The Dungeon Masters' Foundation Mk.II

[BSF]

I have a player that wanted to use Vow of Poverty from Exhalted deeds....I agreed, after all we're all here to have fun. Aye Carumba...his characeter is now totally "out of control" and I even limted some of the adder feats....Why did the player want this feat, you may ask? Because he is a damn rules lawyer munchkin...Thats O.K> there are plenty of ways to kill a "untouchible" 28AC...

Please allow me to intorduce you to this nice incorporal creature ftom Tome of Horrors 2..
Oh I sorry did that hurt!.. OOhh Golly youre @ 1/3 Hit Points...Just imagin If i was actually able to possess his character (mwahahahaha!)

There are these little "stupid" feats like "nimbus cloud" that floats around this enlightened monk......I said NO WAY....The other thing is this.. There should always be a catch....
With VOP any gold or material wealth results in no feat....Just wait till this players argues for a "fair share" of the plundered gold...(he always will cuz he's capt. argument)

I am having my players look at stuff from BoED. I have one player that is seriously considering Vow Of Poverty. But I think he has decided to pass on it. Personally I like Nimbus of Light, but it is a bit underpowered for most circumstances. The Diplomacy bonuses aren't bad if you are really trying to tweak that out though. Still, most of my players have shied away from BoED. They keep mumbling something about it being too hard to maintain Exalted status. We will see though, it would be fun to watch all that RP out.

On the vow of Poverty thing though, your PC had dang well better be arguing for his fair share of the treasure. He worked hard for that stuff to be able to give it to those that need it. Check the second paragraph of Other Ramifications of Poverty on page 30 of the BoED.

I also "banished" all PDF crap that PCs will down load. Much of this stuff is made up by players anyhow (its a conspiracy)

Wow, I really run a different game than you. I have 3-4 shelves of D20 products. I also have 693 Mb of PDFs that I refer to. Admittedly, some of those are maps and tiles. But I wholeheartedly encourage my players to work with PDFs. So long as they fit the character concpet and fit within the campaign, I am good with it. I run a large group and I use a lot of 3rd party material. Many of the PDfs I refer to the most are written by some of the industries leading professionals. Monte Cook, Sean K Reynolds, Phillip Reed and others. They do good stuff. Then there are PDFs by "lesser knowns" such as Spencer Cooley (The Sigil), James Garr, Gareth-Michael Skarka (GM Skarka) and Corey Reid (Barsoomcore). EN Publishing has some very good stuff, I think I only have 18 PDFs from EN Publishing. It isn't all stuff for everyone, but the PDF market has some great bits out there.

Dude you should have seen when Unearthed Arcanna for 3.5 came out....it was almost as bad as AD&D UnEarthed...(We actually burned a copy when camping!) Players were coming to me saying, "Yeah i want to take some of these talents listed here"

OK, I agree with you here. Some of the stuff in UA is less than stellar. That being said, I have adopted a couple of things for my campaign from there.

Mongoose makes good stuff.....It just needs editing and tweeking

Again, big differences in what we like. I have looked at Mongoose stuff, and some of it is pretty decent. But I have seen a lot of Mongoose stuff I have passed on completely. But the stuff I have seen for Paranoia is good!

i explained to my "uber monk" . "You realize that your character is pretty powerful, and to balance the game you will have to fight bigger baddies. Your characer is such an "Exalted" monk that his goodness draws evil and good alike. More enemies will attack you, and as a player you will have to fight off the greatest evil on the battle field, or it may easily pick through your comerades..."

Last session the PCS fought a KYton with levels in Assassin...It was a CR 12 encounter .
Each round I rolled on a d6 "1-4 the kyton attacks "lil goody 2 shoes" 5/6 it attacks the priest..So i was mostly attacking the Exhalted monk. (I hit him a few times too!)

Heh, this I can relate to. Last campaign I created a couple of templates that I might apply to PCs. One is the Hero of [Deity] template. The other is Champion of [Realm]. Heros always get picked on when there is a choice. Especially by opposing Heros! Champions are pretty much the same, but they are more in danger from enemis of their realm. By the time that campaign ended, two PCs were Heroes of their respective gods and one of the Heroes was also a Champion. It was fun stuff all around. Just for the record, whenever I don't have a compelling reason why any given opponent will choose one PC over the other, I make the players play Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who gets attacked. And yes, I have had Players intentionally throw the game to have their PC save another.

It is fascinating how many variations of the same game we all play. Some of us like certain material more than others. Some of us have stylistic differences. But in the end it is all a bunch of people having fun playing a game. That's cool.

 

[BSF]

Nightcloak,
perhaps you can use the differences in magic to emphasize a campaign element? Perhaps the gods are waning in power as the magic from the East is being built upon and strengthened. Perhaps there is a god that is the sole god of arcane magic, but instead of seeking followers, derives power whenever a new arcane spellcaster grows in power. Perhaps the magic is just new "technology" and each spellcaster is either "old school" or "new school".

