House Rules

Thanks to the wonder that is Google Docs, I've been able to quickly and painlessly put my rules up online. Huzzah.

They lack polish, and new much fine tuning and testing. Specifically, the races are not balanced. Some are rather weak, and some are rather strong. I do not like ECLs, so ideally I will be able to level out the races some.

I'm actually quite pleased with how some of the classes turned out (Samurai in particular). I'm fond of classes gaining unique abilities at levels 5, 10 and 15 respectively (as you'll see). I'm also fond of classes triggering abilities off of daily usage powers (like turning, smiting, stunning, etc). As such, healers, monks, hexblades, and a few other had some of their signature abilities changed to incorporate this. This allows for a player to use abilities more times per day, while still focussing on resource management, not unlike a spellcaster (for example, now a monk can dimension door more times per day, at the cost of stunning less).

I'm certainly happy to get some feedback on these rules. I haven't applied 95% of it yet, and won't until I'm certain I'm happy with them.

The Prodigal Blogger.

So, two days ago, I call Danny to see if we'll be playing D&D that night. He quickly interrupts me to tell me that he stumbled upon a blog where someone was recounting details of our campaign. He seemed bewildered, and almost scared, that some stranger knew who Haldir was, and asked me if it was my blog.

However, Danny being Danny, he paraphrased what he had read, then quoted it back to me. This confused me, making me think that he had read someone else's blog, so I immediately started denying that it was my blog. This caused Danny to go from almost scared to legit scared.

Good times.

Since my last update, I've gone from exclusively DMing to being a player character as well. I've also undertaken creating my own set of house rules, which hinge around "balancing" all base classes, and some prestige classes. I've also joined the Starcraft 2 beta, canceled my City of Heroes subscription, and created a Dungeons and Dragons Online account.

However, as an update to the campaign I'm DMing:

Danny was able to get his hands on a fate chip, allowing him to reroll his fortitude save. This time he made it, and he was able to prevent himself from crashing into the ground. However, in the ensuing battle, Merrick Praetor (NPC Cleric/Prestige Paladin) died, taking the dragon with him. The players returned to Basilicatta, where they were attacked by demonic retrievers searching for La'Travius (NPC Paladin). In the battle to drive them off, Haldir showed up with a young girl who allegedly broke him out of jail, and then proceeded to help them fight off the demons. Lucia attempted to sense the young girls aura, and was nearly overwhelmed with the power of her evil aura. This lead to Raphael Esposito (NPC Fighter/Ranger/Dread Commado) killing the young girl in cold blood, with a single gun shot at point blank. Later that same day, Lucia was approached by a man who offered to resurrect Merrick, if she would sign a magical contract forbidding her from ever setting foot in Merkail (ill-intentioned militaristic nation across the sea that has outlawed all arcane magic).

While this is occurring, Victor, who has been raised from the dead, has taken her leave of the party, only to have La'Travius follow her. She quickly finds that La'Travius managed to recover the Shield of Prator from the abyss, and now he is hounded by demons set on recovering it. So, they are now journeying north to Karvayne (secluded and walled off nation to the north, famous for being plagued with undead, and protected by necromatic knights) in search of a portal to the abyss, so they can take the fight directly to whichever demon prince is behind the attacks.

Unfortunately, that campaign is seemingly on hiatus, since the person who plays Lucia can't/won't decided whether or not she'll accept the offer to bring Merrick back (there may or may not have been a romance subplot there).

Well, at least now I have actual rules for massive damage!

Death and Dying (or just getting messed up in general):

