Friday, September 03, 2010 11:12

Posts Tagged ‘entertainment’

The Undead kicked Freya’s Butt – Play Report

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

So this past Saturday was my first week not behind the DM screen. It was definitely an interesting perspective. One I hope I get to keep for more than this encounter (and the next). Unfortunately, my characters weren’t as useful as I would have liked. They are good characters, just this encounter they weren’t as useful as I would have liked.

We came out of the portal into a giant room. On both sides was a wall of Force. On the left side of the left wall were golden colored orbs of energy and on the other were Blue ones. They had tentacles coming out the top of them and they seemed to have some sort of eyes (What are characters were presuming to be eyes). In front of us were three rows of tables, 4 rows per table. Going from one end of the room to the other under the tables were 6 cables, 3 white, 3 black. They ended at boxes at the end of each row of tables. Our group, learning to be very cautious stood there for a second and looked around. Nothing seemed to be an immediate threat. Charlie, our sorcerer (yes the character’s name is Charlie), walked and examined each table. It became quite obvious that this was some sort of alchemical lab. The tables had lab notes, beakers and vials and human body parts. Frey, My Whisper Gnome, couldn’t see past the table in front of her so she climbed up onto the one table. She noticed the bodies, body parts and So held up her arms (her bracers are her holy symbol) and attempted to turn any undead, just in case. The only thing to happen was a wave of positive energy flowed out of the golden orbs of energy towards her, and the white cables began to glow a little. She then noticed some sort of script some sort of script engraved into the tables. Upon further investigation she realized it was infernal, but she couldn’t read it. At about the same time Recyn (My Elven Archer) noticed past the tables were rows of tiles, some black, some white. Beyond that were big glass cylinders with bodies, and body parts suspended in some sort of green liquid. Stinky, the parties Half-Orc Barbarian began moving forward out of boredom. Then we heard a high pitch voice, which seemed to come from nowhere threatening us.

The green liquid started to drain out of the cylinder containers and the glass slid down. Several zombie like creatures stepped out and began walking forward. Freya, who despises undead, more so then any other person any of the party had ever met, charged forward. She tried turning the undead creatures, but only one ran away from her. One of the bit her and she became dazed. Stinky turned invisible and moved forward. Charlie cast Meteor Storm, but only one was taken out of commission, or so we thought, while the others, though obviously damaged were just fine. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing her arrows. Then, the undead creature which we thought was done got back up and began putting itself back together. Freya, took damage, but wasn’t sure how. Two of the creatures bit Freya again and she became much weaker (Taking 5 points of strength damage, when you only have a 10 strength sucks, let me tell you). And then Stinky came charging in swinging and dismembering one.  But she was then bit. Recyn shot one with an arrow and a loud boom was heard as it hit the undead creature knocking backwards off of a black tile and unto a white one, on its back. Charlie sent a bolt of lightning through another creature, taking it out of commission. Then the ones which were hit, which all except one, were on black tiles got back up again. Freya, who was still dazed was able to figure out that the black tiles radiated negative energy, and the white tiles radiated positive energy. Freya was bit again and collapsed onto the ground (6 points of strength damage this time) unable to move. The only saving grace she had was her arm collapsed on top of her chest. Recyn hopped up unto a table and began firing while yelling, push them to the white tiles. Stinky went into a rage and pushed one onto a white tile, while Charlie cast Prismatic Ray and sent two of them to other dimensions and frying a third one. The damaged undead creatures rose once again and began to attack, but Freya managed cast Greater Restoration on herself and crawl to a white square avoiding the one zombies attempt to squash her. Stinky then pushed another one to a white square while Charlie disintegrated one and Recyn shot one up full of holes (6 holes to be precise). Stinky was then bit again, while Freya made one of the blasphemous creatures from an undead creature, to just a dead creature. Recyn shot one up again with her arrows while Charlie side stepped to get a better angle for his next spell. The one Recyn shot suddenly fell and stopped moving and Stinky was able to smash the other. Stinky and Freya charged after the fleeing zombie like creature, which was no longer afraid of Freya. It moved to a corner of a room in the back and Stinky and Freya smashed at it repeatedly while Charlie and Recyn moved there way forward in the room.

