Forum: Public Forum

Oh and no evil characters...

So far I have...

Becky playing a half-orc barbarian/druid
Len playing a dwarven bard

Sol Stellasdottir is the daughter of Stella, who now owns and runs a tavern. Sol was brought up as the daughter of a tavern wench in a largely dwarven town in the foothills of the mountains. As she grew she came to realise that all her peers had two parents, while she had but one.

When she asked her mother about her father, she was met with a mixture of emotions depending it seemed on Stella's mood. Sometimes there was a longing far-away loook and the words. "He was a fine young dwarf, the son of an adventuring cleric of Moradin, and destined for the same life."

Sometimes the look was intense loathing, and the words were, "That fool ran away before you were born and before his wife was wed." Sometimes it was sadness, and the words "It was his fate to serve a dragon, like his father before him." This was often followed by a look that Sol came to know as pity, aimed at Sol herself.

Sol learned how to serve the tavern's customers and that if she told her little stories to them, they would often give her better tips. As sge grew, so did her stories, and so did the attention of the customers. Not all the attention was innocent, and she came to learn how it might be that a young cleric might have become involved with her own mother all those years ago.

Sol grew into the comely Dwarven lass she is now. Well practiced in telling tales and speaking easily with strangers. One day, a message came for Stella, delivered by a dwarf who looked to have travelled far. Stella cried, and pointed to Sol.

That friends is how I came to Skyborne. Now, if you will forgive me, I have to unpack the measly contents of my travelling bag, for I believe this is now my home.

Sol

Hi all,

First post on the new site - excitement abounds and all that. I've been crafting a character for Xorvintaal and knocking around some background ideas. Ash, I'll send stuff to you privately first before I put up a public bio and stuff if that's cool; I want to make sure it's all kosher and will fit in before splattering the site with dud info.

The barest bones of the character is a male human rogue/cleric. Since I have it in my head that my character is already going to be reasonably well travelled before the game begins, if anyone would like to put together a couple of backstory events to tie characters together a little even before the story proper gets going, raise your hands now.

Looking forward to the game already :]

Here is a possibility Dan. (Welcome to the site BTW. Its nice to have such wonderful DM/GMs and thoroughly nice guys on board.)

In a tavern in a mostly Dwarven village in the foothills of the mountains high above Noldir, an out of place travelling human cleric might once have met a Dwarven serving wench with a likeable demeanour, who seemed to listen intently to all he had to say.

She seemed able to keep him talking about himself and the things he had done, long after he knew he had said enough. Why she would be interested in what he had to say he could not tell; but her interest seemed genuine, and he could detect no malign intention behind her apparent thirst for knowledge.

What wariness he did have was soon quelled by her own words; putting him at ease and making him forget his travel-weary aching feet with tales of other travellers adventures. She did not appear to have travelled a great deal herself, yet appeared to be knowledgeable. Perhaps she quizzed all strangers as much as she was him. She appeared to be particularly interested in the fact that he was a clergyman, but also asked frequently about Dragons and what he knew of them.

Sol was a strange little wench, clearly Dwarven, yet dressed as one might expect of any northern female human, with hair plaited and ribbon-bedecked. These tales of Dwarf Females being tough fighters and miners were obviously not all true, and it seemed they do not all have beards either.

Len

Love it guys, you are making my world very colourful already and I havent really put pen to paper yet....

Got the basic Collective Conscience across.

Len

Cool Len,

Once I've got some of my background stuff written, I'll send you a couple of 'stories' my character (still kicking the exact name around) might have told Sol from his past. He would not have been travelling openly as a preacher, but as an explorer, traveller and wanderer, happy to talk about the road and relate some of his adventures.

Ash, I got the impression you weren't planning to hand out traditional XP, which is totally fine with me. How are you thinking of handling item creation feats? I was considering perhaps taking Brew Potion to bolster the healing supplies a little, but by the book it requires XP to make potions (bleh). Perhaps removing the XP cost and boosting the cost would smooth it out?

I have been talking to ash about it as well with scribe scroll I would get as a Wizard. She is thinking about it and will try and come up with a few ideas.

Ash is going in the Bath, Lola Will be smoking and there will hopefully be an answer soon.

Peace out

What do you think of this?

