TK-Squared's blog

I like D&D

2010-10-06T13:08:58Z

You know what? I like D&D. Because it's not reality.

Reality is god damn boring (in comparison, ofc).

Discuss.

Regarding a Campaign

2010-03-03T12:06:57Z

Sup gaiz, I'm just here, making this here blog post.

While I have one rather slow game, I am interested in opening a second game that is not primarily 'roleplaying' based, but pretty much combat-based. The purpose of which is to allow people to 'test' characters, builds, races, classes or whatever they like in a challenging environment. As my players will be sure to inform you, I am do rather enjoy very challenging combat in that sense. If you are interested in the idea, be sure to reply to this comment with any questions or anything that needs to be clarified.

So, without further ado..

1 The Scales of War: The Tower

The Scales of War: The Tower Edit

Four people awaken within a strange and unfamiliar small room; four of it's five walls houses a single bed extruding from the stone. The beds are not at all comfortable and are reminiscent of prison cell beds. The room is dimly lit by a single torch within the center, flickering an orange flame everlasting. Upon the fifth wall is the door, the only way in or out of the room. Soon after the bewildered four awaken, a robed humanoid enters; her body entirely covered by long garments and her face shadowed by a heavy draped hood. She delivers clothing to each of the naked people and stands back to fully explain what was occurring.

"You have been chosen by the great Scales" she begins, indicating the room around her as the scales she mentions, "to participate in a gauntlet of challenges to test your strength, determination and power. This great honour is yours to bear together." With a flick of her wrist, the Keeper causes the flames of the torch to spit and hiss, forming into a long tower shape, with 11 individual floors. "You are currently at the bottom of the tower, but you shall make your way up the ten floors above this, to the top of the tower. If you successfully complete the challenge therein, you shall be rewarded for your efforts. Every floor will have a series of four challenges for you, that will test you to the very limit of your powers. Every two challenges will give you a break, to rest, relax and allow the Maidens of the Tower to make you healthy."

"If you wish to accept, then merely step through this door and you shall be permitted entrance into the tower."

Game Information Edit

As noted, the game will be simple and merely a series of challenges that afford to test the characters strengths and weaknesses. There will be a total of ten floors and each floor will include four challenges/encounters. A challenge/encounter will consist of many different things and not simply combat against opponents. Each encounter will require the party to attain a key to open the door into the next room; there is no other way to open the door and the door cannot by bypassed by any means. In the event that the key is lost, destroyed or otherwise out of the reach of the party, the encounter fails and must be restarted.

Each floor's progression is as such:

Stairs from previous floor ascend into the First Encounter
First Encounter gives to the Second Encounter.
Second Encounter gives way to the Break Room.
The Break Room gives way to the Third Encounter.
The Third Encounter gives way to the Final Encounter.
The Final Encounter gives way to the Rest Room.
The Rest Room gives way to the Stairs.

Encounters Edit

An encounter will consist of a CR appropriate challenge; although this is not to say the CR will equal the party's average CR, but rather the encounter will be powered to create a challenge for individual members of the party and will be highly dependent on the power level of the group and also past performances. Some encounters will play to the strength of a portion of the party or the weakness of another portion of the party. Encounters are meant to be invoke team work and use of different abilities rather than simply hitting things to death. All encounters will be created to create at least a minor challenge; this is not to say they will be completely unfair, but all encounters will also be conquerable.

As noted, to complete an encounter the party must unlock the door to the next encounter by use of a special key. This key will be an integral part of some of the encounters and should be watched out for. If the key is destroyed or otherwise incapable of being used to open the door, then the encounter will be noted as a failure. Any failed encounter forces the party into the last safe room (Break Room or Rest Room) that they were last in and requires them to complete the next set of encounters again; this said, encounters are always found in pairs.

Safe Rooms Edit

Safe Rooms, the Rest and Break Rooms, are rooms that provide no encounter, but rather give everyone a chance to have some R&R and also healing. This breaks up the encounters, so that you're not running headlong into the harder encounters with low health, as you will require much higher health than that in some encounters. It also gives a chance to sort things out, buff yourself if needs be and anything else that is required. Each Safe Room contains various maidens to aid the party in; Healing, Purchasing, Resurrection, Customization and LA Purchasing.

