D Ampersand D

[Joviwan]

I liked the idea of an all purpose thread for talking Dungeons and Dragons in just about every form. The 'topic' is DnD, so as long as it's related, it's pretty hard to get off-topic.

I'll start with some of my most recent giddyness involving a PC. In my online RP group, I have an ECL 15 half-vampire succubus whom I love and adore. With her +6 cloak, her charisma is 42.

So she has 1 class level. I decided, after thinking long and hard, that Marshal was simply too awesome to pass up... She took Leadership already, afterall. She's basically serving as her fiance's (a tentacled grapple-monkey Incubus) general. marshal is great fun. SHe pretty much breaks Minor Auras. She took Motivate Dexterity as her minor aura.. which means she and all allies within a 60' radius get her +16 charisma bonus to initiative checks, dex checks, and dexterity based skill checks. She already had improved initiative and a dex 20 after items, so her initiative score is now a delicious +25.

Marshal 3, she's picking up Motivate Inteligence. Give her +16 bonus to all intelligence checks and skill checks. COnsidering over half the party crafts crap, and her higher level minions are either knowledge worms or sheer craft monkies, that will work out gloriously for her.

She also abuses a Wand of Whirling Blade with a +1 keen pitspawned silver scimitar and a pair of Gauntlets of Hearfelt Blows.

[loomer]

Working out oWoD vampires, werewolves, etc for DnD is bloody hard. So is working out Alucard's stats.

[Rawtooth]

In the Iron Kingdoms, I'm currently having my players slog through the wilderness after a "hissing" man. So far, they've managed to both show restraint and that rare ability to look before leaping. The first let them get the drop on a NPC I had planned to stick around for while until they turned her into fertilizer. The second kept them alive from a nifty trap I'd built with powder and skigs.

I'm also prepping up a character for the Witchfire Trilogy. Thurian Gunmage who is the only good character in the party. It's going to be interesting to say the least.

[Joviwan]

What is this Witchfire? I haven't heard of it, but anything with Gunmage grabs my attention.

EDIT: I'm guessing it's still Iron Kingdoms, which does, in fact, have gunmages. *looks*

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I have an ECL 15 half-vampire succubus whom I love and adore. With her +6 cloak, her charisma is 42.

...eaugh.

I just died a little inside.

Not to rain on the thread's parade too much, but this is the mentality that killed Planescape (not to mention that character itself pissing all over it).

Anyways, so I don't derail the thread too much, let's talk 4th Edition. Is anyone planning to use/subscribe to the online component? Thoughts about it? I myself would certainly like to take a good look at it, as the idea of the virtual character creator very much intrigues a character-creation whore like me.

[loomer]

I'm going to get 4th Ed, hack out anything useful, and integrate it into 3.75. The updates in general don't appeal to me, so...

And agreed, that's fucking unholy, Jovi. And what the hell is that half-vampire crap?

[Joviwan]

I've been playing her for something of a year and a half, now. She's a very well developed personality, and there's few characters who've had as much attention and development as her. She's refreshing to play just about every day of the week. I mean, sure, a half-vampire succubus sounds completely retarded and an exercise in breaking the system, and most people are perfectly justified in thinking so.. But I started her at level 6 and worked her up to 15 since then, and at no point did I ever actually plan anything, and she is easily my favorite character right now.

Half-Vampire is a template from Libris Mortis. She's the product of a tryst between Malcanthet and a Fighter/sorcerer vampire.

As for 4th edition, I'm... I don't want to use the now tired phrase "cautiously optimistic," because it's tired and I don't really feel that way. Take it one step down, and thats about how I feel about the online materials for 4e. WotC is trying to sound hip and cool with all their nifty online technology/marketing, while all it's really doing is providing yet another orifice for us with which they can violate us at long distances.

EDIT: Clarified/added

[Covenant]

I long decided ago that I enjoy D&D's vast supply of materials, but I wish nearly all of them were considered inspiration, and not as a suppliment to actual hard rules. It's pretty obscene what the rules let you do already, and as soon as 'templates' and odd rule-monkey situations come in... it gets broken. D&D suffers from taking itself too seriously because of that. The old WEG starwars game, for all of it's logical faults, encouraged an atmosphere of "The Spirit And Not The Letter" when it came to things.

