Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

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Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:09 am

This is a compilation of previously-revealed information on my gameworld, as well as rules and guidelines that apply to potential players therein. Most of this info is culled from the 32-page recruitment thread which was previously the entirety of the game except for one in-character thread; it's now spilled out into an OOC thread for the current game, and this is intended to be one more thread which serves as an "infodump". Please try to refrain from posting in this thread, so as not to clutter it up with things which aren't my rulings.

Done prior to page 10.

For now I'll just post quotes from the previous thread. New information and clarifications are in RED TEXT. Quotes have been abridged for readability where appropriate.
willpell wrote:32-point buy for Attributes.

A basic character sheet.

Name : World's Dumbest Wizard
Race : Tiefling
Class : Wizard 2
ECL : 3
Align : True Neutral
Affiliation: None
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
► Show Spoiler
(If your character is psionic let me know, and I'll provide a psionic powers block to replace the above. Or not, if he's a Cerebremancer or the like.)
► Show Spoiler
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in no case do I think the sheets in the D&D books are as they should be. The real ideal sheet is an Excel spreadsheet about eight pages long, but that lacks something in practicality, even online.
Last edited by willpell on Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:35 pm, edited 4 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:18 pm

General background and behavioral stuff
willpell wrote:I expect any party that we end up with to be cohesive, though I have no problem running multiple solo games in separate threads within a shared world. I will not tolerate players robbing from or backstabbing each other, at least not unless both sides are on board and you agree not to let it derail any plot that I'm currently serving.
(In general I tend to be a softie as DM; if someone wants a high level of danger and mortality in my game, they have to specifically request it.)
willpell wrote:
Well, the main reason I took it was because I tend to be a bit paranoid about magic items; the first GM I played with had a tendency of giving every single magic item some sort of dangerous drawback, which made doing anything other than identifying/taking them to be identified absolutely suicidal. And that's if you were lucky; if you were UNLUCKY, the item would try to kill you simply because it was in your inventory, before you even had a chance to identify the thing.
Yeah, lots of people have had bad experiences with a DM like that. I try to make sure I'm as far on the other end of the spectrum as I'm comfortable with going (without being a complete doormat for players that are just as outta-control). The game is supposed to be fun for everyone, and while my kid-gloves approach has been accused of killing some of the excitement, I still think it's preferable to leaving the player scarred and paranoid for the next five years of their gaming career.
willpell wrote:I'm very hesitant to allow homebrew. I can consider it, but don't expect a green light to be more than, say, 40% likely.
willpell wrote:
As I said, I am very much not used to actually PLAY D&D and I MAY have visited a few D&D-Forum to much in the last days.^^┬░
Yep, that sounds about right. The D&D Optimization Community takes a considerable degree of pride in discovering all manner of cheese which is unlikely to ever fly at the table (though they can always hope to find a DM who doesn't realize the danger he's in and will allow them to get away with crap that's likely to end up giving him a complex).
willpell wrote:The world has more or less the basic medieval paradigm, but I can't purge modern modes of thought from my brain, and so instead I've embraced them, so it's sort of more like a Renaissance Faire than the actual Middle Ages. In particular, the humans are mostly united under a very progressive central government, so the quality of living rises rapidly as you move toward the more prosperous regions. Technology isn't reliable, so it never goes mainstream, being more an occasional curiosity. However, the standard of living is somewhat better across the board - cities aren't quite the open-air toilets they were in the real Dark Ages, and the druids and clerics of the world have all but eliminated disease, resulting in the maladies listed in the DMG being practically the only ones that exist, and not very common to boot.
willpell wrote:The forces of Good, or even Law, are almost never stupid in my game. If the Paladin player was behaving disgracefully, it would be likely to count as a violation of their code, or at least to draw attention from the Higher Planes entities who monitor these things, attempting to correct the paladin's definition of Good with gradually decreasing degrees of gentleness. Given that Good Itself is ultimately the source of a Pal's powers, the only way one ever gets away with idiocy is if the GM isn't doing his job.