Both types of room have a 10 hour time limit.

Healing Edit

When in a safe room, everyone in the party will be healed with a Heal spell, with a caster level equal to the party's ECL, but with a maximum of 200 hit points at ECL 20.

Purchasing Edit

When in a safe room, the party can purchase any loot at the Market Price.

Resurrection Edit

If a character dies at any point and the party make it to the next Safe Room, then a character will be revived free of charge and without any level loss.

Customization Edit

Due to the fact the campaign starts at level 1 and leveling will be more rapid, as noted below, the Safe Room will allow for a degree of customization, this includes Retraining and 'LA Buying'.

Retraining Edit

In order to retrain, a character will have to pay a Maiden a number of gold depending on what is being retrained. The cost is increased depending on ECL.

Retraining Feat: 100 * (ECL ^ 2)
Retraining Class: 500+(ECL^2*100) * (Levels in Class/4)
Retraining Race/Template (Lower or Equal LA): 1000 + (ECL^2)*100) * (Current LA+1)

On Retraining Race, you cannot retrain your race to a higher LA and you can only use it to retrain templates if you already have a template.

These Retraining rules may be revised or removed at a later date.

LA PurchasingEdit

In a Safe Room, you are allowed to trade levels in class for Level Adjustment races or template. Changing your race or template in this way does not cost any gold, but instead you deduct the Level Adjustment difference between your current LA and the LA from your class levels.

Experience and GoldEdit

Gaining experience and gold is a simplified matter and the game aims to level quickly. Simply put; opening one encounter door awards you with half the experience required to gain one level and half the gold difference of the two WBL brackets for your current level. A character will only gain experience and gold for an encounter that he has actively participated in.

Character Information Edit

Starting Level: 1st (Experience: 0/1000)
Starting Gold: 150gp worth of equipment
Attributes: 32 Point-Buy
Homebrew: Allowed.
Balance Point: I would LIKE Rogue level powered characters, however; challenges will be scaled depending on the various power levels of each character and challenges will be given where one character is not just standing out all the time. Using anything that has been deemed 'Wizard' level is fine, as long as it's run by me first.
Flaws and Traits: You may have up to 2 Flaws and up to 3 Traits.

House Rules Edit

Hit Points: Maximum Hit Points per Die. If a majority wishes it to be rolled or averages, then I am willing to change this.
Spells: There is such a spell as Enlarge Aberration now! There are now Enlarge/Reduce spells for each type.

Number of Characters Edit

Preferably four. I may consider making an additional instance of this campaign if another set of players want to run it too.

New Prestige Class Idea

2010-03-02T16:06:37Z

Sup gaiz, requesting input on anything I put here. This includes any kind of potential abuse you see of the ability and a way of rectifying it.

The Advance Paladin Edit

Will be a continuation of the Martial Paladin. The class will be, more than likely, SEVEN levels long, aiming for a final level of 17.

Resolute (Ex): You gain the effects of the Last to Fall feat, even if you do not meet the prerequisites.

Vengeful Infusion (Ex): Whenever an ally is killed or knocked out during combat by an enemy, you gain temporary hit points equal to the fallen ally's hit die and a +2 bonus to strength. You cannot gain this bonus twice from the same ally per encounter. This effect is not triggered by any ally gained through any class features or feats.

moar 2 come, plox comment on current abilities and also suggestions if you REALLY want.

The Balance Point System

2009-09-28T20:19:04Z

Balance Point System

(Or Why Profession(Face-eater) is a Situational-only Awesome Skill)

Contrary to what some people may say, or infer through various actions that are with only merit to degrade, the "Balance Points" system is not a bad system. Infact, it is designed so that all people can, and will, create classes that all have varying levels of "power" (and/or balance) depending on their own personal view of balance. All the system does is assign a title to each and every 'level' of balance based upon a premade class from the Player's Handbook/

It's easy to prove that the Monk is a weak class. It's easy to prove that the Wizard is an extremely powerful class. The two other points that lay between these two boundaries (Fighter and Rogue) are, also, easy to prove if you demonstrate against various creatures in combat. This point has been argued over and over again, and I'm not even referring to the Same Game Test (which infers that balance is based off CR = Character Level [noted from the DMG], therefore, at any level, a class should be able to defeat a CR equivalent encounter 50% of the time). The Balance Point system is common sense. It splits a big mush of classes into four distinct groups, where people can easily see what they want and balance the power of their game depending on such (also useful for The Gentleman's Agreement, where a balanced power level means people aren't overshadowing others).

