Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

I know that I have passed on magic weapons before. 1st as a halfling I can't even use some weapons that are too large. I can respect someone wanting to use their great axe instead of a +1 longsword. But I would never give it back. Use it later to trade for assistance or information or if you hire a retainer.

Concerning the fighter not being able to hit. That sucks, buts its a game you aren't supposed to be guaranteed success. Also, and other may disagree, but the fighter can do other things than just stand there and swing. He can pick up a bench and use it like a plow by rushing into a group and possibly knocking over more than one opponent. As a DM you might want to give a bonus to hit since its not going for damage so much as disruption and its like a charge attack, plus its just damn good storytelling. You want to encourage stuff like that, rather than the fighter just stand there and say, "I swing my axe. I swing my axe. I swing my axe."

Another example, our party came out of a room where our impulsive thief had previously torched everything. So its wasn't a good place to be. We burst into another room and find 4 bad guys putting up a barricade across a far doorway. So we have multiple groups of enemies and they seem to be getting ready to fight one of those other groups. I'm getting ready to notch an arrow, but another player has his PC run in and collapse against the barricade and say something like, "Whew, we made it. We're your reinforcements. How many bad guys are there down there?" The rest of just blink, then dive in as well and point our weapons down the hall instead of at these 4. It worked. We didn't fight them, and during the next melee they bolted away from battle and left us. They didn't help us, but we didn't have to fight them either. And we still got the XP as if we had killed them all. IMO a DM should have given that player bonus XP on the spot for that action.

House rules are good. House rules is as old school as you can get lol. Another house rull I like is roll 4d6 6 times for Chargen and drop lowest die for each group. then let the players place the rolls on any ability they want.

Concerning creating your own dungeon. Its done all the time, but you want to make sure that you remain the referee and not the opponent. Sometimes when a DM is using their own dungeon they may feel like the players are beating the DM when they beat a trap rather than beating the trap. With a premade dungeon, the DM can actually enjoy it when a party completely waxes the BBEG without breaking a sweat by using some unexpected ruse or action.

Some of my thoughts:

-The primary difference on thieves skills and halfling skills is that the former are "active" the player must announce he wish to use it while the last are more "passive" making that the GM rolls whenever he see fits.

-You can have multiple characters of the same class or even only one and make it unique beyond its Abilities values, let the players write a small character description narrating where they where trained, what they like to do on their free time, etc, and base on this you can let them do stuff beyond their class. Ex: One fighter is from the north lands so you can let him know how to survive on cold weather, if you use some "fury" maneuver give him an extra benefit or just allow hit to use it, with this you can simulate skills, knowledge and minor special abilities (warning: you must be careful enough to not allow characters to do really powerful/rules-changing stuff).

-Allow the players to TRY anything logically possible, and if they try something impossible allows them, they'll just fail at it.

-For some actions it's better if you roll secretly, even if you know the outcome, it gives a sensation of "fairness" and keeps the uncertainty of thing.

-For the moving silently thing i would go with:
Thief: Skill % (starting at 25% (1 in 4)).
Non thief without armor or w/leather armor: 1in 8 (half of above).
Non thief w/metal armor: 1 in 20.

To me the dwarf preferring his own axe instead of a magic sword its proof of good roleplaying.

As for unique characters, it is as everyone else said. They can be identical in class but the way they are played is what makes them different.

Example: I have two rangers in a game and while one is a human, the other is a Bisren. Guess which one scares the locals more? The human ranger terrifies the locals more then the never seen before Bisren. Why? It is because the player rp's the human ranger as death walking on two legs to anyone that does not know that character. The characters words and actions proceed him while the Bisren ranger is an oddity but no more then the gnome, half-elf, and halfling of the group for this is a human dominate setting. 99% of the npc's that the group will encounter will be humans unless they specifically search out other races.

There are locals that when they see the human ranger in the distance, they will literally go inside and bar the door shut because they fear him that much. This is also a low level character. Most npc's are 0 level for a reason.

I played a human thief that had 3 hp but an 18 range. He was the bastard of a local baron who cast aside his mother. He grew up poor and stole pies from windows, but had an ego the size of a small country. He bragged about his prowess in battle, but he never actually swung his sword in a melee not even once until he made second level and rolled more HP. He did his damage with his bow and if it looked like he might somehow end up in a front line he would discover a bootlace untied and let people pass him by while he set it right.

