New Member, New DM and need some advice

[Jinglez]

First of all I'd like to say hello, as I just registered up. And do a little introduction. Im 23 and i'm (somewhat) new to DnD. Was always curious about it since I saw a Dexters laboratory episode about DnD when I was a kid.
Anyways a friend of mine who was working some odd jobs with this guy that cleaned houses after evictions or something like that. Well they got a whole stack of DnD books. and my buddy brought over a trunk full, and let me pick out a whole bunch of them, knowing I was looking to getting into it.
So a group of friends and I started a campaign after a week or two of reading up on rules and watching example sessions on youtube of Chris Perkins. So on and so on. To make it short. The first group Flaked out. 1 of the players seemed to have no interest in the game when we played, and it was very hard to get him to show up at sessions cause he was too busy with doing drugs. another player always had to be drunk, and it would never fail within about an hour of play, hed be too drunk to stay focused, and it was even worse when hed constantly invite his girl friend over and was totally distracted the whole time.
So me and my girl friend, and the one player that was left, decided to start over, and form another group. which we brought my girl friends brother into. and just last session got one of our mutual friends to join, and she seemed to like it alot and played two nights straight with us.

Anyways to the point now. Ive been DMing, all these sesssions. The first group lasted 3 1/2 sessions. This new group has now done about 9 or 10.
Im DM and I double as Codious the fighter/sorceror. becuase I want to play but no one else seems to want to DM.

So currently the group has: Codious:Human Fighter 9/Sorc 3, Renton:Human Paladin 12, Ariana:Elven Cleric 12, Lea:Human Wizard 12, Rune: Tiefling Rogue 10/Fighter 2. Rune is what I need help with...

First: We are useing a combination of 3.5 and 3.0, mainly 3.5 though. We have PH 3.0 and 3.5. DMG 3.5 MM I-4. Using FR Faerun for the world. and we have several of the prestige books. and many other books but thats what weve mainly been using and looking at.

Ok now the problem. Maybe someone who knows the rules better might know something we are doing wrong. or have some advice for me to tailor encounters to better cope with this and not over power the encounter for other players

Rune the rogue 10/fighter 2. Is over powered, I believe.
Quick example: last session we fought our first dragon, a blue mature dragon. The dragon only attacked once.. and was dead before the end of the 2nd round. and only the rogue and and wizard made any attacks on him.

the rogue did atleast 2/3 of his health if not more with two turns.
This is why..
he has TWF feat. Amidextrious, Weapon Finesse, Extra Finese and his sneak attack, combined with the improved crit feat.(this is the one that really made him too damn powerful) and some others i cant remember off the top of my head,
but those are the main things. Hes using .. Rapiers I think if i remember correctly. He took fighter multiclass mainly for the extra feats. And tieflings favor rogue so he had no upsets about an exp penalty.

so with his improved crit with his weapons he gets a 15-20 crit threat chance. so with most enemies, when he flanks them and is able to make a full round attack he gets his sneak attack dice (+5d6) + First attack+ an off hand attack + a second attack. and when he rolls at least a 15.. its an auto hit, whether he makes the second roll for actual critical hit or not. He also just about always goes first with the very high initiative he has. So, needless to say he can pwn alot of things before many other player have much of a chance to try.. I dont want to ruin his play experience because of this like just limit him on things, or never let him successfully hide or always use things that cant be flanked or worse kill him lol. but its affecting everyone elses.

So the question is. are we doing something wrong? or do I just have to find a way to better counter this? I thought I could deal with it, hes always been very powerful, but after the dragon, died like a wuss to him when i thought it was going to be a pretty great challenge for us and last several rounds... I figured Id go looking for answers, most I could find was people talking about overpowered/underpowered rogues, and revision on that class from 3.0-3.5-4e.

And now I am here. So what do you all think?

[Badgerish]

Welcome to the hobby/boards!

1) only a nat-20 is an automatic hit. a roll that is in your threat-range (15-19 in this case) but not a 20 still needs to hit the target's AC to threaten.

