OT: am playing D&D light and am having fun

[Erax]

Stewart Wieck (author of Mage) was a guest at one of our cons, and he's an OK guy. I've been curious about it ever since, but have other priorities for my oh-so-short gaming budget.

But then again, Mage doesn't really mesh into the World of Darkness, and there aren't that many Mage players out there (compared to Vampire players).

And I've never played a Storyteller-line game, not even once. It's like a glaring hole in my gaming history.

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by Erax:
Greg - Many good games have been released since the days of FASA's Star Trek. Check out Fading Suns, Ars Magica and (if you like feudal Japan) Sengoku. These are some of the most innovative / well-written / well-researched titles that have been released these Last few years.

The Star Wars D20 system is also quite good, after you get used to the idea of playing Star Wars with levels and classes.

GT - When I said 'group', I meant that as including the DM. He is the most important element of all, I know many people who hate D&D because they started playing with a lousy DM.

Erax, I'm sure there have been quite a few games come out since I stopped playing in the fall of 1993. I had to take on a part-time job and lost contact with my group. NOw I just play the occassional rpg on the computer. It's not the same, however. I miss the interaction of role-playing, even though I'm the shy and quiet type. I think that's one reason I like playing barbarians. I can grunt and then perform some death-defying act. Maybe if some of us who live in the Tampa area could get together....?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Go to the Atlas Games website and look for "Free Ars Magica"

all i saw was a couple of free adventure's.

[Loser]

I've got the old White Wolf edition, and us it mostly as background for othe White Wolf campaigns, and an indication of the progression of style within the company, as that is the oldest White Wolf publication I can find.

[deccan]

You should have looked harder:

Free Ars Magica

[narf poit chez BOOM]

well, it took me about an hour, but i finally did it - i rolled up my first character for D&D.

if you don't think that's an accomplishment, you've never read all of the first five chapter's.

neither did i. round about the skills, i started skimming. a LOT of information.

if anyone is actually interested, meet Mr. Unnamed, a 1st level Ranger:

Str: 14
Dex: 15
Con: 13
Int: 13
Wis: 14
Cha: 10
yep, that was my first roll. no rerolls.
HP: 9
AC: 15
longsword, shortsword, longbow.

now, what's the Touch AC, the Flat-Footed AC, and all that stuff about what feats a ranger gains when choosing two-weapons and light or no armor that i ran into in the feats section but didn't see a peep off in the ranger section when i checked?

oh, and thanks deccan.

[ December 18, 2003, 23:10: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Taera]

touch AC - no armor bonus
flat-footed AC - no agility bonus

ranger gains the Ambidexterity and the Two Weapon Fighting feats.
Details:
When fighting with two weapons, normally players suffer a -6 penalty to hit with each. (might be wrong on the numbers)
Two-weapon fightning reduces this to -2/-4 (with the 2nd one being the off-hand, choose yourself whether he is left or right handed). Ambidexterity nullifies the penalty for the off-hand, making it -2/-2, however the other weapon must be small I THINK

[Lurker Above]

Originally posted by Loser:
Did you know they are killing off the enitre World of Darkness?

Yeah, they got tired of the complications and they're pulling the End of the World. I think God did that in the book from which Dave got my avatar.

I think that book is "Job: A comedy of Justice" by Robert. A. Heinlein. Not sure, though.

Also, some good places in the Vancouver/Greater Vancouver area to buy D&D stuff: Pastime Games in Langly (I'm not sure of the address), and i know that the Coles bookstore in Willowbrook mall has the D&D starter kit thing, as well as several rulebooks (The 3.5 core ones, Book of Vile Darkness, Book of Exhalted Deeds, and Dragonlance Campaign Setting, Last I checked). You might also want to check any massive book store, I think the chapters in Metrotown (is there still a chapters in metrotown?) had most of them. Other than that... well, let's just say a friend and I once drove around vancouver from 9 AM to 6 PM looking for gaming stores, and found nothing but Warhammer.

Also, good Groups can be hard to find. A good idea is to find a bunch of internet friends, and use AIM (yeah, yeah, AOL's horrid, but they know how to make a messenger.), since its chat room has a dice roller. A good program to help with that stuff so that you don't have to keep the stats on a UBB is DMGenie (DMgenie.com) and Player Genie. Or, you could have players e-mail your sheets to the DM, who keeps them in a word processor (and players keep everything of theirs on their computers, too), and then the DM can e-mail out experiance point rewards, treasure hauls, and the like (assuming you have a good DM (who's willing to do that), that works well. as a mediocre (at best) DM, I usually just tell the PCs their rewards in the chat. ). Try and schedual your games for a certain time each week, though. I've tried both unschedualed and schedualed, and I don't think an unschedualed game has survived more than a month.

Finally, the two weapon fighting chart (for 3.0, at least) goes:

Circumstances Primary hand/Off Hand
Normal Penalties: -6/-10
Off-hand weapon is light: -4/-8
Ambidexterity feat: -6/-6
Two weapon Fighting feat: -4/-8
Off hand weapon is light and ambidexterity feat: -4/-4
Off-hand weapon is light and two-weapon fighting feat: -2/-6
Both Feats: -4/-4
Off-hand weapon is light and both feats: -2/-2

sorry if the above is confusing (or formatted weirdly).

So, assuming your ranger is medium sized (the PHB races that are are Human, Elf, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, and Dwarf), then, with his longsword and short sword, he gets -2/-2 (short sword is light). of course, that's in addition to base attack bonus, strength bonus, etc, but your full attack bonus, as a ranger, should be +1/+1 (your strength negates the 2 weapon penalty).

...er. Hope I helped.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

thanks, Taera and Lurker. the only problem is, i don't see any ambidexterity feat in the feats list.
from the description of two-weapon fighting, it looks a little like they combined them. two-weapon now drops them both down to -4/-4 or -2/-2 if one is light. but my complaint is that not all the feats a ranger can get are in the class discription. like multi-shot at level 6, if armor is light or less. looks like Unnamed needs level to before he can put that shortsword to work, to.

well, i have internet freinds here, but nobody's said they're interested in a game...

[ December 19, 2003, 04:40: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Lurker Above]

You know, I seem to recall something about combining them when 3.5 came out. I personally prefer 3.0, mostly because I only just got used to it when they released 3.5..

At any rate, a ranger should be able to dual wield at 1st level.

The reason that not all the feats a ranger can get are in the class description is because the feats in the class description are gained just because you're a ranger. Unlike skills, class doesn't normally affect which feats you can get, (although weapon specialization is an exception), instead, the feats have prerequisites that seem to favor specific classes (like extra turning). The thing is, with prestige classes (specialized classes that have less max levels, and themselves have prerequisites), and multiclassing, for the most part, any character should be able to get any feat. (unless a character has Int 6 and the prereq is an int score so large that even if the character put his Ability score increases into Int every time he got one (every 4 levels) he'd still be too stupid to gain the feat. (although, with epic levels (beyond level 20), he'd still be able to get the feat eventually.))

Again, if that sounds confusing, it's because I'm insane.

Edit: Also, if you really want, i just started a campaign using the "play whenever everyone's on" method, and i'm teaching someone else how to play too, so if you want to play, gimme a shout, eh? (I play a bastardized combination of 3.0 and 3.5, though the ranger in my campaigns is the 3.5 one, just because the 3.0 one is horribly weak.)

[ December 19, 2003, 05:01: Message edited by: Lurker Above ]