You don't need exotic titles and cool skills to make a PC unique.

Ha. Yes, indeed. Crazycrypt has a fighter who was a coward. Seriously. Was, until he too rolled more HP. Now he thinks he's a bad dude...

Coming back to give some principles I use for adding humor.

1) You can get away with an occasional sight gag, but given that you have to describe most of what people see, it's probably more trouble than it's worth, and has too great a chance of falling flat.

2) Puns are in the same place. I'm not averse to pitching wordplay occasionally (just ask my players) but puns are like salt and pepper, they should season your conversation with a bit of cleverness, not overpower it with you trying to show off your vocabulary.

3) Popular culture references can be fun but see rule # 2 and double it.

So what's left, I hear you say.

So here are my principles of adding humor
1) Humor is always situational and character or NPC driven.
2) Humor should be consistent with the PCs or the NPCs wants and desires.
If it doesn't fit with a character, then the humor won't work.

3) Quirks of personality always work better as the basis of humor.
For example, I had an alchemist NPC in one of my cities named Emil Spatterbeard who had a tremendous aversion to dickering on price. He would respond to haggling by getting very nervous and stuttering. Due to an unfortunate experience with a haste potion, he would also shriek and go into a fetal position under his counter anytime anyone said the word speed, haste, or any other variation. The players had a great time trying to figure out what the trigger was and it led into an interesting adventure sending them off to find ingredients for a potion that Emil wanted to make.

4) Get your characters into the swing of things by helping them develop their character and giving them things they can do in the context of the game.
For example, Raywin the dwarf believes he has received his calling to join the order of the priests of Th'nall the Giver. However, he is also very disreputable looking so the priests have been sending him on various "snipe" hunts to gather material for the rituals they claim are required for him to be ordained. He gains spells and such normally, and has been taken into the order by He Who Watches (the cyclops god) himself, but he continues to quest to become accepted by the priests of Th'nall. He also has a mission to make the world a safer place, and so is on the guard for all sorts of things that might be dangerous, however he fails to see the threat in things like swords, axes, and such as they are merely useful tools.

5) Odd magical items can also add to your game, especially if you get really creative about effects or personality. In a Monty python and the Holy Grail dungeon I ran at Gencon back when it was still in Kenosha Wis, the cleric in the group had something called a Holy Moly Spell. Had 144 different effects, none of which could be predicted in advance. Players would use it sometimes just to see what would happen. Don't be afraid to be silly, but try to make sure it fits in the context of your world.

Hope that helps. It sounds like you're on the right track though. Keep it up and let us know how you're doing.

In teluria's game there is a rednecky dwarf that has a tendency to pass gas in stressful situations, usually in tight passages surrounded by party members.

Thanks for everything since my last post! Taking it all in, and working on my second test-dungeon. Going to run a few of these to get myself and players acclimated to the system, then I'm going to start the full group on Morgansfort. Also going to try to get in another player so there's 4 of them. Included undead in this one so the Cleric feels more useful. Left more to random rolls, ended up with a pair of plundering gnomes in one of the rooms, planning on some fun interactions there with the party.

However, this left me with more questions.

1) For higher treasure types, such as Gnome's having "D", it's listed under lair treasure. Does that mean that would be the treasure in a gnome lair, or does each gnome have that on their person?

2) This might be a GM preference, but let's say I have a player like my halfling in my last dungeon who wanted to move silently. In general, how far of a space/time does that include? If you wanted to move double your movement, would it only be one check? What about during combat when the rounds are divided?

2a)On that note, if he fails, at what point does he fail? Say he is wearing leather and moves 30'/round. The treasure chest is 60' away. There are lightly sleeping guard dogs in the room that will wake up upon failed check. Do I put him at 30' because that's one round? The entire way? Half a round? When he takes one step?

I should add, let your players develop relationships among their characters as well. For example, Kalixta the illusionist took am immediate dislike to Ragda the Flatulent, which only grew after she drank the wrong potion and became a dog woman. Since her sense of smell is now 25x stronger, she is much more sensitive about odors.

Try to keep it simple, rather than rolling per movement or half movement use one roll, if he fails he moves but the dogs will hear him.
Never really care for exact positions and such rules but he probably will have only up to 30'.

Of course if you want more detail make a roll per movement rate but this will make almost impossible to pass the dog guards...