• Rather than dying when a subject reaches -10 HP, a character dies when they reach a negative number equal to their constitution score, or ¼ their maximum HP, whichever is higher. For example, Lucia Di’Mato is a paladin with 220 HP. She is dying between -1 and -54 HP, and dies at -55.
• The feat Diehard still only allows someone to take actions until -10 HP.
• The heal DC to stabilize a dying character is 14+Hit Dice. For example, Lucia Di’Mato is a 14th level paladin. She is dying after being mauled by a paragon dire bear (Don’t laugh, I’ll do it). The DC to stabilize her is 28.
• Each character has a unique massive damage threshold. The massive damage threshold is (Con Score*3)+Hit Dice. Whenever they take enough damage from a single attack to meet or exceed this threshold, they must make a Fortitude save (DC15+1 for every 5 points of damage above the threshold), or be reduced to -1 HP instantly. For example, Lucia Di’Mato is a 14th level paladin with Con 20, so her massive damage threshold is 74. She takes 112 damage from an evil cavalier’s unstoppable charge. She now has to make a DC 22 Fortitude save or be dropped to -1.
• A character receives a bonus or a penalty to their massive damage threshold based on size. For every size larger than medium, the character receives a +10. For ever size smaller than medium, it’s a -10. For example, Gia the 15th level halfling barbarian rides Wiggles, the 22 HD wyvern into battle. Her massive damage threshold is 69 ([18*3]+15), while his is 118 ([32*3]+22+30)
• A character with the racial or class ability “Powerful Build” counts as one size larger than they actually are for calculating massive damage threshold.
• If a character takes enough subdual damage to exceed their massive damage threshold, the are at risk of being knocked unconscious for 1d4 minutes. The save is handled the same as if it were lethal damage.

I'll start posting larger swaths of my house rules (all of which are based on 3.5 D&D), or better yet, find someplace to plop down all 17 or so pages of it. I'd love input from those who have it. As a side note, I'm applying as few of these changes as possible right now, to avoid confusing or stressing my players (the above listed rules have been applied, since those situations come up time and time again).

(Points to anyone who gets the M:TG reference.)

Player Death, again

Haldir Halith, Warmage 12/Knight Phantom 1 died in battle with an ancient green dragon last night. He and his party had tracked the dragon to it's lair, after skirmishing with it in mid-air aboard their elemental galleon, The Nirvana. Upon reaching the lair, the party engaged and slew most of the dragons guardians, and skirmished with the beast again, scoring a crit with the Nirvana's heavy cannons. After pursuing it into it's lair, the group withdrew, knowing their spells and ammunition were sorely depleted. The group then maintained a position flying 1800 ft above the forest canopy, sleeping in shifts to prepare for battle the next day.

Six hours after the initial confrontation, the ancient green attacked the ship, having first warded himself with spells. This ambush culminated with Haldir being snatched off the deck of the ship, and flown off with, only to be thrown down to terra firma, first being subjected to a point blank breath weapon. Haldir was slain instantly as he failed his fort save against massive damage.

This is the second time that the players have withdrawn midway through a siege, only to camp out within sight of the area being sieged. Both times, this resulted in them being attacked while some or all of them slept. Both times, this resulted in player death.

Seriously guys, stop it.

Save vs. Awesome!

Another house rule has favored the players strongly.

Last session, we experienced our first meaningful character death: the bard entered melee with a foe that possessed a vorpal weapon. She was decapitated on the very next action of said enemy. A small outcry arose, and the party's warmage declares an attack on the bard's killer. The warmage lands a crit of his own (thanks to his choice of Improved Critical: Ranged Touch at lvl 12) on a Sudden Empowered Orb of Fire, and ends up doing 40d6+24 damage to the target. That's a damage range of 64-264 fire damage. The warmage then roles all 40d6 at once, being very dramatic, and totals a modest 153 damage. Factor in fire resistance, and the target took 148 damage, 2 hp shy of being dropped in one hit.

However, I run rules for death from massive damage. Each creature has a threshold based on size, and if you exceed that threshold in a single attack, you must make fortitude save of 10+damage over threshold. For example, a medium creature has a massive damage threshold of 50 damage, for a large creature it's 65, for huge it's 80, etc.

So, the target of this Empowered Orb of Fire was subject to a DC 108 fortitude save.

Good job Danny, you killed the bad guy.

0.0125%

As long as my incredibly simple, done with a calculator math is correct (funny thing, it was wrong the first time, but I fixed it), then that is the chance on any given attack that it results in an instant kill (That is, rolling three natural 20s back to back). It's a rule variant from the 3.0 Edition DMG, one that I've used in every game I've run.

I've actually, as a DM, rolled trip 20s three separate times, twice against player characters, once for an NPC attacking a Slaad. Both times it resulted in player death, and much endless bitching. Sorry guys, player death happens. No character is invincible, and sometimes as a DM it's important to remind the players that they are mortal.

