The "Basic," "Test-Bed," "Restricted," or "Simple" Campaign.

[Aktariel]

Depending on your frame of mind...

I am going to tell you a story of our land, a great and terrible tale of possibilities that were and are and have never come to pass.

In the beginning was the First Age. This was the Age of Men, and Magic, for Sword and Sorcery reigned supreme, and the elves had not yet come from their far Faerie plane, nor had the dwarves crawled out of their mountain homes. This was a simpler Age, a time of contentment, when the foundations were laid for what came after - magic and swordplay were developed, and men learned how to kill, and to kill one another. This Age, like any age, had it's heroes: men from a time so distant only their names and scant few of their deeds remain. Mages such as Mordenkainen [tm], and Leomund [tm]. Swordmasters such as Tiger, and Al-Thuzad.

But this age passed, as all such ages do. The elves arrived, bringing their own magic, their own swordplay. The dwarves arose, bringing new and better weapons. Other races, from over hill and under stone, though still few, arrived as well. This was the Second Age, the Age of Expansion. Men learned to kill mortals other than themselves, and to take pleasure in it. The elves settled in, and began slaughtering each other over whose responsibility the transit to this horrid plane had been. Near the end of the Second Age, the Ways to the East, and the North, and the South opened, bringing ever more races, and ideas, and possibilities.

This led to the Third Age, The Golden Age as some named it. It was a time of infinite possibilities. Anyone could become anything: a poor farmers son could become the mightiest Archmage in all the land, or even just win that pretty girl down the road. Words like psionics and incarnum and even the occasional whisper of Truenaming and Pact-making could be heard. Crystal castles were raised. The Temple of Nine Swords arose, and ushered in a great era of swordplay. The Druidic Council of the Nine was formed, and an Empire or five built up and laid to rest.

But this Age came to an end, as all such Ages do. The elves, tired of this far flung land, sought once more the comfort of their faerie home. A great Gate was planned, to link this plane permanently to theirs. But a great disater befell them. The Gate, in stabilizing, drained far more magic from the land than the elves had planned, and in the taking, warped. When the great experiment was over, the Gate was no more. But for the seventy-seven days that the portal existed, a new race poured through. Elves, corrupted by the Gate’s dark energy, passed through to our world, and in so doing, were changed into fell beasts, perversions of their former selves. They became...

...Orcs.

In this great Cataclysm, the Ways were sundered, shutting each region off from the others as in Ages past. Psionic energy and Incarnum ceased to be available in the West, though perhaps they still remain in their respective lands. Magic itself, once the staple of the land, ceased to flow as freely as it once did. No longer do mighty mages call forth the wrath of the Heavens, or conjure the fiends of Hell. This is a much less complicated age, the Fourth Age, the Age of Simplicity as some name it. Once again a good sword and trusty companions are all that remain for a man to depend upon, and whatever prayers the gods may answer....

Go forth, young Adventurer, and seek your Fortune in these fair and beloved lands. Trust few, and ware the orcs...


My brother and I are creating a campaign [the above tidbit is part of the backstory to explain our major world revisions], and as it stands it has gone through several evolutions. It was started when I said, "Let's play a game without all these pesky sourcebooks" [We had over 50 at last count.]

So we made a list of books that were allowed:

Allowed Resources [for Players]:
The Players Handbook
The Players Handbook II
Complete Adventurer
Complete Arcane [but only for the warlock and associated effects]
Complete Scoundrel
Complete Warrior
AEG Mercenaries

... and of course, the DMG, DMG II, and MM for the DM.

Then, it sort of mutated. "Let's make it simpler," we said. So we took out casters. There are no Primary Casters in this setting. The strongest divine caster? The paladin. The strongest arcane caster? The warlock.

And then I discovered this site. [Via a warlock rewrite in Cielingcat's sig, actually...].

So now, in addition to everything else, this campaign is sort of a test bed. Because it's so [well, relatively] simple, it serves as a place to try out homebrew material we happen to like or want to try. Such as all four of the excellent books created on this site.

