today, for the first time since starting this campaign, a character could have died.

"Could" because we forgot about making death saving rolls during this rather exciting battle. We only remembered after we healed up, and then made the guy roll just to see what would have happened if we didn't forget. And then he failed the roll three times.

We had a good laugh, and the DM let the player decide whether he was dead or not, and the player choose life.

In my game, death is permanent. I also have some pretty nasty death and dying rules. On the flipside, I make a single PC death into the equivalence of a TPK (barring a pre-arranged circumstance where a PC has a heroic sacrifice when a player is tired of playing them).

That being said, the more common means of character death-being reduced to -50% HP-is removed from the game. That is, if you're at 1 HP and the enemy crits you, you don't die outright.

One of my beefs with D&D is how hard it is to remove someone from combat through damage without killing them outright. As a DM, I want to be able to drop people without forcing them to burn some high-level magic (which they may not have access to) or roll new characters. That's one of the reasons I like the armor-as-DR rules from Unearthed Arcana. It means you can beat people silly without worrying (as much) about killing them. It also means that heavier armor makes you tougher, instead of a guy in plate being just as robust as a dex monkey, which I also like. (Not that I dislike dex-heavy characters, but I feel like if you're based entirely around dodging, then when you do get hit, it should mean more than if you get hit while wearing artifact full plate.)

In the game I'm a PC in (not the game I DM, but I'm contemplating changing the rules) when you "die" (Reduced to -50% HP), you're just removed from the encounter.

The reason I didn't institute rules like that in my game is because I don't like the idea of removing P Cs from the encounter, because then the player has nothing to do for half an hour or more.

Has anyone here been reading Harry Potter and the Natural 20?

It's the most interesting thing. I didn't know anything of D&D besides what I learned from Darths And Droids and DM Of The Rings and Giant In The Playground. But seeing it contrasted point-to-point with the way magic works in the potterverse is highly interesting, and quite hilarious. "Those "wizads" aren't Wizards, they're Warlocks gone wrong!" "Elves in the kitchens?!" "The bank is run by goblins?!" "Dragonskin gloves? Do you farm the dragons or what?"

edited 23rd Nov '12 2:14:32 PM by TheHandle

One of Ron brothers was a dragon wangler so it seems safe to say yes to that last one.

edited 23rd Nov '12 4:26:45 PM by joeyjojo

I must thank you for this gem. I'm a couple chapters in, and this is gold when you know both universes. Kudos!

Backstory:

*Elven cleric of an earth god of law and good.
*Cursed by chaos magic with a stone growing in his throat that took his voice. (What drove him to law good earth god in the first place)
*Recently had a near death experience and as a consequence his chaos curse flared up again and turned him into a woman.
*Decided she would take a level in monk as a result. Wrote this diddy:

Jasumiet stood on her meditation stool again as she trance. Ever since that night in the ice wizard's domain, she has taken to this practice rather than sitting as most elves often do. She wanted her body straight, better to feel it out, an inventory of her form, all so strange and familiar. She neglected her usual ritual, to feel the earth, the core of stability lying underneath her feet, that elemental entity of law and order the dwarves had named Barthe.

She long felt guilty and adrift for abusing this ritual and this night knew she had to return to it. She had nearly lost her life and had lost her body by casting her fate to the wind. For Hahnayla's followers may thrive in that but it was not for Jasumiet. This night, she had to reconnect with earth in her trance, when her mind was most open.

The habit of some time asserted itself though, feeling her way through her body, along side the habit of decades to feel into earth. Performed at once, it briefly seemed so simple, shifting the flow of her being to align with the stone, to be as the stone. She did it without thinking, as if settling into a comfortable stance.

In the next moment, the dawning of enlightenment made her shiver through, the comfort of familiarity stilled that shaking with contentment, the affirmation of identity solidified greater then she had ever felt in nearly a hundred years. Her flesh was as the stone, and the stone in her throat was like flesh. She was her younger self then, she was her great self now, she was the stone of the earth, an extension of Barthe and she was herself.

'I am.' She affirmed.

'I am!'

'I AM!'

"I am," She said hoarsely. The sound of her voice, so long unheard that even as woman's it could be no less shocking. It wasn't shocking at all, although it broke her from her trance. It was so natural her throat stone vibrating like the voice box it replace like stone had always been a part of her body. She smiled and said more smoothly, more confidently, "I am."

She nodded her head at that and smashed her fists together, clapping like a pair of rocks. She felt back into her trance, this time feeling her body and the earth at once. This time she only felt one thing, as those things were one thing.

edited 24th Nov '12 10:49:41 PM by God_of_Awesome

Where's the best place to play D&D online?

You gather up players through online forums, and then grab mIRC, create a channel on some server or another-I tend towards irc.sorcery.net-and use maptools to host the map.

'course, the IRC part is optional. Some people like to use Skype for voice chat.

As for what's the best place to recruit, eh, that's a bit more complicated of an issue.

I don't want to recruit, I want to be a recruit.

I wanna be a bard and make up limericks.

Might I suggest Giant in the Playground's forums?

FACEPALM! OF COURSE! WHAT A FOOL I'VE BEEN!

I do hope that wasn't sarcasm, because GITP really is an awesome place to find games.

Also, fuck yeah bard! -Lute solo-

I usually underline sarcasm when I find it.

I've been to GITP, but I can't seem to understand how to actually find a game to join...

By the way, which edition is better for playing Bard?

edited 30th Nov '12 10:15:43 AM by TheHandle

Depends on what you are going for, really. I personally like 4e's take on the class, but it might not have what you are looking for.

4E definitely has the best Dashing Swordsman type bards.

Something that is not an underpowered, waste-of-space Spoony Bard. Something that will allow me to be a Large Ham and use The Power of Acting and The Power of Rock to achieve achievements.