Now, there are legitimate arguments against things like necromancy and sneak attacks, and the paladin might get some credit for roleplaying a sensible distaste for such things. But using the Paladin Code as an excuse to be a Nazi to the other PCs will certainly not fly. Templarish behavior is usually a sign of corruption in NPC organizations that are ostensibly devoted to Good, and it usually doesn't last long before actual do-Gooders will put a kibosh on these overzealous, overcompensating phonies. And on top of that, the other PCs are here to have fun, so you need to be able to come to an accord with them. Fortunately we all seem to be intelligent and decent individuals, so I don't anticipate a problem.
willpell wrote:Atrocities in my world have a habit of attracting tactical nuclear karma sooner or later.
Anti-arcanist prejudice is going to be fairly uncommon in any gameworld I make; if it's very important to you to have that background, it'll mean that you came from a small and isolated area that's far from the influence of the more powerful and hegemonic civilizations, which tend to be very pro-magic. (The same is true of slavery; it's not something that gets tolerated in most parts of the world, and there are numerous groups actively working to stamp it out, so places where it survives on any major scale are quite rare.)
The absence of rogue and healbot niches might be a problem, but I suppose I could give you a Factotum Hireling or DMPC optimized for Opportunistic Piety, or a Trickery cleric with a Rogue level for Trapfinding. Or I could just not use traps, but that'd be killing the genre a bit; they'll probably be a bit sparse since I don't consider them to be great storytelling, but I don't think they should be entirely absent.
You get WBL based on your ECL, according to anything I've ever seen. (The WBL system is wonky and I strongly dislike it as-is, but for now I'm leaving it alone for fear of breaking something if I monkey with it.)
Nioca wrote:(For those concerned, his pettiness will mostly manifest itself towards NPCs; he's smart enough to know not to get too snippy with the people who have his back).
I'm quoting this bit of personality description regarding a former PC because it enables me to make a point about how I operate while running the game. While I am definitely dead-set on having the players' characters get along with one another, I also tend to expect them to treat most of my NPCs well, unless it's explicitly a situation where they're in conflict for the sake of the plot; after all, the NPCs are essentially sort of my PCs. I'm running the game to provide for the players' entertainment, but I'm allowed to want to enjoy the experience myself as well. Thusly, while I'm not saying you can't ever mouth off to an NPC, I am saying that it will heavily influence how that NPC, and any others that see it happening, will react to you....if the ability to "act up" without consequences is an important cathartic element of why exactly you're playing an RPG, you need to make that extremely clear to me up-front. My NPCs are generally there to provide color and bring the gameworld vividly to life, and not as victims for you to abuse; if what you want to do is exactly that, I may be able to provide, but my personal comfort level suffers in such situations, and they will have to be handled with considerable sensitivity.
I prefer not to have characters randomly die, so I give everyone the maximum possible HP for their HD. So if you have all D8s, you get 8 HP plus your CONMOD, times your level, then add feats or whatever.
willpell wrote:I would like for players to roleplay being concerned about their characters' health when they're beaten down to a tiny percentage of the original value, even though there are no mechancial effects to being anywhere above 1 HP. I don't plan on my villains fighting to the death either, although they generally won't have maximized HP, just because that would make combat take too long and the NPCs don't have charmed lives. (Which is not to say a player can't die ever, but I prefer that it should take more than one lucky crit roll at the wrong moment.)
As a corollary to this rule, I should probably look at the efficacy of things like Vicious weapons, which let you burn HP for some sort of bonus, given how much more effective these become when HP are maximized.
I'm far too lazy to track weights, and running out of food is the sort of thing that I tend to do as plot-rails, or not, regardless of the players' actions.
I always encourage players to go into detail, do research, maybe come up with info so cool I have to give them bennies for it.
willpell wrote:My campaign is...mostly serious, but I look for occasions where it seems in-theme to break theme, if you follow that. I read too much of gaming-related webcomics (primarily Goblins, OOTS, DMOTR, Darths, and the famously NSFW Oglaf) not to be willing to put humor into my game wherever it fits. Like in the other game I'm running, the player stumbled into a room full of people who are magically insane, and since they're all babbling out of their gourds anyway, I saw no reason not to have them break the 4th wall a bit, especially given that the nature of their madness ties into some higher beings in the campaign world which have a legitimate reason for being able to see outside their own reality. I try to do this sort of thing subtly and non-disruptively, but it gets to make me feel sort of clever and sneak in some references which will hopefully amuse the players.
willpell wrote:
I was assuming I'd need to be careful to not shift around civilization and such. xD I'm used to weres being treated as mindless monsters by Generic NPC Here.
Er, no, my campaign isn't like that. Occasionally you will face paranoia and hostility from NPCs based on your nature, but it'd be a relative minority; for the most part people would treat you as a potential danger but would judge you based on your actions, and certainly would avoid provoking you, while quietly summoning aid just in case you turn on them. The human empire which dominates my gameworld has gone to great lengths to discourage xenophobia and general idiocy of the sort that prevailed during the Dark Ages before it arose. The technology is still medieval, but the sociology is almost modern; diversity and critical thinking are highly valued by the architects of the culture, who do their best to encourage a more enlightened attitude among the social rank and file. It doesn't *always* work, some percentage of people will always continue to be butts for one or another reason, but the "typical" peasant in my gameworld tries to be prudent and reasonable, rather than fearfully twitchy in a way that's only likely to make matters worse. As long as you act like a paladin, or just like a decent person, people will generally treat you in kind, even if you abruptly turn into a nine-foot monster...they might jump or scramble back, might even grab a weapon, but they wouldn't make the first move unless you're clearly acting aggressive toward them or something they need to protect.
willpell wrote:
Feytala wrote:Hrmmm... As my concept is based on bias and paranoia, maybe I should then shift around to something other ?
I didn't realize that was important to you, but it's not impossible; it just suggests that your character probably comes from somewhere far from the center of the Empire, either a border province or one of the hundreds of small and "backward" kingdoms that prefer to reject its social reforms. (The Empire is pacifistic and does not conquer nations or territories that it mildly disapproves of, though it has a tendency to economically out-compete them eventually. If their population is suffering because of the nobles' refusal to join, the Empire may clandestinely encourage the citizenry to rebel, but it never outright attacks without serious provocation.)
Otherwise, you could certain switch concepts, but you never described anything about what you were working on that sounded like it depended on bigotry. I thought you were a sexy Tiefling? That concept still totally works, and if she's prone to acting up, getting run out of town is certainly something that can happen; it just will usually not be based solely on looks and rumors, because the people have been given some education and discouraged from being superstitious.
willpell wrote:Yeah that sort of thing can certainly still happen, it's just usually on a more localized scale, rather than something that's true everywhere. There are always groups of people who remain more stuck in their ways; it's kind of a theme of the setting that sometimes humanity doesn't take to enlightenment as well as some people insist on believing it should.
willpell wrote:
Quest rewards are always fun, for myself or others. C: Honestly I love things like that, since it makes the PCs feel more like they're gradually evolving rather than BAMLEVELUP, oh hey you're suddenly awesome. xD
Oh yeah, I hate that. I've often debated whether I could turn D&D into a purchase system like WOD or HERO, where you would pick up character widgets one at a time and just use levels as thresholds, but it would be a ton of work to set it all up, and at least one player has said to me that the result "just wouldn't be D&D anymore". So it remains in the "maybe someday" pile.
An example of class feature progression:
willpell wrote:
Since the druid level equivalent for rangers is 1/2 ranger levels, I would have a medium MS at level 7, and at level 9 could instead choose to take a large MS.
Sounds about right. I'd be content with saying it's the same spider in either case, having just grown continously over time (so it's just slightly below Large size at level 8, and just slightly above it at level 9).
willpell wrote:Psionics is slightly less common than magic and slightly more common than incarnum, binding, truenaming and so forth in my game; it might come up in, at a guess, 1/8 of battles on average, though you could bring that number up by specifically seeking out things like Mind Flayers or the rumors of a desert kingdom ruled over by mantis-men.
Last edited by willpell on Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:29 pm, edited 20 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:18 pm

