OOC: General Discussion

[silanariel]

I thought I remembered those disarm penalties. I think that's why one of my characters had gauntlets or something?

It's sort of nice to play a character where I don't have to try and be clever!

[Rabbit]

BOOKMARKS!

Hey everyone,

This is, of course, not mandatory but it might be a good idea to "bookmark" the threads in this Eberron forum. That way you are notified by e-mail when a new post has been made.

Just click on the "book mark" by the "search" option in the light blue bar at the top of each thread. Unfortunately you have to do this for each thread, but we should not be adding very many more for this game.

Let me know if anyone is having trouble locating the book mark.

[silanariel]

I saw this tattoo and thought of our Hitchhiker's joke from the other night..http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/09/hitchhikers-guide-ta.html

[Rabbit]

So this picture is not 100% accurate, but I saw it and was reminded of the Briar/June combat duo.

Attachments:

[icnivad]

Fuck yeah.

[reefwood]

I wondered about this in the middle of last session but didn't have a definite answer, forgot about it, and then was reminded today when I came across something about kneeling in Pathfinder. Anyway, this is from 3.5 FAQ and says you can't trip someone who is prone, so an attack of opportunity cannot be used to re-trip someone who is already on the ground and trying to stand up. You have to wait until they are standing to trip them, and by then, the chance for an attack of opportunity has passed.

When a character gets up from prone, when does the attack of opportunity take place? When he is still prone? When he is standing? Can the attacker choose when to attack? In one case, the attacker can get a +4 bonus to hit. In the other, he can make another trip attack.

All attacks of opportunity happen before the actions that trigger them (see Chapter 8 in the PH). When you make an attack of opportunity against someone who’s getting up, your target is effectively prone, and therefore cannot be tripped. You could ready an action to trip a prone foe after he gets up, however.

[Rabbit]

Mar 23, 2011 14:30:22 GMT -5 reefwood said:

I wondered about this in the middle of last session but didn't have a definite answer, forgot about it, and then was reminded today when I came across something about kneeling in Pathfinder. Anyway, this is from 3.5 FAQ and says you can't trip someone who is prone, so an attack of opportunity cannot be used to re-trip someone who is already on the ground and trying to stand up. You have to wait until they are standing to trip them, and by then, the chance for an attack of opportunity has passed.

When a character gets up from prone, when does the attack of opportunity take place? When he is still prone? When he is standing? Can the attacker choose when to attack? In one case, the attacker can get a +4 bonus to hit. In the other, he can make another trip attack.

All attacks of opportunity happen before the actions that trigger them (see Chapter 8 in the PH). When you make an attack of opportunity against someone who’s getting up, your target is effectively prone, and therefore cannot be tripped. You could ready an action to trip a prone foe after he gets up, however.

Thanks for looking this up reefwood. And it sounds like a fair judgement to me. As we have been playing with tripping AoO, I could foresee combat getting pretty repetitive (monster gets tripped, tries to stand up but gets tripped again, monster tries to stand up but gets tripped again, etc.)


PS- I added this to the Rules and Other Such Nonsense thread with the other tripping and disarm stuff.

[silanariel]

Mar 15, 2011 14:00:13 GMT -5 Rabbit said:

So this picture is not 100% accurate, but I saw it and was reminded of the Briar/June combat duo.

Rad!

[reefwood]

XP for creating magic items

I looked into this a bit last night, and this morning, I thought about taking an Item Creation feat, but then I realized I need to use my 3rd-level feat for a prestige class prerequisite. Still, this may be something I want to do later. Perhaps take the Craft Wand feat at 5th-level. Anyway, it looks like there are up to 4 things needed to craft a magic item (but usually just the first 2):

1) Half the base price in gp

2) 1/25 the base price in XP

3) The price of any costly material component

4) If the spell itself requires XP to cast, you need to expend that, plus 5 gp per point of XP expended.

So, it looks like if a magic item has a base price of 500 gp, the spell uses a 200 gp material component and 10 XP, the gp and XP costs for making it would be:

1) Half of 500 gp = 250 gp
2) 1/25 of 500 gp = 20 XP
3) 200 gp material component
4) 10 XP x 5 gp = 50 gp plus the 10 XP

Total = 500 gp plus 30 XP

Although, each item creation process has its own subset of rules. I didn't read them all, but for example... magic weapons don't require 3) the costly material component, or 4) the XP component to cast the spell, so if the above item was a magic weapon, it would only cost 1) half the base price of 250 gp and 2) 1/25 the base price of 20 XP.

