They always tell me such things but I have an inferiority complex. Or maybe it's just that my Italian is just as bad. I'm gonna look for composition forums, that looks interesting.

@Zachiel There are two kinds of composition teachers: those who specialize in writing, and those who specialize in studying writing. I have a preference for the former.

where lots of people, especially girls, seem to be able to write a lot of different things

and in a more varied composition than mine

About the only hiccough in your English I've seen is a slightly higher than usual tendency to mix up prepositions or add unnecessary ones, which is one of the most common ESL quirks and really doesn't inhibit communication very often.

And honestly, most native speakers don't know how to use a preposition either.

Italian is a little bit more free in sentence composition. Adjectives can be put afer or before the subject or the object, verbs can be put earlier or at the end... not so easy to understand for a foreign speaker I think

most italian journalists don't know how to conjugate a verb

coniugate?

decline!

Right the first time, I think?

I'm sadly unschooled in the vocabulary of linguistics; I mostly go by instinct, and I've read so much good English since I was very young that my instincts are usually correct.

But darned if I can explain why it's one way and not the other.

facepalm

maybe the first time was ok

@Zachiel ?

but is sounded awful

Ah.

I need a mirror to facepalm at myself

Heheh.

^ For future use.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton hello

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Heya.

yo

you're pretty good at D&D DMing, right? How do you fare if talking about D&D 3.5 builds with peculiar restrictions on the permitted manuals?

@Zachiel ummm.

explain, please?

My first response is "Glad I'm not playing that game"

My second response is "maybe you should change system"

hahaha I know 4e is wayyy better

Given that it's possible to break the game using the SRD, limiting splatbooks (save for some of the more... egregious FR ones)

... um, not what I'm saying, mate.

Find the system that suits your needs. If your need is managable complexity, D&D isn't an appropriate system.

I also know that 3.x is broken

My need is to play with people who plays D&D 3.5

I'm not sure "manageable complexity" is what the issue is here.

but I'd like to ave an appropriate character

Well, it's tryingt to enforce the social contract "please don't make such and such type characters" through mechanical rules.

He's got a group of GMs who each have preferences and prejudices that lead to a labyrinthine web of allowed and not-allowed.

And that simply doesn't work well.

Right.

appropriate as in "survives fights and contributes substantially to them, even if playing with really different level characters"

@BESW not true

@Zachiel so what are your requirements?

If you can get them all into a doc, then we can start considering options

I have a web-based pbc staff that made some really clear decisions about which manuals are allowed

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/29599571/…

What level?

I think I'm going lunch now. That's plenty of time to read the wall of text

I'm 11 with enough xp to go 12

but I'd like to be able to play alongside with a lvl 15 wizard that levels up way faster than me

Meh, read it.

Oh, that's easy. You can't.

a lvl 12 warrior does

@Zachiel That right there? That's why 3.5 is a bad choice for this game. Level disparity kills.

Um. Warrior.

fighter, sry

What areas does the wizard choose not to bother with?

Does he do divinations?

right... judging from those posts you're in a silly silly game. What level of choice is possible here?

Have you designed your build from 1-20?

Short version. If I was in that sort of play-by-chat game, I'd play a factotum or binder

Oooh, factotum.

@BESW my second favourite 3.5 class.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I never got to play one. [sad]

@BESW yeah, me neither.

What's your favorite?

I... miiight play 3.5 for the chance to try a binder, but probably not.

I just love the idea of binders.

Ah.

@Zachiel But yes, you seem incredibly mis-built. So any advice I can give requires a well formatted list of books, a list of requirements, and the ability for a full respec

not so full respec

I can change rogue for anything similar, at a price in XP

I can change my ability scores and feats, again at a price

I was thinking at rogue 5 chameleon 10 shadowdancer 2 then monk

[blink]

but it was more for the sheer coolness of doing 2d10 damage with a punch

ummm.

using the feat that mixes rogue and monk levels

... oookay.

and aiming for a secondary sniper role

Can you take levels in factotum or binder?

not that strong since there's no Darkstalker feat

no

I wish I could be a factotum, I'd knew where to put my ability points

however, while ascetic mage was going to win me some nice damage and armor class

Short version: I regret that builds that can make you competitive with a Tier I class have been eliminated from the game. If you want to play with a wizard 3 levels your senior, you... basically need to choose from allowed tier I or II classes.

Personally, I'd be a stealthy cleric

or druid.

There are some amazing things you can do with clerics or druids who want to be stealthy.

I was surprised how viable a stealther a core cleric could be if he's willing to sacrifice his armor.

If you have access to UA variants, you're golden.