Classes
willpell wrote:Rogue is fine as long as you're not stealing from or backstabbing the other players. I actually have a fair bit of fun playing up the slightly transmundane status of rogues - they're not outright magical or anything, but stuff like how Evasion will let them dodge even when there's nowhere for them to go, it amuses me to come up with explanations for that which make it seem as though they're just *slightly* supernatural in a way that nobody can quite put their finger on.

I'm not a big fan of the bard's flavor as-written; I usually refluff bards in my campaign to be more like either rock stars or great statesmen who inspire through oratory, rather than the traditional medieval lute-strumming falsetto free-rhymer. Prankster types are even more likely to annoy me than traditional bards.
willpell wrote:I have mixed feelings on Bardic Knowledge. On the one hand it can be an excuse to feed the players plot, which I always like doing. But conversely, if I don't have a satisfactory answer to some question, I don't want to have to make up something inadequate just because the player made a roll - whereas, if I do have a really great explanation for something written, I don't like having to keep it to myself because the player failed the roll. I'd rather just give information away anytime it's appropriate.
willpell wrote:
Ayeaka wrote:(I do know the rule about paladins and multiclassing, yes. I hadn't meant that.)
Don't worry too much about that one; there are so many workarounds for it that few games even bother enforcing it. I do, but not in any kind of punitive way; it certainly wouldn't apply to something like going werebear, as that's hardly a failure of paladin commitment.
To expand on this offhanded comment, not only do I enforce the rule that you can't switch out of Monk or Paladin without giving them up forever, unless a feat or prestige class or something explicitly breaks that rule - but additionally, I use the Favored Class rules across the board, and then some. While I'd consider allowing someone to accept the 20% XP penalty if they really wanted to, I'd prefer to just assume that any build which breaks the Favored Class rules is flat-out impossible; thusly, while any character of any race can have any combination of classes which are all kept in lockstep with each other, the options for "splashing" are sharply limited. Fighter 3 / Wizard 1 is a legal build for Humans, Dwarves and Elves, but not for Half-Orcs, who would have to do Fighter 2 / Wizard 2 instead, or Barbarian 3 / Wizard 1. Since the favored class rules are book-contained, I'm open to making case-by-case exceptions; if you wanted your dwarf to be a Warblade 3 / Psychic Warrior 1, I'd probably allow you to favor one of those classes in place of Fighter, as long as you're keeping to the general spirit that Dwarves are supposed to be good at dabbling in combat ability regardless of their other classes. But if you want to cherry-pick the best abilities of all the classes, taking 2 levels of Fighter for the bonus feats and 4 levels of Ranger for an animal companion and then proceeding to go six levels in Monk for still more feats before spending your last eight levels becoming a Cleric of War, you can expect me to make you jump through all of the hoops that such obvious minmaxery clearly deserves - there are feats and such that can make it possible, but you'll be required to spend those feat slots.)
willpell wrote:
CelineSSauve wrote:Favored Soul does not have Knowledge Religion as a class still; it has Knowledge Arcana instead.
I houseruled that; FS should definitely have K:Religion instead. (If you would rather have Arcana, because your character knows nothing about religion but is interested in magic, I will allow this, but by default the FS is assumed to be in communication with his god and to have studied the gods in general.)
Last edited by willpell on Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:21 pm