So the encounter is half over. All that is left are the balls of Energy (Energons from Manual of the planes (Called something else which starts with a Z in previous editions)) and the (Gay) lich in the other room. So overall, my Undead hating Cleric (Hierohant, Contemplative) and Recyn haven’t done much, but hopefully once we see the lich Freya will get to do a little better.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Character Counts – Master Abjurer Saelion

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

The prestige class Master Specialist is from Complete Mage. It is actually 8 different classes, one for each of the arcane schools of magic. As you level up in this class you continue to gain new spell levels. What is even more important you gain special abilities based on your school specialization. For example as an Abjurer you gain a bonus to dispel checks, a Necromancer gives undead allies Fast Healing, Conjurer’s summons gain extra HPs.

Character Personality
Saelion is extremely friendly and kind. He hates to hurt others and uses his abilities to protect everyone he can. Even when battle he tries to encourage his allies to show mercy and not kill.

Character Background
Saelion was born to a wealthy Elven family. In his early childhood he lived a life of luxury. When he started his apprenticeship to his wizardry master war broke out. Saelion’s master was asked to help with an offensive and he took Saelion with him. Saelion saw the destruction that magic could cause. His master was killed during the offensive and Saelion vowed to use his magic to protect others.

Advancement
The two best ways I see to advance Saelion is to increase his wizarding levels giving him access to higher level abjuration spells. The other way is give him cleric levels. The cleric levels will give him the ability to heal which would work great with his personality.

Master Abjurer Saelion

Master Abjurer Saelion Spellbook

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Character Counts – The Dread Pirate Simmoines

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

The prestige class “Dread Pirate” is from Complete Adventurer and as you are probably thinking is based on the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride (or at least I am presuming so). What makes this class interesting, just like the character it is based on, reputation is everything. For all practical purposes alignment doesn’t matter. Many of the class features only reputation matters. An Evil character could have a good reputation and a Good character could have an evil reputation. A good reputation (Avoiding unnecessary bloodshed and honoring truces) would make it more likely for others to negotiate with him and give his allies bonuses to diplomacy and rerolls on failed saves. An evil reputation gives bonuses to intimidate and attack rolls.

Character Personality
The Dread Pirate Simmoines is extremely cruel and takes pleasure in torturing his victims. He is very intelligent and when in battle is tactically and strategically minded. He loves his reputation and uses it to its fullest potential to intimidate his prey and enemies. His crew on the other hand he treats fairly well.

Character Background
The Dread Pirate Simmoines was born to a semi-wealthy family though he doesn’t know much about it. When he was only 8 years old his family was journeying by sea. Their ship was attacked by pirates. All were killed except for the Simmoines who was taken captive by the Captain, the Dread Pirate Charlie. Simmoines was taken because Charlie wanted a cabin boy and another human onboard his ship. From Charlie he learned about seafaring and piracy amongst other things. He worked his way up through the crew to eventually become the second mate of the ship at the age of 16. His cruelty towards those ships preyed upon made Dread Pirate Charlie look tame and merciful. His cruelty made much of the Goblin crew fear and respect him. When he reached the age of 18 he led the crew against the Dread Pirate Charlie and the First Mate. As Captain of the pirate ship Lost Hope, he took piracy to the absolute evil it could be taken. When he attacks a ship he doesn’t just kill its crew and passengers. He tortures them; he rapes women and children before killing them. He quite often keeps one person alive, though mentally scarred for life to tell the tale. He has gone so far as to occasionally sneak into a port at night to secretly deliver the the lone survivors to ensure the tale is told. Because of this he and his ship are the most feared pirates on the sea.

His crew however he treats a little differently. He fears that one day they might mutiny against him. So he ensures that they receive an equal share of the spoils, though keeping the best for himself. However, any crew member who shows sign of weakness, or mutinous actions or thoughts is tortured or killed.

He shuns any type of organization between other pirate ships. He is not for hire and will only consider any type of negotiation if he feels the other party has something truly worth getting. After getting what he wants he kills the one(s) he negotiated with and leaves no survivors.

