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[PrivateNomad]

Any flaws with my character I should know about?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Alright. I think I've got the basics of my cleric down. Dragonborn Lesser Aasimar cleric of Bahamut, or similar good dragon deity. Pride and Luck Domains.
Time to fill out the specifics.

[Harbingerjm]

And again, I said worry. Not insta-ban. You don't need to get pissy. But kobolds with levels in tier 1 classes can be worrisome. Whether those worries are founded or not is an entirely different matter.
Jeezus man.

Oh, well then, my mistake. Thank you so much for not insta-banning me from Dice's Wizard-buffing campaign for taking a race that can theoretically be used to make Pun Pun and planning a one level Cleric dip on my Rogue/Swashbuckler. In the future, I'll make sure to stick with races and classes that can't possibly be used to outperform your own perfectly balanced and flavoursome characters. Would Human Commoner do it, or would the potential chicken abusing builds keep you up at night worrying about your characters being crushed under the weight of an imminent agricultural reform?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Guys, I think it's time to get back on the respect train.

[Remuthra]

OI, YOU LOT! BE MORE POSITIVE OR ELSE!

[Nerjin]

Hm... this seems to be getting a little rough.

@Dice I do notice, now that it's been pointed out, that you've buffed wizards. Tawa did much the same in his game. May I ask why? Aren't they already the most powerful class [usually]?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Question about Dragonborn for the group: when they remove racial traits, does that take languages with them?

[Rolepgeek]

Any flaws with my character I should know about?

I dunno, what flaws did you give him?

Looks like just Shaky and Poor Reflexes, to me.

In all honesty, there's (almost) no such thing as a bad character. It's hard to manage to be an actual drain on resources, though it's possible. It's just a matter of how much you can contribute.

Take Nerjin's character, for example. He's actually really damned tanky, with 20 Constitution and good Dex for AC, plus fighter so he can take feats to be even better at dodging shit pretty easily. Combined with Mounted Combat being able to turn away blows, he's pretty well set in that department.

But, the question is, if he's fighting alongside the Catfolk Swift Hunter who's dodgin' around like crazy and doin' flips and shit while turning people into pincushions, is he going to feel accomplished? Or is he going to feel overshadowed and annoyed at not getting the chance to kill anything?(also it's a cat and he's a dorf what the fuck do you think their relationship will turn into) If he was on the frontlines he'd be Weapon Finesse-ing with a Heavy Shield and Phalanx Fighting to fuck people up and refusing to take any shit for it. As an archer, he's tanky, but no one's really gonna be able to reach him for that to matter. He's a cool character concept; my favorite Scout was still the Lawful Good Dwarven Scout(he was military) who took shit from no one and used a pickaxe to cave in skulls. Dwarves are fuckin' awesome. Being quirky in a politically dangerous way is cool. But a Dwarven Archer in a party with a troll in it is going to feel overshadowed.

You're a barbarian, it's hard to go wrong with them. You're also going to be taking all your hits to the chest, with that much Constitution. You'll be fine, I think. Though I hope you roleplay the low mental stats as something other than either ignoring them in favor of being sophistorc(not that it wouldn't be amazing, but to do it right while being a Barbarian and having low mental stats would be tricky), or having him be "TRADOK SMASH PUNIES".

I expect we'll get plenty 'Hulk Smash' from the Troll, if he's in the final party, considering...you know...Intelligence 4...

I just give Nerjin shit cuz' I wanna help him. And give Harbinger a hard time because I like poking fun at people anyway. And there's a surprisingly low number of people with stupendous races. No elves so far, though...meh, if Harbinger's got Trapfinding I can probably be my Human Warblade.

He's a duilest.

Although...again, jeezus Harbinger, calm down. Let's go through my statements one by one.

First off, whatever you might say about rogue/swashbuckler being terrible, we have two fighters and a warrior in the party. Hush you. Stop bashing on rogues.

Second off, I was responding to your sarcastic disproportionate retribution about 'horrifically powerful' kobolds. Which you take as me thinking I can ban you from someone else's campaign?

Third, my characters aren't perfectly balanced, or necessarily nicely flavored. Though usually I find some good flavor to make them taste good. However, that's irrelevant in this. I never claimed mine were better than yours; if I implied it, it was by mistake.

Fourth, jeezus stop using so much acid on me good gods man. You're gonna turn Neutral Evil if you keep up this level of malice.

Fifth, that's a lot of sarcasm

Sixth, calm the fuck down, it was a joke

Seventh, man, you don't even know about those chickens. Don't even joke about that shit, bro.

@Nerjin, I believe it's because at low levels, Wizards suck.

High levels, they're gods. Low levels, they have...well...Tradok, and your char, to compete with, to say the least.

@Immaterial: No, as you do not forget a language when you become Dragonborn.

[Flying Dice]

Okay, time to chill out. Rolep was expressing valid concern, considering that the things presented actually have been remarkably restrained. Even Remuthra, but that's with the memory of a certain monstrosity he once made. Don't jump down his throat for it. That said, also don't hammer people about their character concepts; if they're too broken compared to everything else, they'll get the DM veto, and that one doesn't look terrible.