A couple ideas mentioned last night for working the XP costs into this game were:

1) Turn the all XP costs into gp cost. Based on the normal rules, this would be 5 gp per point of XP. So for the above item, instead of costing 500 gp plus 30 XP to make, it would be 500 gp plus 150 gp = 650 gp.

2) Have magic item creator level up a slower rate, as deemed appropriate. Perhaps one session later as the default. And if only a little bit of XP is used between a particular pair of levels, the PC levels up at the same time as everyone else. Or if they use a ton of XP, it is two sessions later.

Another idea I had this morning is to create a limit based on the total XP needed to level up. Maybe 5% or 1%? And if the PC exceeds this limit, they will level up one session slower? Lets see how the numbers play out:

If Dee'noh takes the Craft Wand feat at 5th-level, he could make a 3rd-level wand... he may not even be able to afford the 5,625 gp cost, but the 1/25 XP cost would be 450 XP. Being at 5th-level, he would need at least 10,000 XP, and to reach 6th-level, he would need to gain another 5,000 XP. 5% of the XP needed to level up is 250 XP, or 1% is 50 XP.

Dee'noh couldn't create the 3rd-level wand without falling behind if it was 5%, but he could make a 2nd-level wand (180 XP) and two 1st-level wands (30 XP each) which doesn't seem too shabby at all. Or if it was 1%, he could create one 1st-level wand. However, a wand may not be the best example since they start out at 50 charges, so it is pretty expensive compared to potions or scrolls.

If he made potions and/or scrolls instead, it would be 30 XP for 3rd-level potions or 15 XP for 3rd-level scrolls. He could make 5 of each at the 5% rate and still have a bit of XP leftover for something else. Or at the 1% rate, he could make one of each, or four 2nd-level potions (12 XP each) and one 1st-level (2 XP each), or twenty-five 1st-level potions (2 XP each).

Also, I realize now that if Dee'noh had exactly 10,000 XP when he gained 5th-level, he could not create magic items without losing a level cos it would lower his XP total. So, maybe, if this system is used, it should be based on the previous level. He needed +4,000 XP to go from 4th-level (6,000 XP) to 5th-level (10,000 XP), so if you assume he gains a bit more than the minimum (cos you usually wind up with more than the exact amount need), then at the 5% rate, he would have an extra 200 XP to use at 5th-level for creating magic items, or at the 1% rate he would have 40 XP.

I'm not really sure what the % rate would be, but based on these handful of numbers, 1% seems pretty fair. At least for the examples, it seems like you can opt for one or two higher level items or several lower level items, and you can do it without worry of falling behind (which is pretty sweet). Essentially, it would be whatever the DM considers an acceptable XP freebie.

Another way to determine excess XP could be to base it off the average XP from an encounter. So when you reach 5th-level, you have just completed several 4th-level encounters. I have no idea what this number should be, but if the average XP per PC for each encounter is supposed to be 200 XP at 4th-level, you could base the % off this amount. If you do 50%, that would be 100 XP which means you reach 5th-level with a total of 10,100 XP, so at 5th-level you have 100 XP extra to spend on creating magic items. Or if the rate was 25% of encounter XP, it would 50 XP extra at 5th-level. Essentially, the last encounter gave you a bit more XP than needed to level up, so you can expend that XP without losing a level.

And I guess however the rate is determined, it would also make sense that any leftover extra XP will carryover at each level. So, if you get an 40 XP at one level but don't use it, and then you get another 50 XP at the next level, you now have a total of 90 XP extra to create magic items without falling behind.

Anyway, this post wound up being much longer than I expected, and it's totally cool if this % idea doesn't sound good to anyone else.

p.s. - Pathfinder did remove the XP cost for creating magic items, and it seems like they replaced it with Spellcraft checks that function similar to Craft checks to determine success but not time.

Cos unless I overlooked something in the 3.5 DMG, it looks like you always succeed on creating magic items in 3.5 as long as you pay all the gp and XP costs (which have to be paid upfront). It looks like the only way to fail is if you intentionally abandon the process to make another item. You can only work on one magic item at a time, and the days do not need to be consecutive, but if you start working on a new item before finishing the first item, the first item is ruined and all the costs are lost.

[Rabbit]

I need to read this over again and think about some ideas I have, but I do like the idea of Time and Skill restrictions replacing the XP costs of item creation.