Advancement
This is a level 16 character so it is already pretty powerful. However, making the Dread Pirate Simmoines more deadly is easily done. Depending on what you need done there are several ways. The simplest method would be to improve his equipment. Gives his weapons additional pluses since they are only +1 items. Add keen to them to increase the critical range from 18 to 17 making it more likely to critically hit. Give him gloves of dexterity to increase his dexterity which would make it more likely to hit his targets and make him nimble thus harder to hit and improve his balance and rope skills.

Adding class levels is obviously a good way to go if you need his CR to be higher. Adding levels of Rogue would give you loads of skill points to make him extremely skillful as well as improve his sneak attack and give him Improved Uncanny Dodge. I would add to those Jump, Tumble, Use rope and Intimidate skills to make him most interesting. Adding levels of fighter would give him extra feats and greatly improve his combat abilities. Adding sorcerer would improve his will saves and add some low level magic to his repertoire. Adding Bard would give him many skill points and limited magical capabilities. Druid could be an interesting choice, especially with the aquatic animal wild shapes. However the druid’s necessity to not have metal would greatly limit him in the long run. Barbarian, cleric, ranger and wizard, though could be interesting really don’t offer anything. Monk and paladin are out of the running.

The most interesting way of improving upon him is to make him a vampire. Now I know what you’re thinking. “But Vampires have problems with traveling on the water and as Captain of a ship he may need to be out in the sun.” Well it is a simple problem to resolve. Give him a magic item or an artifact that allows him to cross water and be in the sun.

Dread Pirate Simmoines

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Prestige Class Series of Character Counts

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

If you ever played D&D 3.x you know that just about every supplemental book has a bunch of prestige classes. I don’t know how often you have ever used any of these prestige classes but I know my play group has never used them. I am currently running what I call Joey’s Infinite Dungeon. It is a high level game where all options from all books are available for the players to use. The sky is the limit. When they made their level 17 characters I worked with them and encouraged them to take a variety of prestige classes. All but one of my players just kept to leveling up the base characters. The player who did use a prestige class took the Dragon Disciple, though a great class, he has used it before.

Now as I said before, I don’t know how often you use prestige classes from the various sources out there, but I bet it isn’t often. So for the next few Character Counts articles I am going to focus on prestige classes from the various non core books. I will give the normal background and personality so even if you don’t play D&D 3.5 you can still use the character in your campaign.

To make the characters I will use PCGen to get the ability scores. It is set to Roll 4d6 drop the lowest. With the exception of that required to use the prestige class all skills, feats, abilities and items are from the core books and RSRD.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

The Half-Blood Prince: A Good Movie That Pissed Me Off

Friday, July 17th, 2009

I warn you now. This post contains spoilers to both the book and movie of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I did my best to leave things out that would spoil things for people who have yet to read “The Deathly Hollows.” I would also love to hear your comments about the movie.

So Thursday afternoon I went to go and see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was a good movie. Unfortunately it pissed me off at the same time.  It pissed me off worse then the Order of the Phoenix Movie.

The Order of the Phoenix pissed me off because a great many things were left out of the movie that were in the book. I was able to forgive this for two reasons. First, is tha obviously not everything in a book can be put into a two and a half hour movie. The second reason is that when the Order of the Phoenix was being made Deathly Hollows (The last book) was not out yet so they didn’t know that cutting out some of the stuff they cut out might come back to bite them in the butt later.

With the Half-Blood Prince I cannot forgive them for leaving out just about 75% of the book. Again, yes I understand that the movie can’t have everything from the book unless they want to make a minimum of a four hour movie. However, Deathly Hollows was out before they were even writing the script for the Half-Blood Prince. They knew what was in the final book. This movie gave them a chance to correct some of the issues I had with the Order of the Phoenix, highlight how the Muggle World (Non Magic Users) and the Magical world interacted with each other in the meeting between Fudge, Scrimgeour and the Muggle Prime Minister. I believe that having Dumbledore’s conversation with Harry and the Dursely’s was important because Kreacher plays an important role in the Deathly Hollows and they should show why Kreacher has to obey Harry. People who didn’t read the book wouldn’t understand.