It's certainly not hard to adapt a WoD werewolf to D&D if your objective is to make something that plays similarly, but if you want to physically re-engineer the thing into the game, it falls apart. What I wish is that D&D were less about looking to exploit the machine that runs the game, and more about using it as a functional environment to decide combats and foster a storytelling game. It's just too easy to turn ridiculous.

[loomer]

I need to physically re-engineer, so it does have that issue. I blame my setting's alternate DM who keeps introducing shit like Alucard before we're ready to convert him.

[Vicious]

I have an ECL 15 half-vampire succubus whom I love and adore. With her +6 cloak, her charisma is 42.

...eaugh.

I just died a little inside.

Then I shouldn't mention my ECL 16 Tauric charge-whore with 52 STR, 42 CON and more claw attacks than you can shake a stick at?

Edit: Grr, meant to hit preview, not submit. Anyways, I'm personally both looking forward to and am slightly scared of 4th Ed. Some of the stuff I like, some of it makes me a tad wary. Regardless, I'll still probably play 3.0/3.5 even after it comes out, because that's what the folks I play with prefer. Unless they all switch, I probably won't bother.

*goes back to lurking*

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Working out oWoD vampires, werewolves, etc for DnD is bloody hard. So is working out Alucard's stats.

And going in the other direction: One of my more enjoyable campaigns happened when I converted Illithids and Intellect Devourers to oWoD stats and had them enact their sun-blotting plan with the aid of a dominated sect of anarch vampires.

[Lusankya]

My favourite character was Haezeus, my Half-Celestial who was raised by evil cultists and was the cultists' god's chosen prophet, and had the cultists' god speaking directly into his mind. Most of his time was spent trying to turn his god's evil cult into a full-blown evil religion. He had a deeply ingrained desire to be "good" and was constantly disgusted by his innate and disgusting impulses to do charitable things like heal the sick and give alms to the poor.

He ended up dealing with this by marrying the woman who he loved and focussing all of his "perverted" impulses on her. Through various acts of mental agility, this actually led to him deciding that the only logical action for him to take was to vivisect his sister and force his wife's soul into his sister's body. He also had a demon grafted to his skin so he could constantly be reminded to follow the "righteous" path. Naturally, his boss thought that this was all a fantastic laugh.

You know the "stealth evil" character? The one who at the end of the campaign jumps up and says "I was evil all along, and none of you guys guessed it"? Well, Haezeus was stealth good.

He was also an absolutely horribe multiclass. It was something like Bard/Favoured Soul/Evangelist/Courtier/Warlock/Marshal... At one point, the DM let me get a level of Acolyte of the Skin for free because a) it's not that great a class and b) I only really wanted the class for the "demon grafted onto your skin" class feature. Of course, this meant that he sucked at everything except diplomancy, but that was ok by me. It was a solo game, and I hate combat.

[SCRawl]

I guess I'm way out of touch. The last time I played AD&D it was first edition rules. I have no idea what any of you are talking about, though it sounds (to me, the ill-informed one) very Monty Haulish.

[Old Plympto]

I guess I'm way out of touch. The last time I played AD&D it was first edition rules. I have no idea what any of you are talking about, though it sounds (to me, the ill-informed one) very Monty Haulish.

Heh! I played AD&D with those THAC0 wotsits back in the late 80s a couple of time. I do remember as a Ranger going toe to toe with an aboleth by jumping on its back. The creature went underwater, but our wizard (or some sort of spellcaster, I can't remember) made sure I could breathe underwater. I think I killed it.

[Molyneux]

I'm looking forward to one thing in particular from 4e (well, two things really, but one thing more than the other).

First, they've said they're getting rid of level adjustments! You'll actually be able to play, say, a drow or a centaur from first level without being horribly weak compared with every human in the party! You'll have to devote some feats if you want certain "race-iconic" abilities, but still, it sounds like a major improvement.

Second, they've said that they're taking some facets of warlock and putting them into wizard - specifically, something to prevent the problem of having 2 magic missiles per day and then being useless until you get some sleep. I'm hoping for something like Eldritch Blast.

[Joviwan]

Isn't... that just what Warlock already does? Or are they changing that, too? The biggest change that I'm aware of is that every class will get per-encounter abilities very much akin to BoNS, though obviously more fine-tuned and in greater supply and diversity.

