We are starting an Eberron Campaign - Need Your Advice

[Najo]

Our gaming group is starting an Eberron campaign and I have some feedback I need on a few items please.


Action Points: Our DM is wanting to make action points more fun to use and more viable without over powering them. He is considering giving us half the number of starting action points (rounded up), but allowing them to replenish every game session. That way we have less of them, but can use them a little more freely and not be turned off taking action point based feats and prestige classes. Does any one have any advice on how to balance this properily and what feats, spells, prestige classes and other game mechanics would it impact? How do you adjust those items?



On the second note, Character Concepts:

I am trying to decide on the type of character I want to play and want some advice as to how to build each of them. Here are the different characters I am thinking of:

A Kalshtar Psychic Warrior that is built to fill the role of a fighter with some neat "jedi" like powers and a strange planar connections to Dal Quor. I would like to maximize the psionic power and get a good synergy from its action points with its psionic powers.

A Changeling Spiritual Assassin, that is also strong enough to fight in a back up fighter role and uses its disguise ability to get close to targets. I want the Changeling to have a strange mystical side to it and any killing it does to fit with its beliefs. I would like to maximize the combat potential, action points and the feat Heroic Devotion (from Faiths of Eberron).

An Arenial Elf who is tied in some way to the Undying Court, serving a secret agenda of theirs and acting as ther agent afar. Anything that fits the concept works, either a caster or warrior type. The elf could have had something occured that awakened the prophecy within him or tied him to a dragon mark unexpectedly and now he needs to hide it.

Also, a character that makes good use of the feat Dragon Prophesier along with Prophecy's Hero (both from Magic of Eberron) is interesting to me. I like the idea of the character being tied to the Argonsessen Prophecy and able to find inner strength by going into a mystic state. This also means that a high WIS bonus that works with the character's concept and game mechanics is good to.

Overall, I am big on a good character concept with a interesting background as well as a synergistic and well-built character. I need some input on what feats and classes to go after.

With background ideas and concepts I also don't care what gender the character is, since I usually DM and play NPCs all the time, but would prefer a male character just because we are playing with a couple of new players and I wouldn't want to complicate things with any gender bending confusing him and her. The rest of us are comfortable with strong characters played by either men or women. If the character being female was essential to the concept and that concept was the top choice for me, then I would play her that way.

 

[shilsen]

On the action point front, I've DMed two Eberron games (one lasting 2 years and one into its third) where I usually allotted three action pts per session instead of the standard format. The action pts didn't carry over to the next session. It worked just fine, even though I normally only have one or, much more rarely, two combats a session. The only thing I restricted was the use of the Action Surge feat.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

An Arenial Elf who is tied in some way to the Undying Court, serving a secret agenda of theirs and acting as ther agent afar. Anything that fits the concept works, either a caster or warrior type. The elf could have had something occured that awakened the prophecy within him or tied him to a dragon mark unexpectedly and now he needs to hide it.

In the Player's Guide to Eberron we find the Deathguard - a small religious order which travels the world on behalf of the Undying Court, taking the fight to necromancers and the undead wherever they're found.

Alternatively, the vigilant sentinel of Aerenal prestige class is a "part spy, part assassin" option for a character who pursues the agenda of the Undying Court and the Sibling Kings across the world. Conceivably, a vigilant sentinel of Aerenal could also belong to the Deathguard, perhaps assigned - at least initially - to carry out a series of tasks within the borders of Karrnath aimed at thwarting the plans of the Order of the Emerald Claw, the Blood of Vol, or Count Vedim ir'Omik's Ministry of the Dead.

 

[pedr]

On the Action Points thing, the RPGA campaigns set in Eberron have a per-adventure rather than per-level allotment of APs (where an adventure is roughly 4.5 hours of play-time).

The chart is available in the Xen'drik Expeditions Campaign Standards from www.rpga.com. The system has two numbers - one for players without special reward cards and a higher one for those who have them. The higher number is 4+(1/2 character level) rounded down.

 

[The Lost Muse]

I made used replenishing action points in my last campaign, and they still didn't get used all that often.

Also, assuming that you've got ~13 encounters per level, PC's get enough action points to use their abilities in the encounters where they matter.

 

[Najo]

I made used replenishing action points in my last campaign, and they still didn't get used all that often.

Also, assuming that you've got ~13 encounters per level, PC's get enough action points to use their abilities in the encounters where they matter.

There are some interesting action point based abilties tied to feats and prestige class levels, but with the finite 5+ 1/2 your level gained each level and 13 encounters per level even, most action point based abilties can't even be used once per encounter until your high level. Considering that you are giving up feats and class levels abilities for some of these mediocre effects, it is really surprising that action points were not designed around per day instead of per level. Per level is going to vary based upon the xp given and how much roleplaying a group does. In some story driven games an action point ability might be very interesting to use multiple times in a roleplaying span and not be game breaking, but that character's next level is way off and they have no way to replenish their action points before the next fight. When that occurs, the feats and class abilities fueled by action points are dead weight. So we want advice on how to seperate action point replenishment from level advancement in order to remove that problem but keep action points balanced properily.

I suppose technically action points are a freebie anyways, and that is why the associated feats and levels are weak but when your talking about feats and class abilities none of them should have a limited use until you level. Let's say that you have a BBEG who has action points and action point related feats, the DM technically needs to track the use of those action points until that BBEG levels. So as the PCs encounter him his is getting weaker with each meeting until he levels. This makes the idea fairly silly. What about characters who spend alot of downtime between adventures or are retired. They run out of the ability to use their training until they "level". It brings the metagame into the world setting in a unrealistic way.

The other issue is the current way action points work makes characters not want to take those feats and levels and hold on to action points unrealistically. Action points should be getting used here and there through out the character's level not held till the very end and then used or in the most dire circumstances. If that were the case, then thee shouldn't be any feats or classes based around the use of them.

Action points need some work. The problems make them less fun and to silly if you ask me.

 

[The Lost Muse]

Najo, I'm in agreement with you - if you are investing one of your limited feat slots or levels into an ability, you should be able to use it.

That said, Action points should encourage a certain "cinematic" feel - and when they get used to boost saving throws or AC for a round every once and a while they aren't really doing their job.