The Dungeon Masters' Foundation

[Blade of Desecration]

Character gold should be determined by ECL, not character level. That is, if everyone starts off at the same ECL (which it seems like, by the way you put it). It doesn't seem fair that a character gets less gold than everyone else because they decided to choose a race with a LA, especially when LA's can already be brutal.

I don't think that anyone should be excluded. If we're going along and someone else wants to join in, *bam* they're in. There are plenty of ways to work their character in. If someone wants to start up another campaign while this one is already going on, then they are welcome and able to.

I've been contemplating something, ever since I found those tests concerning characters and stats. I've always thought of having a game in which everyone's character was of the same race and class as indicated by the test, and that they're stats were according to how the test rated them. I think it would give the game a different feel, and make the characters more personal. Of course, if someone preferred something different, they are welcome to make a different character. It's just a thought. What does everyone else think?

I'm aiming for a campaign that will last for some amount of time. I'd also prefer a more low-magic setting instead of one that is so chock-full of magic that it becomes mundane. Of course, I wouldn't really mind much either way.

I like some magic, but not too much. I don't lke commoners walking around with wands.
As to your test idea, I have two problems. One, I don't think that test is completely accurate, since it put me as a gnome paladin . Also, I can never seem to get the ability score thing working. I fill everything out and enter it, but then it doesn't give me stats.
As to multiple campaigns, we only need this if we have to many people for one campaign.

 

[Xen155]

Well, I think Dyne is corect about the starting gold thing.

I intend to be a LE Domain Wizard Evoker. I like to have two casters who complement themselves so I think we can have more than one caster, of course that is my opnion, and an excellent question was asked and im asking the other people who want to play as well as the DMs
At what pace do we intend to play this campaign?

 

[Dyne]

BoD, I'm thinking you might have a pop-up blocker that blocks the ability scores from coming through. If you use Mozilla Firefox, it has a pop-up blocker built in. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. If you don't want to go by the test, fine. I just thought it'd be interesting to have that as an option.

As to the pace, probably not too fast. I, myself, can only be online for a few hours. I'm sure there will be others who will be interested, but they won't have much time. In that case, if the DM is on at the time when others are on, perhaps the DM could run a few mini-adventures or something for the others. The plot should only progress when everyone is there.

Or, if you mean how fast the plot should progress, or perhaps how fast our characters level up and all that, then I still feel that it should be nice and slow. I'm not very fond of jumping several levels in only a few sessions. For one, it takes me a bit to get used to my new abilities from leveling up. It helps to go up in power at a rather slow rate so that people can get used to things a little bit at a time. That, and I hate the "power creep" of D&D. If the pace of the game went too fast, it could run the danger of becoming a battle just to keep yourself alive. That type of game is fine, I just prefer things nice and slow myself.

Of course, I'm adaptable. A game could run virtually opposite of my idea of the perfect game and I'd still enjoy it if that's what everyone else wanted to do.

 

[Stone Angel]

Well I am no stranger to pushing the pc's and making them choose between being at full strength and making little headway or advancing at a weaker condition.

But my question is this should not a 20th level fighter equal a 20th level wizard on damage output. Granted their will always be differences. A thief's damage should roughly equal a fighters after a successful sneak attack or so. A monk should be equally effective with his strikes and quivering palm and all his extra abilities. A barbarian probably surpasses and even should surpass the fighter in raw damage capability.

The fighter presented in the dmg versus the wizard in the dmg. The fighter at 20th level can hit another fighter of 20th on average three of his four attacks doing on average about45 points of damage. This can be tweaked of course with a more expensive weapon and an even higher strength. Taking the other fighter in four rounds. If he is lucky and does maximum damage he can do it in three.

The wizard presented doesn't really do any pc wizard justice and it doesn't even peak do to the ecl there but with a few metamagic feats even just a fireball or scorching ray could take down that same fighter in a round or so. Not to mention the collateral damage with the fireball he could do to other combatants. Maybe I have just been skewed by the evil powergamers that makes up my group.

Now I am not saying that this is unfair just curious if anyone has tried to mitigate this or not. That was my only question. The bard says the fact that it is a limited resource is one way the way it is built into the current system. Any others or instances?

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[Dyne]

I'm lucky enough to have good Players in my game. Except for a little metagaming and stupid decisions on the part of the Players, they don't try to powergame.

But, that's my regular group. I'd seen powergaming in other groups, and all of it has been with some kind of spellcaster, mainly the Wizard. I've considered turning the Wizard into a Prestige Class, and forcing a character to advance sufficiently in the Bard or something until he meets the requirements. It would probably be better if some other class was designed like the Bard, however with a different focus. Basically, an apprentice Wizard.

On the ability score test:
I also encountered problems getting my ability scores. This might be because a pop-up displays the results. I tried it in Mozilla Firefox, and it didn't work. I tried it in Internet Explorer, and it still didn't work. Then, I realized that my security settings might be blocking it. So, I adjusted them and tried it again. It didn't work, but then I tried it again and I finally got the results. I'm pretty sure that the settings were blocking it.

 

[Blade of Desecration]

Following Xen's idea, I'll be a CN orc (not half-orc, full orc) warmage, from Complete Arcane. Yes, I know an orc gets a charisma penalty, the warmage's main ability score, but I like the abstract stuff.
I agree with Dyne that the game should be slow paced.

P.S. Dyne, I'll try that thing again.

 

[Blade of Desecration]

Alright Dyne, I just tried the thing again for a while, and it still isn't working. I don't think I'll be able to get it running.

 

[ender_wiggin]

I think I might as well join. It couldn't hurt right?

My gaming history:
I'm pretty young; only 16, senior in high school. I started playing a while ago in middle school with one group, but they eventually became druggies and I stopped hanging around with them. For about a year I stopped gaming, and then got back into it with another group; unfortunately, they were all roll-players, and then last year they all went to college, so I was back to square one. I started DMing pbp last summer - the experiences haven't been bad, per se, and I'm a better DM than I thought I would be, but the smaller sites I've DMed on have this curious trend of dying. Why not on Enworld then? Because with 1000+ users online simultaneously, Enworld runs pretty slow on my computer. I thought a smaller site would be better initially, but I guess not. I hear we're getting a faster server soon. Good thing....
I guess that was pretty boring, but if you read it you have a good idea of where I'm at.


Now my first question:
I heard many good DMs tell me that you shouldn't buy too much into your story arc. But in addition to playing Dnd, I write stories. So I'm a narrationist. And there's this plot arc that I've come up with, not in one or two months, but over the course of several years, that I am very very proud of. I guess my life goal as a DM is to see the plot arc played through. Now tell me, how bad is this? (I'll even give you the plot arc; in my opinion it is very good, but you won't be able to play in any of my games...)

 

[Xen155]

Ah, that is a rather odd char CotDS but I like it! And we will be a magical forc to be reckoned with.

As to the Question brought up earlier, NO WAY should a 20th Fighter and 20th Wizard be equal in damage output. Im not gonna get into an explination right now (Orange Bowl, GO OU) but no way.

I was refering to both Dyne, slow game sounds fine to me and we should get the people who wants to plays available hours.

 

[ChaosEvoker]

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