Harry Potter and the Natural 20

[LeonCross]

Just started reading this, and I think it's pretty brilliant: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20

(Milo, a genre-savvy D&D Wizard and Adventurer Extraordinaire is forced to attend Hogwarts, and soon finds himself plunged into a new adventure of magic, mad old Wizards, metagaming, misunderstandings, and munchkinry. Updates Thursdays.)

Has anyone else read it?

[Dusk Eclipse]

I started reading it some time ago; but I lost the chapter I was on and I am lazy and don't want to start reading it all over again. It was pretty good though.

[Golden Ladybug]

I read it before, and I was a bit "eh..." about it. I felt that the focus was too strongly on Milo, to the detriment of the other characters.

Still, cool Fanfic. Lots of fun interactions between the characters, and a ton of lampshade hanging. I don't regret reading it at all :smallsmile:

[Eldan]

I only read hte epilogue today, but the Salt bit made me giggle.

[Aidan305]

I was pointed in its direction a couple of months ago. A couple of odd changes to canon (What is it about people and changing Quirrell's character?), but generally entertaining and a nice display of the (non-)interaction of magic systems.

[pita]

What is it about people and changing Quirrell's character?

Quirrell makes a terrible villain once he's known for what he is. To keep him interesting, he has to be changed. This is unlike Snape, who is an interesting character in any form.

[Eldan]

That said, it is ever really known what he was like before bonding with the Dark Lord? Milo breaks Voldemort's hold completely. Who knows what he would revert back to. So, this is much less extreme than Methods of Rationality.

[ShadowFireLance]

I hate you, thanks to that link, the rest of my day is gone. :smalltongue: :smallfurious:

[Nekura]

Well it was unique and different but I don’t if I’d say it was a good different. It wasn’t a horrible story but I wouldn’t rate it very high either. I’ll agree with Golden Ladybug that it focused to much on the OC. All in all it was rather average and if I had read other HP/DnD crossovers it would loose the points in originality that had me rating it that high.

[LeonCross]

Lol. Glad you're hooked Shadow.

This got me interested in reading other stories, particularly crossovers, in which the D&D lampshade was hung hardcore with lots of rule interaction, proper leveling, etc. At least on the Harry Potter front, this story is about all there is.

However, it did make me interested in running a lampshaded D&D campaign, but do it seriously, which I'm starting next week.

What prestige class would you recommend for Milo? I assume he doesn't want Milo to multiclass (otherwise throwing in some Cleric and then Mystic Theurge would give Milo ludicrous utility in a world that lacks both Clerics and his form of Magic) and I assume he doesn't want to use anything "too broken" (looking at you, Infinite cheater of Mystra).

Aburant Champion looks like a solid option to give him some physical offense and self reliability in the world. Not sure if there are any, but any prestige class which grants a decent at will ability would probably be good as well. As one of my favorites, I'd personally love to see Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, but that might be a touch too far on the broken side.

[Dave Halfbreed]

Mediocre, really.

I know there's SOME kind of crossover potential, but I can't guess what. The best I can think of is the Harry Potter characters playing the game (Harry splits the Party, Ron somehow fries himself, Neville gets nothing but 1s and 3s, and Hermione is a railroading DM)

[Randomguy]

Lol. Glad you're hooked Shadow.

This got me interested in reading other stories, particularly crossovers, in which the D&D lampshade was hung hardcore with lots of rule interaction, proper leveling, etc. At least on the Harry Potter front, this story is about all there is.

However, it did make me interested in running a lampshaded D&D campaign, but do it seriously, which I'm starting next week.

What prestige class would you recommend for Milo? I assume he doesn't want Milo to multiclass (otherwise throwing in some Cleric and then Mystic Theurge would give Milo ludicrous utility in a world that lacks both Clerics and his form of Magic) and I assume he doesn't want to use anything "too broken" (looking at you, Infinite cheater of Mystra).

Aburant Champion looks like a solid option to give him some physical offense and self reliability in the world. Not sure if there are any, but any prestige class which grants a decent at will ability would probably be good as well. As one of my favorites, I'd personally love to see Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, but that might be a touch too far on the broken side.

I don't know about Prestige Classes, but I'm silently yelling at Milo to take a reserve feat of some sort, preferably Fiery Burst.

[BWR]

I love it. Honestly, if you are going to stuff in a new character like this, of course he's going to take up most story time. There's no way to write a story like this without that happening. And the author hardly removed all agency from the original threesome.