2) why did the Blue Dragon engage in melee, in a place they could be flanked?
2b) why did the Blue Dragon engage in melee at all?

3) going first is great for spellcasters, but poor for people who want to make full-attacks, as you have to move into position first. Why did the Dragon get within 5' of the Rogue before init was rolled?

[Baldin]

Hey there and welcome,

As the answer above only a natural 20 is an auto hit anything else could be a threat but has to be equal or higher then your targets armor class.

Secondly i couldnt not see what you count for crit damage. If you crit you multipy the damage you deal, however only the weapons damage and static damage multiplies, meaning magic weapn, bardig music, strenght etc. Extra dices do not, this means sneak attack does not multiplu and neigter do any other extra dices, from a flaming weapon for example.

Cheers
Baldin

[LordHenry]

The Rogue gets his sneak attack (5d6) on every attack he makes if he is allowed to sneak attack - not sure if you already know that.
Furthermore, sneak attack dice DO NOT get multiplied on crits. So even when critting, it stays 5d6 SA. (again, not sure if you know that - usually Rogue does not benefit too much from crits, especially if he does not have the feat craven)

Lastly, if I remember correctly, the Rapier is not a light weapon, and has further penalties when dual wielded. (at least in 3.5) The off-hand weapon has to be light as far as I know, so for example a short sword or dagger.

Some dragons have blind sense I think, at east good vision. A mature blue dragon should have damage reduction.. which appliees to every hit.. ususally a Rogue's bane. He should also have Reach.

[Kesnit]

Lastly, if I remember correctly, the Rapier is not a light weapon, and has further penalties when dual wielded. (at least in 3.5) The off-hand weapon has to be light as far as I know, so for example a short sword or dagger.

It is light with respect to Weapon Finesse, but I don't think it is when used off-hand in TWF.

Is the Rogue taking the -4/-4 penalties for TWF with a non-light off-hand? That could reduce his damage, if he cannot hit.

[Krazzman]

I noticed a few things:

First welcome to the hobby. For the next campaign better drop the 3.0 books and start reading through the rules a bit more careful.

1) Tiefling... they should have Level Adjustment +1 (LA+1). Therefore he should be Rogue 9/Fighter 2 or Rogue 10/Fighter 1 except you all play with LA-Buyoff.

2) In a Round you have only 2 options: Move (up to your speed) and Attack a single time or move 5' and make a full attack. Therefore as a rogue being in the flanking position in the first round of combat and actually being able to get this without really moving: kills encounters.

3) Rapiers. He could have Keen Rapiers instead of the feat but that's not what I'm aming at. he deals when all of his 3 attacks hit 3d6+2.5*Str-mod + 3x Sneak Attack (if he can do it). Assuming a Criting of all 3 it would be 6d6+5*Str-mod +3x sneak attack.

3b) Crtting as been said is not an automatic Hit. A natural 20 is a critical threat and an automatic hit.

4) Over or underpowered. Jeah that topic again... it sucks I have to tell you. It's going on some peoples nerves since 3.5 was released. As you might happened from reading a bit on this board there is the term Optimization. You as a DM have to search for your on preferred powerlevel and then try to adjust the capabilities of everyone that they fall right into your envisioned powerlevel. In and on itself the Wizard has the potential to outperform your Tiefling player. The crux here is this might crash hard with your group. My advice would be to first try simple things (stay a bit in core then slowly advance from there). More supplements might make certain things far more difficult but are giving you and your players options. Some of them are strong choices and are perceived as OP (ToB for example is being perveiced as op while being not and some other classes just are OP if played "right" [wizard/Cleric/Druid]) some of them are bad choices (like the truenamer).

Speak this up with your group since one thing is pretty much the most important part: Inter-Party-Communication. Try to resolve conflicts through talking. I hope this helps you and whish you some quality time spent gaming.

[hoverfrog]

He's 12th level. It is expected that he will do a lot of damage. Surely the cleric and wizard buffed him up anyway with spells so that he could sneak into position for his sneak attack and do maximum mayhem. That's just good play and no reason to punish the player.