But, of course; there are naysayers. Well, yes; this is the internet, for everything and anything there are naysayers. I'll break the community on this matter into two groups; the Stats and the Rands. The Stats will, most likely, go for the Balance Point System. They understand that the system is not based off gaming experience; but rather the system is based off statistics (get the name?). The Stats will examine a class, in depth, base it off averages and statistics and compare it to other averages and statistics. They will not assume a random dice roll, but instead an average of a 10 or 11 on attacks, a miss 5% of the time and a critical hit 5% of the time. They will compare ability spreads and usefulness against creatures and enemies that one would be logically fighting. They will attempt to discern the answer to the question; "What do you bring to the party that is useful?" (or further; "What do you bring to the party that is useful against Encounter x?").

A Stat will tell you that a monk does not bring anything to the party, in theory. Of course, they know that in a game there is random chance, there is "carrying", skillful playing of a class and just plain luck. Of course, a monk could defeat a Balor if he manages to run in, crit x amount of times with his flurry of blows and then eat his face with an awesome Profession(Face-eater) check because the Balor was busy dancing the Hula. It's also feasible that team tactics could aid the Monk into doing things like flipping out and killing people with his bare hands! But, a Stat understands that, even though it's a group game, a class should be created to survive on their own, not just with the help of Arcane Al or Pious Paul (or Drunk Diedre).

Now, a Rand will tell you that they once saw a Monk totally flip out and crit a Balor x amount of times with his flurry of blows and eat his face with his awesome Profession(Face-eater) check; therefore the Monk is not a terrible class. The Rand believes in the random roll of the dice (random, rand? GET IT?!) and that all classes are equal because there's a certain amount of random shit that occurs in the game. They will tell you that everyone's equal because everyone's playing together. Now, some Rands aren't that bad; I exaggerate for the sake of humour (humour? On these here interwebnets!? What heresy!). A Rand can be swayed over to the points of the Stats, but still believe that there is the potential to be awesome in any game, given x amount of good luck, y amount of bad luck on someone else's part and z amount of compensation.

Also, Rand's will invoke the Oberoni Fallacy (It's balanced because you can change it) and the Stormwind Fallacy (Power is lack of roleplay!). They have words like "Powergamer" and "Munchkin" in their arsenal and they're ready to use them against the Stats with a ferocious vigor!

But, do I hold this against them? Of course not. Where would we be with those Rands? But, I have strayed from the initial point, but at least the concept of Stats and Rands has been cleared up... Just a final note, there's a subgroup of Stats I like to call Theos. Theos do exist and they are the ones who come up with those fantastic game-breakers that Stats just adore for being so creative (and Rands tend to hate for being so powerful). Some Rands seem to mistake Theos for actually WANTING to play their creations. They're called Theos because they create Theoretical Optimizations (Man, I'm on fire with this wit). Keyword: Theoretical. They know they're not meant to be played and they, most likely, don't want to play them. Where's the fun in that?

Anyway, Balance System. The Balance System is favoured by Stats, as I'm sure I've said before, because it gives them various bars to test against. You can slot any creation into the Balance System in any of the power levels. Which, much to the dismay of some Rands, is a good thing. It allows for you to say "I want a game that's Rogue level power" or "I want a game that's Fighter level power". This way, you won't have Batman going around shutting down combat everytime in one round. You won't have CoDzilla eating everyone in the face. You won't have Tim the Cowardly Monk not contributing anything to the battle and making Tim McPlayer unhappy. For homebrew classes, it allows people to see what kind of power level that class has without having to go over the Stat's analysis on various posts/talk pages/whatever and trying to make heads or tails of their arguing (because they will argue about it... which isn't a bad thing, it's so they can be sure and finally come to an agreement). If Tim McPlayer comes along to the Tome Fighter class and look at it, he's going to say "WOAH THIS IS POWERFUL". But, if he sees that little note on the right that says "Balance Level: Wizard", he'll probably be "Oooh". Or if he comes across the Marshal class and says "Hm, this isn't as good as that Tome Fighter class...", he sees it says "Balance Level: Rogue", he'll understand that this is down a step of power, but still quite good. Is this wrong?