But last night, my wife's Paladin 5/Pious Templar 4/Griffon Rider 2 rolled trip 20s on a smite against a mature adult dragon (CR 13), slaying it instantly. Now she's a Griffon Rider 3.

Invention Origin enhancements: The mandatory option.

You ever found a really sweet free to play game online? Maybe it was a simple 2D flash game, or a really badass 3D freeshare FPS, but either way, it was way more fun than it should have been.

So you play this really sweet, free-to-play game for a few weeks, at which point you find out, "Hey, there is a whole 'nother level here I've yet to touch!" But then you find out that level comes with a $15 price tag to it, or that you can buy in game money (which takes forever to earn), or that in order to access a certain realm, where all the good items are, you need to purchase a subscription?

Yeah, IOs are like that.

They don't cost money (real money, at least), but the principle is the same. You don't NEED them to play. Quite the contrary; most players have been dominating in City of Heroes/Villains for years without them. However, the gulf of power between a Hero without IOs and a Hero with them is staggering. Furthermore, you can see exactly which bonuses a player possesses by looking at their powers tab. If you click on a Scrapper and find out he has 3 Ultimate Recharge Bonuses, you know that this Scrapper is filthy rich, as he probably has billions of influence worth of IOs slotted into his powers (::cough::Karou Non' Drak::cough::). Using this, people are able to pick characters which are seemingly more powerful, or at least wealthy, based on how many IO bonuses they have (Within SGs, this practice is nearly unheard of. In PUGs, in can be, at times, rampant.).

Now, I have no problem with IOs. They add a new level of depth to the game, and allow a person to make their unique Hero (or Villain) even more unique. However, I think it's a tad misleading to say that IOs are completely optional. By that same logic, all gear is completely optional. You don't need it, it just helps.

And I think we can all disagree with that (barring Vow of Poverty).

Powergaming Part 3

I had originally intended to simply transcribe Jameson's character sheet, rather than talk about how cool I thought he was. Then I found out my wife recycled him. Sorry.

Anyways...

For various defensive and offensive reasons, I started taking levels of Monk with Jameson. My DM allowed me to take the feat "Ascetic Mage", despite my being a Wizard. Normally reserved for Sorcerers, this feat allows you to use Charisma towards AC, stacks your Monk and Sorcerer levels for purposes of the Monk's unarmored AC bonus, lets you convert spells into +to hit/+dmg equal to the spells level on all attacks for a single turn, and lets you freely multi-class between the two. In short, a damn good feat. By spending much time and resources in game, I was allowed to use it on my Wizard, using my Intelligence score for AC.

I also took "Arcane Strike", a feat the also lets you drop a spell for a +to hit/+dmg bonus. However, rather than +1 per spell level, it gave +1 to hit/+1d4 dmg per spell level, for every attack you make until the next turn. The best part was the feats weren't mutually exclusive, so I could drop two spells a turn, if I had a mind to (and I often did).

Then, after finding out that a pre-existing magical item could be permanently augmented, I took a pair of Ogre Gauntlets and turned them into a Frankenstein worthy monstrosity. After I was done with them, they went from simply granting +2 st, to the following: +4 str, +4 AC, +1 to hit, +2 dmg, Flaming Burst (+1d6 fire dmg, +1d10 extra on a crit), and they were acid proof (courtesy of the scales of a green dragon I slew while separated from my party). I would have added more, but alas, Tom made sure to keep my party VERY busy, not giving me the chance to tweek them.

I made the mistake of teaching Tom how to beat a powergamer. I explained to him that rather than trying to contest with the strength of their character, you simply need to force them into situations where, a.) Force of arms doesn't matter. b.) They must make choices they hate. c.) They are relatively powerless.

Simple enough, really. Some DMs get so caught up in literally trying to beat the players, they miss easy ways to take them down a notch.

Armed with this knowledge, Tom almost succeeded in shutting me down completely: He made me king.

I hate leading groups. I'm not bad at it, but I lack patience when it's most crucial, and if I'm in charge, it HAS to be my way. So, to avoid conflict, I let others lead. Of course, I still want to do things my way, so quite often, I end up separated from the group. Sometimes I'm right, sometime I'm wrong. In this case, going my own way turned into a nightmare.