It might be that the dragon (you as the DM) wasn't using his abilities to the maximum. A dragon has some devastating range attacks., 14d8 damage from his breathe weapon is nothing to sneeze at. His frightful presence sends the party's mounts screaming in terror even if it doesn't much scare the PCs. He is at least 200 years old and has a wealth of knowledge and understanding of tactics. He has DR10/magic and an array of spell abilities equivalent to a 7th level sorcerer.

Maybe the tiefling killed a Major Image of the dragon that he was using to test their abilities while it sat back invisible and watched. Maybe they killed the concubine of the dragon that he had grown tired of and had under a suggestion to try to fight the party without any magic? Now he can see what they can do and has a plan to take them out. Displacement and mirror image are available to it if it does deign to enter melee that give the tiefling a poor probability of actually hitting him. Don't forget that he should have treasure including magic items and would know exactly how to use them.

[laeZ1]

I've been a DM for just over a year now, and my players' rogues have a tendancy to tear up my NPCs into little pieces. When I want a really good fight to happen, I try to make sure the NPCs in question are heavily fortified (enchanted armor right out of the DMG, no crits or sneak attacks allowed), or cannot be flanked. Your rogue is doing exactly what rogues do. Another thing I've learned is that when you've got a group of PCs, they have a much easier time against one very powerful opponent, as opposed to many semi-powerful ones.

[dantiesilva]

You can always put them against undead, constructs, and plants. All immune to crits. On another note you could give creaters armor with the fortification ability which makes crits harder. After all 25% of them don't work on light fortification. But I agree with the board, if the dragon was played right it should have survived much longer. Only excuse is going against my super level 1 commoners that kill it in one hit, and thats a great wyrm that they kill. Sadly it takes 600 of them in an arrow volley XD.

[Jinglez]

wow thank you all for the timely replies and welcomes.

First. the natural 20 being the only auto hit i did not know. we thought any crit threat was still a hit but just a normal strike, if the second attack roll failed.
so that alone will make a great difference.

now more details on how we use the mechanics. the way we understand it, when we do succeed on a critical hit, we only multiply the attack dice. so if a fighter has a bastard sword that does 1d10(with a +9 with STR mod and any other variables). and there he scored a critical hit. he would roll 2d10+9.
one of the posts confused me to think- would it instead be 2d10+18? like the damage rolls modifier gets a x2 as well?
So no we dont multiply any other variable, only the weapons damage dice.

Now about the dragon and why he was flanked. My players are pretty smart and resourceful. as long as my paladin doesnt blindly pull a leeroy jenkins, which is what hes become to be known for.
Encounter took place in a desert in the "eye" of a sand storm that was more like a magical desert huricane was a very open area with one plateu wall and 2 large boulders. and a small oasis pond. the blue dragon was burrowed, and was using the immitate voice feature it has. and he was speaking in a voice of a commander the players met at the beggining of the campaign. i was luring them into a trap basicly. and after they would defeat the dragon i would infer the commander had a run in with the dragon at some point since he was copying the commanders voice.
well the paladin decided to use detect evil. and was able to detect its general location while they were still to far away for me to get them FF, as i wanted the dragon to burst out of the ground hitting them as it came out as soon as they got to it.. well the paladin instructed the rogue where the evil presence was, and the rogue threw a dagger right on top of where the dragon was hiding under the sand.
I always reward them when they get creative, sometimes because it impresses me other times just to inspire them to be creative more often.
So i made the dragon trigger its trap to swallow the dagger basicly when they did that, and began initiatives. the dragon went last of course with a +0 init. the paladin and rogue were able to flank it, during that turn. the rogue delayed, so he could wait for an opportunity to flank. at this point the dragon is still on the ground mind you. when his turn came, i decided to use the full attack hoping the high damage it would deal would some what scare the players, and make them alittle more cautious as i thought it would be a greater challenge then it was..
I planed to fly him across the board on his next turn and use his breath attack. but he didnt last that long.