So we added a few things:

Races of War, the Tomes of Fiends and Necromancy, and the Dungeonomicon. For players and DM's alike.


The adventurers start at fifth level, with any class or race they like, from the above listed supplements. The main enemy is going to be what we dubbed "True Orcs" - more like ogres, with the following racial abilities:

- Medium Size
- Base Speed 30 ft
- +4 Str, +6 Con, -2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Cha
- Bonus Feats: Diehard and Endurance
- +4 racial bonus on saving throws against all diseases and poisons.
- immunity to all ingested poisons [and any diseases they might catch as a result of ingesting something]
- Regeneration 5 – fire, sonic, and electricity deal normal damage to orcs.
- Natural armor +3
- Darkvision 60 ft
- proficient with all simple and two martial weapons
- treats all orcish weapons as martial [IE the orcish double axe is a martial rather than exotic weapon for a true orc, and some are even proficient in its use.]
- Daylight Sensitivity: While in brightly lit surroundings (such as a daylight spell), an Orc suffers the dazzled condition and is thus at a -1 penalty to attack rolls and precision-based skill checks.
- Automatic Languages: Orc, Common
- Bonus Languages: Dwarvish, Elvish, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, Sylvan, Undercommon.

LA: +4 [though no one's going to be playing one.] CR: 3? 4?



The campaign is going to be mostly a mercenary story, with the adventurers [who have previous experience with this sort of thing, as evinced by the fact that they're level five] forming a hard-bitten mercenary cadre of orc fighters. Since magic is on the wane, and therefore magic items slightly...rare..., we've allowed feats to be purchased for gp [mimicing real life "training"].

The campaign is being designed to run without limit, though time constraints [we only have about a week or less of actual playtime, and we need to sleep...] may limit us to levels ten or fifteen.



I threw this out to get suggestions and feedback, and so that is now precisely what I ask you for.

What are your thoughts? Do you like the idea? Absolutely hate it? Are the orc LA and CR balanced?


What do you think?

[Judging__Eagle]

I like how it was man who was there to begin with.

Almost every setting has Dwarves or Elves 1st. Then humans show up.

Kudos for some originality. My own setting 'had' elves in it, but they're a non-race now.

The rest seems pretty good.

You could use pure casters as villans though. Everyone can accept 'some' degree of magic, if you're able to kill it.

Make evil necromancers actually worth hunting down.

[Cielingcat]

I believe he's using the Warlock I wrote, which can serve as an evil necromancer via the Bone sphere and Necromantic feats.

The Orc looks like a CR 1 creature if you throw it a level of Warrior, instead of CR 1/2. Basically, CR 1+level, meaning it should be ECL 1.

[Aktariel]

Nope. Sorry. No casters. Just doesn't work like that. We want to simplify, and having 300 [at least] pages of spells to choose from is not simple.

Yes, the revised warlock is on the list. We shall see if anyone plays it. At the planned campaig brutality level, we may go through characters rather expeditiously.

The enemies are orcs. True orcs, "plain" orcs, half orcs, and orcs with class levels. The enemies are orcs because orcs are like Lays. I bet you can't kill just one, and no matter how many you kill, you never feel bad and there's always more.

And it makes the alignment system really easy: Either you're an orc, or you're not.


Note: You think the orcs, as presented, are only CR 1 characters? Hmmm. Maybe we do need to throw them some more bones. They're supposed to be tough. Like, an ogre's slightly weaker younger brother. Able to murder a commoner without breaking much of a sweat, and a first or second level adventurer without much more of a sweat.

Maybe we'll just write up some nice and tasty Frenzied Berserker racial substitution levels...

The Write-Up:

Campaign Restrictions:

Allowed Resources [for Players]:
The Players Handbook
The Players Handbook II
Complete Adventurer
Complete Scoundrel
Complete Warrior
Tome of Battle
Arms and Equipment Guide [with limitations]
AEG Mercenaries


EDIT: <snip>



Races:
Any with no or +1 LA [LA buyoff in effect.]

[Aktariel]

Like the title says...