After fending off a siege by the lich, and routing his army of undead, the city was in shambles. We stayed to try and rebuild, and offered the money and resources we had to the effort. However, the city's council felt that we were solely the blame for the attack, and it was our fault (I agreed). So, their answer to the destruction was to leave, and plead their case to the king that we were evil and left the city in ruins. I felt that being labeled as brigands by the king wouldn't help us beat the lich in the slightest, and that we needed to reach the king first, and take responsibility for what happened. That way, we could avoid his wrath, and solicit his help in fighting the lich.

After much agony and conflict (myself and the two NPCs I traveled with, Galin the half-dragon, and Lady Cross the Paladin, were ambushed by the green dragon I mentioned, which left one of them permanently scarred), I reach the king, and tell him everything that happened, leaving nothing out. He sympathizes with our plight, and absolves us of guilt for the fate of the town. To celebrate our victory in driving back the lich, he invites me to a banquet. At said banquet, an assassination takes place, which Galin, Lady Cross, and myself vainly try to stop (Draco-liches are tough customers, I'm afraid). With the king's dying breath, he gives me the royal signet ring, and leaves me his throne.

What. The. Fuck.

That makes absolutely no goddamn sense. I've known the king for all of one day, and he makes me his heir. So, I immediately try to seek out his closest blood relative. There are none. I seek out other royalty within the kingdom. None are present. So, I spend much time agonizing over how to not be the king anymore, and how to hide this from my party. Before I left, we had discussed petitioning the king to make John, our fighter, the mayor of the city, which we could then use as our base of operations against the lich. John had spent the entire game bitching about how my mage rendered him useless, so I supported this idea, to give him a stronger sense of purpose within the group. And Tom knew this. Bastard.

So, as I return to my party, having found a proper steward for the kingdom in my absence, I receive word that the nation to our south is poised to invade, after hearing the former king had passed. So now, I'm faced with letting this country fall, or trying to save it. As I mentioned earlier, I lost my soul to a demon. It was the price I paid for it saving my life. In addition to fighting the forces of the lich, I was fighting a personal war for my free will. In order to keep the trust of my party (which ended up with multiple Paladins), I continued to risk personal safety for the greater good, despite my Lawful Neutral alignment. So, for me, it was more than a simple invasion, it was a test to see how far I would go to prove that I wasn't secretly evil, and that I wasn't a puppet of the demon.

So, I travel south to parlay with the invading nations king (again, with Galin and Lady Cross, no real players). I end up being so frustrated with the whole situation, that once I enter the throne room, I launch a one man assault on the royal guard. I reasoned that I was a higher level than the other king, and his guard, and that I could intimidate him into withdrawing from my border. I was half right. I tore through his guard, with Galin and Lady Cross covering my flank, to find that the king was an epic level rouge, and that he could sneak attack me even if I wasn't flat footed (which isn't even really possible, I found out later, given the rouges build).

I was completely outplayed. Tom was able to manipulate the actions of my character, alienate me from the group by playing us against each other, and waited until the last minute to bait me into fighting a superior foe, so that my defeat would be complete. I have to admit, I never saw it coming, not like this.

However, I ended up having the last laugh. Do to the sheer overwhelming power of the foes we faced, we died a lot. A lot. But Tom allowed for frequent resurrections, even in the absence of divine healing. It annoyed me, but what broke the camel's back was when we got ambushed by a Hell Wurm. It flew over the city, hit us with it's breath weapon, then left. I was taken to -14 HP instantly, from full. When Tom found this out, he kinda blinked, then said I was only at -9 HP, courtesy of the demon that owned my soul. So, I told him that I was at -14 HP, and that I wasn't going allow myself a 7th extra life, for the sake of accommodating his unbalance encounters. I told him my death was final, and that player fatality needed to be taken more seriously, otherwise there was no point in playing.

Doing this seemed to rally the party, and they all agreed with me: our deaths would be final, and meaningful, not just hiccups in our campaign.

Which to me, is the heart of the issue with powergaming to begin with. When something ceases to be a challenge, what's the point? If all the enemies in the world only provide you with resistance equal to that of a cardboard cut-out, why play? Likewise, when every battle you fight offers crushing defeat, why play? A balance must be struck. Where the outcome isn't certain before conflict begins, where defeat and victory are both equally real options. That's what makes gaming fun. That way, if you lose, you still want to try again, cause you can do better. If you win, you still want to come back and do it again, if only to try and outdo yourself.