Races (which I'd rather you called Species as often as possible)
Pretty much all classes are allowed; Races I'm a bit pickier on, anything beyond the standard elf-dwarf-orc-gnome-hobbit stuff, you should probably ask first. I have access to most of the books which aren't campaign specific or third party.
A class is just a job that you learn to do, and thus most all the options can fit into a campaign world without much difficulty (to date the only class which I'm fairly certain I'm NOT using is Artificer, since that's very heavily tied to Eberron and strongly contradicts my idea of magical theory). But the races (gah I hate calling them that) are a very different story. A world where elves exist is completely different from a world where they don't, and that goes triple for weird creatures like Ormyrr and Warforged, so I scrutinize every creature with a very critical eye to decide whether it has a place in my worldbuilding. You'll never see a Dread Blossom Swarm in my game, because I have not used enough controlled substances in my life to think that anything about the idea of a buch of flowers that fly around in a colony makes any sense. That's about the most extreme example of idiocy I can think of, but there are races presented as player-character options which are not much less insane, and I'm totally not cool with them being part of my setting.
willpell wrote:I'm not huge on the Monster Classes. (In other words, generally anyone who wants to take a creature with Hit Dice or Level Adjustment needs to start the game with the full Monster Manual stats of that creature, and if that exceeds the game's current level, they just can't use that creature. I may eventually shift on this stance, but for the moment the only Savage Progression which is approved for use is the Ghost, and even that one is played on the assumption that if your character dies and you keep playing them as a ghost, you must take all five Ghost levels in a row before you can resume advancing your class - there's no becoming a "level 1 ghost" just to get the incorporeal type, and then going right back to what you were doing.)
An additional clarification on this: If a character dies in-game, you may immediately apply any number of "levels of ghost" to them and continue adventuring, but because your ECL is now higher, you will gain experience very slowly, if at all, and you cannot level up until you exceed the ECL of your ghost form. (Example: A level 1 character needs 1000 XP to level up; if his first act upon setting out as an adventurer is to get killed and rise as a ghost, he will then be a 1-HD character with one class level and 5 "levels of ghost". He will have 0 XP and ECL 6, so his total XP will need to be (1+2+3+4+5+6)x1000 = 21,000 before he can add another class level. If he'd waited to die until after hitting 1000 XP and Level 2, his ghost self would then be ECL 7, and would need a total of 28,000 XP in order to reach Level 3.)
If you are raised from the dead in a fashion that causes you to lose a level, you may lose all of your "levels of ghost" instead, putting you right back to where you were before you died, or if you were dead for a long time potentially even allowing you to Level Up immediately upon being raised. Characters who take any non-Ghost levels after death are presumed to be comfortable staying dead.
I will see whether this rule breaks in the course of play, and may revoke it if so, but for now I'm basing it on a character from the "Order of the Stick", who spends quite a good bit of time dead and ends up wiser because of it, retaining that knowledge after his resurrection and seeming not to be terribly lacking compared to the rest of the party, who have continued to adventure during this episode.

willpell wrote:Half-elves and half-orcs in my game get the bonus skill points of a Human (not the Feat).
Did I mention that I have at least 12 elf races in my game, not counting those made from templates (or minor variations like the Forestlord Elf in Dragon Magic and the Arctic/Desert/Jungle elves in Unearthed Arcana)?
I replaced the Aasimar with a slightly altered version called the Heivolk. The main differences are that the Heivolk have -2 to Strength, but instead of Paladin, their favored class is Marshal, from the Miniatures Handbook. Thusly, they're not necessarily Good, just as Tieflings are not always Evil - but they are nearly always gregarious, surrounding themselves with companions or followers who can benefit from their Marshal aura...which is Charisma-powered and thus directly benefits from their racial bonus to that stat.
If you're into Elementals, I have my own homebrew versions of the Genasi from Forgotten Realms, which I didn't like as-written and so adjusted to suit my preferences.

House Brujheria, "Firehearts"
+2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma. Hot-blooded and as hypnotic as a flickering flame, the fire Genasi are prone letting their emotions get the better of their common sense.
Native Outsider; not affected by Something Person spells.
Darkvision 60 feet.
Unaffected by extreme temperatures and can survive indefinitely without food or water, as long as he or she can eat anything combustible.
Resist Fire and Lightning 5.
Favored Class: Rogue
Level Adjustment +1.
Celestial is a terrible, terrible, awful weak template that gives you virtually nothing. Ditto for Fiendish. If you really want to play a character with one of these templates, I'll let you have it for LA +1 instead of the listed +2. But even for an LA +1 template, you can do much better.

Everything I said before about Celestial (as opposed to the more powerful Half-Celestial...nice one, MM writers) applies to Fiendish as well; they are utterly awful templates and unquestionably not worth LA +2. If you liked the general concept, I'd be comfortable letting you have Fiendish or Celestial for LA +1, but I think Hellbred would be a better execution of the same (former) concept.
My CW does NOT have the obligatory Fantasy Japan region. Or rather it does, but only in a very niche sense.

