I will continue to run the current messageboard game until Chapter 3 reaches its end, or its players lose interest. Destindeterre, and the events that occur within its bounds, will not affect the revised story or give out any information relevant to the new storyline.
Those who wish to participate may write up characters. I plan to begin the game with 4-5 people, and will run with between 3 and 6, depending on how things go. Three of my current players, Taylen, Reyolen, and Pvednes, have highest priority for the new game, and thus will have reserved positions unless they decline to join. Other current and former players from my game, and members of Katrinity's D&D game, may apply for the remaining positions. I will consider other applications only after the people listed here have had a chance to apply or decline.
Applications should be submitted via private messages, or via email ( yabathewhat@lycos.com ). Anyone who wishes to discuss details with me may do so in IRC, over AIM, or in private messages. If anyone has general questions, and would prefer to discuss them in a public venue, they may ask here.
Getting the remaining pieces together will take roughly a month, if everything goes as expected. I hope to have character sheets and histories by then from anyone who is interested.
What?
So the campaign's being held in IRC now, instead of a messageboard. Good... D&D tends to work better in IRC than on a board anyway, as IRC is simply faster.
However, then you put in a slew of house rules that don't seem to make a lot of sense, and would generally slow the game down, which I'm sure is opposite to the intended overall effect.
New races, stat average, and most skills appear to be alright, really. Not much problem here. Most of this is the stuff from your last campaign (Or would it still be your current one?), and seeing as how this one's set in the same world, well, it kinda fits.
But then, we get to the classes. Melees are okay, but that's because they've gone unchanged. These spellcaster changes, well...
Mana points. Is this D&D, or some Final Fantasy ripoff? Hell, even FF 1 and 3 had a variation on D&D's spell slot system. Mana points are one thing that I can see slowing the game down: Calculating how much mana your character has, then calculating bonus mana and adding that, and then finally choosing spells and assigning spells to that mana and trying to make sure you can get everything you need into one number. What's so wrong with the spell slot system? I've found it's plenty fast. You memorize a bunch of spells, and then you use them. Unless you're a Sorceror, in which case you just use them. Also, mana points gives the campaign a lot more of a hack'n'slash kind of feel, much like BG:DA2. If I want to play a video game, I'll play a videogame.
Feed healing is another "just friggin' no" situation. Why even give the cleric any spells at all then, save for curative ones? Instead of buffing the Fighter for combat, why not just Feed Healing him during it? Once again, another hack'n'slash feel thing, as it basically turns Clerics from an adventuring priest with battle skills into a walking band-aid. If I want to see walking band-aid Clerics, I'll play Everquest.
Clerics as Scholars is kinda neat, but I think that should really be more of a player's option, rather than an outright house rule. I've seen some very intelligent, scholarly Cleric characters, and I've seen others that simply relied on their faith. Why make a roleplay campaign, and then force players to take a particular path? That just adds to the hack'n'slash feel. In addition to trying to explain everything with a point value, the player just plays the game, not really choosing what happens during it. Like BG:DA2. Fun, but very linear.
The spell learning rules... Actually, those are good. I played in another campaign with something similar (albeit using the spell slot system) as a Fighter/Mage, and thought it was a good system. Tough, but it makes a lot of sense. Also good is the part about magic items having personality... Does this mean that if a warrior finds a sword powerful enough, he can converse with it? I personally think it would be fun to ask a sword's opinion on things. :D
On languages, well, I'd personally have to disagree there, although it's not as huge a deal as Mana Points. It's true that not everyone could read and write in the 15th century. Hell, most people couldn't. Some people still can't today. But the thing is, that's all just dealing with the common folk. Adventurers are above average, better than Joe Commoner, larger than life. I'd think that if a warrior can cut through legions of orcs with his mighty broadsword, he should at least be smart/wise enough to read and write. After all, a warrior doesn't become skilled and strong if he stupidly gets himself killed earlier in life. I'd know. If he's smart enough to survive, he should be smart enough to read and write. The exception here is the Barbarian, who's illiterate for obvious reasons.
Skills are good, but they were carried over from the other one, so... Yeah.
Feats and spells. I'm lumping these together because I can ask the same question for both: 3.0 AND 3.5 ed? Why? This adds more hack'n'slash feel, as players will simply choose what's most advantageous to them from either edition. For example, they may have some harder-hitting 3.5e evocation spells, coupled with 3.0e Fly. That would just make casters way too powerful. As well, the dual-weilding change in 3.5e means no more Ambidex feat, unless I'm terribly mistaken. This bumps up the power of warriors a bit, as that's one less feat they need to take in order to dual-weild effectively. Thing is, though, dual-weilding is supposed to be hard, and take much training and a lot of skill. This was reflected in the Ambidex feat, and its DEX requirement of 15+. Not only that, but players are encouraged to spend more time min-maxing their feats, spells, and stats, rather than jus choosing anything and going back to playing. This slows the game down more. Also, everyone gets a power boost, unless I'm terribly mistaken (I admit my experience with 3.5e is limited), but have you made the monsters more powerful to compensate?