Written by and with thanks to my brother.



Notes on the Orcish people

Orcs are every bit as ugly and foul-tempered as wild boars, but only half as smart. -An old dwarf joke-

Notes on the appearance of Orcs

* Canine teeth

* Snout instead of nose. ( a bit pig like ; not exceedingly large )

* Height wise they range from 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet 8 inches.

* They have broad shoulders almost 2 1/2 feet to 3 feet across.

* They weigh from 240 to 400 pounds most of the weight is muscle and bone

* Their skulls are much thicker than humans measuring nearly half an Inch thick in some places.

* Their skin can be dark green, black, dark gray, gray-brown.

* Their blood is black or very dark blue.

* Their tongue is black.

* They have nothing white in their eyes as humans have -- it's dark brown or black instead.

* Their skin is thick as half an elephant’s hide on some areas of their body. They get bulges or a thicker skin on the place of skin where they were wounded. The bulges don't get away like human scar tissue does.

* They can stand much more pain as humans and can also fight on a broken or heavily injured hand or leg.

* They can touch their knees without bowing as humans do.

* Their jaws are strong and they can bite through bones like dogs.

* Their lips have the same color as their skin.

Orc Physiology

An Orc's constitution is legendary. They are very sturdy and capable of performing acts of strength and stamina that few others can achieve. One noted ability that most Orcs share is the ability to eat or drink nearly anything on the planet and derive sustenance from it without it adversely effecting them, unless the material is exceedingly poisonous. This even extends to such things as mild poison and spoiled food. No Orc has ever been known to starve to death due to their own actions.

Male orcs generally don't get very old. Sixty percent of all males die before their 25 birthday, in wars or internal fights for leadership. Only five percent of them get older than sixty years and these are mostly shamans.

Ninety percent of all female orcs get older than 150 years. They generally get fertile at eight or nine years old, and infertile by eighty-five. They feel pleasure by having sex between the above mentioned ages, this causes a lust for rape, on the same level as that found in male orcs. It is this that causes many older female Orcs to join raiding parties.

The older an orc female gets, the more sadistic they become. Their experience and wisdom grows as well, giving them greater prestige in the orc tribes. Although they are treated like slaves when they are younger, they get respect and better food when they are old, because orc leaders ask them for advice. The old female orcs also keep the old tradition, lore, and legends of the tribe. Nevertheless they are forced to work like slaves until they die. Though in every tribe there are a handfull, usually between 15 and 150, depending on the tribe size, that become full-fledged warriors.

When orc-women are six months pregnant and bear between two and four young. Like a bear an orc woman has four nipples. They have no breasts but something looking like sow-udders, when they are pregnant. The udders get smaller after the orc-woman has sucked her offspring for three or five months. Then the young can drink blood and later they can eat some meat and vegetables and later still they can eat everything [and more] that a human can eat.

Orc children grow and mature at a much faster rate then the other races. A child is nearly full grown, and essentially an adult, by their tenth year, about twice as fast as humans do. It is from this fact that many believe that Orcs have a short life span, but most Orcs die of other causes before they achieve old age, so one is quite sure what that span is. The average life span of an Orc is around 45 years. It is usually at this point that their reflexes begin to slow and they are killed in battle, or by some natural event they could not avoid. Few Orcs live into what could be called old age, but a few have been known to live well into their seventies.

The orc-women take care of their offspring and give them nutrition such as cooked roots, worms, insects and other nutrition that grown-up orcs disdain. This is because they have no weapons to hunt.

The male orc leaders give the female orcs little food and when they give them food, it's more of the kind they disdain, and it's nearly the same as the food they give to their slaves.

Orcs are not abusive with their offspring and spend time teaching them what they need to know. When they are old enough and have learnt enough to be good as servants, (that's around the age of four), they treat them as rough as they do full-grown orcs.

Despite the Orcs nature for combat, they are by nature very hardy and do not become ill very easily. This is due primarily to the nature of their living conditions, constantly being exposed to the filth that they live in makes them much stronger, for any who are weak would most certainly die.