* Skarns - reptile-infused human hybrid with bone spines on their arms and legs, and a very lawful and militaristic society. Renamed the Ni Shaan in my setting; they're the feudal-Japan analogue I alluded to earlier, a somewhat unsympathetic portayal of the Samurai as ultra-Darwinists, who refuse to admit error and shed blood at the slightest pretext.
* Illumians - Again, the canon is adjusted slightly; in the books Illumians have a halo of glowing symbols around their head, but in my world they keep a lower profile, and the only place the symbols appear is as a brief flicker in their eyes when they fully exert themselves. Thusly, they look exactly like humans but don't have the bonus skill points and feat.
The Karsite gets both +2 Strength and +2 Charisma, but unfortunately, it's simply prohibited from casting spells. (Techncially you could manifest psychic powers, which are basically spells in all but name, but I would probably have to veto that even though my game doesn't use psionics/magic transparency, as it's just too much of an exploit.)
A quick correction - per the RAW, Karsites get +2 CON rather than +2 STR; them getting STR instead is apparently a houserule I made up, either accidentally or without explaining my logic to my future self. Still, I think it's more useful, as they have both Damage Reduction and built-in healing, so they don't really need higher HP on top of that, and Strength helps them be effective as fighters.
They're called Spellscales, which is a realy dumb name, and I'd have to modify them somewhat, as one of their racial abilities is tied to the Draconic pantheon, which my game doesn't use. [But I] would like to strongly recommend this race. +2 Charisma, favored class Sorcerer, and a racial obsession with variety and experience - not to mention that they look a lot like elves, except for the titular scales, and a few ridges on their forehead or possibly sharp teeth. I even have a better name for them - Dracaena, the scientific name of a plant which produces a resin called "dragon's blood". The name comes from the latin for "female dragon", and Spellscale women are slightly larger than men on average.

Alternatively, if the CON penalty of spellscales bothers you, the Draconic Creature template is +1 LA and gives +2 STR, +2 CON, and +2 CHA along with natural weapons, natural armor, darkvision (along with LLV, which spellscales also have), and a couple skill and save bonuses.

What made me think the spellscales were perfect was their described culture, and I can't really summarize all that; if you can't get a copy of Races of the Dragon to read, well, I'll try to do it justice in play, but the extremely short version is that they're highly experimental and experiential ultra-individualists, crave endless variety and high drama, and pretty much worship Magic. They look sort of like elves except for having colorful scales on their skin and a few forehead ridges, and their personality is a lot like that of Elves except with much less patience, and much more expression of emotion in ways that a human would recognize.

Mechanically, spellscales are -2 CON, +2 CHA, have low-light vision, and they can do a "blood-quickening meditation" every day which gives them a skill bonus or temporary use of a feat or something. Their favored class is sorcerer; canonically, they're always born as the child of one or more sorcerers (unless they breed among themselves of course), though I'm open to changing that. That's about it, really; they're not terribly exciting, I just thought the personality seemed to be about right, and they had the right balance of human-ness and non-humanness.

Draconic creature is a template which gives +2 STR, +2 CON, +2 CHA, +1 Natural Armor, claw/claw/bite attacks, and a couple of minor bonuses for LA +1. It can be upgraded to Half-Dragon using a transitional class, but that probably doesn't interest you. I also made a houserule that Draconics can take the first two levels of a Racial Paragon Class designed for Half-Dragons. Fluff-wise, these are just people who are less than 1/2 dragon but still very measurably affected by their dragon-ness, with scales and claws and a very prolonged maturation period. Unlike with the Half-Dragon template, Draconic doesn't require you to specify what color your dragon ancestor was; you can choose to say that your scales are red and thus you're probably descended from a red dragon, but since you don't have a breath weapon or any immunity to fire, the difference might be only cosmetic.
willpell wrote:Fiendish Codex 2 gives us the Hellbred, specifically Spirit-Aspected ones: yet again, +2 CHA and -2 CON (just like the Spellscales as well as Faerun's Star Elves, who are in my game but I haven't figured out exactly how to adjust them), with a few other assorted bonuses. The default fluff is kind of a deal-breaker, but I might be able to work out an alternate backstory to let you go with something resembling the picture. See, Hellbred are people who were damned for their actions in life, then repented at the last minute. The forces of Good suspect them of trying to weasel out of their just punishment without really being sorry, and so they're reincarnated in a devil-tainted form and given a last chance to try and achieve an act of Good sufficiently powerful to un-damn them. (Since I don't really hold with the idea of damnation in the first place, I'll have to reinterpret this idea slightly; my version of Good is both more tolerant and less forgiving than the classically Catholic version that's being referenced here, but I'm sure I can work something out.) So in this case, the character might have run afoul of a Pleasure Devil (the diabolic equivalent of a Succubus), and now be reborn as something resembling such a creature.
willpell wrote:It would only cost 1 skill point per level, as Control Shape is going to be treated as a permanent class skill for any werecreature (not sure if that's official rules, but it's a pretty obvious common-sense ruling).
Well the short version is that Goliaths have +4 Strength, +2 Con, the Powerfuil Build ability like Half-Giants, a bit of natural armor, and a bonus to Climb and Jump. Might be a couple other things on there, but all told it's pretty sweet for just LA +1, and they have a rather neat culture described in the book, where they're nomads with a highly communal society and a strong competitive streak. (I don't love their goofy names though.)
The speed (you lose from being a Dwarf or Gnome) is kind of a big deal IMO, and a lot of the bonuses aren't very relevant. But CON alone makes both races very solid. Another race that gets a CON bonus for LA 0, along with +1 square of speed and and a few immunities from the Fey type, are Dusklings, who I call Bubasti; the only problem there is that they suffer an INT penalty, but otherwise they'd be right up your alley, as a race of extraplanar blackish-blue cat people with a primitive society and a talent for shamanism (they favor the Totemist class, which conjures thought-forms to gain the abilities of magical beasts).
Some new information that came out while I was writing a PM, which you might benefit from knowing:

