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Altaria87
2009-06-13, 02:06 PM
Basically me and a few friends used to run DnD games, and I provided all the handbooks and monster manuals and stuff because A: I has links with a book store, B: I had the most money. However a while ago I lost all the books and we've had an idea about running a game using purely the SRD, and I'm just asking if that would be possible, as I've forgotten a few important things like the wealth rules and how you decide starting hp.

Flickerdart
2009-06-13, 02:11 PM
Starting HP is just max hit die instead of rolling. WBL is in the DMG, not PHB.

You really don't need the Player's Handbook.

Prock
2009-06-13, 02:14 PM
I,ve done it
And if you need anything that not on the SRD it surely is somewhere else online, like Cristalk keep.

Altaria87
2009-06-13, 02:19 PM
I,ve done it
And if you need anything that not on the SRD it surely is somewhere else online, like Cristalk keep.
Ok, thanks, I was just wondering if it was plausible, and to the other guy, I meant I've actually lost ALL the needed books, but if I cna find the stuff online, I doubt that'll matter, so thanks :smallsmile:

RelentlessImp
2009-06-13, 02:20 PM
A failure is me. I didn't read completely through the original post. Ignore this.

One thing I will add is that Wealth-By-Level follows a formula that's been posted on Wizards.com (for Star Wars Saga, but still - it's the same formula in 3.5).

The formula is (Character Level*[Character Level-1])*2000. So a 20th level character has (20*19)*2000, or 760000 gold.

Altaria87
2009-06-13, 02:27 PM
A failure is me. I didn't read completely through the original post. Ignore this.

One thing I will add is that Wealth-By-Level follows a formula that's been posted on Wizards.com (for Star Wars Saga, but still - it's the same formula in 3.5).

The formula is (Character Level*[Character Level-1])*2000. So a 20th level character has (20*19)*2000, or 760000 gold.

Ok then xD


I,ve done it
And if you need anything that not on the SRD it surely is somewhere else online, like Cristalk keep.

Incidentally what is Cristalk Keep? I searched on google and lal that came up was this wacky Sanyo product:smallconfused:

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-06-13, 02:28 PM
It's spelled Crystal Keep.

Eldariel
2009-06-13, 02:29 PM
Incidentally what is Cristalk Keep? I searched on google and lal that came up was this wacky Sanyo product:smallconfused:

This is CRYSTAL KEEP! (http://www.crystalkeep.com/) Or something. I'd personally prefer Crystal Tokyo, but YMMV.

Prock
2009-06-13, 02:30 PM
Its a typo on my fault
this is what I meant http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/index.php

Altaria87
2009-06-13, 02:32 PM
Its a typo on my fault
this is what I meant http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/index.php
Ah, thanks people, that was probably my mistake for being such a doofus:smallredface:

Eerie
2009-06-14, 03:10 AM
Just download everything in PDFs. Problem solved.

Yora
2009-06-14, 05:09 AM
To complicated.
I have the core books on a shelf in my living room, but I very rarely take them down when working on RPG stuff. At some point you know most of the rules and those you don't you can find much quicker on a SRD site than scrolling through hundreds of pdf pages.
There are some tables which are missing in the SRD like XP and wealth by level. But I don't use them anyway.

AslanCross
2009-06-14, 06:30 AM
I was able to teach my players the game with just the SRD.

jcsw
2009-06-14, 06:33 AM
Personally I find d20srd.org > crystalkeep for SRD things.

daggaz
2009-06-14, 07:11 AM
I like this one even more than the SRD, as the information is organised in a more useful fashion.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

FMArthur
2009-06-14, 11:27 AM
My entire group has been functioning without the PHB or referring to the SRD for quite some time. The only problems that arise are spell-related, and almost all of the troublesome ones are from the Sorceror/Wizard list so they don't always appear. We also had a druid who had no access to the monster manual...

Anyway, I bought another copy of the PHB a few days ago. Jubilation was overabundant.

TheThan
2009-06-14, 12:17 PM
The only real thing you need in the DMG is the experience chart and the wealth by level table. However it is nice to have. Particularly if you don’t have access to the Internet at you’re gaming table.

RS14
2009-06-14, 01:38 PM
One thing I will add is that Wealth-By-Level follows a formula that's been posted on Wizards.com (for Star Wars Saga, but still - it's the same formula in 3.5).

The formula is (Character Level*[Character Level-1])*2000. So a 20th level character has (20*19)*2000, or 760000 gold.

