RE-SKINNING: Who needs rules to customize?
kitcik
Adventurer
Read the post title again. "Re-skinning" not "fore-skinning"
Now, if you want to talk about how to "re-skin" my anarmored, unarmed attacks, it could get interestnig. However, not something I want to discuss with a dude.
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HRSegovia
Explorer
Ok. THAT was funny - And this is what I want: creativity. Let's hear some more!
I agree, but it is part of the ruleset.
RUMBLETiGER
Adventurer
The benefit of using things according to RAW is that way, everyone can all understand the same thing and be on the same page.
In the event that one wants to throw people off, Or if everyone can understand and agree with (or atleast get some enjoyment out of) any change, than groovy.
Me and mine, however, are pretty strict RAW people. only houserule we've ever seriously stuck with was eliminating xp penalty for multiclassing. With that said, templates, creative-out-of-the-box play and ridiculous builds have more than covered the "Whoa, didn't expect that coming" feel in our games.
In the event that one wants to throw people off, Or if everyone can understand and agree with (or atleast get some enjoyment out of) any change, than groovy.
Me and mine, however, are pretty strict RAW people. only houserule we've ever seriously stuck with was eliminating xp penalty for multiclassing. With that said, templates, creative-out-of-the-box play and ridiculous builds have more than covered the "Whoa, didn't expect that coming" feel in our games.
carborundum
Adventurer
I love reskinning stuff, and encourage my players to do so too. The party wizard/loremaster/arcane archivist is book crazy. His spells all involve paper, parchment, ink etc in some way. Slow looks like rolls of paper wrapping up the limbs of opponents and hindering their every move. Detect spells display their information on a floating scroll, visible only to him. What else.. oh yeah, staffstrike - that was a roll of paper on the ground that rippled violently throwing people to the ground.
I made plenty of monsters by reskinning whatever stats I wanted to use.
Giant blobs of flesh with huge tubes sticking out of the top, wailing to disconcert their foes? No worries - lets use the stats for hill giant bards.
A floating ball of eyes that winks at you and burns you or breaks your weapons? Warlock.
A possessed paintbrush? Gnome illusionist.
Great fun
I made plenty of monsters by reskinning whatever stats I wanted to use.
Giant blobs of flesh with huge tubes sticking out of the top, wailing to disconcert their foes? No worries - lets use the stats for hill giant bards.
A floating ball of eyes that winks at you and burns you or breaks your weapons? Warlock.
A possessed paintbrush? Gnome illusionist.
Great fun
Empirate
First Post
Spellcasting Thematics (3.5) also allows you to pick a "thematic spell" in each spell level you know, whose caster level increases by one. So it's far from worthless. Better than Mobility, or Athletic, or Run. In a low level game, where you start at level 1 and you know you'll never reach past 7th or so, it's decent.
HRSegovia
Explorer
Yes, but as every game should be: all rules are optional. Remember the days of OD&D? That's when I started. That's how I grew up. There was not a rule for everything and the game was still a mystery. We had to invent ways to handle situations and GM's have to wing-it creating just as much fun as actually playing ("This is how WE do it in our game. How do you do it in yours?").
Today, D&D is almost no different than Magic the Gathering: how can we bend every rule we can find to increase the critical threat range to 2-20? The rules have become a cage to view the D&D realm rather than a freeform means in interact with it.
Somewhere in between is the place where magic is made. It starts with a common understanding in your group: "All rules are optional. We are not here to tweak our character to become powerhouses. This is not a competition. We are creating personas to experience a world. Who do YOU want to be tonight?"
My greatest advice in this situation, when the rules have become the only means of resolution, is to play OD&D; if just for one long session (preferably until level 4). -- For the DM, use the following guidelines:
- Avoid an epic campaign. Keep it within the same region with little travel. "The Cave" or "The Dungeon" should be the climax and not the core.
- Focus on story rather than action to give the players an opportunity to love their character and not their abilities.
- Creatures and magic should be rare and sometimes feared as myth or witchcraft. This will keep the horror and fear of the creatures when encountered, the convenience of magic to a minimum, and the mystery of the D&D realm full of wonder to PC's and NPC's alike.
- Above all, focus more on the game and less on the rules. Wing-it when necessary, but for the most part just make a judgement call on success, failure, and allowance rather than breaking the momentum of the story to create a convoluted, unrealistic, or unnecessary rule to handle a mundane or meager task.
You, and your players will learn much from the experience.
Empirate
First Post
While I do sympathize with the general bent of your statement, I disagree strongly on the role of rules for the game.
I find it highly motivating and interesting to not only play the game itself (which revolves around 90% role, 10% rollplaying in the group I DM for), but also think about the metagame, i.e. using and working with the ruleset. I find it fascinating how many interesting character concepts can be made to work within the ruleset in D&D 3.5 - giving you not only cool images in your head, but also mechanics to translate these into concretes. This way, you can be sure your ideas of what a character is good at, how his magic works exactly, and what his special moves are, will have a mechanical impact, too.
We have experimented with more free-form roleplaying, be it the highly abstract and simplified FATE-based ruleset that saw us saving the world from Odin's wrath, or a more simulationist Hârnmaster-based, heavily houseruled, "don't worry, we'll just handle it this way" system that carried us through three awesome campaigns. I even played in a campaign that positively had no rules whatsoever to translate imaginations into game mechanics.
All of these had their advantages over D&D, each in their own ways. However, none of these could match the appeal of D&D 3.5 for its ability to make concepts work mechanically. Granted, it can be a lot of work, but it can be quite enjoyable for a gamer like me to play the metagame and see how the myriad parts of a system fit together.
My fun's not better than yours, though. Enjoy your games, they sound great.
I find it highly motivating and interesting to not only play the game itself (which revolves around 90% role, 10% rollplaying in the group I DM for), but also think about the metagame, i.e. using and working with the ruleset. I find it fascinating how many interesting character concepts can be made to work within the ruleset in D&D 3.5 - giving you not only cool images in your head, but also mechanics to translate these into concretes. This way, you can be sure your ideas of what a character is good at, how his magic works exactly, and what his special moves are, will have a mechanical impact, too.
We have experimented with more free-form roleplaying, be it the highly abstract and simplified FATE-based ruleset that saw us saving the world from Odin's wrath, or a more simulationist Hârnmaster-based, heavily houseruled, "don't worry, we'll just handle it this way" system that carried us through three awesome campaigns. I even played in a campaign that positively had no rules whatsoever to translate imaginations into game mechanics.
All of these had their advantages over D&D, each in their own ways. However, none of these could match the appeal of D&D 3.5 for its ability to make concepts work mechanically. Granted, it can be a lot of work, but it can be quite enjoyable for a gamer like me to play the metagame and see how the myriad parts of a system fit together.
My fun's not better than yours, though. Enjoy your games, they sound great.
carborundum
Adventurer
Nicely put especially your avoidance of the badwrongfun argument. Your games sound excellent too!
For me, it's just a way to describe a concept in my head using existing rules, rather than have to invent new rules, items, classes, spells or whatever.
For me, it's just a way to describe a concept in my head using existing rules, rather than have to invent new rules, items, classes, spells or whatever.