Some GMs will let you play a "level 1 lizardfolk", with 1 hit die and no level adjustment, who gets a few stat bonuses but no second hit die when he levels up, and then when he levels up again he gets the delayed HD and the rest of his stats, and is now a Level 3 character exactly matching the one in the monster manual. In general, I do not allow this; it's assumed that lizardmen are all but born with their monster manual stats (except higher, since the MM assumes that an average lizardman has 10s and 11s in all stats before applying his racial Strength bonus and Intelligence penalty and so forth, while in my game, literally every creature in the world is built on 32-point buy unless the plot specifically requires them to be more or less powerful). If you really have your heart set on being a Minotaur or something so that you can't start the game as a full-fledged member, I might consider allowing the Monster Class, but overall I'd rather either raise the ECL or steer you toward a different character concept, as I really don't like the system. The only cases where I've actually made use of it are with ghosts, lycanthropes, and possibly a character going from Tiefling to Fiendish to Half-Fiend or the like, and I'm fussy about how it may be applied even then - you can't just take a few "levels of minotaur" until you get the stat bonuses you cared most about, then go train for a few levels in a class before coming back and finishing your "being a minotaur" coursework. Template races are different, but for any creature in a Monster Manual of any variety, what's printed in the statblock (except with better Attributes and different choices of Skills/Feats/gear/etc.) is exactly what you'll be playing. If that makes it impossible to get as many class levels as you wanted, well, that's what life is like sometimes; it's why you don't see a lot of hill giants becoming arch-sorcerers, outside of an epic game.


Regarding the Half-Fey template:
willpell wrote:By the way, actually looking at the half-fey template, it says your HD become d6s and you get x6 skills for them? Is that supposed to apply to class-level HD or only RHD? I have a slight problem with the former interpretation as it contradicts other templates, but on the other hand you really badly could use more skill points. If you're willing to ding your HP to get them, I'd probably allow it, since I'm very sympathetic about the shortage of skills.
Last edited by willpell on Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:21 pm, edited 12 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:26 pm

Deities
willpell wrote:Symbolism does matter in my game, but not in a One True kind of way; there're always multiple ways of making any point which deserves to be made.
willpell wrote:One thing I should let you know is that in my campaign, I houseruled Lolth to not be evil or a demon anymore. The Drow are still following the same general religion, but they leave her name out of it; she just sort of wanders around in the wilderness watching spiders do what they do, killing things when she feels like but not actively plotting much of anything.
I generally use the default/Greyhawk pantheon with a few modifications (the biggest of which is the non-Evil Lolth I mentioned above; also I threw out the dragon gods and the Kuo-Toa lobster-goddess and a few others I didn't like, and added a few homebrew ones which filled roles that I thought were overly vacant; I'd rather have these get revealed in the course of play rather than doing an infodump).
The seven chief LN deities in my setting are:
* St. Cuthbert, god of Justice. Almost Good, but a bit too militant about his idea of right and wrong, and perhaps slightly too fond of thwacking others upside the head. Followers may not be Evil.
* Erathis, goddess of Civilization and Wealth. Typically more constructive than not, but accepting of economic injustices and similar "necessary" evils; thinks on a grand scale and doesn't necessarily pay much attention to the little people who fall through the cracks.
* Bralm, goddess of Industry and Community. Has a creepy queen-bee vibe; that's pretty much all I recall about her.
* Primus, god of Order and Mathematics. Completely inhuman and brutally rational; cares nothing for individuals, only for the Grand Cosmic Design and its guiding principles. See what I said about Erathis, only times 100,000...no matter who you are, you're a speck of dust to him, and not at all welcome to step one inch out of your appointed role in the clockwork universe.
* Zuoken, god of Self-Discipline, Martial Arts, and Mind over Matter. Basically only a good patron for Monks or Psionic characters.
* Soorinek, goddess of Reason and Doubt. Likes to anatagonize and undermine other religions (canonically, she's Evil, but I didn't buy that based on the described persona; she's more like someone who gets into an Internet flamewar over intolerance for the stupidity of others and makes a futile attempt at beating some sense into their heads).
* Wee Jas, goddess of Transition, Inevitability, Death and Magic. Pitiless but not actively Evil. Followers cannot be Good.
Last edited by willpell on Sun Nov 09, 2014 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:27 pm