Or you might "damn the torpedoes" and just go full bore into the AU/AE magic system regardless of what the players think they want today. Maybe do a one-shot to ease them into how the magic system works well before you begin a campaign. But then just let them know you are running an AU/AE campaign and that's that.

Obviously, you know better than I how well this would actually go over with the players.

 

[BSF]

Does anyone have any ideas for the stats of a dairy cow? I have some really disturbing things planned involving these harmless little cud chewers...

I would probably just use the Bison from the MM. Maybe leave the Gore attack in place for Bulls and remove it for Cows. *shrug* Maybe not though. I don't have much experience with dairy cows. How often do one of those charge?

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Hi all...

Some of you know I've been absent, and for those who didn't, I've been absent. January 18th I was in a pretty bad car wreck where my leg was broken and I suffered a lot of soft tissue damage (cartilage) and bruising in my chest and ribcage. I've been staying with my wife (we live separately... but get along fine) but she didn't have internet access. But I'm back, and after I've had a few days to catch up, I'll be back to participatin' again.

 

[Aris Dragonborn]

Holy crap on a stick, dude, a car accident? Glad to hear that you're alright.

We should get this thread going again. Updates on what's happening in your campaigns, anyone?

Well, since you asked so nicely

We're FINALLY ready to begin a new campaign, set in Eberron, after a year-and-a-half hiatus (everyone got burned out on gaming - is that even possible? ). Since I have only three players presently, I let them roll up Gestalt characters form the UA. And, since they wanted a high-level ccampaign, I let them start out at 10th level. Considering the cool new races in the ECS, I was surprised (and a little disappointed) that all three chose human as their race :\ . Anyway, the classes they chose are: Fighter/Druid, Rogue/Monk, and Fighter/Psion.

I'm going to run them through the Eberron adventures (The Forgotten Forge, shadows of the Last War, Whisper of the Vampire's Blade, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw). So far, I've only had a little trouble scaling the Forgotten Forge for 10th level PC's (I think that we took to much time off; even though I continued to buy and read game books while on hiatus, I'm still having a little trouble knocking the rust off of the pipes). I've added/deleted some of the monsters originally given in the adventure (like the Beetle Swarm, in favor of a pair of Fiendish Sword Spiders ), and I'm probably going to expand the given dungeon site to account for the PC's levels; seems right to me anyway.

[Sidenote] To aid in building this dungeon (which has never been one of my strong points), I've ordered AEG's Dungeon sourcebook, hoping that it might have some helpful tips and tricks I can use in addition to whatever I can find on the EN World boards. If it proves to be half as useful as I think it will, I just might order their Evil sourcebook as well, so at long last I can run a proper evil campaign my players have been whining for.[/sidenote]

I'll probably follow the campaign track fairly close, with a few minor changes here and there; WotVB doesn't seem to follow along with the Schema Hunt storyline, so I'm still looking for a way to bring it more in line with the other adventures.

Some other little things that I'm going to do will be to use the Marrow Knight from Creature Collections I in SotLW, when the PC's reach Karrnath (FINALLY!!! I've been looking for an opportunity to use this monster ever since I bought the book, and now I can finally inflict him upon my group!).

Anyway, that's it so far. I'll try to keep y'all updated as much as time allows.

 

[Nightcloak]

Hi all...

Some of you know I've been absent, and for those who didn't, I've been absent. January 18th I was in a pretty bad car wreck where my leg was broken and I suffered a lot of soft tissue damage (cartilage) and bruising in my chest and ribcage. I've been staying with my wife (we live separately... but get along fine) but she didn't have internet access. But I'm back, and after I've had a few days to catch up, I'll be back to participatin' again.

Holy crap on a stick, dude, a car accident? Glad to hear that you're alright.

What he said.

Glad your back!!!

 

[Blade of Desecration]

OK, I'll bite. What in the world are you going to do with a dire, er... dairy cow???
And do I really want to know or is Madmorgan going to make me roll a madness save if you tell me???

Two words: cow wendigo.

 

[Nightcloak]

OK, I'll bite. What in the world are you going to do with a dire, er... dairy cow???
And do I really want to know or is Madmorgan going to make me roll a madness save if you tell me???

Two words: cow wendigo.

Save Failed...

 

[Blade of Desecration]

Save Failed...

Hehehe...

 

[Nightcloak]

We're FINALLY ready to begin a new campaign, set in Eberron...

Cool.

Eberron is one of the campaign worlds that go on my "If I had more time" list. You know, the imaginary list for the alternate universe were you have time to play the 3 or 4 games extra a week with all of your new found free time.

Themind is running an Eberron campaign too, this will be cool to see how it works for both of you.

*Taps foot and watches the clock*