That is false. The image below shows wealth by the table in blue dots, the best fit exponential (e8.11 + 0.272 x) in blue, the best fit quadratic in red (99700 - 41800 x + 3460 x2), and the above formula in yellow.


http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/RS14_photo/wealth.png

Altaria87
2009-06-14, 01:48 PM
That is false. The image below shows wealth by the table in blue dots, the best fit exponential (e8.11 + 0.272 x) in blue, the best fit quadratic in red (99700 - 41800 x + 3460 x2), and the above formula in yellow.


http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/RS14_photo/wealth.png
*Looks* :smalleek: I think I'll stick by the other formula but thanks all the same.

Fenix_of_Doom
2009-06-14, 01:53 PM
That is false. The image below shows wealth by the table in blue dots, the best fit exponential (e8.11 + 0.272 x) in blue, the best fit quadratic in red (99700 - 41800 x + 3460 x2), and the above formula in yellow.


I seriously doubt those are the best fits, you approximate nearly anything with power series and those are both way off.

Kosjsjach
2009-06-14, 02:01 PM
I seriously doubt those are the best fits, you approximate nearly anything with power series and those are both way off.

Let's see you do better, then. :smalltongue:

I looked around, and it's true; beyond some really ugly-looking formulae, you're not going to find a formula that accurately predicts the WBL.
Kinda sad, really.

RS14
2009-06-14, 02:15 PM
Let's see you do better, then. :smalltongue:

I looked around, and it's true; beyond some really ugly-looking formulae, you're not going to find a formula that accurately predicts the WBL.
Kinda sad, really.

I considered it a bit more. A reasonably good exponential fit is 10^(3.50+0.12x). It's at least something you can memorize.

Fenix_of_Doom
2009-06-14, 02:17 PM
Let's see you do better, then. :smalltongue:

I looked around, and it's true; beyond some really ugly-looking formulae, you're not going to find a formula that accurately predicts the WBL.
Kinda sad, really.

I did, I plotted the power series up to x^15, it was a good fit except that before level 2 your wealth supposedly approaches infinity and after level 20 it approaches minus infinity, so yea....

RS14
2009-06-14, 02:19 PM
I did, I plotted the power series up to x^15, it was a good fit except that before level 2 your wealth supposedly approaches infinity and after level 20 it approaches minus infinity, so yea....

With an arbitrary polynomial you can do better, yes. I chose to restrict mine to a quadratic, since the originally provided formula was one.

Devils_Advocate
2009-06-14, 02:23 PM
I like the core books for the fluff and advice they include. But once you've already read them, you should be able to get by fine using the SRD, your memory, and occasional help from others to fill in the few missing bits.

Doc Roc
2009-06-14, 03:18 PM
I steadfastly refuse to open the PHB. So yes, it can be done.

Chronos
2009-06-14, 03:24 PM
I did, I plotted the power series up to x^15, it was a good fit except that before level 2 your wealth supposedly approaches infinity and after level 20 it approaches minus infinity, so yea....If you're using a fifteenth-order polynomial to fit a data set with 19 points, you're doing it wrong. You want your number of degrees of freedom in your fitting formula to be significantly less than the number of data points, or you'll get something that passes very close to all of the data points, but goes absolutely crazy everywhere else.

Given how close RS14's exponential fit is, with only two degrees of freedom, I think it's safe to say that they took an exponential function and rounded it to get the official table.

Waspinator
2009-06-14, 04:01 PM
If you want a cheap replacement, may I suggest this?
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12736.phtml
There's some for a pretty decent price on Amazon right now.

AslanCross
2009-06-14, 04:33 PM
Come to think of it, you could just have your PCs level up whenever the adventure is over.

EDIT: Some groups have put together Encounter Calculators that compute XP and treasure rewards.

Yora
2009-06-14, 05:00 PM
My players get XP equal to EL * 200, shared equally among all participants. And as I'm not writing adventures for publishing, it's just up to me to see if I should give them more or less treasures for the next encounters. The tables aren't balanced either, so they are just guidelines to have the group equiped to handle the encounters of published adventures. But as you'll never know how the players combine class abilities and which items they buy, you can't count on that either. So just go by your own guess what stuff they should find in the next sessions. You know best what resources they allready have and how they can handle things.

kjones
2009-06-14, 10:50 PM
If you're using a fifteenth-order polynomial to fit a data set with 19 points, you're doing it wrong. You want your number of degrees of freedom in your fitting formula to be significantly less than the number of data points, or you'll get something that passes very close to all of the data points, but goes absolutely crazy everywhere else.

Given how close RS14's exponential fit is, with only two degrees of freedom, I think it's safe to say that they took an exponential function and rounded it to get the official table.

Thank you! I was tearing my hear out reading this thread, but Chronos saved me from having to give you all a math-whuppin'.