Spells
willpell wrote:I can't tell you not to use any spells I don't know, but in general I'd prefer if you mostly stuck to the "classics" just for the sake of making my life easier...in general, a spell is "approved" if you see an NPC casting it or find it on a scroll or something, and otherwise I may get a slight headache when a player first busts the thing out and messes up my plans. Which is something you have to deal with as a GM, I know - I'm just saying...have pity on me. :paranoia:
Um... Since I have to select spells before I see NPCs... You're saying I can only select 7+ levels of spells, between two classes, from only the PHB? :shock:
Not quite that bad, just that I'd prefer you didn't get too fancy. If you'd like suggestions on spells I'm comfortable with to fill gaps in your selections, I'll see if I can oblige.
Of note, while I've familiarized myself with a goodly few spells outside the PHB (particularly several from PHB2 and a few in Complete Divine), I also have not studied all of the PHB's spells, and in particular almost none above 4th level. So expect there to be a bit of negotiation involved in all of your spell selections - start with mostly PHB stuff, and if I approve all of that, you can bring in a few spells I don't know and will have to personally investigate.
willpell wrote:I may veto individual spells if they're overpowered, or make houserules where I see fit (for instance I don't allow anyone to sleep in a Rope Trick)
CelineSSauve wrote:So... Never take Rope Trick since that removes it's only useful features. Okay. Duly noted. :roll:
The ability to alternate an infinite number of 15-minute adventuring days starting at character level 3 is not a "useful feature"; it's game-breakage. Granted you don't have to wait a very long time before you get Leomund's Secure Shelter, but still. Rope Trick is still good for vanishing from known space long enough for a patrol to pass by, or something like that; it's just not a complete spoiler like it is by RAW.
willpell wrote:
Feytala wrote:As I read it, Outsider also gives you very cool polymorph-possibilities for a wizard
:x

There's a very frightening word in that sentence, as well as the overall message. I'm not trying to be Stop Having Fun Guy, but the line between a fun toy and a game-breaking engine of insanity is rather thin here....
Feytala wrote:Did I say something wrong ? What breaks the game ? Outsider ? Polymorph ?
Polymorph is a legendarily broken spell, even if it's only limited to humanoids; outsiders tend to have legions of powerful SLAs and SUs given to them on the assumption that they were monsters, not player characters, and allowing an Aasimar character or the like to shapeshift into such things is likely to get degenerate fast. I'm not saying it can never happen, but it will need to be heavily scrutinized and possibly spot-nerfed with less-than-elegant rulings.
I have similar issues with the Summon Monster line. I'm not saying nobody can do Polymorph or Summoning, but they are extremely powerful and dangerous spells, and I will not do a player any special favors (or have the bad guys pull any punches) if they're attempting to wield such awe-inspiring weapons, and I'm not above making spot-rulings to restrict their potency as I think of them, or to quickly check any attempt at abuse.
Ghoul's Touch - Tiny houserule I added to this spell, which probably won't ever affect you but I'm just making sure you know in case it somehow comes up. I ruled that if the caster level is 3, the spell won't paralyze an Elf. At caster level 4, like a Ghast's HD of 4, it will. That was basically just me being cute, but I thought I'd run with it.
Identify: Personally I'd be just as happy if nobody in the party had it; I think of it as something of a buzzkill, taking too much of the fun and mystery out of the original dungeon crawling experience. As long as you guys will avoid going completely overboard on the "try it out and see what it does and then complain if you get killed" method of identifying magic items, I'll try to make sure things are entertainingly mysterious (and thereby save myself a good bit of behind-the-curtain work which would delay the game).
Last edited by willpell on Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Sun Oct 26, 2014 1:08 pm

Skills
I would rule that Cook is a Profession, since food isn't really an item in the game sense.
It's actually -1, because all crafts suffer a -2 penalty if you don't have appropriate tools, and I ruled that these have to be purchased separately for each craft. In most cases a standard set of artisan tools is just 5 GP, though alchemist and poisonmaking labs are 100 gp, and I may deem others to be similarly expensive (you really shouldn't be able to craft arms and armor without a forge for instance; I don't know if the rules ever actually covered that).
Last edited by willpell on Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:09 pm

