Recent content by Sojourn

Guilds I introduced Guilds and made it a part of PC skills. If you have 0 ranks in a skill, you are a LAYMAN. If you have 1-4 ranks in a skill, you are an APPRENTICE. If you have 5+ ranks in a skill, you are a JOURNEYMAN. If you have 10+ ranks in a skill, you are a MASTER or GUILDMASTER...

Stats Again I have a couple of other methods for rolling stats, one I've used and one I haven't. Epic: Roll d4+16 for stats, Comeliness is straight 16+Chr Mod. This is the method I would use for Gamma World games, or when Players roll 1-shot PCs for a specific module like DRAGON MOUNTAIN or...

Reputation Besides the 6 standard stats, I use a 7th stat- Comeliness, from the early days of D&D. It's a straight roll, add Chr modifier, add race modifier, add +1 for youth (age less than adult). Comeliness resurfaces in Book of Erotic Fantasy as "appearance". The 8th stat is Reputation-...

Alignment Stat Instead of the page-long "don't play evil" warning, I've implemented an alignment stat. Good is +2, Evil is -2. Lawful is +1, Chaotic is -1. Neutral is 0. So LG +3, NG +2, CG/LN +1, NN +0 CN/LE -1, NE -2, CE -3 This can be used a variety of ways. I first thought of it as a...

Stats I used to let players roll 4d6, drop the lowest. Then it was 4d6, reroll 1's ONCE, drop the lowest. [with the horrifying 'yahtzee' experiment- if you rolled 4 of a kind, you kept that score. That was retired the 2nd time a player rolled all 6's] Then it was 2d6+6, for the longest time...

The Fat Kid in Dodgeball rule The Fat Kid in Dodge Ball Rule: often, PCs with a high score in a skill can skip making a check, especially if they'd only fail on a 1 or other very low roll. Sometimes the entire party can get a pass this way- except one. Whoever has the lowest score always has to...

Killer DM Trade Secret #1: I'm not nearly as blood thirsty as I claim. I like it when players get attached to their characters and get involved in the game, and nothing makes them keep their distance like thinking they will die no matter what they do. But by announcing I'm a killer DM up front...

I've been running an evolving world since 1981. Here are some of the most/least useful house rules I've adapted, and several I've never used but thought they were interesting, and have as standby for one shot games or alternate campaigns. The current house rules clocks in around 50 pages or...

DM of 30 years seeking Dragonslayers to save my world. Over 520 dragons are devouring my world, you could kill one a week for 10 years. Or 10 a week for a year, whatever. One of my players has moved to North Carolina, and one is lost to changed work schedule. This is a great time to save the...

Until I got stats for Khezef, my run at him went like this: He was lurking around the basement of Darkhold, devouring thieves to piss off Mask, an enemy. If PCs saw him, they would not know, (at first) but each would be fighting their own private Khezef the Chaos hound- using the 3.5 big Hell...

I haven't seen the Kzinti since Dragon #50 and the Star Trek cartoon series. A friend used them in his world, allegedly- they appeared in the house rules but never in the actual game.

On the other hand, maybe low stats are what you're looking for. Lycanthropy is a CURSE, not a super power. Most creatures die of it, either directly, or because their rampage causes them to be hunted down. Not all templates have to make a creature more deadly.

I like steel dragons.

these drakes make me happy, I found an identical thread which was closed and it made me sad.

Shadow Serpent has perfect timing for this is The Shadow Year in my campaign, where Shadow Dragons are all powerful and any game on the night of a new moon has an encounter with one in addition to anything else scheduled that night.