SCRawl: DnD these days, while not innately monty haulish, has pretty much been hand crafted from the ground up bye Magic players, for Magic players, so things like slightly poor word choices or vague descriptions are almost immediately exploited. No, I'm not saying *everyone* does this, but a large portion does.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Second, they've said that they're taking some facets of warlock and putting them into wizard - specifically, something to prevent the problem of having 2 magic missiles per day and then being useless until you get some sleep. I'm hoping for something like Eldritch Blast.

My ex-room mate Dev said they were overhauling the spells-per-day system and allegedly replacing it with something far more fluid for 4th edition. He said he was rather sad to hear this, as the spells-per-day system was his favourite part of the rules to ignore.

[Imperial Overlord]

Spells for wizards are getting broken down to the following, last I heard:

Rituals: identify type spells, summonings, things that take a long time.

Incantations: spells cast on a per day basis. The baddest things in the caster's arsenal

Power Words: powers usable on a per encounter basis.

Spells: Powers on a at will basis.


Warlocks are getting something similar, with at will stuff like eldritch blast getting augmented by limited use but potent curses and invocations. They've apparently put some effort into making the warlock abilities distinct and not just copy of wizard spells.

[Joviwan]

So Warlock is basically turning into a Warlock/hexblade? Heck, I'm totally all for that idea.

I was reading the races articles they have published, talking about what races they've been playing with and which ones are going to make it into the game. Hearing that they dropped the Gnome brought warm feelings to my heart. Reading what they did to the Tiefling (and the divide between Demons/Devils), hurt me to my very soul, so I'm already planning on things to change when 4e rolls around. I'm glad it's a default player race, but... yeah, wow, that backstory is lame. Also, the dragon... dragonborne? The new draconic player race. Does anyone else feel that wasn't a good decision? It doesn't feel particularly special, and I don't see how they thought it could compare to the staples of humans and elves and the like.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I was down on 4E, but now I might check it out.

[Molyneux]

I was down on 4E, but now I might check it out.

They're souping up beholders; one is now supposed to be a 'boss-level' creature, appropriate for a solo encounter.

They've got a video of it. ^_^ And while I liked the old idea, I think the new tiefling concept is interesting...though the design looks a bit odd. Why the heck give them a lizard-like tail instead of barbed or something like that?

[CaptainChewbacca]

I was down on 4E, but now I might check it out.

They're souping up beholders; one is now supposed to be a 'boss-level' creature, appropriate for a solo encounter.

They've got a video of it. ^_^ And while I liked the old idea, I think the new tiefling concept is interesting...though the design looks a bit odd. Why the heck give them a lizard-like tail instead of barbed or something like that?

Beholders don't NEED 'souping up', they're the ungodly juggernauts of D&D. I've never felt fighting one was an easy thing to do.

[Molyneux]

I was down on 4E, but now I might check it out.

They're souping up beholders; one is now supposed to be a 'boss-level' creature, appropriate for a solo encounter.

They've got a video of it. ^_^ And while I liked the old idea, I think the new tiefling concept is interesting...though the design looks a bit odd. Why the heck give them a lizard-like tail instead of barbed or something like that?

Beholders don't NEED 'souping up', they're the ungodly juggernauts of D&D. I've never felt fighting one was an easy thing to do.

Perhaps they souped up the treasure and XP, then?

To change the subject slightly: has anyone else here read Magic of Incarnum? I've been trying to come up with a good, versatile Totemist build, but beyond a basic barbarian/totemist/totem rager I don't have many ideas.

[lance]

To change the subject slightly: has anyone else here read Magic of Incarnum? I've been trying to come up with a good, versatile Totemist build, but beyond a basic barbarian/totemist/totem rager I don't have many ideas.

You can use the manticore belt to fling spikes.

[Imperial Overlord]

Beholders don't NEED 'souping up', they're the ungodly juggernauts of D&D. I've never felt fighting one was an easy thing to do.

Clearly you didn't have bow monkey death machine PCs in your group. Beholders are fairly good at dishing it out, but the low Fortitude save and moderate hp and AC (although somewhat beefed up in 3.5) means that if you can dish it out with ranged weapons they die quickly.