Items
willpell wrote: I exercise veto power over all item selections. There are no guidelines, since I don't really know what I'm comfortable with until it comes up. As an example, the Bag of Tricks is disproportionately difficult to deal with compared to how useful it is, so I would discourage that one. Sticking to simple things like Rings of Protection and Belts of Giant Strength is preferred, but you can get away with a fair bit more than that, with minimal grumbling from me.
willpell wrote:(In general, I treat a character's possessed items as part of their character just like Feats and Skills; it's fairly rare for me to part you from those things, and I'll get frowny-faced if you make a habit of trading them among players so that I have to keep adjusting your stats.)
willpell wrote:Item Familiar....I allow those, but only for non-spellcasters (and non-manifesters). It's a way of (very slightly) balancing melee and caster types, justified with the idea that a mage's or psion's personal mystic energy "drowns out" that of an awakening item, like a tree draining all the nutrition from the soil or blocking all the sunlight, preventing other plants from sprouting around it. (An imperfect analogy, obviously, but hopefully enough to keep the rule from seeming completely meta.)
About Wild armor:
willpell wrote:
Amara wrote:...could we also rule it DOESN'T go invisible, since the mechanical bit is just me keeping armor bonus? XD
To avoid naked bears, and also because the idea of a massive armored bear is just wondrous.
Absolutely.
In other words, the player chooses whether Wild armor merges into the shapeshifter's form or remains evident. The mechanics are the same either way.
willpell wrote:
Ayeaka wrote:1) May need to ask you for a few items that don't exist but aren't super important things.
I have a persistent terror of some player talking me into letting them have, say, a piece of chalk even though they've spent their last CP and can't afford it, and then later MacGuyvering a boss-killer bomb or something using the freebie. It shouldn't be hard for me to call shenanigans on such a thing if it actually happens, but I start gnawing my proverbial fingernails anytime players seem to be trying to be "clever".

As long as I'm sure you're just enriching the story, though, I can be more chill about it. Really, what I want is for the rules to *enforce* that you're just enriching the story, and can't gain a mechanical effect that you haven't "earned" (though sometimes being clever, genuinely rather than in quotes, is indeed an appropriate way to earn it).
willpell wrote:
Ayeaka wrote:I wonder if there's an enchantment for containers that keeps food fresh..
Actually I don't know of the mechanics for it, but I've established that they exist in my gameworld so...heck with it, you can have *that* for free. Just assume that it magically only works on food, and is of indeterminate size (out-of-character that is; it has a fixed size but we're not going to establish what that is unless it matters for game purposes, in which case I'll decide the least inconvenient answer).
Last edited by willpell on Tue Dec 09, 2014 9:32 am, edited 5 times in total.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:16 pm

Feats
willpell wrote:Flaws are allowed as long as you don't use them to get a single feat chain that would have been impossible to get at your level without Flaws.
There really are [a lot of Feats to choose from]...I've thought about letting players take more of them since so many extra ones got published in later volumes. I've yet to go forward with the idea because I worry about breaking the game, but it'll probably happen eventually, maybe as an in-game event. I'm somewhat partial to the Sean K. Reynolds Feat Point system, but would need to overhaul it to my satisfaction since he prices some things differently than I think is right, and I don't know what the implications are for PrC qualifying and such. So it's being put off indefinitely but it's definitely something I'll consider someday.
willpell wrote:
Ayeaka wrote:I'm actually a little stuck on feats still. So far I've taken improved unarmed strike and improved grapple. (Since Phieran, like Ilmater, favors an unarmed strike.]
Those are somewhat redundant on your bear, unless you plan on avoiding shifting a lot; I'll let you take them both as a single feat.
willpell wrote:The main reason why I don't offer all characters more feats is that I'm worried about them entering a PRC earlier than is normally possible, but with your build, that's obviously not a concern.
willpell wrote:Track is a plot device disguised as a class feature (and used as a feat tax for PrCs). In my game it'll probably never even get rolled.
Regarding a couple of possible feat choices:
willpell wrote:it's a pretty weak feat anyway; I'll probably just give it to you as a quest reward if you're into that, rather than make you spend a slot on it.
willpell wrote:Being another Exalted feat, you can't just take it because you want it; the Celestial Powers need to approve.
willpell wrote:have reviewed the Devotion feats extensively & even sort of homebrewed two new ones - it bugged me that Law and Chaos devotion don't function the same as Evil and Good (in my campaign, I try to make it clear that the two axes are of equal cosmic importance, contrary to how the game often portrays them with items like the Horn of Goodness/Evil or the Robes of the Archmagi, and details like Paladins having Detect Evil but not Detect Chaos). Thusly, the as-printed Law Devotion is renamed Perfection Devotion, and Chaos is renamed Possibility. For the moment they're still associated with the Law and Chaos domains, since making new domains is a tall order and I'm not sure I even have room in my campaign's roster to add more.
Regarding the Daunting Presence feat (though it's applicable to any Fear effect):
willpell wrote:While certainly villagers and such might roleplay being scared, it'd be the kind of scared that makes them more determined to defend themselves, unless you take this feat to indicate that it's even scarier than that and can completely rattle their resolve with unadulterated terror.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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Re: Whiteleaf Campaign Setting and Pell's Campaign Rules

Post by willpell » Tue Dec 09, 2014 9:26 am

Level Adjustments
willpell wrote:@ Nioca - Hm, LA is annoying that way. I'm almost tempted to rule that it uses ECL instead of CL, but that might be a dangerous precedent. I *did* end up ruling that ECL is used in Affiliation scores, but that's not quite the same thing.
You either die Chaotic, or you live long enough to see yourself become Lawful.
Glemp wrote:To some extent, you need to be arrogant - without it, you are vulnerable being made someone's tool...for Herbert's sake, have the stubbornness not to submit to what you see instantly, because you can only see some facts at a time.
My long-neglected blog.

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