I try to avoid clerics

And I assume you can't submit a request for classes to be added?

@Zachiel then be a druid?

how much you're faithful to your dogmas is DM fiat in the end

@Zachiel ...you have some nasty GMs.

@Zachiel Mate, unless you can give us a complete and comprehensive list of your requirements, I can't help you. I don't feel like playing 20 questions.

I changed a MoMF druid for this character for I wasn't able to roleplay that

I understand you Brian

But the fundamental problem here isn't technical, it's social.

I'm making the list before bothering you again

it's that it's hard to understand what's effective in the system

the wizard player is pretty good at that

@Zachiel There's mechanically effective and socially effective. It sounds like your mechanical advantages are being limited and your social effectiveness is curtailed at GM whim.

she got up a merchant's guild with some pretty ideas like buying and selling from players at 75% to get a name, then selling personalized items at 80% while buying them at 75% with commercial feats of her guild

@Zachiel Ah. DMG 2.0 businesses are allowed.

How... droll.

no

they're not

but let's suppose a PC wants a mithral chainmail

and no other PC has one

It sounds like you need to stop worrying so much about what class and feats you have, and first figure out the kind of game your GM is playing. Because it's not exactly D&D, or at least it's a very peculiar interpretation of it.

he must buy it from NPCs. Or a merchant with the mercantile background feat could get it at a lower price and resell it at 80%. Still convenient for the buyer

provided the buyer can use his feat forr this month

the merchant, not the buyer

If a player can set up a mercantile empire without repercussions from the local establishments, but a cleric can't step a toe out of line without her god abandoning her...

but if there's a corporation of merchants, chance is that at least one's gonna be free for striking the deal with the customer

that player's good at writing and roleplaying, the DMs don't bother her too much, but the real issue is she has really good ideas

it also looks like she can understand what to do to get what she wants better than me

In that case, be useful. Literally.

but that's not a problem as long as I can have fun too

Be her apprentice.

how?

Ask how you can support her plans, therefore you being cooler is now part of her plans.

she's married to a lvl 25 dervish/abjurant champion that defends her

her prc (bringer of the purple) lets her have dragon allies

Yep, but having real helpers is always useful.

need to eat now. C U l8r

WOOOO! It's a @Cat!

@Zachiel ttfn

lol, Good day @BESW

(and everyone else :)

I liked the answers to your question that mentioned bees.

Yeah, I was reallly happy with the answers to my question

I have to go in a bit later today and pick a "winner", but since it's Christmas, I'll leave it a while longer

Anybody know if @LitheOhm is coming back tonight?

No clue

He wanted me to tell him the story of the first character who died in one of my campaigns.

Interesting demise, was it?

@Cat Harrowing.

Mostly for me, though.

I find killing people's characters stressful

Mostly it happens by accident, not design.

It was my third session as a GM, and also my third session in any kind of RPG ever.

@Cat Nothing kills a PC like the guy who plays him.

Someone got suicidal then? ;)

Well... eh, I can tell it now and Lithe can read it later, if you like.

If you so desire :)

It's wordy though. I wrote it out in advance so I can just copy-paste and make sure I get it in the right order.

I may not be the most appreciative audience, since I don't understand the nuances of player stupidity in design/behavior at times, but I'll do my best!

Heh.

Okay, then.

lol

Please bear in mind: this was the first time I'd ever GMed, and it was also my first tabletop RPG session of any kind. Most of the players were either as green to RPGs as I was, or at the very least had minimal experience in the 3.5 system, which had been released less than a year earlier. In fact, I taught myself on the 3.0 core books and then had to read the 3.5 books shortly before the first session.

Sure

I set the game in the World of Air from the Death Gate Cycle novels. It was a hollow egg of a world, with floating rocky islands dry as parchment and the only source of water an eternal storm at the bottom of the world. We began play in a small unaligned bandit city.

Even then I was comfortable throwing out or changing the rules for the sake of a good scene, so when I saw that they had very little healing I gave the party a set of potions which, when imbibed, granted full healing after eight hours sleep.

One last note: my players enthusiastically embraced the house rule that natural 1s are automatic failures, and three in a row kill your character (natural 20s were auto-successes, and three in combat auto-killed your opponent, but guess which is going to be relevant in this story).

lol

So: we're maybe three sessions into the campaign. Still level 1. Mostly RP, a little fighting, and the goblin rogue stole the mayor's money and took a leak on his front door. The Lawful Good dwarven cleric is being played by a guy who desperately wants to throw himself into RP, but is overwhelmed by the mechanics of playing a spellcaster and has some peculiar ideas about RP for his character.