Like, needing skill ranks in Spell Craft to (have a decent chance to) create certain item types. If an attempt is made and a skill roll failed the gold costs and time costs are still lost/spent. A truely botched item creation attempt could even "misfire" and do harm to the creator and his surroundings. Point being, you want to know what you are doing before you try something dangerous like item creation.

Another option, I am considering a Base Skill Rank Requirment (per item type) to even attempt item creation. Like a character must have 5 Ranks in Spell Craft to craft scrolls. The actual numbers would need to be worked out. The perk is you can become a professional scroll maker, but it takes your skill points away from other things an adventurer might find useful.

And there is only so much time between sessions and during a game that a character can use to create items.

[reefwood]

Apr 12, 2011 14:34:48 GMT -5 Rabbit said:

I need to read this over again and think about some ideas I have, but I do like the idea of Time and Skill restrictions replacing the XP costs of item creation.

Like, needing skill ranks in Spell Craft to (have a decent chance to) create certain item types. If an attempt is made and a skill roll failed the gold costs and time costs are still lost/spent. A truely botched item creation attempt could even "misfire" and do harm to the creator and his surroundings. Point being, you want to know what you are doing before you try something dangerous like item creation.

Another option, I am considering a Base Skill Rank Requirment (per item type) to even attempt item creation. Like a character must have 5 Ranks in Spell Craft to craft scrolls. The actual numbers would need to be worked out. The perk is you can become a professional scroll maker, but it takes your skill points away from other things an adventurer might find useful.

And there is only so much time between sessions and during a game that a character can use to create items.

Here are the Pathfinder rules for Magic Item Creation. First is the general info, and then, there is the info for specific types of items, and these rules are similar to some your ideas.

The base difficulty is DC 5 + caster level for the item. It should be noted that all magic items have a CL listed, but very few have a caster level as an actual prerequisite. I think the minimum caster level for most magic items is actually based on the minimum the level you need to cast the spell, so the CL of items can be lower than what is listed in the book or higher, depending on how powerful you want to make the item.

It should also be noted that Item Creation feats have a minimum caster level, so there is already a restriction on what level a character can do these things. Also, some classes receive them as bonus feats, so an Artificer or Wizard should be able to scribe scrolls at 1st-level with ease if minimal resources put into the effort. In 3.5, there would be no chance for failure (unless you purposefully quit) and only require 1 XP for a 1st-level scroll. In Pathfinder, having an Int mod +1 and putting 1 rank in Spellcraft would guarantee success on 1st-level scroll (DC 6 vs 1 rank +3 train +1 Int mod = 1d20+5).

Another way to make it harder could be to increase the DC by +2 if you want an item to be a bit harder, or +4 or +5 to be a lot harder, or maybe by the spell level to make it more gradual (i.e. a little hard for low level magic but a lot harder for high level magic). This would encourage players to pump more ranks into Spellcraft but not make it impossible for them to use bonus feats. Plus, action points can be used on skill checks, so a player could burn an action point to help offset the increased difficulty, which seems like a pretty fair trade-off too.

One more thing about Pathfinder is that failing a Spellcraft check by 5 or more results in a cursed item, so it would be good for the DM to make the rolls. Cursed items can do all sorts of things, but the instant mishap idea you propose might be an easier way to handle things. Especially if a character makes multiple potions or scrolls because having the curse wait until the item is used would mean the DM having to keep track of which ones are cursed and the players stating whether they are drinking potion #1 or #3 or #7.

Anyway, those are just a few more off-the-top-of-my-head ideas, and time is certainly a good way to control magic item creation too.

[silanariel]

I have a question. I'm going to take a Fighter level so I get and extra feat and I was gonna go for Power attack so I could also get cleave at this level. But, I wanted to take a shifter trait with my next feat, except that it is a fighter feat and not a character feat. Am I going to have to hold off on Cleave so I can get a shifter feat as a character feat or, does it not matter in this game?

[Rabbit]

Apr 25, 2011 12:20:30 GMT -5 silanariel said:

I have a question. I'm going to take a Fighter level so I get and extra feat and I was gonna go for Power attack so I could also get cleave at this level. But, I wanted to take a shifter trait with my next feat, except that it is a fighter feat and not a character feat. Am I going to have to hold off on Cleave so I can get a shifter feat as a character feat or, does it not matter in this game?

Yeah, it matters. There are certain feats yo ucan take for fighter feats and certain ones you can't.