In this book they introduce another Death Eater (well, more of an honorary Death Eater for all practical purposes), Fenrir Greyback. In the movie, they show him, they a wanted poster for him, but they never explain who or what he is. They give him no development. Yes, he is not the most important Death Eater, but his background is what makes him important to readers (and movie watchers), but they totally ignore it.

In the book there are (Basically) two fight scenes. Potter vs. Malfoy, which they had and did a decent job with in the movie. But they didn’t put moaning Myrtle in, or the aftermath with Harry getting in trouble for using Sectumsempra, a dark magic spell.

The second fight in the book is a battle between Hogwarts Professors, some members of the Order of the Phoenix such as Tonks, Lupin and Bill Weasley and some of the member sof the D.A. (Dumbledores Army) such as as Hermoine, Ron, Neville and Luna who fought against several Death Eaters including Draco Malfoy, The Carrow siblings and Fenrir Greyback and Severus Snape amongst others. In the movie they basically cut out this scene. They just had the Death Eaters show up and wait for Dumbledore and Potter to arrive on the Tower. To make it worse they didn’t have Potter in his cloak and petrified by Dumbledore. They just had him standing there like an idiot.

To make up for the lack of the Hogwart’s battle scene they made a new battle, which took place at the Weasley’s during Christmas. The fight scene was horribly choreographed and lasted maybe 1 minute and ended in teh destruction of the Weasley household. It totally ignored the fact that in the book teh Weasley Household is probably the third safest place for Potter because of extra protections put in place by the ministry, as well as the fact as Voldermort had basically ordered Potter to not be touched because he wanted to follow through with his plans of getting rid of Dumbledore and taking over the ministry. It also nerfed Ginny Weasley’s ability as a fighter. Something those of us have read in the books, You don’t mess with Ginny because her combat spells tend to be very destructive.

Now in the case of Harry and Dumbledore’s trips into the memories of various people who, whether knowingly or not, had information on Voldermorts past they forgot to have the discussions about the memories. I understand, and agree that they didn’t show harry viewing all of the memories. It would have made the movie way to long. But what they have done was had Dumbledore say there were other memories after Harry found out about the Horcruxes and tell Harry what he believed, at least about the cup because Harry knew about the cup in the book.

Actually, I believe Dumbledore (and I don’t blame Michael Gambon, at least not completely) was misportrayed. Dumbledore is supposed to be, for the most portrayed as a somewhat carefree and very friendly guy, who even when serious has a nicness and humerous attitude. In the movie, the script has him portrayed as this always perfectly serious guy who has no joy and seems to have no feelings.

Snape was another big mess up in character development in this movie. They got it right towards the beginning when he made the unbreakable vow. However later, they actually showed the argument between Dumbledore and Snape, something not done in the Half-Blood Prince book, it is only mentioned by Hagrid that they were in an argument. And at teh end when Snape kills Dumbledore they had him show emotion, mainly to me what seemed more like guilt and sadness. In the book, he is virtually emotionless when this happens. For this, I do blame the actor, Alan Rickman. I think he forgot to read that part of the book when he was preparing for the role. They also never showed the buildup of hate and mistrust Harry had for Snape. Yes, it is not a secret and is shown in the other books, but even before Snape kills Dumbledore Harry and Snape are butting heads more and more throughout the book.

Now down to the relationship between Harry and Ginny. Yes it is important. It is a part of the book that shows Harry does care about other things other then just VOldermort. He is a 16 year old. Hormones are flowing. He wants to hook up with some girl, Ginny Weasley to be specific. Though they had the timing of there eventual kiss about right, (After he gets in trouble for using Sectursempra) but it was in the Room of Requirement, right next to the vanishing cabinet. They should have had him get detention from Snape and him missing the Quidditch match. It would have shown that Hogwarts business truly went on as normal. It would also had made the kiss a better and more meaningful scene, instead of this Ginny being kind of a mysterious tease.

My last major peeve with the movie they didn’t have Dumblefore’s funeral. It was one of the most touching scenes in the book. It also showed how important Dumbledore was in the wizarding world.

