Any PnP RP veterans around here?Follow

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/deaa/?srp=20

cool story, bro.

So some friends of mine who have never played D&D or any PnP RPG want to try D&D (mostly just to say they have played it). Unfortunately that might leave me to be DM unless we can find someone else in the area with more experience (which I have 0 experience being a DM). Would love some suggestions... I think they want to do it in person but I don't have any materials.

The only main materials you need for D&D is a grid to handle battles. It's incredibly helpful to have a battlemat because it has the grid already printed onto it and you can use wet erase marker on top of it to draw objects, but even that's not needed if you don't want to invest in it.

Everything else required to play D&D is about effort. Do you remember some of the work you put into learning D&D for the first time (reading the PHB) and then all the work yo may have had to put into making your token (unless you were lazy and copied ****). It's going to be a lot of work for first time players to learn D&D.

1. So the absolute first thing you must do is make sure everyone understands the amount of time and effort they will have to put in to play D&D and that they are willing to do this. Nothing is worse than putting all the effort into creating a campaign for players who decide they are no longer interested in the game.

2. Assuming they are all enthused enough to put the effort into playing the game (and you are willing to put time into becoming the GM or finding a GM), give them the PHB and tell them to read it. It will tell them how to play the game, it will tell them about the world, it will tell them how to make characters, and it will tell them how to run combat. As a GM you should read over the DM's Guide. As a DM, there isn't a rulebook you follow, but the DM's guide is a good place for ideas and inspiration and a good place to fall back on.

3. If you decide to GM, I would suggest running a premade adventure first. I haven't looked through them at all honestly, but I could help you find one if needed. For me, the hardest part was acting out the characters. People would ask questions you don't expect and you need to be prepared to handle them spontaneously. I found running battle to be easy.

Rule 1 for backstories: if your player has something in their backstory but hasn't paid points (or whatever the equivalent of rightfully starting out with it is in your RPG system) for it, it's fair game to blow up, steal, or turn against them.

Think of Jack Sparrow as a roleplaying character that gave himself a pirate ship and crew in his backstory before heading out on that Isle de Muerte adventure, but didn't pay points for it.

I know there's been this argument before, but what are the differences between Pathfinder/3.5 and 4.0? I know Al prefers 4.0 but some of you prefer Pathfinder/3.5. Not sure which one I'd want to go with, though probably 4.0 since I've never played Pathfinder/3.5.

Also, I'm a little worried about my roommate's campaign. We haven't started it yet, but it's an adventure about dealing with problems with the elements run amok and his GMPC is more or less Aang.

For brevity, I'm going to refer to pathfinder/3.5 as just 3.5.

In my view one of the most core differences between 3.5 and 4.0 is how classes different from one another. In 4.0 all the classes follow a very similar mechanic in how they are built: everyone has at will powers, everyone has encounter powers, and everyone has dailies. Every tank has a mark, every healer has a heal, and every striker has a damage bonus. Every character will have roughly the same amount of skills (sans feats they choose), and every character is useful both in combat and out of combat.

3.5 is different in that classes are highly dissimilar to each other. For example, fighters in 3.5 don't have daily or encounter powers. Everything a fighter does in 3.5 he can do every round. However, while you can feat him up to do certain things, he doesn't have as many options as a 4.0 fighter. A 3.5 fighter is mostly the equivalent of a 4.0 who only uses basic attacks or at wills. A wizard in 3.5 is radically different than this. Wizards have spells, and all their spells are daily spells. For example, magic missile is an at will in 4.0, which a wizard can cast all day long. Magic missile in 3.5 is a daily spell that you can cast a finite number of times. It's quite possible for a 3.5 wizard to run out of spells and just have to kick/punch you. Characters are not all equally good in all realms. For example, rogues in 3.5 are often skill monkeys, who's primary role is to complete skill challenges for the party while other characters matter more in combat. Characters also do not have static relative strengths. A 3rd level fighter is pretty much flat out stronger in combat than a 3rd level wizard, but as they level up a wizard a 12th level wizard is far stronger than a 12th level fighter.

