Recent content by Callista

Drizzt verges on Mary Sue but he's not quite there--his major problematic trait is that he never seems to be tempted to do anything truly bad; his barbarian rage isn't nearly prominent enough to count as a temptation to be truly ruthless. I don't care if he's a deadly fighter so much as the way...

There's a workaround for the valuable material components and focuses for spells. Check BoED p.30; you can use your friends' material components to cast the spell (presumably, you're casting it for their benefit rather than yours), or you can use XP to cast the spell instead at a conversion rate...

I would say that, since dropping the object is a free action, both of these actions can be made to knock the object out of the air or out of your opponent's hand, rather than ending up holding it.

Sorcerer... hmm. Well, you're going to have to pick your spells carefully. You could get the flavor you want with just your spell selection, you know; it's not like you have to go into a PrC if you don't want to when you've got a relatively powerful class like sorcerer. If you weren't set on...

D&D is gaining new players all the time. As people get too busy or move away from their gaming groups, those books stay in their closets, and the new players buy books of their own. Even if they stop playing eventually, most people will introduce others to D&D before they lose interest; and in...

They're natural creatures. Make 'em true neutral. You've given them INT 2, so they are going to be more like an animal protecting their territory or their master than like the hyperintelligent, scheming Beholders. Fairies tend to be chaotic in most worlds. Have you read up on some of the fairy...

The wording is, "If you break your vow." Circumstances which are not under your control and which you can neither predict nor prevent don't count as YOU breaking the vow. I'd say it's a job for an Atonement, since I imagine the kind of character who had made a vow of poverty would probably also...

I'd rather have a character die fairly than live because someone fudged a roll. But I do try to have contingencies in place (even Contingency if necessary) for most things we could reasonably expect to come up against; and there's always the party resurrection fund if I really feel the...

The negative energy that animates them probably gives them a sort of instinct. In the case of negative energy, that'd be the instincts necessary to seek out and kill living things, because that's what negative energy does--it's the antithesis of life. So they're running on instinct rather than...

Not with my DM... I recently calculated this: We're 6th level and we have less than what a 3rd-level party should have. One character in our entire group has a magical weapon and our most powerful magic item is a Handy Haversack! Somehow, though, we've made it work, and nobody is thinking of Vow...

Yet another personal example. I like to walk, and my area has an extensive network of paved bike trails. From my town to the next is eight miles; and I generally make the distance in about three hours. The walk back in the evening is usually three and a half hours; so that's sixteen miles in...

That's what things like action points and luck feats are for. If you want to keep a bad roll from killing a character, then the ability to re-roll or modify that low number can save your character. And, if it comes down to it, non-cinematic deaths can always be reversed with a Raise Dead (or...

Regarding skeleton intelligence: Not having an Intelligence score is not necessarily the same as being unable to do anything but move forward and attack. Vermin, including creatures like spiders, have no intelligence scores; and they perform fairly complex, though instinctual, actions.

He's probably also having to make concentration checks to cast in mid-flight.