"I've got a few hours before my meeting with the mayor. I put on my full plate, pick up my shield and mace, and wander through the city looking for ways I can help people."

I have him assist the local blacksmith, rescue a kitten from a tree, and help an old lady across the road before I give him what he really wants: "I want to rescue people from a burning building."

The dwarf finds and carries out a little girl, who screams that her mom is still inside on the second floor. He runs back in, coughing and soot-covered, and passes out in front of the woman, who hauls him out by his ankles just before the building collapses.

Nice GM

(I didn't want to kill him!)

He's at 1 hit point, singed and burned and has a nasty smoke-inhalation cough when he wakes up, but at least nobody stole his bag of stuff! He puts his armor back on, realizes he's now late for the meeting with the mayor, and runs all the way across the city. At noon. In a desert. In full plate. At 1 hp.

huhuhuh

Unfortunately the mayor has cancelled all appointments that day because someone took a leak on his door in the middle of the night, and stole his money, and he's apoplectic. So the severely burned, still-coughing dwarf heads back to the inn. All the way across the city in the noon-day desert heat. In full plate. At 1 hp. Yes, he's a cleric. Yes, I asked why he didn't heal himself. I can't remember his answer.

At this point I probably should have been calling for Fortitude saves or something vs the heat, but it was my third-ever session so I was just noting the situation and figuring he'd hit the sack and heal up before it was something I needed to act on.

The crispy fried dwarf arrives at the inn, panting and covered in sweat and still at 1 hp. He goes straight to bed, but first he chugs two of my homebrew healing potions. You know, the one that cure you of all that ails you after a good night's rest?

Yup

lol

I figure I'll have him make a Fort save and take Con damage or something --I hadn't quite figured out what but I want there to be some consequence. I'm still pondering this a moment later when the monk pops into the room.

oh no

The group erupts with groans, jeers, catcalls, and whoops. The monk's player declares his finger to be a Vorpal Death Finger.

lol

[1.]

OH no!!!

I throw my hands up in the air, the dwarf seizes up and dies, and the player rolls a new character: a dwarven cleric with exactly the same stats, gear, and appearance, except his hair is brown instead of black. This dwarf goes on to be slaughtered by his own party after betraying them (leading to one character's death) to a nice lady who gave him tea.

I thought you were going to have another death there

And that is The Story of the First Time a Character Died in One of My Campaigns, and Also the Second.

but I guess there's no need to reroll a fort save

(heal check, I mean)

That's a good one.

Yeah, he just failed it, he didn't roll a 1

I definitely got a good laugh out of it

Glad to hear it.

That player lost so many characters to poorly chosen RP immersion.

Sounds like he kept the games funny though ;)

Those are the kinds of folks that frustrate you though

Well... his next character got another PC killed, and his character after that managed to curse half the party before he died.

Eventually I figured out that he was creating characters with such complicated mechanics that he was getting confused and couldn't make good decisions.

My oh my!

So we sat down and I made him the mechanically simplest character we could come up with. He was basically Indiana Jones: skill checks and a few attacks. Nothing circumstantial, nothing with times-per-day or anything like that.

I haven't really had any experience with a character like that.

Usually it's either group hijinks or smooth sailing in my games

It's good that you found a way to solve the problem

We also fortuitously had about a month where it was just me, him, and a really good role-player. He blossomed.

That's awesome. It definitely doesn't sound like it was for lack of trying

Went back to the complicated characters and kept up the good RP, became one of the guys I've had the most fun working with.

That's great!

Our last game together was absolutely brilliant. I put his elf wizard through the wringer physically and emotionally, and he loved it.

No, ranger. It was a ranger that time.

cool story bro

By the end he had bronze false teeth and a network of scars across his entire body, had lost his mentor, had forgiven and then been forced to kill the mortal enemy of his best friends, and married a catwoman with a full traditional catfolk ceremony (which I cribbed from Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking).

(That campaign I had determined that the characters would actually get physical signs of their heroic journey; usually with healing magic your PCs can spend twenty levels without any scars.)

(So I had evil forest-drow torture them, and then they got rescued by a race that didn't trust magic.)

Anyway. I miss those guys.

Yeah, I still miss my days as a new RPG player with a DM of my own.

I enjoy DMing, but would love the chance to just play again.

@Cat I hear ya.

I've got some PCs I really wanna revisit.

For a while I had some of my old PCs appear as NPCs in my stories, but they had a terrible habit of being slaughtered by the party

@Cat I did that once, with a PC the party had really liked playing alongside. He became their mentor and plot point supplier and source of cheap spellcasting.