Cultural Habits of the Orcs

The orcs live off of raids, plundering, hunting and the products of slaves. They make slaves of humans and other races and let them produce grain, beets fruits, bread and other necessary things, such as swords, alcohol, etc. They generally use the grain, beets, and fruits to feed pigs and more seldom cows (orcs prefer pork), their slaves, female orcs and their offspring. The sweet fruits, beets, and grain are also needed for producing alcohol.

It is important to note that the tribal shaman is often clean, though his body is covered in ritual scars and tattoos. He wears furs that are kept clean, as well as any number of trinkets as and amulets, talismans and the like and is, depending on the size of the tribe, surrounded by two to eight warriors.

Orcs and combat

Orcs live for combat. Their entire culture revolves around it; any new born who is sickly or weak is raised for food, or sacrificed upon birth. The only exception is those born of a shaman who are given to the shamans to care for. At age 5 all children begin what is called Ur A Geth (bloody rain) for then next two years all orcs from the ages of 5 to 7 are trained in the art of war and killing by the warriors of their clan. After this they are trained by the warriors of their tribe for two more years, and then by the warriors of their horde for two more years. At this point they are eleven. They then return to their tribe and must undergo the Zaakk Gud Vem (naming ritual). During the Naming Ritual, they cut their palms and pledge themselves to there clan, tribe and horde, then grasp a heated sword by the glowing blade with their palms to seal the cuts. The high shaman then gives them their battle name and they are sent out into the world to kill five non-orcs and return with the skulls as proof. They are then considered a full adult orc. From this point on the train most every day in the skills of war, and join any raiding party that is assembled.

While Orcs may use bows, crossbows and the like, and some even have a fairly high degree of skill with them, in many cases they are better in melee fighting or in an orc-to orc [or orc-to-man] combat. Orcs also enjoy this much more as it tends to be more violent and in their minds more honorable, as well as giving an orc a greater chance to loot his slain enemies.

Orcs will use just about anything that can be used as a weapon. They do however prefer real weapons to improvised ones and take fairly good care of them, keeping the blade sharp and rust free [by rubbing them with the fat of their slain foes.]

Generally their swords, axes and knives are made of iron. If there is not enough iron available, they use other metals or use bones or horns for making their spears. If all types of metal are scarce then they use maces, stone axes, stones, and if all else fails tree branches as clubs.

Orcs are not above the use of poison, or disease. They have been known to use catapults to launch dead cows, which have been stuffed with the organs of those who have died of disease, into a town or city they are attacking in hopes of infecting those inside with the disease.

The Orc tribe

The orcs are divided into hordes, of which only two remain: the rest have been destroyed and their members slain. Each hoard is then divided into tribes, 5-6 tribes per horde. The leader of the Hordes is known as the Warmaster, but he consults the council of elders made up of the three oldest shamans, the three oldest female orcs, and the three greatest warriors. Generally each tribe has one main chief, who is called the tribe leader, and three “sub-chiefs” called viceroys rule over a clan. This chief governs the other orcs with an iron fist. An orc clan usually has 250 to 5,000 male orcs. A tribe has 500-10,000 orcs and a horde anywhere from 25,000 and above. In the first days of the orcs it is said that the hordes were easily 5 million strong, and it is only through magic that they were held at bay. Any tribe that is smaller dies out or merges with another tribe. Any tribe who is larger generally splits. There are many times in which fierce fights break out between orcs for tribal leadership.

Around one third of an orc tribe are slaves and female orcs. Female orcs ensure that the slaves don't escape. As a reward the slaves must do much harder work than the female orcs. Generally dead slaves are eaten by the orcs. Some tribes breed human-orc offspring by raping captured human women. They then keep these women as theirs and rape them often to ensure a large half-orc population to use as soldiers for the tribe. The number of half-orc warriors it has is the best way to measure an orc tribe’s power.