[Eldan]

I like it. A few jokes remind me quite a bit of OotS in their general make-up. "Oh, I dropped out of a time-skip! I'm experiencing the weather in real time, there must be an encounter nearby!"

[Randomguy]

Apparently Milo's going into Rainbow Servant now. I wonder how he got past the "find the jungle temple of the Coatls" part of the entry requirement.

Also, I think he's relying too much on high level spell slots. A web would have probably been better than a Black Tentacles.

[urandom]

Perhaps Coatls exist for harry potter too? And have something that could be squinted at and described as a jungle temple? On the one hand he has cheese like a headband filled with a continuous mirror move for lots of feats. On the other hand he's going into rainbow servant, and doesn't take celerity.


Assuming Bellatrix is around CR12 (like Quirrell), She's going to have a hard time when she runs into appropriate challenges (either groups of adventurers or monsters). I think it will really depend on how effectively she's used imperius. In harry potter world imperius is effective almost all the time - but they don't seem to progress saving throws - almost all monsters and any moderately buffed level 12 party is going to have a much better will save than anything in harry potter world. That's assuming they don't have protection from evil or immunity to mind affecting. Deathward and high touch AC will shut down Avada Kedavra. Spell resistance may block everything if she doesn't have caster levels. If she's careful to apparate out of any questionable situation she might survive long enough to imperius her way up the food chain, but she's extremely vulnerable with commoner hitpoints and no saving throws. The first 1d6 damage she takes may be her last. Except for plot immunity of course - or any evil allies she gains who are willing to raise her. This is making me want a harry potter in dnd world book.

Also Black tentacles would have killed those cops if it was up for more than one round - good Fiona made him drop it.

[Vizzerdrix]

I've been reading it for a while now and thoroughly enjoying it.

I'd like to see Milo get his hands on some shapesand though. Just to make faking it in transfigurations a bit easier.

[BWR]

Perhaps Coatls exist for harry potter too? And have something that could be squinted at and described as a jungle temple?


If couatls exist in HP-verse, they are more likely to be like dragons and trolls: entirely different than what Milo knows as couatls and incompatible with his fundemental mechanics.

Re: Bellatrix.
In a straight up fight, as soon as someone hits with...just about anything, really, she's going down. No hp, ridiculous saves, normal squishy human build. A single 1d4 dagger is likely to seriously inconvenience her. A sword will probably kill her even without power attack or a crit. Since she seems to be able to spam spells and interrupt other people, and spells like Disillusionment are almost impossible to detect (True Seeing would likely work, but not See Invisibility), she could, with a little caution on her part, be very dangerous.

She can at will cast no-save death spells which bypass magical protection (depends on how the writer works with Death Ward), domination spells and a host of other useful abilities. She also has one guy who knows how the world works under her control. She can go far.

[Eldan]

If couatls exist in HP-verse, they are more likely to be like dragons and trolls: entirely different than what Milo knows as couatls and incompatible with his fundemental mechanics.

Don't forget: he's a rules lawyer. If the class never actually says "A couatl as described in the Monster Manual on Page X", a different creature called Couatl might work.

[BWR]

The requirements only mention "finding the hidden temple of the couatls"
The fluff description of the class specify that they are beings dedicated to good and promoting good deeds and knowledge.
He could power through the requirements, but he might run afoul of the 'thing' that slaps you down when you try to game the rules too much.
And would he want to lose 4 caster levels?

[Eldan]

Text vs. table. Who knows.

[Randomguy]

Text trumps table, and I heard that in some non-English versions of the book the table matches the text (so no lost caster levels).

[Douglas]

In the last part of book one he's considering what PrC to take and mentions that he could handle the fluff requirement of Paragnostic Apostle by hanging a sign on his room door. I wouldn't put it past him to ask a friend to buy a model temple (with a few model jungle trees attached) from a craft store, declare it belongs to the couatls, and set it up somewhere in his room so he can "find" it. I don't see the Disgruntled Mechanics smacking him down for it; it's not a mechanics issue, it's a fluff requirement. The one thing he tried that did get stopped was a high-power abuse of ambiguous wording on a game mechanic.

As for lost caster levels, it is clear from Milo's posted sheet that the author is going with the RAW text-over-table interpretation. Milo isn't losing any caster levels at all, much less 4 of them.