DMG II -- In my hands . . .

[FreeTheSlaves]

You mean the "mindset" of being right? One peasant punch is one peasant punch. Thirty peasant punches should wash over the demon like so many raindrops. A hezrou or balor shouldn't be scratched. A pit fiend should be able to walk boldy into a mob of humans.

I'm getting totally ot but if you watch the anime Naruto, there is one scene where the main character Naruto creates 1000 shadow clones of himself (they have the same physical strength, but no powers & can't handle a single wound) and collectively the 1000 punches do demolish the demon Gaara.

The mob sounds like a perfect opportunity for the Bard & other socially skilled characters to defeat a large number of enemies, & for once leave the great cleaving fighter with his jaw hanging.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Gosh, that must be why tanks turned out to be so ineffective in WW2. Or not.

[ot]Tanks main protection from infantry attacks comes from their mobility & small arms. The panther version D suffered heavy casulties at Kursk because the engine was unreliable & it had no machine guns at all.[/ot]

 

[LordVyreth]

The mob sounds like a perfect opportunity for the Bard & other socially skilled characters to defeat a large number of enemies, & for once leave the great cleaving fighter with his jaw hanging.

How? The mob has a collective Will save as a 30 HD monster. And these are people worked up in a bloodlusted killing frenzy to the point where they ignore pain and certain death. That'd be a hell of a diplomacy roll.

 

[Mercule]

D&D monsters aren't supposed to be specialized or provisional.

That's true. We aren't just talking about a critter, though. We're talking about a template, or something very close to it (don't have the book, yet). Templates represent a specific concept, and should be used for that purpose.

If you use the "lich" template to represent a someone who has drunk from the Fountain of Youth, it won't work overly well. If you use the mob to represent any large group of people, it's going to have some bad results.

Actually, I'd go so far as to say the mob isn't "just" a critter. It's a way of statistically representing the ability of a large group of critters in a relatively narrow set of circumstances. So, in this case, yes, it is provisional and specialized.

 

[Mercule]

How? The mob has a collective Will save as a 30 HD monster. And these are people worked up in a bloodlusted killing frenzy to the point where they ignore pain and certain death. That'd be a hell of a diplomacy roll.

I think it's perfectly appropriate for a Bard with a high enough Perform check and/or the right feat to be able to whip a group of people into a frenzied mob. "Face" characters in the movies do it with some frequency.

 

[colonelthread]

People at Work
.....Mercantile Guilds and Occupations
.....Nonmercatile Guilds
.....Other City Dwellers
Establishments
.....Inns
.....Eating Halls
.....Taverns
.....Shops
.....100 Instant NPC Agendas

In particular, I'm looking for something to help me with describing NPCs and locations to my players, such as tables or lists of quirks, traits, and facial/clothing descriptions for NPCs and names and descriptions for shops, taverns, dungeon rooms and hallways, cavern tunnels, forests, etc. I always seem to come up short on these kinds of things when designing adventures, or I have them in my mind but forget to use them during the course of play. Is there anything like that in there?

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Obviously, you can't please everyone. My preference would be to strengthen and refine the archetypal class system so that it actually reflects archetypes not some hybrid of archetypes and arbitrary rules constructs. If D&D ever ditches levels and/or classes, I'm heading for Fantasy Hero.

I obviously don't hate the classes as they exist, because I play'em and play'em. But if I ran the zoo, I do it all on a skills and feats basis for ultimate PC customization. Again, that's just one man's opinion. If it bothered me enough, I'd dismantle the whole thing in and house rule it my way.

 

[takyris]

re: Class options for players -- I like 'em. I don't intend to use all of 'em, not by a long shot, but I'm running a game now where I'd like for people to be able to consciously go through rituals and training to bring out latent outsider-heritage, and the racial levels in UA would work just peachy for that. I can see companion spirits working well in my world, too.

On the other hand, because I'm running this as d20 Past in a fantasy world, high-level magic isn't an option for my players without incantations, so they need some way to get fun goodies in other fashions.

I shudder at the thought of a game that allows every UA character-creation option, every DMG II character-modification option, and every Prestige Class from every WotC book ever produced (without even getting into non-WotC supplements), but I don't think that's really something most people want to do. Most people are picking out one or two things that work for them and going "Oooh, yeah, that would fit," and often they're doing it while getting rid of other stuff. Like gnomes.

 

[Simplicity]

In particular, I'm looking for something to help me with describing NPCs and locations to my players, such as tables or lists of quirks, traits, and facial/clothing descriptions for NPCs and names and descriptions for shops, taverns, dungeon rooms and hallways, cavern tunnels, forests, etc. I always seem to come up short on these kinds of things when designing adventures, or I have them in my mind but forget to use them during the course of play. Is there anything like that in there?

The 100 NPC agendas is probably the closest you're going to get for such things in here.
It's basically just a "what's my motivation?" for random NPCs.

Saltmarsh might help with some descriptions, but it's probably not nearly as good as whats already in the DMG1 for descriptions.

 

[colonelthread]

it's probably not nearly as good as whats already in the DMG1 for descriptions.

Oh :\ I must have missed that chapter. I'll have to give it a look when I get home tonight. Thanks!