Yeah, it could be possible to make these changes work really well. But the thing is, some things you changed were core parts of the D&D system, and if you really want them to work well, you'll need to remake the entire system. By that point, you may as well just make your own, homebrew game system and be done with it. Which reminds me, I need to get to work on my Devil May Cry-based-game rules...
but since this is the right place to ask, I'll address it one point at a time.Yes, I'm moving to IRC because it's faster. This means I have to be able to keep up, so it's an experiment for me, which I hope will go well. However, don't get too excited, chat isn't as fast as you think it is. It also lets me (and everyone else) keep lots of notes without having to constantly write things down. And I guarantee you, nothing I've put in will make three game days take two years. Chat just can't go that slow, even if I'd written 500 pages in custom rules. It's impossible.
The world isn't *quite* the same. One is basically derived from the other, though I've changed quite a bit of it. That's why I can start over with the same people using new characters, and still expect them to be surprised.
Melee isn't unchanged. You covered that. I've basically hybridized between 3.0, 3.5, and custom concepts, on every point.
Have you ever looked at a high-level spellcaster, and wondered, "Why the hell can't he cast more 1st-level spells?" I have. WTF? You can change the fate of the world with a single spell, but throw out a few magic missiles and you're done for the day? No. Mana fixes that. It adds flexibility to the sorcerer and bard, where flexibility is the entire fricking point. And how much more time does it really take to add numbers? Yeah, if you're playing a high-end cleric, it might double the time spent picking new spells at the start of the day, which might be significant if you change every spell in your arsenal. Use a calculator. Or better yet, have a spreadsheet out. Put the spell name in one column, mana cost in another, times cast/memorized in a third, tally the totals with formulae. There you go. Enjoy your video game.
Read the class descriptions carefully. Cleric, paladin, and monk can already feed healing. It's just that each one has it described a different way, and none of them use mana. Clerics drop spells. Paladins use lay-on-hands. Monks get wholeness of body. I just made them all work the same. It pumps up the paladin a touch at higher levels, which I'd normally object to, but it's for a good cause.
Players still have the option to not play clerics. I changed clerics as a story point. I created the story point because I'm sick and tired of hearing, "Clerics aren't priests!" They are priests. Why the hell would priests know how to fight? They spend most of their time in the temple, and if every cleric can fight, then there's really no sense in even having paladins. If you wanna learn to fight as a priest, then take time out of your busy schedule of praying and blessing people to train as a fighter... if your deity condones that sort of thing.
Spell learning is basically a hybrid between sorcerers and wizards, with a little homebrew logic thrown in. Intelligent magic items are one of my personal ideas, which goes to justify a lot of the things people go "WTF?" about in normal campaigns. Like why an enemy would have a magic ring sitting in a chest instead of wearing it and using it against the PCs. It also means some interesting surprises when an item disagrees with what it's asked to do, or with who's asking. And yes, when magic items get powerful enough, they end up on the Intelligent Items table in the DMG. But that's a looooooong way off.
Intelligence as a fighter has nothing to do with reading a book. It doesn't even have much to do with reading a sign at crossroads. Intelligence does not automatically make a person able to read. Most people in the middle ages couldn't read. They knew what currency looked like, presuming they had some, and bartered or traded to earn a living. That guy who sold fish in the market generally couldn't read. Why would someone who spends his whole life learning to survive in the wild, with no books, or someone who trained for years to fight with every imaginable weapon, or spent all his time climbing mountains or breaking into houses, learn to read? Private tutors are expensive, and most schools are run by churches. That's also why scribes existed. Couldn't read or write? Fine, that's common enough, hire someone to do it for you.
Skills are skills. A few names changed between the editions, and a few nice skills disappeared in the transition from 3.0E to 3.5E, so I kept the old ones. Nothing big there. I also made Intuit Direction more important, because the original description made it kinda worthless in a lot of situations. I've been doing that since day one.
Why both books for feats & spells? Because not everyone has a 3.0 book and not everyone has a 3.5 book. I happen to have both. I hear a lot of, "The spells in this book are broken," for both editions. Reading through both books, spell by spell, spell list by spell list, would be a waste of my time. I don't have a lot of spare time, and what I do have is getting sucked up by this changeover already. Does it let people do more? Yeah, probably. Odds are they'll be glad for it too, because I give storyline a higher priority than challenge rating. And if they don't have both books, or don't want to bother with a spell-by-spell comparison, all the better.
As for the specific point on dual wielding, I'm quite frankly sick of the one-level-ranger cliche on fighters. Though a lot of people have been unhappy with various features of 3.5E, there's pretty close to a concensus that the drizzt stereotype shouldn't exist. Yes, dual wielding takes a lot of learning. So does mastering a weapon. So does learning to fight with a whip. So does learning to snap a weapon out as fast as blinking an eye. So does learning to spin like a helecopter with an axe (and not falling on your ass). So does crafting magic items (especially in this setting, hoo boyo). So does just about everything you can take a feat for. That's why you don't get four feats per level. I still to this date do not understand why they made a 3.0E feat to give 2 ranks in one skill.