Dice, are all psionics banned? Can you elaborate on that rule?

No psionic PCs. I have a completely irrational dislike for psionics. You almost certainly will never encounter, say, mind flayers, either.

FD: This an acceptable trait?

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahano. At least the 'core' set of traits are mostly tradeoffs that you actually consider before taking. 

Do sorcerers get free familiars at 1st level?

Sorcerers do get Summon Familiar as a class feature at 1st level, so assuming you don't trade it away for an ACF they have a familiar, singular, bound to them.

Elves are allowed to grow facial hair in this setting, right? Please tell me they can.

Yes. Your elves can be as fat, hairy, ugly, &c. as you like.

Swift Hunter related questions:
1. I don't really want to play a Ranger with an animal companion (and, to a lesser degree, spells). It doesn't fit my mental image of my character. Feel free to tell me to suck it up, but would it be alright if I changed those out for class features that aren't the various ACF? I would have to go over it in more detail with you, of course, but it would essentially just be making it so I got some Scout-like class features(maybe just have the levels stack for some more of the class features from Swift Hunter?) or the Ranger features at a better rate. I dunno. Ah, yes, that's right, some more skills, for example, and a wider skill list, would be cool. Like Disable Device/Trapfinding. Ah yes, and a few changes to the normal class features(Manyshot is now useless, compared to Rapid Shot, since Full Attacks are standard actions), perhaps? Put together an organized list of the changes you want and I'll go over it.
2. What are the enemies we could be most likely to fight/deal with? It will be annoying if I choose Outsiders as my favored enemy and then it turns out we never ever fight a single one. Or Undead and the same happens. I understand you don't wanna give everything away and there'll be random encounters etc., but some knowledge of it would be nice so I don't have to make guesses/fuck with my character concept to make the 'best' choices for a Swift Hunter's Favored Enemies. Maybe a better question would be 'what sort of enemies are around this area?' Also on the topic of favored enemies, can we please just make each type it's own favored enemy? I really don't get how a giant eagle, a bear, and an anaconda have more in common in terms of anatomy and habits then gnomes and dwarves do. There are two main forks that the campaign could take, and the party could end up following either or both, depending on certain factors. You're likely to be fighting enemies from the following list: (Spoilers ahoy) Early: Evil humanoids, undead, animals, elementals; Later-but-not-late: More Evil humanoids, possibly some fey, possibly more undead, enemies which could logically be found in the underground, forests, and mountains. Late: Dragons. You will almost certainly not be fighting Outsiders, and will not be fighting m/any non-Evil humanoids for a very long time if at all. Aquatic creatures may make brief appearances but will not be common. Also, that's acceptable.
3. Could the fast movement from my Scout class apply to flight speed instead, if I have a character with such? One or the other, but not both.
4. Can I take Flyby Attack even if I only have a Glide Speed? RAW specify fly speed, and I'm going to stick with that. Sorry.
5. Ah, ummm...throwing weapons...if I didn't want to have to fuck about with shuriken, is there any way I could have large numbers of throwable weapons without having to burn through my gold like mad? If you're specifically wanting the pointy sort, we can whip up something like a homebrew throwing knife. I'll set them as being 2sp per, 1d3 for damage, and 0.1lbs per knife. Medium size, crit 20/x2, Piercing. Sound good?

Warblade/Swordsage related questions:
1. First, I want to play a character who wields one weapon, in one hand, without a shield. Please, Dice, tell me you have some ways that this isn't an awful idea?!? Not anything off the top of my head. It's an awful idea for fairly sensibly reasons, too (at least by WotC standards). Maybe minor bonuses to AC and attack rolls.
2. Does Weapon Aptitude work to change between categories for things like Weapon Focus now? Yes.
3. Is Adaptive Style a bonus feat for Swordsages still like I remember it was in one version of those homebrewed rules? It's usually considered a feat tax from what I can tell... Assume that it is. It's always looked like a feat tax to me, and half the point of a lot of this houseruling is dealing with bullshit like that.
4. Uhhh...how does Discipline Focus interact with the new rules regarding Weapon Focus now? And Weapon Aptitude, for that matter? Ater a quick review, I don't think there should be any interaction. Discipline Focus doesn't actually grant Weapon Focus, just its effects, ergo you would still need to take Weapon Focus if you wanted to follow that progression of free feats. Weapon Aptitude wouldn't matter, as the automatic gains are based on HD rather than class level.
5. I...I thought I had more...hmmm...oh yeah, how exactly do Keen and Improved Critical stack? As in, triple the base range(base doubled, then the base doubled again), or as in quadrupled(base doubled, then that doubled again)? I'm guessing the former.Yes, the former. Base doubled again is quite enough already, heh.
6. How, exactly, does Weapon Finesse work now, specifically? Does the weapon in your off-hand only apply half of your Dex bonus? Exactly what it says, you substitute your DEX modifier for your STR modifier when calculating damage in the same way that the feat does so for melee attack rolls. In the case of off-hand weapons you would indeed only apply half of your DEX bonus. This is for the sake of not forcing people to take a second homebrew feat to make DEX-based melee fighters viable in a party full of trolls and half-orcs.
7. Since we can become proficient in exotic weapons without the use of a feat, simply by rolling and making a check, can we be assumed to have one free Exotic Weapon Proficiency? Not with the Spiked Chain or anything, mind you. I'm just curious, is all. Not at start, but given the simplicity of the process it shouldn't matter overmuch.

