I think the best advice I could give for a new DM is to, for your first campaign, play things out totally cliche. Have a fairly standard BBEG, with pretty simple motives, and really just do everything by the book.
The more standard your basic campaign premise is, the more time and energy you'll have to spend on actually becoming a better DM.
It's really easy to get excited about all the ways you're going to break the mold an try new things to excite your players, but really, it's more important to learn the basics firsts, and then once you have those down and know how to work within the rules, you'll be much better off for your second or third campaign, when you do run off the rails.
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Since @Brian Ballsun-Stanton is a Nazi and does not believe in free speech I am posting this again
It is a valid question yet the stackexchange minions are pissing on it. Ignoring the actual question I posted and deleting it is pure cowardice! I ca...
the initial question made it clear he'd pirated a copy of the material, and he's conveniently removed that in the repost whilst adding the bit where he calls a mod a Nazi - smart move :D
@Magician well when he returns there may be more Fun for him to dispense, unless the person's hit the rate limits
... which actually makes the "I can post this more times than you can delete it!" threat funny, now that I realise it, because as of a couple of weeks ago that's impossible
...it gets even more bizarre when you realise he's been on the Stack for more than a year, and got a Nice Question badge for his only other active post on RPG.SE.
@BESW There's a side-effect of Stellata's character gen I kinda like. The social skills I've been flustered about are Deceive, Provoke, Rapport and Empathy. Those all seem to be the skills about how one deals with people.
She has Deceive at 1 (she's kinda good at being deceptive sometimes), Provoking at 2 (she knows how to piss people off), Rapport at 3 (she's good at making friends), and Empathy... at 0. She has no idea about it. Peoples' mental states go way over her head and she will often miss a subtle change in them.
though I might tinker to see if I can give her Empathy at 1, and I might give her a stunt around using Deceive...
My thoughts are that she her plant-ish nature makes it hard for people to read her. But it also makes it hard for her to read others, so it's difficult to know when people are catching onto her.
Actually nevermind that stuff. I just realised I don't really need to focus on her being deceptive, since she will not often be in espionage mode.
@Miniman getting a bit more liberal about deletions now that the gold badge is in my pocket :) (not that it should matter...but it did for a few weeks there)
Anyone have any interesting race ideas (thematically or mechanically) for a Swordsage/Factotum starting at lv2? 0 LA preferable, I might be able to swing a +1 LA. Currently considering a Spellwarped or Phrenic Incarnate Construct Warforged, alternatively a Whisper Gnome if those two options aren't allowed and I don't get a better idea. (D&D 3.5)
People here might be able to offer suggestions if we had some notion of what "interesting" meant to you. Ironic theme mismatch? Powerful confluence of motive and means? Funny-looking?
Any and all. My interests are so varied that anything might be applicable at any time lol. Gimme any idea and where to find it and I'll look it up. I'm honestly kinda clueless right now, and researching races at random in hopes something sparks an idea.
I know about the build I'm likely to go for, but other than that I have no idea what to do. Probably going to focus on having lots of Knowledge ranks, and UMD, Spellcraft and Iaijutsu Focus, and be a somewhat arcanist leaning utility character. The group doesn't have an arcanist (and tbh probably doesn't need one) but they do have a rogue who has the primary skillmonkey covered, so I'm thinking something like a curious researcher/wanderer or something along those lines.
That way I can be a secondary skillmonkey (mostly for knowledges and magic stuff) and have that sort of arcane dabbler type of feel.
Someone mentioned Microsoft OneDrive here once. I can't recall who. If anybody does favor it over other services, any particular reason for the preference? I've always used Google Drive, but everybody in my group has a Microsoft account (we're all grieving MSN Messenger expies :P), so I'm looking at trying it for my next game's collab.
Tempted to make a monstrosity of ubercasting straight from the PHB just to prove to someone that mental stats are worth more than physical stats in 3.5...
Mrf... A really good looking game (though the GM confuses me =_=) looks almost perfect for what I've been looking to play, but the time... I'd only be able to get a few sessions in before it might interfere with my work schedule once it changes...
I might be able to get away with it after my work schedule changes... but I'd be pushing it and sacrificing sleep to do it. Besides, the players are voting on who to let into the game from amongst several others who applied, I doubt I'd be picked for the one slot since at least one of those others is an arcane caster (from what I saw of their discussion with the GM) and their open slot was filled by a wizard who had to drop out.
And my Swordsage/Factotum was going to be essentially a magic item user, secondary skillmonkey, and knowledge whore. Their rogue can do all that already (but they aren't yet for some reason) and another skillmonkey is likely to seem redundant...
Hmm... I wonder how you'd make a Blue Mage in D&D...
A mage who learns their magics from their enemies. Literally learning the spells they cast on the mage.
Spellwarped would probably be a good start... But where to go from there...
Where can I find a reference, preferably online, to help convert the Advanced D&D Book of Artifacts to 5E? If nothing else, just converting Appendix B. One of the big things is finding spell/effect equivalents.
I just wanna know how a huge segement of people who stopped advancing with 2nd edition heard that they could just play 5e like 2e and use all their 2e splats
Winterbash 2014 is coming!* 'Tis the season of earning silly hats for your avatar to wear by achieving achievements in Stack usage. Not only are these achievements more "fun", off-kilter, and promote a sense of community festivity than the usual goals for getting badges, but they earn you hats. S...
@Miniman there's an anydice feature that could make that anydice program a bit more rapidly parsable:
output [Y crit] + [Z crit] named "Something"
output [d20 crit] named "Another thing"
that will replace the titles of "output 1" and "output 2", probably replace it with something like: "Damage probabilities for two attacks with disadvantage" and "Damage probabilities with no advantage or disadvantage vs AC12" (I think?)
Where can I find a reference, preferably online, to help convert the Advanced D&D Book of Artifacts to 5E? If nothing else, just converting Appendix B. One of the big things is finding spell/effect equivalents.