Generally:
Half the stuff you say will slow the game down won't take place during the sessions. Choosing spells? You have two weeks between sessions to choose or rearrange spells, unless you're a sorcerer or bard, in which case you have to choose spells when you level, or shortly thereafter, one at a time. Even if you do change spells mid-session, dropping a 3rd-level spell for a 3rd-level spell takes no more time with mana than it did on spells/day. Picking feats? That's done before someone even submits a character, and thereafter only when they level. Anyone picking spells or feats when they should be roleplaying will have to wait longer before they level again.
Yes, I've customized quite a bit. I've had two years to think of, develop, and balance my ideas. Mana got a lot of attention, because I wanted to make sure it was mathematically balanced before even introducing it. I had several ideas that I didn't bring into this game, because I don't feel confident about their stability.
Why are you, Ruvyen, the one asking these questions? I expected them to get asked, along with several others. But why you, and why are you complaining about loss of roleplay? When I ran a purely roleplay game, you forgot you were even playing and disappeared for weeks at a time, then got yourself killed because you tried to run, yell, and wave, with several broken ribs and a shattered armbone (0hp), wearing full gear.
At the end, for me, it's just a mater of Roleplay, And Doc is one of the rare DM where he can actuly consider your ideas.
I'm very happy that Doc is starting a new game with IRC, because forums for me, was dealy slow and painfull.
But like I sayed, I trust Doc to give use #1 intertamaint, plus, the guy do this for us out of his free time, so thats extra cool!
This was my 2 cents.
quote:
`Doc had this to say about Punky Brewster:
Why are you, Ruvyen, the one asking these questions? I expected them to get asked, along with several others. But why you, and why are you complaining about loss of roleplay? When I ran a purely roleplay game, you forgot you were even playing and disappeared for weeks at a time, then got yourself killed because you tried to run, yell, and wave, with several broken ribs and a shattered armbone (0hp), wearing full gear.
I'm asking because, quite frankly, even if I'm not playing, the concepts you've introduced are fairly interesting, if more than a little... weird. I'm complaining about the loss of RP because, with the mana points, well, that's just one more thing expressed with a number. As much as I like the D&D game, I feel that too much is expressed with numbers alrerady, but that's probably just me. I've been in a game or two that degraded from a great story into fun with number-crunching.
Oh, and about the spell level deal, there's also the question of why a high-level mage would even be casting Magic Missile unless it was a last resort, or the DM threw goblins/orcs at him. Why not use Flame Arrow, or Melf's Acid Arrow, higher-level spells? If a mage uses up all of his 0-level spell slots (I think Magic Missle is lv 0, isn't it?), then he still has lots more spells tucked away, and they're far more powerful than just Magic Missile. It also adds a bit of strategy to playing Wizards... Instead of casting spell X over and over and over, the system encourages using different spells and combinations of spells, along with teamwork, to take the enemies down. Flame Arrow deals damage, but in a multiplayer game, I'd rather use Hold Person, Paralysis, utilitarian spells. That way, the enemies are defenseless while my partners beat the tar out of them. The spell slot system encourages strategizing, instead of just blasting your enemy with umpteen Magic Missiles. For me, that's what made playing a Spellsword so fun... I could annihilate the enemy with a spell, or I could buff myself, hold him there, and engage him in hand-to-hand. Both strategies had their uses.
As for disappearing for weeks at a time, I don't believe I actually apologized for that, so... I'm really sorry about it. I was just really, really busy trying to keep my grades up, while trying to keep some shred of a social life, while of course searching for a job. (Reminds me, I need to get back on that.) I generally didn't have massive hoards of time... Hell, some days I didn't have any free time. I was so busy with real life, I hardly had any time to think about Khazmon's actions, so when I finally did end up posting something just to let everyone know I still existed, it was a pile and a half of crap. As for running in full gear with 0hp, the aforementioned lack of free time also made me somewhat forgetful. To be perfectly honest, though, I probably would've had to leave the campaign soon anyway, thus making yet another NPC character. As for why I didn't just ask for an NPC for a while, until I got things sorted out? Pride, I guess.
quote:
When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Taylen said:
You would use magic missle (level 1 spell) because it always hits (unless you utterly cannot see your target), unlike fire (flame arrow) or acid (melf's acid arrow) most things will not be immune to the damage, can hit some things that shrug off any other magic spell, and does decent enough damage (up to 5d4+1 at level 9) to be useful.
Flame arrow and Melf's Acid Arrow can probably hit opponents most of the time, and at the level you'd be using them, do more damage than Magic Missile. Not to mention, I believe Acid Arrow continues to deal 1 acid damage per round for a while, too, which can also help against enemy spellcasters. Hit 'em with one o' those babies, and it's Concentration checks every round, no?
Then again, like I've said, my best wizardly experience was with my Spellsword, and he was part Fighter. I generally got more use out of utilitarian spells. So, instead of killing the enemy caster with two or three Magic Missile spells, I instead hit them with one acid arrow and close to sword range to finish them off. Took longer rounds-wise, and put me in a bit of danger, but it kept my group safe from the mage's spellcasting, too.