Then I had him murdered horribly and graphically by the big bad villain. They were shocked both in and out of character. They knew how much I liked him.

Yeah.

That was a daring plot device!

Heh. It wasn't planned from the beginning.

He started out as a one-time escort adventure, but the party loved him and kept up with him.

A great tribute to your character :)

Heh, I suppose.

NPCs are really only as alive as the players make them, though.

Anyway, I have to go shower and get ready for my day. Thanks for the great entertainment! I'm sure we'll run into each other later in the day!

@Cat See ya.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I noticed that you included Mark of Healing in this ardent build.

@BESW yep

What's your opinion about Mark feats in non-Eberron settings? I know they're supposed to be balanced in part by social obligations in the setting, but I also know most groups ignore that entirely.

@BESW They can be fun, and I usually integrate them into the flavour of the game

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I have the manuals list handy but I need to translate it. Do you prefer a downloadable file or copying from here?

@Zachiel I think he's abed. He'd probably prefer a Google Docs link or something similar.

@BESW Now I am online! :D

@JonathanHobbs It's a post-Christmas miracle?

I finally got around to posting the Tale of the First Death in One of My Campaigns.

I hope it entertains you.

I will read it shortly :)

(and: I probably will let the Bastion's conflict with the Elementals, and other stuff, occur around the players :D)

(they can either participate in a war or do other stuff within a nation at war)

@JonathanHobbs It'll come to them if they don't come to it.

And it sounds like you've got a very deep world in mind, with the different locations and the abandoned and maybe-should-have-been abandoned temples, and all that kind of stuff. Rich.

@BESW There is not much I haven't told you, and beyond that I only have vague ideas and a sense of what I want it to be like. So... I guess I have it in mind to eventually have a deep world, and what I have in mind is the possibility of a deep world.

@JonathanHobbs That's fine.

Make notes of things that occur to you, and be ready to have that sense of what it should be like guide you in improv.

And always feel free to call for a five minute snack break while you figure out what's over the next hill.

And listen to your players. They'll speculate and joke and hope among themselves, and if you can keep an ear up they'll give you great ideas you can steal.

My players frequently try to guess what trope I'm about to use, or about to turn on its head.

[yawn] I am inclined toward bed.

@BESW That was an intriguing tale. :)

@BESW Ha, okay, I'll keep my ears peeled

And also goodnight :D

@BrianBallsun-Stanton docs.google.com/document/d/…

@BrianBallsun-Stanton that's the technical limits of character creation. I need to level up today and I'm gonna level up to Chameleon 7 but I don't know where to put my ability point.

@BESW lol

that's a good one.

Hello @LitheOhm

since I've been asking everyone around here I'm asking you too, are you good at D&D 3.5 character building?

wait.

you... have access to forgotten realms.

::sigh::

@Zachiel Based on that list, play a sneaky cleric or druid. Just... play a sneaky cleric. It's amazing how biased this game is to spellcasters.

yeah I have

@BrianBallsun-Stanton but how comes a sneaky something can be good without the darkstalker feat?

In any case my question is what to do now with my existing character. The fee for changing character in 10% my actual xp, which have been stashed away during the last 9 years

@Zachiel Hello there :). I'm not bad at it, no - my specialty is sorcerors.

I've come to a conclusion. I can't have fun playing anything.

@Zachiel use spells instead. Spell compendium is allowed.

only as errata

I could use combust to good effect

since it is in one of the other manuals

@Zachiel only... as ... errata?

yes

So therefore, spells that are in it and in other books are allowed?

in other allowed books

... right. Yeah, be cooped by the system is the best bet, I think. Or just take some of the completely broken things from forgotten realms.

Hell, they even have the infamous serpent book.

@LitheOhm let me explain you. I have this PC born with horrible ideas in my mind we're trying to ...well... sub-optimize

i could take sakkartar's triple strike and a wand of rapid metamagic

a rod

a stick

whatever

but the problem is: am I too frail with 8 in Con and thus forced to spend my chameleon boost and my floating feat there?

@Zachiel Yes. Fundamental build problems are fundamental.

If I absolutely need to change that abilities (now they are 8 20 8 18 10 16) what's the best way to change them? (Charisma is pretty useless for this character I know. It had to be an ascetic mage at some point in its build)

@Zachiel Are there level 17 mages around?

One is gonna be by february but she hates me. There's PNG wizards or my cohort when I hit lvl 19

@Zachiel aren't there epic wizards around?

I could have sworn you mentioned a level silly something

an evil vampire png wizard that got killed today by adventurers yes

@BESW Yeah, that.

png?

yes but he's wizard 1 by now. Abjurant champion is for the future

So basically, step 1) get a thought bottle (complete arcane)

step 2) find a caster of level 17

step 3) get 30 wishes cast.