In short they basically one or two pages from like five chapters, amde a script out of them and added a lot of crappy filler content and cheapened out on on getting actors to play roles of Death Eaters and Order of the Phoenix members and hoped that the name “Harry Potter would bring in money for them, which unfortunately it did, and will bring in more.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Movie vs. Book

  • The movie and the book were both good, but, the movie was better. (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The movie and the book were equally good. (0%, 0 Votes)
  • The movie and the book were both good, but, the book was much better. (38%, 3 Votes)
  • The book was awesome and the movie sucked (50%, 4 Votes)
  • The movie was awesome and the book sucked (0%, 0 Votes)
  • I saw the movie but I didn't read the book so I can't compare them (0%, 0 Votes)
  • I read the book, but I didn't see the movie so I can't compare them (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Harry who? The Half-Blood What? (12%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 8

Loading ... Loading ...
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Character Counts – Delamaoh Mountaintracker

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Sometimes even the most experienced players and DMs experience a block when coming up with ideas for characters and NPCs. So here I hope to give you every week a new character pretty much completely fleshed out for you to use.

Character Counts – Delamaoh Mountaintracker – Level 10

Character Creation Notes
Was completely made in PCGen

Character Background
Delamaoh family lived and worked in the lowest and most dangerous levels of the Dwarven city. The clan
was attacked by Duergar (Gray Dwarves) when she was young. Both of her parents were killed in the attack. The clan lost the
lower levels in the attack and evacuated to the higher levels. Delamaoh was accidently left behind. She managed to evade
capture and fled even lower underground. She lived alone for many years deep underground constantly fighting with aberrations,
magical beasts and small Duergar patrols. Several years later in her wanderings she ended up back by the lower levels of the
Dwarven city. She wandered into a battle. Her clan, after years of battle was finally pushing the Duergar out of the lower levels of
their city. She jumped right into the battle. During the fight she ended up saving the leader of the clan. The Duergar was defeated
and pushed out of their city. Now Delamaoh lives in the lower levels of her ancestral home and patrols for threats to it almost
always alone except for her constant companion, the Dire Rat she calls Sharp Tooth.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

So What Happened to the Weekly Game?

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

If you talk to anyone who has played in a weekly D&D (or any other weekly RPG) game they will all tell you that there were times that their game just seemed to die, even if it was for just a short period of time. Well that is what happened to me and my weekly game. Though it hasn’t died completely, any outside observer (and one of my players) would say otherwise.

So what happened to my game? When did it start to fall apart? Well it started to fall apart in October of 2008. One of my players hurt his knee badly at work. Because of it he couldn’t drive. The game was normally at my house because everyone except for him lived right by me. At the time was the DM. So we cancelled the game two weeks in a row. The third week I threw together a quick dungeon for myself and the other two players. We then found out the one guys knee problems became very serious and needed surgery. So we moved the game to his house which is a bit of a distant from us since it is a suburb of New York. We finished his adventure in the end of November and our youngest player, who unlike the rest of us who are in our late 20s was just a senior in high school, was going to be the DM for the next adventure.

He was going to run a modified version of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. It was also going to be the first appearance of our custom race, The Tainted Ones, which is based off of vampires. So we made our characters one week and the next week we started the adventure. (I’ll post a little bit about it later, but it was cool that the arrogant Gray Elf Wizard made friends with the god of The Tainted Ones, where the tainted one in the group, and respectful Paladin pissed him off). And then it all went to hell again.

As I said, he is a senior in high school (for another week or two now) and will be going to college in the fall. So his mother decided he needs to spend almost every waking moment with her. We don’t know why and his father is just as confused by it as the rest of us. He is going to college locally and will be living at home at home with his parents. The rest of the D&D group all have our theories but he swears his mother is the reason.

Now we have a backup plan. It is called Joey’s Infinite Dungeons. What that is a hack and slash inter-dimensional dungeon where no area past a portal is bigger then the battle mat we use. Sometimes it is an actual dungeon setting; sometimes it is an open field, or a dense forest. All characters were created at level 17 so encounters can be made just a little more interesting and difficult. However many games got cancelled anyways. First, we are all scouts and two of us are still very active adult leaders in our respective units and the Order of the Arrow (OA) so many Saturday’s we have to cancel because of obligations related to that. The other guy is a scout and member of the OA but not active. But, this past summer he got married, joined the Masons and is very active in his church so a lot of his time gets taken up by his wife (How dare she want to spend time with her husband lol), his induction, and now officer ship in the Masons and Church activities.

