Complete Champion excerpts

[Warbringer]

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.

I've been playing 'roleplaying' games all wrong for past two decades

 

[hong]

I've been playing 'roleplaying' games all wrong for past two decades

The blinding flash of enlightenment hits! The blinding flash of enlightenment hits! --more--

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The blinding flash of enlightenment hits! The blinding flash of enlightenment hits! --more--

.... possible crit... DOUBLE DAMAGE!

 

[Wavestone]

I have looked though my book, and I have to say my reaction is a bit mixed.. some things are nice - feats (domain feats!), spells, the part about church organizations modeled after the domains, in addition to others modeled after the good/neutral PHB churches.

I think that one thing that people will either like or hate, is that a big part of the book is tied together thematically.. In the organization chapter, there are four religious/divine organizations in quite a bit of detail. Almost all of the prestige classes in this book are connected to one of these four organizations. And even the two PrC that aren't, are tied to a couple of core churches. Quite a few of the magical items are tied to the organizations as well.

Three of the four organizations are decently generic, even if there are some GH flavor here and there. The worst offender is the fourth, The Shadow Strikers of Pelor..

I can understand where the designers come from - religious/divine prestige classes really should be tailored to the exact church/cult in the campaign. The problem is that it may be easier for experienced DM's to flesh out generic prestige classes, than to ignore the flavor in the PrC and organizations in this book. One interesting thing with a few of the classes is that you have a choice of special abilities to choose from when gaining some class features - meaning there is quite a bit of variability.

It really depends on how much retrofitting you need to do - if you're playing more or less core, I think there are large chunks that can be used as is. If say you're using homebrew, FR, Eberron, you have a little more work to do.

Basically, it comes down to whether you like things like premade churches/organizations. A big part of the book is taken up with organizations, and things tied to them.

-Wavestone

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have looked though my book, and I have to say my reaction is a bit mixed.. some things are nice - feats (domain feats!), spells, the part about church organizations modeled after the domains, in addition to others modeled after the good/neutral PHB churches.

Could you give an example of what they do with fluff and domains? That's honestly one of the sections that intrigues me the most.

 

[Wavestone]

Could you give an example of what they do with fluff and domains? That's honestly one of the sections that intrigues me the most.

One section of the book talks about church organizations, and uses domains as the base for the organization and its benefits, a la the recent style of affiliation score modifiers, and corresponding tables of ranks/affiliation score/benefits.

sample: Air domain.
Affiliation score mod: (just a couple of points)
character level... +1/2levels
can fly... +3
has visited plane of air at least once... +2
frees someone from captivity...+4

Rank1: score 4-12, Windtraveler - +1 saves vs earth spells, +1AC vs earth creatures.

The core D&D churches is fleshed out a little more, with a more complete organization write-up.. allies&enemies, duties, favored feats/combat tactics/adventures..

Domain feats are a nifty new type of feat, that generally grants a special ability related to teh domain. The interesting things are that there are no prerequisites, the benefit scales with levels (often granting a bonus per 4 or 5 levels and the like), and its usable once/day unless you take the feat more than once - BUT if you have turning, you can spend turning attempts to activate it again.

Generally, if you like tables of affiliation scores and organization benefits by rank, you'll like this book.. there are three big chunks of organizational info.. Core churches, churches built on a domain, and the four earlier mentioned religious organizations. I just counted, and there are 40 separate tables of organization affiliation scores and benefits thorughout the book. Each accompanied with fluff on the organization/church/domain..

hope it gave you a little better idea..?

Late here, so any further questions has to wait till tomorrow..

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Very cool. Are all the PHB churches fleshed out, or just a few? I have a cleric of Garl Glittergold in my campaign and I've scooped out all of Moradin's fluff and applied it to a comparable god from Ptolus, so that'd be useful, too.

This sounds like it might be a pretty good DM's book, even if the PrCs sound pretty uninteresting to me.

 

[Felon]

To be fair, nobody's advocating this kind of extreme here.

Note that your post was immediately followed up by folks who did indeed advocate that very position. There are a lot of folks who basically run their games like they were just tabletop skirmish encounters--basically Warhammer with D&D rules.

Ironically enough, these guys love to say that they run their adventures like Raiders of the Lost Ark, even though whenever Indy was in dungeon-like environment he played it slow and smart.

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.

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.

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.

No, Zaru, the game should not focus the majority of player time on activities that cater to the short-attention-span Bruckheimer style of D&D any more than it should cater exclusively to the detail-oriented, meticulous style of play that D&D originally offered (where brute-squad tactics usually resulted in sudden, horrible, ignominious death). That's just shoddy game design. Far better to support different styles, from the button-mashers to the chessmasters.

For that reason, I'd prefer that they just offer the skirmishmonkeys the full-healing-after-one-minute option that I mentioned above, so they can play their "balls-to-the-wall" game without it affecting the way I want to run adventures.

 

[hong]

Note that your post was immediately followed up by folks who did indeed advocate that very position. There are a lot of folks who basically run their games like they were just tabletop skirmish encounters--basically Warhammer with D&D rules.

You say this like it's a negative thing.

Ironically enough, these guys love to say that they run their adventures like Raiders of the Lost Ark, even though whenever Indy was in dungeon-like environment he played it slow and smart.

You say this like it's a positive thing.

No, Zaru, the game should not focus the majority of player time on activities that cater to the short-attention-span Bruckheimer style of D&D any more than it should cater exclusively to the detail-oriented, meticulous style of play that D&D originally offered (where brute-squad tactics usually resulted in sudden, horrible, ignominious death). That's just shoddy game design. Far better to support different styles, from the button-mashers to the chessmasters.

This tells me you've never done any button mashing before. Isn't it fun talking about stuff we've never done?

 

[Felon]

You say this like it's a negative thing.

No I dont. I say it like it ain't the way I want to play D&D. If you wish to infer something negative, that's your deal.

This tells me you've never done any button mashing before. Isn't it fun talking about stuff we've never done?

Well, gee, what can I say here?

If I admit to not having done any button-mashing, then I confirm Hong's "talking-about-stuff-I-haven't-done-before" line of reasoning. And we all know you can't discuss the downside of drowning babies until you've actually done the deed a couple of times yourself, so I have no recourse there.

Yet if I admit to having done button-mashing, then I'm a hypocrite for not wanting to play D&D that way, so I'm screwed there too. Couched as a simple snide remark, Hong has constructed an impenetrable retort!

Oh wait, I'll just say that what I enjoy when I'm playing my Xbow is different from what I enjoy when I play D&D. False alarm, folks, Hong's got zip.