D&D come Thursday

[Newby]

(more or less something out of the DM's guide)

Yuck. Although the ideas in the DM guide are nice, they're too cliché for my tastes.

[deadly7]

Yeah, he used one to start out with so he could familiarize himself with everything.. That was it.

[iago]

Speaking of D&D, I'm going to be playing it with a guy at work soon, with luck. I went out and bought the Player's Handbook (3rd ed). He needs to find another person to have a decent sized game (we have 1 other guy, and a DM + 2 isn't really enough).

[deadly7]

Speaking of D&D, I'm going to be playing it with a guy at work soon, with luck. I went out and bought the Player's Handbook (3rd ed). He needs to find another person to have a decent sized game (we have 1 other guy, and a DM + 2 isn't really enough).

We're playing with the 3.5 core rules. Those books are a lot nicer than the 3.0 ones (in that each row is colored so that you can actually tell what something is on quick glance instead of having to trace it with your eyes -- I hate that).

We were originally going to start months ago, but we were all lazy bastards (and none of us had willingly wanted to DM and actually had experience with the game before.).

[iago]

A guy I work with offered to DM, so that's the easy part.

His reasoning for 3.0 rules? Most people are upgrading to 3.5 rules, so getting 3.0 books used is cheap.

[kalaka]

Or you could just download 3.5 books for free
Complete Divine is 3.5, btw. I don't see why a 2nd level Cleric can't have 4 ranks in Heal, Knowledge or Spellcraft. Most of the prerequisites for those feats are core divine spellcaster abilities.

[iago]

I don't like using downloaded books, it's not the same. Plus, I don't want to be sitting around a table staring at a laptop, I'd much rather be paging through a physical book.

Plus, rules aren't all that important, as long as they work and they don't get in the way of gameplay.

I find that games also have "rule creep", so to speak. They keep adding more and more rules and the gameplay gets slower and slower. Some updates also simplify rules, which is good too.

[deadly7]

So, my group totally got its shit handed to it today.

It was the third watch and we were resting because I needed to get back all of my spells and our Sorcerer had run out of all spells - even Orisons.  So we had no spells.  We had the 8 hours of rest, but needed the one hour of meditation or what have you.  Anyways, the DM rolled for wandering monsters.  He rolls a level four bear... easy, right? No.  2 claws, one bite attack, and all of the heavy damage people in the group sleeping.  It was my watch, so I was wearing armor and had an AC of 18.  The bear had a +11 to hit.  A few rounds later, the monk, the fighter, and myself are all lying unconscious and bleeding profusely.  The monk and the fighter manage to roll a stability check and stop bleeding.. with -9 health.  I failed and I died.  I made a new character... a wizard.  Fuck yeah for doing DAMAGE and not being a sissy healer.

[Sidoh]

Lmao, deadly.  That's one badass bear.

[Newby]

Pwned pretty easy, n00b.

Next time I make a D&D char (probably never outside of NWN / BG*) I'm making an archer, and I'm jacking the class description from BG2, because jesus fucking CHRIST archers are badass. My archer in BG2 at level 17 can dish out like ~60 damage a round. Unhacked. deadly, we need to play; I'll import my archer and solo rooms for us like I did an entire room full of fire giants (they couldn't fit through the arches, so I stuck them there and ate them up one by one).

Oh, your stability check @ -9 hp reminds me of another D&D story:

It was ~2am in the morning, our group was doing D&D. We were fighting some giant spider, and it was fucking our shit up good. One kid had to leave, so he left his character for us to play. Unfortunately, he became unconscious. We did -1 hp/round, and the spider was still kicking strong at -5hp on his character.

-7hp rolls around, almost dead, -8hp rolls around, almost dead, he's on -9 hp and I'm the last person to attack in the round. I'm a rogue, and I use a crossbow. If I don't land this shot and kill him (I needed to roll a 5-6 on a 6 sided die) his character is dead. I'm pessimistic, so I give up. I roll the d20. A 19 pops up. That's a hit!

I still have to get a pretty much impossible roll on the damage. I roll. I get a six. The spider got pwned and our pally healed him back to health.

On the subject of a wizard.... go conjurer (I think it's conjurer, whatever school has magic missiles in it) and your best friends = armor / magic missiles. 'specially magic missiles! This is as far as I can remember from my experiences in NWN, BG2, and real D&D. Oh, and familiars suck dick.

[deadly7]

Lmao, deadly.  That's one badass bear.

That's what I said.  Here was what my friend said to me today at lunch (cause I sat with a different group of people), "I killed you and now you're afraid of me, aren't you?"  I respond "Yeah, basically.." and his girlfriend bursts out laughing and goes "That's not possible."

Unhacked. deadly, we need to play; I'll import my archer and solo rooms for us like I did an entire room full of fire giants (they couldn't fit through the arches, so I stuck them there and ate them up one by one).

Yeah, definitely.  I need to install the game, though.  It'll probably have to wait until this summer, especially because I can't update my router's firmware without breaking it, and the current version I have does not support forwarding ranges (i.e. 81-90), and BG2 wants a LOT of forwarded ports.

On the subject of a wizard.... go conjurer (I think it's conjurer, whatever school has magic missiles in it) and your best friends = armor / magic missiles. 'specially magic missiles! This is as far as I can remember from my experiences in NWN, BG2, and real D&D. Oh, and familiars suck dick.

I went universal, but I'm going to learn the obvious spells such as Magic Missile and Melf's Acid Arrow (fucking love this spell. ), among others.

[deadly7]

Being a wizard totally kicks ass, if for nothing else than the fact that I totally own my group's sorcerer in my damage-doing ability (I love my 4d6 spell. )

[Newby]

Sorcerers are jokes. Haha.