The Orcish societal ladder is such:

Warmaster
Council of Elders
Shamans
All females above the age of 120
The oldest fit male warriors
The Za Goon (Bloody blades) Orc barbarian elite.
Female orcs over the age of 100
Warriors
Female orcs over the age of 80
Male orcs
Female orcs
Young
Slaves
Note that half orcs are allowed into any position, though they generally are warriors, or Za Goon.

There are two Orc hordes left: One resides in the swamps that border the deserts in the south of the land, they live on boats and in floating towns. The other horde resides in cave dwellings carved into the great mountains at the edge of the desert, the mountains that seal the way to the south. [The way to the south remains shut.] They were driven here right after the Cataclysm, by the armies of men and dwarves, hoping to stem the harm done by the Cataclysm.

Both hordes scratch out a meager living in their respective lands, so from time to time they get it into their head to mount a raid. They assemble their warriors, often numbering in the tens of thousands, and under the cover of darkness cross the desert into the swamps and from there up into the fertile planes that we civilized beings call home. From here the begin to pillage, plunder, rape, murder, and burn all they can find carting off great amounts of our wealth. They bring it home with them, and then for a few more years remain pacified in their land, until times get hard again and they once more attack us.

[MrWaeseL]

Make everyone a mandatory half-orc. That race was designed to be simple!

[Cielingcat]

1175272332[/unixtime]]Make everyone a mandatory half-orc. That race was designed to be simple!

Wrong kind of simple.

[Aktariel]

Are people not getting this? Let me make this perfectly clear.

No one is playing an orc. Any kind of orc. Orcs are the enemy. They are scum.

Our mission is to eradicate them.



No one plays orcs.

[MrWaeseL]

Are people not getting this? Let me make this perfectly clear.

No one is playing an orc. Any kind of orc. Orcs are the enemy. They are scum.

Our mission is to eradicate them.



No one plays orcs.

So...let me get this straight...Orcs are the only PC race available?

[Fwib]

Yay, Orcs!

[Catharz]

Huh, so the reason orcs have such great endurance is that they use a different globin (or other oxygen transporter).

Of course, most 'blue blood' is from copper compounds, which tend to be quite inferior to the iron ones. Maybe orc blood is just super-saturated, hence the extremely dark color and viscosity?

[User3]

1175262833[/unixtime]]I like how it was man who was there to begin with.

Almost every setting has Dwarves or Elves 1st. Then humans show up.

Kudos for some originality. My own setting 'had' elves in it, but they're a non-race now.

Are you serious? Those "ages" are the various editions of D&D.

[Judging__Eagle]

1175276268[/unixtime]]

1175262833[/unixtime]]I like how it was man who was there to begin with.

Almost every setting has Dwarves or Elves 1st. Then humans show up.

Kudos for some originality. My own setting 'had' elves in it, but they're a non-race now.

Are you serious? Those "ages" are the various editions of D&D.

Hah, that's hilarious if it's true.

But, you could play Elves or Dwarves as a Race-Class back in 1st Ed. last I remember or are you talking about chainmail and the original 3 pamphlets?


Anyway, Aktarial, I think you meant "Horde" not "Hoard".

The first means a lot of people, the second means to store stuff.

Also, I think you meant "hardy" not "hearty" when describing orcs resiliance to disease.

[RandomCasualty]

1175276268[/unixtime]]
Are you serious? Those "ages" are the various editions of D&D.

lol. Awesome. And so true.

[Aktariel]

1175288048[/unixtime]]


Anyway, Aktarial, I think you meant "Horde" not "Hoard".

The first means a lot of people, the second means to store stuff.

Also, I think you meant "hardy" not "hearty" when describing orcs resiliance to disease.

Grrr. My apologies. I simply posted what my brother had wrote, and didn't bother to go over it...

I'm off to shoot him. And possibly myself...


EDIT: I've edited up to "Orcs and Combat." If you find any mistakes in the sections I've corrected, let me know.


The bit about the Ages being the editions of DnD - yes, I suppose. It wasn't necessarily what I had in mind when I wrote it, but true enough.

Although I think there were orcs in 2nd Ed...