It is wrong to help people understand that there are varying levels of power and that games do actually have power gaps?

Furthermore, it is easy to assume that each level is a fixed point (with a fixed integer number). This is not true. A balance point is a range; contrary to the name it is given. If we are to think of it as a scale of 1 - 100 (100 is the top of the reasonable power scale and 1 is the bottom of it), we could give ranges as; (where x equals the total balanced power of the class)

Monk Balance Point: 1 ≤ x ≤ 25
Fighter Balance Point: 26 ≤ x ≤ 50
Rogue Balance Point: 51 ≤ x ≤ 75
Wizard Balance Point: 76 ≤ x ≤ 100

Do not quote me on that bit as being a true statement or fact; it is only speculation and for demonstrating that the balance point is not a "MUST EQUAL IN POWER" type of thing, but rather something on the Monk's Balance Point may be slightly more powerful than a Monk, but not good enough to hit the Fighter Balance Point range. (Obviously, based on this range, some classes may not fall in any tier but, rather, are higher or lower. Like the Prestige Class: Planar Shepard would be over the Wizard Balance Point by a fair margin, or a Commoner would probably be underneath the Monk Balance Point. But, these are classes You Should Not Take).

The Balance Point System is also not to say that Class X is always that powerful or weak. It's to demonstrate potential, not builds. A wizard who takes only toughness as his feats, dumps int and only take evocation spells is probably going to suck badly. But, that's not the power of a Wizard, that's the lack of power of the player. I reiterate; the Balance Point System measures the power of a class; not a build.

But, maybe my mind is closed because I like statistics (as I've been told by certain Rands) and I'm not open to the idea that the Monk is SO AWESOME (Profession(Face-eating) +40). But, oh well. I keep explaining why the Monk isn't a good class and people keep on ignoring me (or yell the same thing over and over and leave (or call me rude (or crass (or a bully (or a troll))) (or just ban me)).

So, all in all; that's what they Balance Point System is. If you don't like it, don't be petty.

My View on The Gentleman's Agreement

2009-09-25T18:21:20Z

The Gentleman's Agreement

(Or "Why are we not all just Wizards?")

We are all aware that the wizard is the be all end all of everything ever with his variety of spells available to him, his ultimate arcane power capable of locking down an entire battle within the matter of seconds. That upmost super power at the fingertips, ready to crush everyone to their deaths with awesome combinations of magic spells. If you're not aware of this, you've been missing out on the power of Wizards (LogicNinja's Guide to being Batman, TreantMonk's Guide to being God) or just full casters in general (Druid's Handbook, Cleric's Handbook).

So, with this access to the internet; anyone and everyone can optimize (except those roleplays, of course; we all know you can't be powerful if you're roleplaying (roleplaying is all about accentuating FLAWS!)). This is because of the variety of handbooks and guides and statistical spreads printed by experienced gamers and people who may have a little too much time on their hands. But, there are still people who play the monk (even those that know it's not very good) and fighter. Hell, some people even play Truenamer or the Complete Warrior Samurai. Why isn't everyone just plowing through the game with their full casters?

I know what you might be thinking; maybe these people weren't aware of the true power of these classes (or lack thereof) because they're not as frequent to the dwellings of the D&D 3.5 internet community as you are! For a percentage; this is true, I confess. I played with a group who weren't very knowledgeable on power scales at all, but that's because they were new to the game (although, one of them was going Wizard / Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil which was very suspicious). The DM had only banned Tome of Battle (because it was a sort of "vanilla" game, to get people into the swing of things and not wanting to get everyone using Warblade immediately, I assume).But, what about the rest of the people? Those people who do frequent the haunts of the internet that supply us with out optimization and squabbling? Why do they do it? Why don't they just whip out the nightsticks and CoD it up for every game they're in, ever?