Introduce a new Craft skill of Craft: Magic Item (Which will use your casting Stat and not Int as all other crafts do)

Then Make a skill check against this skill of DC13 + The caster level of the item being created.

If you fail then the materials are wasted
If you pass then the item is made
If you Pass by 10+ then you are able to make 2 of the intended item

Price of the materials would be 75% of the market price as worked out in the DMG.

Assuming your casting stat is your 18 and you keep your skill maxed this should give you 25% chance of failure, 50% chance success and 25% Doubling up.

Totally up for rewrites let me or Ash know

I don't know about that. It seems a little harsher on the classes for whom Int is not their spellcasting stat, as they already have fewer skill points at every level, and making them keep up an extra skill just for the purpose of letting them use their Feat(s) seems a bit punishing.

If a failure chance is what you're after, why not make it a flat 25% chance of wasting the materials? Of course, this makes the risk less and less worth taking as you get to higher levels and you risk wasting potentially huge amounts of resources for nothing.

I would recommend just making the cost of making 90% of the market price - it makes the Feats worth having, but without overcomplicating things. Maybe it would be worth having the manufacture of more complex items (not consumables, but definitely Wondrous Items, maybe Rods/Staffs and special enchantments for weapons/armour/etc) have a requirement for 'special' ingredients - the kind that must be adventured for, found, researched or bought specially. This would keep it within the DM's control as far as large manufacture goes whilst retaining the usefulness of the Feats.

Thoughts?

Woosy spellcasters.
Be a Bard. Bards get spells AND skill points to spend.
You will grow to l♥ve my inspiring +1 ditties and stories when you are searching for that extra point.

I tweaked Sol's Page, adding in a conversation with "daddy". Can Mistress DM please read and check for consistency with her campaign storyline before I get too attached to it?

Len

Oh yeah, and with regards to hit points for level 2 (I'm assuming max at lvl 1), how are we getting them? Are we using one of the set ways (1/2+1, 2/3 round down, 3/4 round down) or are we chucking a die and hoping the barbarian ends up with more hit points than the wizard?

Hello, I am in for this game definately.

I have little time here on a real computer, as mine is still unavailable, and doing anything on my iPhone is a pain if I want to read into everything.

I would like an elf wizard/warrior so will that be 1st & 1st? Is the 1000gp to spend on Gucci armour and weapons? Can we use the DMG for tweaking the armour?

Speak soon...

Now I have read this thread properly, I see a wizard has been mentioned. How about a ranger or a thief? (old habits die hard, and I refuse to call them rogues!)

I imagine Jason would have his character's descendent follow his ranger example, but can't say for certain. Thief might be the answer for you. Out and out trap-finding, lock-picking, back-stabbing, sneaky collector of other people's treasure.

You probably need to think of a race and some reason why you would be willing to sign away your life and wealth in the service of a dragon. The conditions we signed in the past were quite difficult for a thief to accept. 90% of everything goes to the dragon, and woe betide you if you are found to have kept anything back. Therefore there has to be a pretty compelling reason to sign as it is not just you, but your direct line, for ever.

Len

Not to pop another bubble at all, but I'm doing at least some of the Rogue bit (I refuse to call them thieves) as mentioned above. A Ranger might be a real help, since we're otherwise likely going to be lacking any real muscle, and someone playing a character that might have a shot at actually hitting something would likely be a real boon as it seems to stand.

That said, if you're keen on going rogue (no pun intended - ah, who am I kidding? I intended the hell out of it), give me a rough idea what kind of skill set you're going for and I'll adjust so that we don't overlap too much.

He is going to be a thief who will tend towards lock picking, trap finding and disabling, a guy who can value things and a guy who claims he is an archer rather than a thief or rogue for that matter.

Rogue is just another word for a cad or a bounder!
Thief is someone who takes what is not his.
Archer is someone who is good with a bow!

Okay, if you're going for that end of things, I'll look to the stealth and subterfuge related skills and go for a character based more on being a con-man, gadabout, cad and/or bounder. Not having to worry too hard about traps and locks will save me some skill points for fast talking and smooth sneaking.

Im up for brew potion and scribe scroll to be 90%

Oh and HP is a dice roll im afraid...