So now we are lucky to play once a month. And just to give and example, the next three weeks we have cancelled the game. This coming Saturday the one guys church is participating in some sort breast cancer fundraiser (Yes, let us help cancer and raise money for it. YAY CANCER! (I know bad joke, sorry)) and the other guy his running a Changeling game (WoD) which I was the only one invited to participate in of the D&D group on Saturday (SO this month the Changeling game being a Saturday worked out ok). The next weekend I will be at a scout camp somewhere in upstate NY for the Section Conclave and the weekend after that one of the guys I hung out with while working on my second college degree is turning 21 and his parents are throwing him a party and required him to get people from school to attend or they were going to cut him off so I am going to that.

So will we ever get past this cancelling of the games? I hope so.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Response to Responses on 4e Characters

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Two days ago I made a post called “Opinion on Character Creation in 4th Edition” It got a very active response from some of the community. I did post my response but since I do not have a way for people to subscribe to comments to a particular post (yet) I am posting my response here.

As I said I haven’t played a 4th edition game yet so my opinion of character creation in 4th edition can change when I finally play a game (It will probably be a long time because none of my group wants to try it but me).

No when I used bluff, diplomacy and Intimidate for an example I made a mistake. I got fixed on it because of something I was doing and misplaced it in my head and it ended up in here. That was just a stupid mistake on my part.

I agree that skills in 4th edition are probably more flexible. However I believe that to be a problem in its self. For example, look at Athletics. Someone who is good at climbing might not be a good swimmer. Someone might be a good swimmer but couldn’t jump more than an inch to save their life. In 4th edition if you take athletics as a skill you are good at climbing, jumping and swimming. Now there are some feats that will boost certain aspects of a skill, or at least appears that way. Example: Sure Climber. It allows you to climb at normal speed and +1 to all Athletic checks. So in 4th edition if you are good in one thing you are good in all things. 3x allows you to be good at one thing but not necessarily all. Now before you jump down my throat I am also away if the player is a good role player he will be able to decide on his and role play out if he is good at climbing but not at swimming. But that is still hard to do.

RE: Patriarch
I really like your idea of adding fluff to skills where characters explain how and/or why they are good at a skill.

My next 4th edition character should be out next week (classes just started so my time became more limited, and I am currently getting over a cold). I look forward to more comments so keep them coming.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Character Counts 1 – Arthur Dannenberg

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Sometimes even the most experienced players and DMs experience a block when coming up with ideas for characters and NPCs. So here I hope to give you every week a new character pretty much completely fleshed out for you to use. For the 3.5 version of the character I am using is the SSA-X2 vs. 3 sheet which you can get at http://www.ssa-x2.com/ and for the 4th edition version of the character I used the Kiznit Character Sheet which you can get at Dragon Avenue.

Below you will find a link to a 3.5 version of the character and another to a 4th edition version of the character. These are full character sheets in an Adobe PDF file not just stat blocks. Please feel free to make simple stat blocks for your use.

Then I have any notes on my process of creating the character. After that is the background of the character. I tried to make it as complete as possible. After that is the characters personality and how it might react in some generalized situations followed by some physical descriptions.

Arthur Dannenberg – Level 1 – 3.5e
Arthur Dannenberg Level_1 – 3.5e Spellbook
Arthur Dannenberg Level_1 – 4e

Character Creation Notes

This was my first time making a character for 4th Edition. Besides being a new system I found it to be a lot more confusing than any other system I ever played for the first time before. So please be sure to double check that I put the correct information in the correct place. If I screwed something up please let me know so I make the appropriate corrections.

For Ability Scores I used PC Gens ability generator set to 4D6 reroll 1s and drop the lowest. Where it put the scores is where I left them. That is why I chose to make Arthur a wizard. I used the same numbers for the 4th edition. I did NOT give him the +2 to an ability score that humans normally receive in 4th Edition

For Starting money, height, weight and age I actually rolled the dice and used the charts from chapter 6 (Chapter 7 in the case of money) of the 3.5 PHB. The 4th edition version he got the standard 100gp.