Now for damage reduction.. The only damage reduction that I saw for this dragon was. a magic resist of 5. i didnt note anything else. unless it was listed at the begining off the dragons section in the MM but I did not see it. Ill have to look again.

Yes we are doing two weapon fighting correctly as far as I know. He used to take a -2, -2. but he recently switched to the rapiers he purchased in a town we were at and now takes a -4, -4.

and as for the tiefling bit, and him being a "powerful race" completly my fault really. I allowed all the players to start at a Level 3. not ecl 3. (before i entirely understood the difference between the two.) we started at this level because the wasted time on our other campaign. and just thought it be nice to start with a boost. He does his exp correctly and uses the faerun book when calculating his levels experience. the reason he hasnt fallen behind. is also my fault. because one of our sessions lasted about 12 hours straight. and the players held in there and wanted to keep going. well i lost track of how much experience they had already acquired. throughout the time before they got to level up and meditate on what they learned and what not. so I let them level up twice. instead of once, and just short of the second level. (they really had gained three levels if i would of let them, except for the tiefling) so needless to say his ecl is 1 above the rest. Ive been gradually reducing the actual experience we would gain to slowly get him back even with the group. but i dont want to drop the experience just like that and ruin the gratification of a great fight.

and @ Krazzman please elaborate on the rapiers part I do not fully understand.

Keep in mind the dragon is just one example fresh in my memory, but my rogue player seems to tear up the battle field almost every time we play. Sometimes its not a big problem (infact sometimes he ends up saving the party from disaster) others he rapes an encounter that should of been much more difficult. I dont wish to "punish" my players for good play. the kill comment was a joke, as I dont want to kill any of my players. and actually kinda felt bad, one of our recent sessions I almost killed our paladin. but they quickly got their strategy and were able to stop him from dying.

and yes I have definatly noticed, when they take on a single powerful enemy, they work together and take it out quickly. but if they are up against a couple or more semi powerful and sometimes CR of near equal to their level. they have a pretty good challenge. they seem to really enjoy massive hordes of lower level opponents though. 5 PC fighting 20 monsters at once gets hectic but is very fun.

[dantiesilva]

Keep in mind dragons have minions, so it would not be alone unless it had a good reason to do it itself. Was one of the books you grabbed the draconmicon. If so you may want to read that for help on dragon campaign, it even has a scenario. You could also have the rouge look into a mirror that he thinks is normal, which in fact makes an evil clone of him. And there is a feat that lets you use two rapiers without penalty.

[Jinglez]

actually we do have it, lol didnt even know we did until just now. like i said I got a pile of books from my friend. too many to even keep in one place. I havent gotten a chance study even half of them yet.

This game is fun but it has so much depth to it. and I dont think we could ever know everything about it without actually playing through it. just about every session we will run into something we dont know, and if we cant figure it out within about a minute, I just make something up that is fair enough for the time, until we can actually take time and research it later. I feel playing it is prob the best way for us to learn. theres too much to just read on and retain the knowlege of for the game. our first few sessions were really slow, but every session we have we get more into the groove as we discover the rules and get a hold of everything.

One thing we all want to get into is crafting. but it seems very complex to all of us. many things we dont understand about it. which we are trying to figure out so we may soon be able to craft weapons. everyone wants a custom tailored weapons. and along on that basis, crafting magic weapons and more about gems and their effects and how they can be placed in weapons and so on.

[Glimbur]

Crafting, as in PCs making magic items from the books, or crafting as in the custom magic item rules? The first one is pretty simple: take the right feat, have the right spells, get items for half price (plus some XP, but by the book lower level people get more XP from an encounter so it's ok). It gets trickier with magic weapons and armor. I'll try to explain. Magic weapons (and armor) can have both an Enhancement bonus and special abilities. They have to have a +1 enhancement bonus before they get anything else. Then, special abilities stack with enhancement bonus to determine effective enhancement bonus for total cost. For example, a +2 flaming long sword costs the same as a +3 long sword. You can't go above +5 enhancement or +10 total pre-epic (epic is a mess, by the way).