Rule 0? More like The Gentleman's Agreement. The Gentleman's Agreement is an unspoken understanding between two or more people, not necessarily men (who don't even have to be gentle!), who understand that they're all there to have fun. Most often in a game, the Gentleman's Agreement is between the players and the DM. The DM is there to tell a story for the enjoyment of the players, so they may play in his world and frolic with their characters. The players are agreeing to this by accepting the condition not to balls it all up by playing super powerful characters. Many people make this agreement by simply arriving at the game, but, of course, there are those few that aren't gentlemen... We'll come back to them later.

We go back to the group I was discussing earlier. It was an Eberron campaign and people had taken a variety of classes to create a diverse group. There were alot of us; about nine, infact. Here is the breakdown;

Elven Ranger (With pet Owl)
Shifter Monk / Paladin
Changeling Wizard / Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil
Changeling Druid / Master of Many Forms
Elven Bard / Cleric
Human Cleric (Incidentally, it was Jean-Luc Picard)
Halfling Rogue / Paladin / Grey Guard

I joined the game last, as my friends were playing the Bard and Rogue and they directed me to it. The first time I started making a character, I was informed that I was not allowed Tome of Battle and I was fine with it (the DM knew I was more experienced than the others), so I made a Human Barbarian. His name was Jarith. He was focused on tripping and actually had relatively low health (bad rolls). I could have made a super powerful wizard to contend with others, or I could have made an ubercharger quite easily. But, I felt that these guys deserved to be able to work as a team. Unfortunately, the first enemy was faced was a Construct Hydra/Kraken (dubbed the CYBERKRAKEN for later use). Yes, with an ubercharger build I could have charged it, leap attack anal rape feat butt kill it within one turn and then reaped the glory of being AWESOME AND SHIT. Or shut it down with one or two spells cast in rapid succession. Instead, Jarith ran in, did some damage; got hit and ran away.

Was this more fun? Of course it was! The entire group were actually implemented into the battle, rather than just one or two guys destroying him. It wasn't about the numbers; it was about the interaction between players.

Second session, Jarith died. Did he die against an enemy? Nope. He was killed by another player. I was fine with it and I didn't hold a grudge or a vendetta against them for this; I didn't go to a forum and demand that someone make me a super powerful build to destroy my enemy in the ranks for this treacherous act! No. I laughed about it and remembered the Gentleman's Agreement. We're here to have fun and play a game. It's a game, after all, and the attack was justified. So, I spend the rest of the session working a new character and watching what was happening in the game.

You may be wondering "What's the point to this little story?". If you did, you probably missed the little bit about the vendetta there and the Gentleman's Agreement. But, my next character was... A Grey Elf Wizard. That's right, Batman Begins and such. Throughout the creation process and the spell selection I remembered The Gentleman's Agreement. I made the character first, not the crunch. His "fluff" was made as a humourous indication of what possibly could happen.

His name was Judas "Priest" Xion, the priest was inserted for more laughs than anything. I envisioned him as a great intellectual grey elf with racism to every single being that ever existed and utter contempt for their continuing existence. The joke, of course, was that he may possibly betray the party after he joins them (forcing the phrase "Curse your inevitable betrayal!"). But, I made a generalist wizard and I felt myself slowly slipping into the idea of making a powerful wizard with the exact spells picked out that are theoretically the most powerful abilities ever and such. But, I stopped myself and picked up spells like Lightning Bolt and Fireball (although, I did have other spells like Force Wall, Orb of Force, Phantom Steed, Overland Flight and such). I prepared spells on a day-to-day basis (the other spellcasters were allowed to pick any spell they had to cast at any time, but I forfeited this right). Judas could have easily dwarfed his team in power, but instead I kept myself doing what was right and kept myself at a power level so that others may shine (and indeed they did).

By the way, a CYBERKRAKEN didn't appear again, nevermind my persistence in attempting to get it back in the game. Just if you were wondering.

Even though I wasn't super powerful and such, I was having a good time. Everyone else was having a good time. This is a sign of a good game. Everyone was at roughly the same level (even the Druid who was morping into so many different types of creatures and using all their abilities (which, to be honest, wasn't minded)) and, in the end, we won our big fight and the group disbanded happily ever after, with no accusations of being too powerful or arguments about things like this. No-one was singled out as trying to steal the spotlight and, infact, no-one did steal the spotlight.

