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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1308660" data-attributes="member: 15470">It sure makes it tough to find somebody who's willing to train him.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Seriously, that was Verenia's prophecy, after all: Chuck the Bereaved: You stand between two great losses. One behind, one before you. The trial will make you stronger.From which we players can only presume that Jim's death was scripted..The one that really cracked us up was in this most recent session, when, for the second time in his career, Chuck gambled in a bar and, for the second time, a bar brawl ensued in which he got stabbed with a dagger...Not particularly; we have two interesting house rules, which you can find detailed at the group's site <a href="http://www.ave6.net/joshwitz/dnd/" target="_blank">http://www.ave6.net/joshwitz/dnd/</a>See (<a href="http://www.ave6.net/joshwitz/dnd/house_rules/" target="_blank">http://www.ave6.net/joshwitz/dnd/house_rules/</a>) for a discussion of this topic. Basically, we have a spell point system instead of individual spell slots; you can memorize the same number of spells, but you use the spell points to pick and choose between them. It winds up being a great advantage for a low-level caster, a great disadvantage at medium-levels (when you have to choose between dropping, say, three third level spells in an orgy of casting, or spacing it out with a bunch of low level spells), and coming back strong at very high levels. It also puts a great premium on, say, having an 18 int as a Wizard.We also play with a custom fumble/crit system. Fumble check on a 1, crit check on your threat range. The roll to confirm looks something like this:Fumble 1 ==> Stunned, prone, loses weapon DC20, and generates AoO miss ==> Stunned, off balance, loses weapon DC15 and generates AoO hit ==> off balance (init=0, flatfooted) 20 ==> saved yourself, normal miss Critical 1 ==> Normal hit miss ==> Max damage hit ==> Max damage + (Multiplier - 1) * Die roll 20 ==> Max damage * MultiplierThe fumble-on-a-1 system typically winds up generating attacks of opportunity, and dropping somebody to the bottom of the initiative order. Other than that, nothing dramatic.Chuck goes down a lot because he uses the two-weapon fighting, with only leather armor, so his AC wasn't too impressive at low levels. Paks got pretty unlucky on her hit die rolls for 2nd and 3rd levels, which didn't help; Stone missed a few sessions and fell behind in XP, relative to the rest of the group. And, of course, our wizard support at this point was spotty at best: Brunhilde? Delonia?I think our DM made it a tougher world by putting us on a 25-point ability buy system.. its been a while, but I think Paks started with something on the order of 16-13-12-10-10-10. Which doesn't net much in the way of bonuses.. some of the other players went with something like 16-14-13-10-10-8, but nobody went all-out for those 17's and 18's, and I don't think anybody had two 16's, either. (That's certainly the answer to, 'Does nobody make their saves?', from an earlier post... if a fighter put a 16 into strength, he doesn't have exceptionally good saves.)Also, most of this far was very low-level; primarily first and second. We got a little bit better at staying on our feet when we bumped up a few levels... and the plot started to feel much more epic. In particular, I like the way characters and plot elements from these early episodes show up even two years later, it very much makes the world feel like a living breathing place. The Scarred Lands world offers much more scope for divine-level plots... if the Gods themselves physically walked the earth only 150 years ago... you expect them to continue to take an interest in what happens there today.I've very much been enjoying writing it; our DM is quite creative, and was responsible for one of my all-time favorite 'My god, that was evil' plotlines... which I shan't spoil for you by describing here!</blockquote>

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