The Gaming Den

Well, the removal of XP per encounter is something that I had to do since my gaming group meets in random combinations of random numbers of people.

So I simply told them that once there have been 13 encounters per player in that campaign setting (as a group, so 10 ppl = 130 encounters), everyone's character and/or alternate characters all go up a level.

I pretty much added a +1 to the "encounters fought" list everytime at least one PC fights an encounter of their CR; so if 4 lvl 6 PCs with Wish economy access beat up a CR 10 monster, bang everyonejust earned +4 encounters. Well, that's 'usually' how it worked. They also earned XP for social encounters and trap by-passing/surviving.

Now of course there were times, when I would add on more 'encounters' for more challenging encounters, but it worked out pretty well. As a group, they knew that they were getting somewhere even if they couldn't always show up to a session b/c of work or schedule conflicts.

Now, that game has since fallen through in the end b/c of a number of reasons and now with school coming up will be so indefinately.

I decided that 'enough' time had passed and simply told everyone to advance to lvl 7 and the next time I run this campaign the PCs will have advanced.



On going gold-less; I found that just using theWish economy to give PCs wealth (they found a way to do it by not using the Candle of Invocation, but I'm not going to let them use the same trick again) and then trick out enemies with gear below the 15,000 gp threshold made it so that no one cared what the loot was for the most part.

I had players who went from being uber concerned about finding a pair of +2 str gloves, to not caring that all of the goons that she had killed had +3 sheilds and armour. She also didn't care that the large black dragon that was killed had a pile of gold big enough to sleep on.

Of course, the group was excited by any random item over 15,000 gp that they found, a magic staff, a manual of iron golem creation, a couple of +3 weapons, just enough for them to feel like they got soemthing new.

Since everyone already had a massive list of gear that they could use and that was level appropriate, they were indifferent to what was found normally, sicne they already had gear that would let them do their jobs.

SunTzuWarmaster at [unixtime wrote:1188559060[/unixtime]]Actually, having a griffin as a Lion4/Eagle2 is an awesome idea. It just will be difficult to have it scale past level 6 or so when animals stop being a real threat.

I guess you'd have to start throwing on extra-awesome stuff like the Tome Fighter has. It's not what most people think of as appropriate, but it turns out we just don't see animals of that high a level around very often.

So maybe you look at Aslan as an example of a high-level lion, with auto-resurrection and dispelling breath. I think the old Ars Magica bestiaries had good material for mythic versions of normal animals.

I also kind of approve of the 'Kaiju' PrC/Template, though as the Giant Scorpion proves, you need more than bigness to be suited for higher-level encounters.

SunTzuWarmaster wrote:But seriously, if you had a couple 4-level classes for various animals, it could be a "pick your own monster" kind of build. It would be inherently awesome to fight the Turtle1/Lion2/Planar Beast 3, which, of course, is an animal with a moderate NA (shell), sharp claws (but not teeth), Pounce, Rake, Resistance to Fire/Acid/Electricity/Cold 10, SR 6?, and a breath weapon.

Yeah, see this is where a Wyvern becomes a Dinosaur 2/Poisonous Vermin 2/Bat 2 and I'm not comfortable thinking that way. I'm also kind of unnerved by the whole 'Horses can take the Unicorn PrC after 5th level, but anyone can qualify after 6th or 7th' idea.

Do you think the classes might have been more generic, just with lists of abilities that could be chosen from? Similar to True Fiend, Conduit and Fiendish Brute?

You know, you could have "Animals that bite", "Animals with annoying movement forms", "Aberrations that are magical or 'psionic'", "Aberrations that are big and club people", "Dinosaurs", "Big Dragons", "Not quite so big Dragons", "Giants", "Elementals", "Magical Fey", "Really fucking small Fey", "Fey that stab you in the face", "Trees" etc?

Rather than everything from aboleth to zebra.
...
Although a Zebraleth would be kind of cool. And by cool I mean moronic. The two terms do tend to overlap...

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1188573869[/unixtime]]Although a Zebraleth would be kind of cool. And by cool I mean moronic. The two terms do tend to overlap...

There is a fine line between stupid and awesome.

What kind of limitations are you, Frank, intending in regard to what a player can have in items at each level? While the eight-item rule limits how much stuff a player can have running, there's the fact some items have multiple effects running at once, which is technically one way to get around that limitation.

I'm imagining a magical pair of underwear that improves saving throws, Constitution, DR, and casts cloudkill or fog cloud (depending on how awesome you are) 3/day all at the same time; effectively giving you the benefit of four items for the price of one. What would be an appropriate level to let a player have such an item? The standard wealth-by-level guidelines aren't really effective, so there must be some other kind of rubric to go off of for gear.

Chances are, if an item exists with multible boosts, only one at a time can be active. So your saves OR your Con OR your DR could be boosted, OR you could unleash a cloud from your magical underwear.

And if I never see underwear that casts those spells, the quality of my life will be a little bit better for it.

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1188573869[/unixtime]]Do you think the classes might have been more generic, just with lists of abilities that could be chosen from? Similar to True Fiend, Conduit and Fiendish Brute?

You know, you could have "Animals that bite", "Animals with annoying movement forms", "Aberrations that are magical or 'psionic'", "Aberrations that are big and club people", "Dinosaurs", "Big Dragons", "Not quite so big Dragons", "Giants", "Elementals", "Magical Fey", "Really fucking small Fey", "Fey that stab you in the face", "Trees" etc?