[CalibronXXX]

You described true orc skin as being as thick as an elephant's, so give them natural armor. I would also suggest slapping on powerful build and a powerful charge racial ability, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1d10 or 2d6.

[Aktariel]

Edited the Orc Flavor Text. It's not perfect, but it'll pass.

Added a +3 Natural Armor bonus [and a few other things, can't remember what.]

Nix on the charge bit. I just don't think it fits, somehow...

What is powerful build? That bit about being nominally one size bigger than you are for wielding weapons and combat maneuvers like charge and grapple and whatnot? If so, I think that'd work.


EDIT: I've been having some trouble figuring out where to draw the magic line.

What about magic items? Do they still exist? I would imagine so, but can they still be created? Up to what level? Who would create them, since all that's left are bards, paladins, fire mages, and warlocks?

Since the wish economy doesn't work, what do I do about treasure? Use gems? Make people carry around massive amounts of PP? let them spend it on feats, representing paying money for training?

Give out miserly treasure rewards?

It's supposed to be a mercenary campaign, so I'm kinda not seeing a whole lot of options - I'd give them things like land and peons to lord over and a title, but that a] slows play down and b] doesn't provide all that much of a tangible in-game benefit. [I'd rather have a shiny +3 greater bleeding vorpal katana than a shiny Really Impressive [ly Long] Title in my hand any day...

Maybe I need to do some playtesting, and accept the fact that I won't get it perfect the first time.

[CalibronXXX]

Yeah that's basically what powerful build does.

Also IMO it may not have been necessary to drop light blindness down to sensitivity since blindness only actually blinds you for the first round you're exposed to bright light and is thereafter treated as sensitivity. Similarly I don't see it as strictly necessary to increase regeneration from 2 to 5, the difference just doesn't seem all that important.

[Aktariel]

PC Races:

Aradan*
Ashemi*
Dralloks*
Dwarves
Elves
Gnomes
Half-Elves
Halflings
Humans
Lahryk*
Makall*

* From AEG Mercenaries



I hate to say this, and please don't come after me with pointy sticks, but after taking a long hard look at both the ideas we were having and the people we were going to be playing with, we're going back to straight-up WotC stuff. [Yes, yes, I know. PLease try and understand that we love the ideas presented here but the homebrew was piling up and some of the players need to be able to start off with a fairly...liimited set of options.]

So, with that in mind I offer this revised class list [of WotC only material]:

Barbarian
Bard
Crusader
Fighter
Hexblade
Knight
Monk
Ninja
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Samurai
Scout
Swashbuckler
Swordsage
Warblade
Warlock

That's all the nonmagic classes [except bard, hexblade, and warlock] from PHB, PHB II, Com War, Com Adv, Com Scoun, and Tome of Battle [which I don't think will break the game], and excluding the AEG Mercenaries base classes, whihc are kind of... crap. Did I miss any? [I don't have my books with me.... *scowls*].

I feel as though we could let players play Bards and Hexblades and Warlocks without breaking the game overmuch, and the "dark magic" feel of Hex and War fit right in... I am concerned about power levels, and not sure that Bard fits the flavor. Or are we going for straight up simple hack and slash ala "take no prisoners, kill the women and children, burn the village, and who needs magic anyway, look where it got us..." sort of thing? Perhaps on a case by case basis.

Did I miss any? Please let me know.



The Monster List [or, what exactly the DM is allowed to pull out of the hat]:


MM
Animated objects (relics of ages past)
Assassin Vine
Bugbear
Centaur
Dire Animals
Dwarves
Elves
Ghost
Giant (all from the MM)
Giant animals
Gnoll
Gnome
Goblin
Golem (one or two if the DM needs to use them for an adventure)
Grimlock
Haflings
Hobgoblin
Kobold
Kuo-Toa
Lizardfolk
Lycanthrope
Merfolk
Minotaur
Ogre
Orc
Roc
Sahuagin
Shield Guardian (one or two if the DM needs to use them for an adventure)
Swarms (minus hellwasp swarms)
Treant
Troglodytes
Troll
Worg

ALL Animals from MM Chapter 2
ALL Vermin from MM Chapter 3

MM2
Dire Animals
Legendary Animals
Razor Boar
Runic Guardian (one or two if the DM needs to use them for an adventure)
Yak Folk

TEMPLATES
Monster of Legend (no spells)
Titanic
War Beast

[Aktariel]

Magic is extremely limited. Warlocks, hexblades, and bards are the only classes with any access to magic at all.