This is the effect of the Gentleman's Agreement. An experienced player can go into a group full of new people who have an offsense of balance and continue to have fun without overshadowing everyone. But, what about if it's different? What if everyone's optimizing? Then. keeping to the same power level is fine; this is not about OPTIMIZATION IS BAD or OPTIMIZATION MEANS CANNOT ROLEPLAY or something stupid like that. The Gentleman's Agreement is everyone having fun within the context of the gaming table. If a group of experienced players using optimized characters get a nth person to their table who's not as experienced, then they should make sure to help him out, so that he can play with the group as an equal; rather than a lesser, so that everyone may have fun.

I keep saying that word; fun. Your sense of fun may differ from everyone else's view on fun. But, the game's not about you. It's about everyone. Everyone can have collective fun by reaching the agreement point of what they want to get out of the game. If you want to the center of attention, bad ass at all times, spot light, killing, slaughtering and just making everyone redundant... Sure you're going to have fun, but no-one else is. That's a breach of the Gentleman's Agreement and you lose your status as a D&D Gentleman until you redeem yourself. People don't like playing with King McBadass, Mary Sue or Mr Carbon Copy.

Still confused to what the Gentleman's Agreement is? I can't give you an exact definition of every single term listed in the agreement because it's a mutating agreement. It changes from table to table, group to group, person to person and such. But, here; I'll give you biggest part of it.

We agree to provide a fun environment and gaming experience to all those that we game with.

The various other bits are to do with co-operation, things you just DON'T DO (like take Theoretical Optimizations if you're not playing in a game specifically designed for them, they're theoretical!). But, as I've been repeating ad nauseam; it's about the fun, not the power. It's not about shining a light upon your character, playing a fanfare and everyone throwing roses at you because you're so fabulously awesomer then everyone else. No. It's about being a team, you're meant to work with these people to achieve a common goal. If a person is doing something that detracts from your experience, talk to them about it, don't just be vindictive and spiteful, skittering off to the DM to whine about it. If you're not sure about things, ask; everyone should help. If someone else needs help, help!

But, what about those people who don't like to play nicely and those people who think The Gentleman's Agreement doesn't apply to them? You get the question on gaming forums about Player X is doing something stupid and such. These are people who want to steal the spotlight, these are people who want to be the best (the very best!) and make everyone bow to their various awesome abilities. So, these people make the biggest and baddest character ever and unleash it upon a party and laugh at other weaker people and comment on the degrees of bad ass he can achieve, especially whenever he does achieve them. Or maybe they're the kind of person who wants to have X and they want it NOW. Or maybe someone who plays the Chaotic Stupid and so on and so on. These people are a bane to the gaming table and they stagnate it! But, it's not just a "KICK THEM OUT NOW" type of thing, no. It's a "take them to the side and talk politely about it like a gentleman" type of situation. Remember; you're a gentleman because you're in The Gentleman's Agreement! The Gentleman's Agreement doesn't have a clause that says you can be a prick because someone else is. It says...

Quid Quo Pro

Put something in and, hopefully, they'll see the error of their ways and reconcile. If they don't, then you raise the problem to the next level. Which, possibly, is removal from the game.

The worst ones are the ones that you can't remove from the game, for some reason. These people should be worked on to try and get them to play along because griping about it is not going to go anywhere. Explain why you feel problems are occurring to the next level of authority in the game (most likely the DM) and explain why you feel you're not having fun due to Player X. If other people are having problems, rally together and try to solve the problem...

Those that abuse the Gentleman's Agreement should be informed of the breech and attempts to reconcile are mandatory

So, in this closing statement, I will reiterate for prosperities sake: Fun is what the Gentleman's Agreement is about in relation to gaming. It's a game and everyone's there to have fun; which doesn't normally occur when everyone's being outshined or just a single person is lacking behind and feeling useless. Be gentlemanly, work together towards a common goal. For my final words, a plug! The Balance Point System gives you power levels that fit well within the structure of the Gentleman's Agreement for balancing a party for fun. It's not about power, it's about everyone having fun and feeling that they're contributing equally to a party and not just leaving anyone in the dust.

Remember, in the words of the Beatles; Help!