Custom magic items... can be a mess. The oft-cited example is a use-activated sword of True Strike. +20 to every attack, using a 1st level spell so costs are low. Kick that to the curb.

Gems going in to weapons? I take you have played Diablo or similar. There isn't a lot of support for it in D&D 3E; all I can think of offhand is weapon crystals from the magic item compendium, which are removable.

[Jinglez]

Yes thats pretty much what we know. +2 flaming sword costing same as a +3 sword, is something that helps. We were having questions about the mechanics about it some. the way the charts are presented in the DMG are kinda confusing. like when it says under the material column "Cost x50 (usually none)". times 50 of what cost. and usually none- being usually no materials needed? if so how often then not? or what is the determining factor. the little "2" next to material has a foot note which then confuses what the purpose of the magic supplies cost column is for. The other side we were wondering about was getting the materials. do you just purchase them? or do you have to loot them from specific creatures or find them in the appropriate places and so on. mainly looking for a list of materials and there values and what each material can be used for, what all their properties are as well. so far we really only know alittle bit about dragon hide, tooth, claw.

Do you need a place to do it in like a workshop, we been reading about the time it takes to craft an item and races benefits like dwarves are good with stone work. but are there other conditions? tools, forges, and so on, and what the factors of any of those variables can change.

and when I say custom i didnt mean spell creation and all that. we will leave that alone for now. and stick with the preset stuff to choose from which is pretty vast already. just custom as in the player chooses the weapon and its qualities and its enchantments and such.

and about the gems, yes ive played some diablo and elderscrolls. and we were reading somewhere about different types of gems having different magical qualities, so we kinda assumed they could be involved in using the gem to enchant its qualities into a weapon like a power source of the weapons magic when crafting..

[Krazzman]

Ah sorry I think it was my weakness of not being that clear from time to time.

The Rapier a weapon as you know that deals 1d6+Str Mod damage and has a critical thread range of 18-20/x2. This means his "Crits" shouldn't be that hard hitting if he doesn't have some extradamage he puts there.

The part I meant to tell you were that he could've spared himself 1 feat and instead took a magical enchant for his weapon and therefore would have the chance to get an additional feat (either getting Improved TWF or something else that would highten his damage).

Bonus: If he seems to tear encounters apart target his weakness: Precisiondamage-Immune foes. Undeads, Constructs etc are all immune to critical hits and Sneak attack (albeit the last one can be mitigated through level 1 spells). But this could've even the tides of your battles out.

Good luck^^

[hoverfrog]

You kind of imply that the dragon went last because he had an initiative of +0. Forgive me if I'm over reading what you wrote but you roll a d20 for initiative and add the modifier, not use the modifier to see who is going first.

On crafting start with something simple like scrolls and potions. The tielfling rogue will love scrolls and his use magic device skill. Basic magic weapons and armour, rods and wands are fairly straightforward. It's the wondrous items that cause the bother because there's such a huge variance on what they do and how to make them.

[laeZ1]

I always reward them when they get creative, sometimes because it impresses me other times just to inspire them to be creative more often.
So long as you keep doing this, you're a good DM in my book.

Now, About powerful races... technically, the game I'm currently DMing is my seccond game. I had one that lasted about four sessions, roughly a year earlier. I told my players to make level six characters.

So I got a level three (four?) drow, a level six human, a level six halfling, and a level one Rakshasa N'zatherune (spelling).

We knew about level adjustments. The drow has a level adjustment of plus three (two?), which means he's on par with characters three (two) levels above him. The Rakshasa N'zatherune had a plus five level adjustment. What my player didn't tell me (or perhaps didn't realize) is that Rakshasa N'zatherunes start with twelve levels of racial hit-dice.

So, the Human, Halfling, and Drow were all roughly the same in strength, but the Rakshasa was roughly twelve levels ahead of them (gaining levels faster than them too, since we thought he was "level 1").