Rather than everything from aboleth to zebra.
...
Although a Zebraleth would be kind of cool. And by cool I mean moronic. The two terms do tend to overlap...

I know that someone once made 20 level classes for each creature type... they just had lists of abilities allowing one to pick and choose... I gotta find it then I can provide a link...


found it: http://www.kobolds-keep.net/Progressions.pdf

hmm... looking at it again, I forgot there was only a handful of them... I figure they may need to be redone for Tome anyway, so it at least gives us suggestions for the other types...

*Yoink* *will look at later*

pft, I was just looking for a decent way to do home-brew monsters. It's easy to create one that only appears once by being touchy-feely with it. Let's see, total armor should be 25, but it has lots of armor so touch should be around 12 which makes for a +2 dex mod and +2 init, blah blah blah. The problem is making that monster get any better.

For example, a "weinine" which is an animated coal-monster my previous DM made (stole?) that can cast spells within special formations (the clear need for fire-spells and/or battlefield control). If you could give said monster a level in Fiendish Brute, give the pack of them the Extra Arms feat, it would be awesome. However, with the current set-up it is difficult to give level-appropriate abilities. A quick 4-level class could show the mutation from a monster into the turtle-monster that the mage is attempting to create. You could encounter several juveniles and then a small attack squad of the prototype elite Turtle-Dragon forces. It's just fun.

there needs to be a mutant class so we can have teenaged mutant3/ninja4/turtle3s....

shirak at [unixtime wrote:1188575349[/unixtime]]

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1188573869[/unixtime]]Although a Zebraleth would be kind of cool. And by cool I mean moronic. The two terms do tend to overlap...

There is a fine line between stupid and awesome.

Indeed. Yet a new psychic power that slaps the target with the full force of the alphabet wouldn't be too ba-
...Well OK I agree. That is dumb. Still..

PDF? Oi! *Yoink!*

This is relevent to my interests. Devil1/fey2/babirussa1 and Dragon2/angel1/elf1 approve.

I don't recognize some of the spells from the Elementalist List, such as Summon Elemental Monolith. Where is this from? Was it supposed to come out in the Tome of Tiamat? If so, can I get a quick write-up?

Game On,
fbmf

Summon Elemental Monolith appears in Complete Arcane and probably the Spell Compendium. It's a 9th level summoning spell that requires concentration and gets you a Gargantuan CR17 Elemental.

Personally I think it's silly that they didn't juggle the stats around a little and make them Colossal; these things are supposed to be bigger than life.

Frank, you and Keith should include options for SRD spells if splat books are unavailible....

For instance, rather than just listing some obscure Summon spell, also put "or Elemental Swarm".

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1188979578[/unixtime]]Frank, you and Keith should include options for SRD spells if splat books are unavailible....

For instance, rather than just listing some obscure Summon spell, also put "or Elemental Swarm".

it'd also be nice if you would note what book a spell or other such thing is from...

Something tells me that isn't going to happen any time soon...

*shrug* Oh well. I trust most of us here are of moderate-to-high intelligence and can infer a spell's function from the spell name, and duplicate or approximate it's effect with SRD. I hope.

I, OTOH, hope people can use this. Suggestion: save everything, as it may get wiped at any time.

Thanks Bigode, that should help a lot.

Thats just sad. They seriously came up with 782 prestige classes? Oh, they didn't there are a 100 or so duplicates or epic versions. Still... thats a giant steaming pile of crap.

One idea for scrolls: Who says they have to burn up when used? Why not make them a magic item that either lets you cast the spell X/encounter, X/day, at will, whatever, maybe even giving it full-round activation or whatever as they have to read it out?

Or perhaps make them items that effectively add the spell to your spells known while you have them? Thus Wizards and Archivists go "Wow, I saved a few hundred bucks by not having to copy it into my book.", Sorcerer types go "Score! I have another spell I have access to!" and Clerics do the same thing as Sorcerers, because we tell them they don't have magical access to every frigging supplement-spell.

No intelligent idea for potions.

Someone else posted, in the More Wish Economy thread, that potions could be handled by making the bottles the magic items rather than the contents. I'd further extrapolate this idea by saying you could carry some appropriate ingredients and put those and water into the bottle and X times a day get a magical potion; or possibly give the bottles a recharge time like 1/hour, 1/6 hours, or whatever.

My earlier point wasn't that having items in the physical shape of potions and scrolls was stupid; it was that one shot items as anything other than plot devices or artifacts(read plot devices) cannot be.

Oh, I understood that, I just remember Frank saying "We have no idea what to do with potions and scrolls." so I thought I'd mention that as an idea.

And magic bottles would be cool. You could then fill them with melted snow from Mount Celestia, water from the hotspring a Linnorm resides under, orange juice or moose piss and still get their effect.

At any rate, I do agree that one-shots don't seem to actually be able to work. At all.

well, for the recharge time, why not look at the rules in Unearthed Arcana about the same thing for spells?

You could re-do potions and scrolls to work the way they do in the living Eberron setting.

They cost 5x as much and work 1/day(adventure).

Doesn't Ebberon have 1/day scrolls called schema or some such?

And how do they justify the one a day potion thing? Magic bottles, or something I would probably be happier not knowing?