And bards are too damn cheerful and don't have a dark magic feel. Plus I happen to dislike them intensely. So players will be... *ahem* strongly discouraged... from playing them. And just to fit with the flavor better, we may do a slight rewrite to give hexblades invocations rather than spells.

But what about magic items? Well, this is what we've come up with so far. Thoughts?


Items:

Everything with a magical bonus above 2 (+3 sword, +2 flaming sword . . . you get the idea, also any major magic items and all relics, and artifacts.) is out right prohibited.

Medium magical items are pending DM approval though it'll only be a few if at all. . . . minor magical items will also be revised.

A +1 sword would be a great find.

To keep the game fun and interesting there will be multiple levels of craftsmanship.

Normal: The stats given in the PHB
Masterwork: +1 to attack or damage but not both. +1 ac or -1 armor check penalty. (+500 GP)
Superior: +1 to both but the item weighs one and a half times normal.(+1000GP)
Near Magical: +1 to both and item weighs the same. (+2000GP)
Magical: weapons deal twice the normal dice of damage [IE, 1d10 becomes 2d10 and 2d6 becomes 4d6], and armor has -2 to the armor check penalty. (5 times the cost)

Note: Magical weapons should be rare. Each one has a story, a name and a history . . . maybe the former owner is looking for it and willing to kill to regain it. . .


Most Alchemy items work as normal but they are double the standard price, 3 times in some cases

[travellersside]

Why does a 'Superior' dagger weigh more than a regular bastard sword? Where does the extra weight come from unless the dagger is now larger than the bastard sword? If it's made of denser materials, does this impact on the hardness and hp?
I like the idea that a magical weapon does extra damage, but what kind of extra die? What happens to weapons that roll multiple dice in the first place, such as the greatsword? Does a greataxe do 2D12 while the greatsword does 3D6?

[User3]

1176555488[/unixtime]]Why does a 'Superior' dagger weigh more than a regular bastard sword? Where does the extra weight come from unless the dagger is now larger than the bastard sword? If it's made of denser materials, does this impact on the hardness and hp?

I'm going to fix this right now... changed to "weight doubles." Though I have no idea why... I may be back to change this completely later.

1176555488[/unixtime]]I like the idea that a magical weapon does extra damage, but what kind of extra die? What happens to weapons that roll multiple dice in the first place, such as the greatsword? Does a greataxe do 2D12 while the greatsword does 3D6?

A Medium greataxe would deal 2d12, yes. And a Medium greatsword would deal 3d6 damage. Thus why magical weapons are so highly prized. Broken? Should it just increase by one die size as though it were one category larger?

[Aktariel]

Urra. That was me in the above post, for the record.

And I changed it to "Weighs one and a half times normal"

Because armor that weighed twice as much would be fvcking heavy.

[Iaimeki]

Why won't everyone play a rogue or a warlock?

[travellersside]

1176562497[/unixtime]]
A Medium greataxe would deal 2d12, yes. And a Medium greatsword would deal 3d6 damage. Thus why magical weapons are so highly prized. Broken? Should it just increase by one die size as though it were one category larger?

1D12 has an average of 6.5, while 2D6 has an average of 7. They're close enough not to matter too much, although the greatsword is more reliable.

However, 2D12 averages to 13, while 3D6 is only 10.5...

In other words, it's not enough to grant 'an extra die of damage'. It might be worth considering either adding a fixed die, e.g. +1D8 damage to all weapons, or to double the base number of dice.
Increasing the size of the dice doesn't give much of an increase in damage - only a point or two, depending on the weapon. In other words, this would be less effective than any extra dice, including +1D4.