There are three morals to this story:

1. When people want to play races that aren't from the PHB, check for BOTH level adjustments and racial hit-dice to determine their level.
2. When somebody says "I cast detect thoughts", know for certain what that spell does before you open your mouth.
3. If anybody ever wants to play a Rakshasa N'zatherune in any of your games, hit them with the wii-mote (or the classic controller). If your wii-mote has a protective covering, first superglue nails to the protective covering, then hit them with the wii-mote.

all joking aside: don't let somebody play one. There are probably worse races out there... I'm sure the people here in the playground know of pleanty, but this is the one I know.

[Jinglez]

Yes we do roll a d20 and add initiative. but as an alteration. to save the head ache constantly criss crossing accross the table and of everyone rolling and writing down the order of each person every round. the way we do it as a house rule. every round we roll initiative. the highest roller goes first then gets to choose clockwise or counter clockwise.( we used to just do clockwise. but the rogue would almost always go first meaning the person to his right would always go last.) and the monsters would be placed in the order either before or after the player with the closest roll to them depending on whos was higher, if theres a tie, then the one with the highest initiative mod goes first. everyone seems to like it best this way, but sometimes we will change it up on days when the rogue has gone first every single time. the paladin gets a joking but upset tude about it so, i offer to play the real way with the rules here and there but they always like to stick with the way we been doing it.

also ive gotten a few constructs in on him, like the demon retriever had construct qualities. ive put them up against a few of those and they had a pretty good challenge with it. (I refrained from using petrification ray, as i did not know at the time is it infact was permanent or not as in the description it says permanent lol). another time i sent in avalanchers, to prevent him from doing sneak attack while flanking. flanking seems to be when sneak attack becomes a problem where he is doing it over and over again. i dont mind at all the sneak attacks he gets as a surprise and the like against unsuspecting enemies and when he can be hidden. but him an the paladin are damn good at working together at getting things flanked. i just need to figure out more clever ways to force them to make a new strategy, because they do the same thing again and again. and i want give them the incentive to be more versatile and creative combat.

[Krazzman]

also ive gotten a few constructs in on him, like the demon retriever had construct qualities. ive put them up against a few of those and they had a pretty good challenge with it. (I refrained from using petrification ray, as i did not know at the time is it infact was permanent or not as in the description it says permanent lol). another time i sent in avalanchers, to prevent him from doing sneak attack while flanking. flanking seems to be when sneak attack becomes a problem where he is doing it over and over again. i dont mind at all the sneak attacks he gets as a surprise and the like against unsuspecting enemies and when he can be hidden. but him an the paladin are damn good at working together at getting things flanked. i just need to figure out more clever ways to force them to make a new strategy, because they do the same thing again and again. and i want give them the incentive to be more versatile and creative combat.

That's good. Against flanking try hit and run fighters or something that can't be flanked.. or something he doesn't want to be next to.
Flanking isn't the only condition of powering sneak attack/sudden strike. There are feats that let's you add sneak attack to a normal critical hit. (not if it was a critical sneak attack) Additionally going first in combat, while the enemy didn't act yet he can use sneak attack.

But be sure to either make it hard for him to get sneak attack or impossible while don't resorting this as your ONLY form of combat. You should throw him a bite every once in a while so he can rip things apart with sneak attack.

[hoverfrog]

Just roll initiative at the beginning of combat and note down the order. Stick to that order till the end of the combat. The first round can be slow but you can use notepad or cards (one per character or monster and one to represent a new round).

[Jinglez]

But be sure to either make it hard for him to get sneak attack or impossible while don't resorting this as your ONLY form of combat. You should throw him a bite every once in a while so he can rip things apart with sneak attack.

yes, this is exactly what im trying to do. i got quite a few options from you guys on here, and it corrected a few things we were doing wrong like the natural 20 being the only auto hit for one.. so i got some ideas now. but i didnt want us constantly fighting constructs. or always making it so no one can flank just to avoid him getting a flanking sneak attack.

recently I had made up a bunch of story line specific warriors that was a squad of about 25 "scout" and fighter type soldiers. and they had the spring attack and the scouts has sneak attack as well.. that worked pretty well, and they werent very difficult individuals but there were alot of them. on a 40 by 40 square grid. and there tactics varied some would go for full attacks, while others would spring attack, so it alowed the rogue to use his sneak attack, and i was using sneak attack on him, just to let him taste his own medicine. :). and the paladin has cleave so when they worked together he got pretty excited with multi cleaves. the cleric was pretty busy supporting with all the damage they were all taking, and she has a crossbow as well she did a good job for taking out the scouts that were in trees. and the wizard liked having so many targets when they were clustered.