I think that Tom forgot that he was tasked with challenging us, not beating us. I think he treated DMing like he did playing a character: He was in it to win.

Powergaming Part 1

When it comes to pen & paper RPGs, I don't like powergaming.

In video games, victory and loss are usually binary. Winning is good, losing is bad. Winning lets you progress, losing makes you start over. In this environment, powergaming is fine, since you're only dealing with the computer, and it's feelings won't get hurt when you give every stat up and new sword to that same warrior. The game doesn't care if you skip content, use cheat-codes, neglect character story developement, etc.

Not true of pen & paper RPGs (for the purposes of this rant, we'll use D&D 3.5, but feel free to substitute whatever works for you). In D&D, you're playing with your friends, or at least, people who share a common interest. Age old lessons of sharing and taking turns come into play, as you work alongside these people to achieve party goals. Powergaming hurts players in this environment, because one player can quite literally overshadow the whole campaign, and ruin everyone elses fun. Powergamers can skew challenge level, party rewards, even negate the need for certain party members to exist. When the warrior has AC 27 at level 3, it makes it hard for the DM to present the party with a challenge that doesn't crush everyone else. Likewise, a party of varying levels can run into similar trouble.

However, in D&D, winning isn't always good, and losing isn't always bad. A player can be tricked into fighting or killing the wrong people, can take the wrong quest or not pay enough attention to the details, getting everyone into a heap of trouble. Having the ability to retreat from a battle, and quite literally live to fight another day, can create incredibly dramatic sequences within a campaign, and give players a chance to display great depth with their characters.

That being said, I'm one of the biggest offenders when it comes to powergaming in D&D.

To be continued...

Powergaming Part 2

Those who have played games like D&D know that good DMs/GMs are in short supply. Far too often, you get a heavy handed DM who tries to force the players to follow the plot. Or, he simply doesn't pay enough attention to gauge monster encounters to the party's true strength. I feel I don't fall into this category, but that I still suck as a DM, so I try to put that duty on someone else if I can.

Not too long ago, my wife and I lived with two roommates, John and Cassie. Both of these people played D&D at one point or another in their lives, and were eager to play again. Being the pack-rat that I am, I still had my books tucked away, so I pulled them out. Feeling that four people wasn't enough, well called in two more people, my friends Tom and Drew. We talked it out for a bit, and we all decided that we'd play a standard fantasy campaign, and that Tom would DM.


After my wife gave me a metric fuckton of shit about wanting to play yet another Fighter, I opted to play the party Wizard. My wife was our Rouge, John was the Fighter, Drew played a "Priest" (Priest is to Cleric as Sorcerer is to Wizard). Cassie didn't come into the campaign until later. My wife proceeded to give me even more shit for the name I chose for my wizard:

Jameson Flamesmith

It's a stupid name, I know. However, most everyone in a fantasy scenario has a retarded name (Elminster, Gandalf, Drizzt, etc), and I felt accomplished actually having a first and last name, unlike most of the party. And it fit, being as I focused on fire magic, so I had no qualms with it.

So, I mentioned how some DMs can be very heavy handed with how they run a campaign.

Tom is a VERY heavy handed DM.

By the end of the first dungeon, our fighter had be gender-swapped via polymorph (and he lost all his gear), I had lost my soul to this worlds version of Satan, and we had horrible offended a lich, by stealing it's phylactery, without realizing that's what it was. Said phylactery was bargained away by us so that we didn't have to fight an NPC rouge thrice our level.

The lich proceeded to hound us across the continent, killing anything around us indiscriminately. We ended up evacuating two separate villages, and leading the refugees to a third city, where we had to fight off a siege against thousands of summoned undead. At this point Cassie had joined us, along with her boyfriend Mike (Cassie was another wizard, while Mike played a Paladin).


It continues in the same manner, fighting elder dragons at level 8, contesting greater demons, yadda yadda yadda. Constantly getting beaten, chased, sieged, betrayed; I decided I'd had enough.

My wizard multiclassed.

To be continued...