Complete Champion excerpts

[Nahat Anoj]

For some reason, I really really like that both the Paladin and the Bard, possibly the two most diametrically opposed base classes in terms of flavor and function, have on their spell lists:

Moral Facade: Divination spells give a false alignment reading.

I think that's keen!

It is kind of cool IMO, especially if you want a pally to infiltrate some evil overlord's compound.

 

[Henry]

Or go one better still and just make characters invulnerable. They never lose HP to begin with. With god mode activated, there'll be no risk of downtime at all. What's the downside? Most encounters aren't desinged to be genuinely deadly, they're just designed to wear characters down and kill time until the climactic battle, and it's already decided that wearing characters down is a bad, boring thing. Even if they're invulnerable, they still have to polish off the opposition, so the "killing time" requisite is fulfilled.

To be fair, nobody's advocating this kind of extreme here. However, I do know that the further things move down the "per encounter" path, the more I concern myself with this being the way the default version of D&D ends up in the future, cutting me off from the mainstream of players.

If so -- ah well, worse things have happened.

 

[Doug McCrae]

it's already decided that wearing characters down is a bad, boring thing.

Yeah, you're right, even though you were being ironic. Wearing PCs down is boring. Balls-to-the-wall, imminent risk of PC death type fights are a lot more exciting imo. Many of the fights in our current campaign have been like this.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Would you perchance be able/willing to provide the full text of the feat?

Not able, sorry. I didn't buy the book, just glanced at it. I was curious if there was a balancing mechanism built into this that hadn't been apparent from the brief description.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Heck, don't even bother with the feat. Just automatically let everyone go back to full hit points one minute after the fight's over.

Or go one better still and just make characters invulnerable. They never lose HP to begin with. With god mode activated, there'll be no risk of downtime at all. What's the downside? Most encounters aren't desinged to be genuinely deadly, they're just designed to wear characters down and kill time until the climactic battle, and it's already decided that wearing characters down is a bad, boring thing. Even if they're invulnerable, they still have to polish off the opposition, so the "killing time" requisite is fulfilled.

If I want to wear down the PCs, I'll have an encounter right after the other one with a round or two(at most) of downtime. I'm really not a fan of long resource management-intensive dungeon crawls, and neither are my players.

Now, that doesn't mean there's anything inherently badwrongfun about a dungeon crawl setup....just like there's nothing wrong with a completely encounter-based setup - I, personally, prefer the latter. Give me a good everything-on-the-line knock-down-drag-out fight over a bunch of little ones any day of the week.

 

[Zaruthustran]

For goodness' sake, just say that the characters regain all their spells, hit points, and abilities at the end of each encounter, and be done with it. All the pretense of limited resources is beginning to annoy me, now.

You said it, brother. A per-encounter system is less cumbersome and more fun.

The fun is in kicking down doors, killing monsters, taking their stuff*. The game's mechanics should focus the majority of player time on those activities, with the least amount of time on after-combat tedium as possible.

-z

* Caveat for NPC interaction and other roleplaying needed to locate the door, justify killing the monster, sell the stuff**.

** That too was a joke.

 

[Nyeshet]

My problem with Moral Facade is that unlike Undetectable Alignment is does not merely conceal one's alignment - it deliberately creates a falsehood. It just seems odd to me that a Lawful spell list should have a chaotic spell in it. I'd as expect to see Protection from Law on a Paladin's spell list as something like Moral Facade. I have no trouble with undetectable alignment, as concealment is not the same as deliberate falsehood, but Moral Facade is certainly not going to be on the Paladin's spell lists IMCs.

 

[Razz]

It's official:

Touch of Healing heals only up to half your hit points. Someone on the WotC forums has the book (before me, darn) and here it is:

Touch of Healing feat

 

[RichGreen]

It's official:

Touch of Healing heals only up to half your hit points. Someone on the WotC forums has the book (before me, darn) and here it is:

Touch of Healing feat

I don't think that's too bad in that case. In fact, sounds pretty sensible


Richard

 

[Twowolves]

I am using a homebrew (see link to wiki in sig).

As for the rules I have implemented, it would probably take its own thread to get into detail (which I might be convinced to create in House Rules if anyone is interested), but among them are:
[*]Magical item creation requires power components and special "recipes" - when you learn an item creation feat you are learning how to make something specific - which then can be applied to create other things with more research/time (this applie mostly to wonderous items, rings, staves)

I'm curious about how you handle this. Long ago, I tinkered with something similar, but never implemented it. My idea was to link magic item creation to craft skills, so that you either knew one item formula per rank in the appropriate craft skill, or else have a requirement of a number of ranks in the craft skill equal to the caster level of the item. Either way, it was a way to link making magic items to, you know, making magic items.