1. You can take ACFs, just make sure to mention what you're taking and source it. Poison Use is obsolete; 4 ranks in Craft (Poison) removes the percentage chance of poisoning yourself. I'll allow you to trade it for Track if you like, but I'll warn you right now that dropping Trapfinding if nobody else has a reliable way to detect and disable traps might lead to some substantial hardships down the line.

I've... never seen that before. Source?
Also, I'll be getting trapfinding from another source in a few levels anyway, so... *Shrug*

It's listed in the houserules near the end, all of which GWG, Hans, and I whipped up a while back to make poisons and alchemicals viable weapons for specialization. The RAW on poisons are shitty and contradictory to begin with, and that bit about accidental self-poisoning is bloody stupid. It's like if you forced someone to take a Sword Use feat to remove a percentage chance of accidentally castrating themselves every time they attacked.

You can find it here. LA+3. However, I'd rule that playing a Psuedodragon would preclude you from wielding any non-simple weapons, as well as from casting spells/SLAs with verbal components, given that they can only communicate telepathically and with animal noises. However I'd give a PC Pseudodragon two 1d3 claw natural weapons.

The main racial advantages are 60' fly (good), blindsense, telepathic communication, a weak poison sting, and good Hide checks in forests.

Pseudodragons aren't set up to be played as PCs -- as such, they don't list racial ability modifiers (any monster that is will have a section labelled "X as Characters" in their entry) -- and frankly I don't think that the value of monsters not intended to be played as PCs is sufficient to warrant working out homebrew for them. If you're really set on playing a monster, pretty much all of the ones designed for it will have the work done for you like any other race. I'll just DM fiat that now: if a creature isn't already set up to be played as a PC, it's off limits.

Actually, IIRC there's a published method for working out the ability score modifiers of not-PC'd-normally races somewhere. Probably in Savage Species...
Also, D&D wiki is terrible, I suggest you stick with d20srd and D&D Tools. D&D wiki mislabels homebrew stuff as official, and vice-versa.

Yeah, I'm aware that it exists, but as I suggested I really don't think going to the effort is worth the dubious payoff of including a scaly flying telepathic cat in the party. The campaign is silly, but not that silly.

I'm aware. But TBH their formatting and color scheme don't kill my eyes nearly as much as d&dtools, so when I know that a page is actually from the SRD I tend to use it.

--

In reference to the need for a ranged attacker, /me points to Warlocks.

Oh, and hey. Nerjin's racist dwarf archer is going to be the plain-jane straightman for this party.

Also more answers later, because this fucking post.

[Remuthra]

I expect we'll get plenty 'Hulk Smash' from the Troll, if he's in the final party, considering...you know...Intelligence 4...

Actually, I plan to try and take a back role, especially since I have a rider now. I want to play with the language barriers.

RE: FD- Yeah, I figured that, though size class adjustments are a tradeoff. Eh, I didn't want to try and scale back my equipment for the extra size costs anyway.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, hmmm.

Now I wanna make Oso again...he seems like he would fit in, compared to a Warblade(who would probably turn everyone from ridiculous into fucking-ridiculous, with White Raven maneuvers), though damn I want to make that duelist. Meh. I like Oso enough that he's cool too. And we do have a lot of melee.

So, uhhh, FD, my biggest concern about Warlocks was actually the limited number of Invocations they know, rather than the Eldritch Blast features.

Would it be alright if I took a homebrew feat?

Yeah, Oso always wins, with me, so I'll just make him.

[Remuthra]

Which one's Oso again? Was that the doompixie?

[Tawa]

Awesome.

Old geezer elf with crazy-ass, perhaps unnatural levels of Charisma, who simultaneously sees everything and nothing.

Also: if I wanted to build, perhaps, a murderhobo shack, what skill would I use? If and when I brew up a wagonload of those buffing potions, I'm going to need a hideout from where to do so.

[Remuthra]

Also: if I wanted to build, perhaps, a murderhobo shack, what skill would I use? If and when I brew up a wagonload of those buffing potions, I'm going to need a hideout from where to do so.

Craft (Wood), Survival, and Profession (Homesteading) would be my best guesses.

[Nerjin]

Oh, and hey. Nerjin's racist dwarf archer is going to be the plain-jane straightman for this party.

That's... Sad. I think... Does that mean I'm in or did I get my hopes up for nothing?