[Silva Stormrage]

Just roll initiative at the beginning of combat and note down the order. Stick to that order till the end of the combat. The first round can be slow but you can use notepad or cards (one per character or monster and one to represent a new round).

Isn't that the normal rule :smallconfused: I didn't think anyone rerolled every single round.

Also on a note for sending creatures immune to critical hits, don't send ONLY creatures immune to critical hits. It tends to make the rogue player feel useless or singled out in the party. My idea is send a necromancer with some undead minions at the party. The paladin would probably love to bash some zombies with holy vengeance :smallbiggrin:

Also send mobile foes against the party as those tend to last longer (against a melee party anyway) casters with battlefield control spells (Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, etc) can really prevent a group from moving as they want.

[pwykersotz]

Just make sure to keep in mind that everything goes down fast if caught off guard. Other than what has been stated you haven't made any mistakes, except maybe in setting your expectations of what the dragon could do. You seldom have a Boss Monster that has enough HP to last a full minute, unless you customize one yourself.

In order for some things to be real challenges, they have to be played smart or prepared or both. I once had two imps take down a party of level 7's just because of forethought. Also, as has been said, minions help. :smallamused:

[hoverfrog]

Isn't that the normal rule :smallconfused: I didn't think anyone rerolled every single round. Yes but Jinglez wrote
rolling and writing down the order of each person every round.Which I took to mean he was rolling initiative each round just like we used to do in the olden days of AD&D. Not that there is anything wrong with running it that way, it just takes a bit more effort.

[Dayaz]

something that wasn't mentioned with crafting: It likes like, a day per 1k gold the item costs, so the PCs will need down time if they're going to craft stuff.

a plus for down time you need to know: Unless the Cleric is tossing out spells like candy on the downtime days, I believe people only naturally regain 1 hp a day >.> Convince the healer he should be doing this. Also, be careful of Ability drain. If a wraith drains someones con to 0, they auto-die.

[Krazzman]

something that wasn't mentioned with crafting: It likes like, a day per 1k gold the item costs, so the PCs will need down time if they're going to craft stuff.

a plus for down time you need to know: Unless the Cleric is tossing out spells like candy on the downtime days, I believe people only naturally regain 1 hp a day >.> Convince the healer he should be doing this. Also, be careful of Ability drain. If a wraith drains someones con to 0, they auto-die.

I think it was 1HP/HD and 2 if you've got a healcheck of at least 15 on you... or similar.

[Silva Stormrage]

Yes but Jinglez wrote Which I took to mean he was rolling initiative each round just like we used to do in the olden days of AD&D. Not that there is anything wrong with running it that way, it just takes a bit more effort.

Got it your comment made it sound like a common house rule or variant and I had never heard of it before. I never played before 3rd edition. :smallredface:

[GeriSch]

now more details on how we use the mechanics. the way we understand it, when we do succeed on a critical hit, we only multiply the attack dice. so if a fighter has a bastard sword that does 1d10(with a +9 with STR mod and any other variables). and there he scored a critical hit. he would roll 2d10+9.
one of the posts confused me to think- would it instead be 2d10+18? like the damage rolls modifier gets a x2 as well?
So no we dont multiply any other variable, only the weapons damage dice.


To clarify that: Yes the fighter would make 2d10+18 damage, the modifiers are multiplied too. But additional damage dice as from sneak attacks, are not multiplied.

And i think there is no way the rogue/fighter could have dealt anywhere near enough damage in 2 rounds to eat up that 276HP a standard mature blue dragon has, this encounter would have a good chance for a total party wipeout if the dragon is played as intelligent as it is.

gr,
Geri