Do whatever it takes to pay them off?

Or, since you're in FR, just candle of invocation.

like, nominally? These things would be beyond the pale. But for a game this silly? meh.

wait is it like "you're not gonna lose all that HP for I'm restoring you to 500 xp less than you were at the beginning"?

@Zachiel yep

in an allowed book.

Second most broken item in the game.

(not counting FR)

I guess they're gonna say no to this on a "it's broken" basis

@Zachiel they. You have a comittee...

okay, here's my fundamental advice. Go find a better game. You've succumed to the sunk cost fallacy.

however there's a guy who has power strike because he had a belt of str +6 during level up

all these kind of games are like this

Nothing you've mentioned indicates that you're deriving any value from these interactions, and there are plenty of play by post games out there

... no, no they're really not.

They're not run by committee, they're not a decade full of house rules...

There are games, even 3.5 games, that you can actually have fun in.

but they don't fill my free time like this does

@Zachiel So... play in more?

you mentioned play by post, is it more like pdf or pbc?

@Zachiel there are many many many out there.

we even have questions about them

sorry, I don't believe in "change your game, change the guys you play with" things

it might be good

but I lose too much on the exchange

@Zachiel As you say.

I'd like to get a good class progession and the right ability scores and equipment and that's all. I'm gonna pay for 6 tomes/manuals, discounted by someone with the merchantile eexperience feat.

@Zachiel It's not. Here's the deal: The task before us is impossible because a) After a decade of house rules and responses to Stupid 3.x Tricks --and, I suspect, petty power plays-- many of the standard reasonable builds have been excised from the allowed ruleset.

@BESW What I was about to say.

b) You're locked into a character that really can't be made very powerful because of previous choices.

c) You have very specific requirements like adventuring with an A-list class five levels higher than you.

ok forget about C

d) You suspect (and rightly, I think) that any time a GM is given explicit power of adjudication over you (alignment-based classes, for example) they'll dick around with you.

the DM's gonna take care of that having big mosters attack them while smaller fray attacks me

d) I suspect that I'm gonna mess something wherever adjudication is based on some written dogma like I did for my druid

@BrianBallsun-Stanton is resorting to Stupid Loophole Tricks because the best legit options have been either banned or are subject to GM dickery.

then what's the second best option? Start being a wizard from level 16?

I can live with that

each level is gained in more or less the same time

@Zachiel be a caster now, dedicated to whatever kind of style you want to play.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton He doesn't want to lose the XP they charge him to rebuild. Hence my point b: locked into his character.

Ah, yes.

@Zachiel Multiclassing is never the answer to being underpowered, I'm afraid.

was indicating rebuild

getting caster at 12 is... (save for ur-cheese, silly)

if I rebuild I also lose all the relationships with existing characters

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Whoops, wrong @.

@Zachiel Then exploit custom magic items for all they're worth, and find your avenue of fun playing third-fiddle.

I also envy people who got it right at the first time

@Zachiel A level 1 wizard is a level 1 wizard regardless of how many levels of other classes he's got.

yes but he's gotta become a level 17 wizard sooner or later

I can delay having fun a year or two

or four

I just hope by the there's not gonna be LVL 70 characters running arouns solving all the big problems

like now the lvl 20 characters do

and that's the only part I really dislike of this game

but wait

@BrianBallsun-Stanton are you saying that chameleon is weak?

@Zachiel If done well, it's fantastic. But you need to be well into your niche to pull it off.

You also need to be in situations that require that level of versatility.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I did it with an anythingganger, but I felt kinda like I could've spent those levels better combat-wise.

Outside of combat it was the Best Thing Ever.

@BESW oh, if you're playing with these shennagans for infiltration and other non-combat activities, it's fantastic

but you have to be focused on that

Hi, @SomeGuy

I'm currently using spells from 4 or 5 lists to buff me as gish

like, metamorphsis + divine power + superior magic fang + wrath of the faithful

I also wanted to be able to cast glibness

as of now, the problem is all the nime I need for buffing.

luckily, most dms keep describing the scenery while we approach, letting us cast several rounds of spells

chameleon also was the fast way to get long duration spells to be "covered" all day long

@BrianBallsun-Stanton so I can do the "hey mr DM I want to follow their tracks to see where they're hiding" but then the actual beating is done my some other guy right?

@Zachiel basically. Focus on urban infilitratoin

Didi I mention my guild leader and my mentor is a chameleon bard mental dominator?

lvl 21, rolls 99 in diplomacy, 123 in perform