StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Erik von Nein wrote: Actually, I was thinking of taking over for the spot/listen/sense motive (or all reactionary skills) and then only hand the people who succeed the results. I played a game like that before and it worked to some efficacy. It especially works when I start messing with their minds, giving them stuff that may not actually be there. I'll have to discuss it with the players.

That's a good way of handling spot checks anyway, no matter the game.

Don't forget to roll for spot checks when there's nothing to see. And smile to yourself. There's nothing worse than a smiling GM.

You might want to practise cackling as well, if it's a horror game.

Heh. I've been told I've got a great evil laugh. It'll be put to good use.

Vendetta wrote:

Erik von Nein wrote: Actually, I was thinking of taking over for the spot/listen/sense motive (or all reactionary skills) and then only hand the people who succeed the results. I played a game like that before and it worked to some efficacy. It especially works when I start messing with their minds, giving them stuff that may not actually be there. I'll have to discuss it with the players.

That's a good way of handling spot checks anyway, no matter the game.

Don't forget to roll for spot checks when there's nothing to see. And smile to yourself. There's nothing worse than a smiling GM.

You might want to practise cackling as well, if it's a horror game.

My friends all immediately clamor for spot checks any time they see me smiling. Even when I'm not GMing, or even if we're not playing a game; I've gotten that bad.

I am gearing up to run a horror game as well, but have found that the taint rules are a little to munchkiny. Especially the corruption rules, for a slight loss you can gain a new feat? Become half blind and take blind fight as your free feat, no major penalties for a horrific deformity. If you do want to go with corruption rules penalize the PC's greater than the original rules do. Do not use more than one or two classes from outside the core rulebook, ie warlock. And especially do not use beguilers, they are ridiculously over powered in bluff.

Next thing to do in a horror campaign is to make certain that you are not using standard weaknesses for creatures, and to drop the hint/s about the new weaknesses at least three times before throwing them into the fire. Don't give out free assistance, but don't forget to leave tantalizing clues either.

Last thing is for DMing in general: pay attention to your players, you can tell when the get a hint or have heard enough, you can also tell if they are getting irritated. Encourage your friends to play a new style of character. (Like the most recent campaign of my friends where we all played differing arcane classes to have a tougher game.) Have fun.

Yeah, no, the one thing I was thinking of changing was not giving them a free feat, instead maybe giving them one once they've reached moderate corruption/depravity and then limiting it to a corrupt feat from Heroes of Horror.

Man, screw Beguilers. I'm sick to death of my friend wanking to them. They're out-and-out not allowed. Same with psionics, because I also know he'll wank to those, as well.

Changing weaknesses is something I'll have fun with.

Ok, so what am I missing about the beguiler that is supposed to make it good compared to say the basic Sorcerer? And why would he wank it, as opposed to an actually wankable class like Artificer, Archivist, Factorum or Dweomerkeeper?

Dark Hellion wrote:Ok, so what am I missing about the beguiler that is supposed to make it good compared to say the basic Sorcerer? And why would he wank it, as opposed to an actually wankable class like Artificer, Archivist, Factorum or Dweomerkeeper?

Beguilers are awesome in that they have a very high minimum power level. Unlike wizards sorcerers, archivists and fighters. Which all have very low minimum levels of power.
You can't accidentally take shield, mage armor, jump and rope trick with beguiler. I am ruling out the possibility of a person giving themselves an 18 charisma and 8 intelligence.
Also the extra skills allow him to be better at bluff I suppose. I don't know what the big deal about bluff is, but I guess it is an issue. Though I would recommend ad hoc rules for that and diplomacy.

lance wrote: Also the extra skills allow him to be better at bluff I suppose. I don't know what the big deal about bluff is, but I guess it is an issue. Though I would recommend ad hoc rules for that and diplomacy.

With a good enough Bluff score and a game that rolls your social skills a lot, you can basically convince most NPCs, including the very powerful ones, of anything. Add in enchantment spells and you can potentially get away with all kinds of shit.

Imperial Overlord wrote:

lance wrote: Also the extra skills allow him to be better at bluff I suppose. I don't know what the big deal about bluff is, but I guess it is an issue. Though I would recommend ad hoc rules for that and diplomacy.

With a good enough Bluff score and a game that rolls your social skills a lot, you can basically convince most NPCs, including the very powerful ones, of anything. Add in enchantment spells and you can potentially get away with all kinds of shit.