Another form of comparison that might help is that 4.0 is more like WoW and 3.5 is more like vanilla FFXI, in very specific contexst which I'll explain. Rogues in WoW at end game were a combat contributing member of the raid, they did damage just like other damage dealers did damage. Thieves in FFXI at end game were pretty much there for Treasure Hunter, their role was to jsut be present for some non-combat benefit they provided. This is akin to how thieves in 4.0 and 3.5 can differ (though 3.5 thieves dont' have to necessarily do this, it is a common occurence). Warriors in WoW aren't too unlike Mages in WoW, they have abilities with CDs that scale based on AP or SP. Warriors in FFXI are very different than Blackmages in FFXI, warriors pretty much just auto attacked while maintaining buffs while mages used spells that functioned very differently and didn't gain percentage towards WS. WoW classes tended to play early game generally like they played late game. In FFXI you had weird things like ninja tanks suddenly showing up at level 37, or certain classes suddenly becoming the new dominate DPS because they got a major ability at a certain level or new powerful WS.

4.0 is more consistent and 3.5 is less so.

I agree. I just worry about whether he's gonna go all Mary Sue with it.

Question: If I create a custom monster(in this case, a giant skeleton made of multiple tinier bones) for an encounter for level 3 players, I'm obligated to use multiples of it as a sub-boss fight later on for level 6-7 characters, right? Assuming that the necromancer who created the first one is still around, of course.

Edit: Based on the CR, I could throw 4 of them at the PCs at level 7 in order to make it a comparable difficulty fight to the original 1 at level 3.

Edit2: Let's see them try to save themselves by spamming Ponies this time! *maniacal laughter*

Edited, Feb 17th 2012 1:16am by Poldaran

Okay, how's this sound for an encounter?

PCs finally track down the lair of the Necromancer sometime after he's murdered his former master(and master of one of the PCs). They get on a flying ship to travel to his stronghold, which turns out to be an old laboratory of the dead master's former master. New session begins with them fully rested having just reached the lab.

They find the primary entrance impassable, and so have to go in through the back way, working their way through a magical vault only that PC can open, then have to cross through a trap encounter or two. They make their way to the lab, where they find the Necromancer putting the finishing touches on his creation, a massive dinosaur fossil golem with T-rex heads for hands I've been hinting at for a while. With a twist: it's made using the rules for Construct Armor. He dons the armor and the fight begins.

Phase 1:
They fight the necromancer in armor. Lesser skeletons are summoned in small waves. Nothing powerful, just a distraction. He fights guardedly, trying to protect himself from attacks.

Phase 2:
As the players weaken the armor to near breaking, the necromancer casts a spell and the armor gets teleported into a dome of some type in the ceiling(maybe one made of some kind of translucent gem). There are four gems in the ceiling. As a full round action, the necromancer activates one, expending its power to summon a wave of monsters. As the PCs deal with the monsters, the necromancer heals the golem a bit each round. He only stops the healing to activate another gem, so they have to burn down adds quickly.

If it reaches full health, go back to phase one. Otherwise, phase 3 begins as soon as the final wave is dispatched.

Phase 3:
The necromancer in dino power armor descends once again and the fight resumes at whatever HP he made it to. His AC is lower, but he's attacking more recklessly, and more powerfully.

Phase 4:
Just as the power armor dies the necromancer teleports out to a platform across the room and summons his Eidolon, a quadruped base form looking like a skeletal horse but with a twist. Just like the PC summoner Mystic Theurge's eidolon, he benefits from a trio of evolution enhancing gems I've home-brewed into the game. The final ability granted by the gems is the power to sacrifice his own life force(and entangle himself in chains) to unleash a powerful sonic attack on his foes(I'm kinda patterning that on Anima from FFX in my mind). The Necromancer then begins blowing summon spells each round to try to bring down the PCs. I'm suspecting that his PC counterpart will have to do the same while the Paladin/Holy Vindicator PC tries to bring down the Eidolon and the Necromancer himself with the GMPC companion doing whatever the other two decide is best.


So, what do you think? Any suggestions to make it more epic?

He's the distraction villain. What the PCs don't know is that while he's indeed quite crazy, he's trying to prevent the true villain from achieving his goal by destroying the city to fuel an undead army to pit against the demons.

I like the idea of a collapsing building, though I'll have to work out a way to make that work.