The 4th edition sheet has no space for background, personality or description. So I put the physical descriptions in the Other Notes Section. I placed the Character Personality in the Notes/Photo Section. No space anywhere for the Background so I didn’t put it on the sheet. It is in the 3.5 sheet and on this post.

Character Background

Arthur was born to an average working class family in the city. When he was a young child he saw a wizard casting some spells on the street. He was amazed by what he saw and decided he wanted to be able to do that. Whenever he could get away from his parents he would try to find this Wizard and follow him around and always watch his performances. After a while Arthur was starting to mimic the gestures and vocals of the spells used in this Wizards performance. Obviously nothing happened when Arthur did this but his mimicry was just so perfect the Wizard took notice. The Wizards name was Dion Laughstrang and he went to Arthur’s parent’s and offered to take Arthur as an apprentice when he 8yrs old. Arthur’s parents reluctantly agreed, after all Arthur was their only living child. All of their other children died not long after child birth and were very protective of Arthur.

This apprenticeship was a little different from what most apprenticeships. Arthur continued to live with his parents and would meet with Dion two or three times a week for lessons. This is because Dion was a poor Wizard who blew most of the money he earned on Ale in one of the local inns every night and very often would forget to pay for a room and lived much of the time on the streets. Very often others would tell him not to listen to Dion. That he was a mediocre wizard at best, and that was when he was sober. However, Arthur refused to believe what they said about the man he idolized; the man who introduced, and teaching him the arcane arts, something no other wizard in the city would have done because of his families lack of social rank.

Both of Arthur’s parents were killed during a riot in the city when he was 13. He inherited the tiny home and invited Dion to move in with him which he did. The morning of his 20th Birthday Arthur had found that Dion was no longer there. He burned all of his items accept for a small wooden medallion of Boccob on a small copper chain, his diary and a note which read:

“When I came to this city 15 years ago I didn’t expect to stay for more than one or two months. Although I had all the coin I needed I decided to entertain the folk with some of my abilities and I noticed a small boy who was completely enthralled by what I was doing. So I stayed longer performing these mediocre tricks and found this boy was almost always there watching, completely mesmerized. I had to make many deals and sacrifices to do it, but it was worth it to stay here. But now I must keep up my end of the deal. It is ok though. I have taught you everything you need to know for now. The rest will come as you go along. I have left you my two most precious belongings. I hope they will serve you well.”

Arthur started to read the diary and couldn’t believe all the Dion has done, the people he met, the places he has been and how he may have influenced the world as they all know it today. He spent most of the year trying to convince the people, particularly the wizard’s academy and all the others who laughed at Dion. But they all continued to laugh saying it was just stories he probably heard at the inn of the doings of others. After a while Arthur gave up and though he had his doubts he decided to set off to see if what in the diary was true.

Character Personality

Arthur is very passionate about everything he does. He wears his emotions on his sleeve.

He would have words with anyone who would say anything against his mentor, Dion Laughstrang.

Wherever he goes he follows the laws of the city he grew up in, even if he were thousands of miles away and those laws and the principles and intent of them had no meaning where he was.

He is relatively naiveté about the greater world

Character Description

Arthur’s brown hair is short and always messy.

Hanging off of his belt is a copper chain which is connected to a wooden medallion bearing Boccob’s (Ioun’s) symbol which is tucked into his belt pouch.

His clothes, though cleaned whenever possible always seem to be dirty and to those who don’t know him he would appear to be a homeless beggar.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark

Congrats to the 2008 ENnie Recipients

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Last Friday was the ENnie Awards. You can get a complete list of the winners from the front page of EN World. But I just wanted to congratulate Yax and Expy of DungeonMastering for there Gold Medal in the category of Best Fan Product.

If you are one of those few people who live under a rock and have never been to the site run by a Red Dragon and his pet you should head out to it and give it a read. It is definitely one of the, if not the, best RPG blogs out there.

Again, Congrats to Expy, Yax and all the other winners of this year’s ENnies.

VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.3_1094]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Share/Bookmark