Pretty much this. I played a Rogue/Spymaster/Assassin character in the Dark Sun setting (with 3.5 rules). I pretty much didn't even need combat skills. Especially when the party was given Draconic feats after making a pact with a Dragon King and, in an act of supreme munchkindom, I chose Acid Breath and convinced the DM that, since Acid Breath was obviously a byproduct of a Black Dragon's digestive system, I should be allowed to expend its daily use to create a dose of Dragon Bile.

This was a character who had such an absurdly high bluff score that he could basically walk in the front door, off his target, and walk right back out. Then, in the epilogue, he teamed up with the party's Psion/Shadowmind in a bid to take over his Merchant House. General consensus determined that the two of them pretty much arbitrarily succeeded.

And the hilarious thing is, when it comes to munchkin shenanigans with bluff, that is probably a fairly minor example.

But doesn't bluff oppose sense motive, meaning that no matter how high his bluff score you can make a npc with a similar sense motive skill, or add in ad hoc modifiers to make up the difference. Unlike diplomacy which was set values to accomplish things.

Which can then make it too difficult for other characters to bluff effectively .

Teleros wrote:Which can then make it too difficult for other characters to bluff effectively .

I guess you win some and lose some.

lance wrote:But doesn't bluff oppose sense motive, meaning that no matter how high his bluff score you can make a npc with a similar sense motive skill, or add in ad hoc modifiers to make up the difference. Unlike diplomacy which was set values to accomplish things.

Basically the DM would have had to make characters with arbitrarily high Sense Motive. Glibness (Bard 3, Assassin 4), for example, adds a +30 bonus on bluff checks for 10 minutes/level when you want to lie. And, if you have a Psion in the party (which, in the case of my assassin, there was), you have such things as Conceal Thoughts (+10 bluff) and Distract (-4 sense motive). Then, of course, Spymasters get multiple bonuses to bluffing and protection from attempts to bypass their bluff skill.

In the case of the game I played, the DM trying to beat my character's bluff potential would have resulted in an arms race that he pretty much couldn't win without either effectively shutting most of the party out of the game (see Teleros' post) or turning the game into pure hack and slash.

Basically the bonuses that you can add to bluff without the beguiler are so heavy that there is no reason to have a beguiler. Sense motive has almost no ability to counter the buffs that bluff get, as such it is to easy for a beguiler, and about the only type of player that has to have it that easy is a munchkin. The beguiler is basically unnecessary because of the other buffs you can achieve with bluff. Example the warlock: you find your party is in need of some sort of bluff or diplomatic effort, switch out a least invocation for beguiling influence and have a continuous +20 to diplomacy intimidate and bluff, all on a class that is already Cha heavy.

If one where to have a beguiler they would demand that the bluff check be in use throughout the campaign, if you use another route to bluff well when necessary it is not something that has to be normal. Also it is easier to challenge your other characters than a beguiler. A beguiler is so powerful in bluff and so focused that it is necessary to have it, but it is impossible for it to be a challenge. As such it is massively not fun.

And that is my two cents on beguilers

EDIT:The classes that I am going to include all come from the 3.5 dragonlance books, and that is because they come from a lower power setting.

For a good horror campaign I recommend THISresource book. There are some seriously terrifying ideas in here that scared me just when I was reading it. My brother DM'd a campaign that incorporated some of the ideas and within a few sessions our party became paranoid, violent, and somewhat mentally insane. In one encounter the party, 4 lvl 6 PC's, were accosted suddenly by a Mindflayer bursting into our tavern. We fought for 3 rounds but were decimated. As soon as the last PC was down the MF disappeared and we woke up at the table in the tavern. All was back to normal, except for we were missing ammunition. Did he really attack us?!? We never knew. A few ideas in the book include:

Psycoses players get when resurrected
Random acts of terror
PC insanity
Committing evil acts and alignment shifts for fun and profit.

Let us know how your horror campaign turns out.

Heh. Thanks for the suggestion Kodiak, but that's pretty much my guidebook for the horror campaign I'm running, including using the taint system. That idea about the (possibly) hallucinatory mind-flayer is a good one, though.

How good are you at mimicking insanity? If you are fairly good at it, I would suggest introducing derro into the mix, somehow. I didn't run a horror campaign, but, my PCs got very worried, twitchy, and otherwise disturbed by their session with the derro. Especially their crazy leader who led them around and chuckled incessantly and engaged in needless and gratuitous acts of masochism.