[Age of Worms] Rules/Options in Play

[Insight]

I am contemplating running Age of Worms in the near future. For those who have started the Adventure Path, or completed it, what rules and options other than the Core Rules / SRD (or perhaps even modifications to the Core Rules / SRD) did you or your DM use?

 

[MerricB]

I am contemplating running Age of Worms in the near future. For those who have started the Adventure Path, or completed it, what rules and options other than the Core Rules / SRD (or perhaps even modifications to the Core Rules / SRD) did you or your DM use?

Player's Handbook II
All Complete Books
Weapons of Legacy
Spell Compendium

No problems so far.

Cheers!

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Starting soon. Complete books are permitted, as well as the Spell Compendium, but that's about it.

AR

 

[Beckett]

Player's Handbook II
All Complete Books
Weapons of Legacy
Spell Compendium

No problems so far.

Cheers!

Toss in the Race books, and parts of Unearthed Arcana (a version of action points, gestalt), and Hero Points out of Arcana Evolved, and that's my set up. Tome of Battle is also being added in, except for the classes (so, feats, and any manuevers picked up with feats).

I like options

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I allow the Complete... books, the Spell Compendium, and the PHB2, but not the Races of...books.

Ken

 

[Erik Mona]

I allow all official books and everything in Dragon magazine or the Dragon compendium in my game, and I'd probably allow some third party stuff if anyone in my group brought it to my attention and it seemed both interesting and balanced.

I am about to ban the spell "close wounds," from the Spell Compendium, from my campaigns forever. The immediate action casting time forces the DM to "rewind," which is an absolutely deplorable design development in my opinion. It nearly happened again tonight, and it would have taken all of the narrative momentum out of an otherwise excellent encounter.

Oh, and the totem druid from an issue of Dragon a few years ago could use some fine tuning. I managed to avoid long-term problems when the character in question was devoured by a giant snake.

Ninjas (Complete Adventurer) are either not powerful enough by a wide margin or require a completely different approach than the one used in my campaign. I have yet to be impressed by the powers of the 5th-level binder (Tome of Magic) from my campaign. His kewl abilities rarely come into play.

--Erik

 

[FireLance]

I am about to ban the spell "close wounds," from the Spell Compendium, from my campaigns forever. The immediate action casting time forces the DM to "rewind," which is an absolutely deplorable design development in my opinion. It nearly happened again tonight, and it would have taken all of the narrative momentum out of an otherwise excellent encounter.

Since I don't know the specifics of the encounter, I may be shooting from the hip, but it seems to me that the DM just has to wait for a bit after announcing hit point damage to give the cleric (or whatever spellcaster) a chance to state that he is using close wounds before going on the describe what happens to the wounded character. To me, it doesn't seem very different from games that use action points - the DM has to pause for a bit to give the player a chance to state that he is using an action point after he has made a d20 roll, instead of announcing immediately whether it is a success or failure.

I does change the rhythm of the game, but not necessarily in a bad way.

 

[RodneyThompson]

One of my main goals when running the Age of Worms campaign (and Shackled City before that) was to make use of the massive shelf of d20 books I have. As a total gaming nutjob and a game designer (who trades/receives comp copies of books), I have a whole 6-shelf bookcase full of d20 books, most of which I've read and never used.

So, I allow them to use any item from any official D&D book except for Oriental Adventures and the Eberron/FR books. Also, I reserve the right to approve/veto any item pulled from the Book of Exalted Deeds, Spell Compendium, Complete Divine, and Races of the Wild/Destiny/Dragon. Any non-official D&D book is approved on a case-by-case basis, unless I wrote it (in which case it's allowed by default).

Currently actively in use, I have Libris Mortis and Heroes of Horror for my side of the DM screen, and my players are using items from Races of Stone, Unearthed Arcana, Complete Warrior, Complete Adventurer, Spell Compendium, Draconomicon, Weapons of Legacy, Complete Divine, Complete Arcane, Dragon #338, the Planar Handbook, and Dragon Magic.

The only thing that I've found to be dangerous is the undead bane weapon in the wrong hands. Particularly, I've got a half-orc ranger who put all his favored enemy bonuses into undead and has an undead bane composite longbow. Let's just put it this way: with haste and all his archery feats, he could output around 80-90 damage at range on a full attack at 11th level. Just be wary of this, and plan ahead. The fact that he's dishing out that kind of damage at range can be problematic, especially for enemies that have no ranged attacks.

 

[Bagpuss]

Core Rules,
Complete X books
Spell Compendium - Although heavily censored due to unbalanced spells*
Wormhunter Prestige Class from Dragon Magazine - with that feat form the complete Divine that allows none cleric to hold back Undead, counting as turning undead so the Rogue in the party can eventually sneak attack undead.
Anything else with DM approval.

*All casters are spontaneous casters in our game so a lot of the situational spells in there become much more powerful if you don't need to memorise them also the Wizard gets spell envy for the Cleric since the wizard has to pay for new spells but the Cleric suddenly gains a load of extra power for free.

 

[gfunk]

We use all official WotC material. If any particular feat, spell, power, or ability turns out to be unbalanced in play we will take a vote to ban it.

Truthfully, w/ all the non-core stuff used in the AoW adventures, your PCs will be smacked-down repeatedly w/o some kind of benefit (like Complete/Race books).