LEB Discussion Thread '09

[Goumindong]

We'll also want to tackle what format/information character sheets will take.

Have you considered myth-weavers?

Example Sheet from a 13th lvl Dwarven Fighter Or does that not have enough space?

Treasure

The gold/time works if its just gold/xp, but it doesn't work if it includes DM's giving out treasure in any fashion except in that same ratio. The question of "what to do if DM's are going to use wishlists and what to do about mixed level parties" can easily be solved by using a treasure advancement specific to each player.

I.E. instead of 10 parcels as suggested by the DMG, the DM sets 7 parcels per level. Each parcel contains an entire level appropriate item that the player chooses. The question of choosing loot is entirely taken off the DM's hands and into the players. Since the DM is likely using wish lists anyway this isn't as big a deal.

Anyway, over the course of 5 levels, every player receives a lvl +4, +3, +2, +1, and +0 equivalent in gold. Each level when the DM gives them a parcel, they simply choose what item from the appropriate level range[or lower] they want and mark it on their sheet. If they level up without receiving a parcel, they inform the DM of whatever game they are in, and take one at that point[you can fluff it out in any way you want]. If a character has already received a parcel for that level they opt out and the DM simply deletes one of the parcels for the level. Then when a character submits his sheet for level up, the character approval processors simply check to make sure that the sheet is right.

I laid out a rough draft of the idea here complete with an example of how it would work.

I think that this solves the problem of "difficulty of DM's in choosing items for their games" and the problem of "difficulty in assigning treasure to parties with characters of multiple levles" while maintaining a item strength variation accross characters as they choose different types of items from different levels[rather than pooling gold to purchase the best and laying secondary items by the wayside]

 

[renau1g]

Issue with using another hosting site is that there's a chance it might go down/be taken down, etc. Not that enworld doesn't have its own issues with that.

Also, Myth-weavers sheet doesn't leave a lot of room to "show the math" IIRC

 

[stonegod]

I'd tend to agree not to favor hosting material externally if we don't have too.

No pre-charter tonight; had to make an unscheduled detour today that ate mucho time. Likely tomorrow then.

 

[ryryguy]

Hey, just a quick suggestion for character sheets in the wiki. It might be useful to add category tags for race, class, area of origin, and maybe a few other things - dragonmarks? House status?

Some of these would be more for curiosity's sake - how many warforged fighter PCs are there? But some categories could also help if you're trying to find all the characters from a particular region to try to integrate your backstory with them, or come up with an adventure idea.

I had thought of this for regular L4W, but with so many characters already made there, it's a little late. For living eberron it could be included in the character creation guidelines from the start.

PS - By the way, I do plan on making a character and playing here! Haven't ever played an Eberron game but always been curious to try it.

 

[EvolutionKB]

Nice idea! I think that would be good to coordinate things.

I should be back to normal posting now. Will brainstorm later.

 

[EvolutionKB]

So where would the "tavern" be? Sharn would be the obvious choice. It has everything we would need. Easy transportation to others areas of Khorvaire, plus plenty of adventures can take place in the city itself.

Stormreach is a little more exotic and could serve as a home base as well. Sharn is still in reach without too much trouble. This area might work out better if starting at level 3.

 

[Erekose13]

I like the Stormreach idea, though I've not played D&DO so others might not be as keen on the idea. Sharn is the easy one we could put it somewhere in Aundair like Passage or Fairhaven. Or hey what about Thronehold. Maybe a little too political and weird but it sounds like fun.

 

[stonegod]

Xen'drik is probably not a great idea, since I'd think we'd have a lot of Khorvaire based addies, forcing folks to spend a lot of time on travel.

If we want sort of continuation, we already have a tavern in Sharn that we can repurpose. Its a hub of travel, so getting to Aundair or Xen'drik are not a big deal if an addy needs it. Sharn is probably the easiest place to explain a bunch of odd PCs other than Stormreach.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I haven't totally committed to joining but in this setting, it's like crazy talk to put your tavern anywhere but Sharn.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

LEB when on 3.5 years and its highest level PC was 5th (no DM credits); there were several 4th. L4W's been going a year and we almost have a small group of 3rd; not sure how many 2nd's they have. My LEW character's 2nd after being in play for 2 years. So I am definitely sympathetic for faster character advancement. On the flip side, that means there will be a much larger gap between newer players and older players and the separation in levels will increase that much higher. Something to consider.

Given that L4W's time-XP rules were designed to give PCs a level every 12 months, that means in the year since L4W started, most PCs have gained one level by encounters and 1 by time. The question then is what do we want as a ratio? It'll affect several things (such as treasure, DM awards, etc). Do we want two time-based levels per year? Three? I'm a bit hesitant about going too fast. I think fast XP is nice, and fits the adventuresome tone of Eberron, though.

Time-based XP should be X levels/year. L4W uses 1. Suggestion is 2, 3 tops by me. We need to figure out how to deal with treasure as well.

So, the underlying motivation for this is that we want faster character advancement. What if we use another method besides time XP to achieve that?

This is a brainwave that just hit me. What if we set the time-based XP to be, say, 1.5 levels/year (or a different number, if that's too awkward for people), and then have DMs double the normal rewards for their adventure? Doing this, defeating a level 1 monster would earn the party 200 XP intead of 100, and so forth. Still use the normal values for figuring out encounter difficulty and so on, just double the values when awarding XP for the encounter.

This way, it's easier for the DMs to plan to give out more significant treasure (say, magic items instead of just massive sums of gold pieces). If we went with time XP at 2 levels/year and normal encounter XP, then roughly 1/3 of the XP in an adventure is going to be from encounters - this makes it quite difficult to adequately plan treasure ahead of time, since you don't know exactly how much time it's going to take, and even more so if the time XP is to be accounted for with time gold.

But, if time XP is 1.5 levels/year and encounter rewards are doubled, then the time XP:encounter XP ratio will be about 1.5:2 over the course of an adventure. In the end it shouldn't really matter what that ratio is if we have time gold, all I'm aiming for is giving DMs a bit more stable footing when planning treasure during the adventure proposal/start of adventure phase.

Thoughts?