Author: Scott

Categories
DnD Roleplaying

D&D die rolls: When and why

I thought I’d contribute to Martin’s Blogging for GMs project.

Last night Jennifer and I were talking about calling for die rolls in adventures. I repeated a bit of truth that I’d read on an advice site: don’t roll dice when it doesn’t matter. (I can’t track it down at the moment; it was delinked long ago.)

For example, if the PCs are coming up on a hallway junction, it’s usually not worthwhile to call for listen checks. Why? Well, you’ll generate a result per person, usually with the effect that someone will succeed. (Enough die rolls and someone’ll usually succeed.) And they’ll turn to their companions and say “I heard X”. All of the time checking skills, gathering rolls, etc. boil down to a bit of information everyone winds up with anyway, which is a waste of time.

Continue reading “D&D die rolls: When and why”
Categories
Misc

Archive meme

The Blog Archive Meme, poached from Artichoke Heart:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

It concentrates power, feeds the vrondi, and does other nifty magical stuff.

That’s certainly a bit of strangeness. (from my post IRE #4 Zuider Ze).

Categories
Game Group

Coromyr Politics

Kostrick: Uncle to the current kind (Crazy), king’s cousin & son of uncle is Stanis (A Necromancer, with estates that border Sembia). Kelemvor: Bad

Maerbourne: A shipping magnate with holdings on the Peninsula of the capital. Led by an admiral (purchased), they’re very worldly and externally focussed. Greedy. Kelemvor: Bad

Jendra: Strong & benevolent, favored by the populace. Led by Viscount. Holdings in the north, trade w/ Deep Woods elves to their north. 2 sons. Not in line for the throne at all. Kelemvor: Favored Our contact in the capital is Farshall, nephew to Viscount.

Lorins: Near the thunderpeaks. Kelemvor: Neutral

Yurlada: Duke. Conflicts with Jendra; power hungry. Allied w/ Maerbourne. Gifted us with enchanted saddles upon hearing of our efforts in the south. Kelemvor: Neutral.

Categories
Game Group

Game in Limbo: October 8th

UPDATE: Everyone’s agreed to a Friday Night game. We’ll start at 6:30, and go til we run out of steam. When we left, we had just bypassed the ambushes with Coromyr’s army…

Remember how during the session, someone said “I think there’s something going on next weekend?” Well…

Saturday the 8th is Camp Night at Kearney Park. After getting passed over for tickets, a friend of Jennifer’s made a second effort & got us a pair of tickets to Camp Night. So that’ll take up our Saturday, from 5 pm on.

Does Friday night work? A short Saturday (12-5) might also be possible? Any other ideas?

Categories
Game Group

Game On: October 2nd

Last week was lost to illness; I hope everyone’s on the road to recovery. Looking forward, next Sunday’s the October 2nd. Everyone ready to game?

After last night’s call around, here’s the coordination status:
Kev works Sunday (10-7 or so)
Jennifer works Sunday early (4-9 am)
Ben’s moved painting his car to Sunday

The game has moved to Saturday, with a proposed noon start time. Thanks to everyone (especially Ben) for making the last minute shift work out!

Categories
Game Group

Gaming: September 25th

Next up, September 25th. No leveling or other strangeness (other than a little recovery from the great beyond).

Any problems, coordination, etc., let me know. (I’ll try and update the loot list– subtract off the stuff we sold, etc.)

Categories
Game Group

Next Up: Sunday September 18th

Happy Birthday Kev! (Today, not the 18th.)

Next game is Sunday the 18th, same 2pm start as normal. Remember that we leveled to 10; I think everyone rolled HP, so some stats and skills monkeying and we’re ready to go.

Anything people want to figure out before we play again?

Categories
Politics

Vanport, OR and other lost cities

Vanport, OR Where? Gone. (Via brutal women) Also Indianola, TX

An all too accurate report on the current Democratic party, from Fafblog

ACORN Housing & community support, for rebuilding.

Categories
Roleplaying

D&D Links

Useful Links of Late:
D20 NPCs, a wiki for D&D NPCs, typically in stat block format. Quick NPCs with class levels, like Orc Barbarians and the like.
Mythosa A slick D&D world, well presented, that can be used in pieces of any size.

Categories
Misc

WoW Shaman links

Shaman Info. Spells, talent builders, etc. Very good.
Shaman Talent Builder, Alt Shaman Talent Builder, Shaman Talent discussion

From the Shaman FAQ on the WoW boards–
5.2 Are there any talents that I *shouldn’t* point points into?
In my opinion, there are four talents that I would recommend staying away from:
* Improved Stoneskin Totem. This talent will increase damage reduction by about 2 hit points for the average shaman, because the stoneskin totem decreases damage before damage reduction from armour is calculated. See my post here http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-shaman&t=27379&tmp=1#post27379 for a more detailed reason why this talent is not a good usage of talent points.
* Combat Endurance. From my testing, HP is regened according to the following formula: regen = 9 + spirit/9. With 279 SPI, you regen 40 HP per tick (one tick is about 2 secs). Ten percent of 40 is 4. So, this talent will allow you to regen 4 HP per tick during battle.
* Improved Grounding Totem. Currently, grounding totem is bugged such that any damage spell it absorbs will destory it. This bug has been around for the majority of beta, and it is pretty much been accepted by the shaman community as “broken as intended”, and there is some uncertainity that this bug will even be fixed. Whatever the case, this bug makes this talent very ineffective.
* Improved Healing Totem. Five points here give 20% increase on 14 HP every two seconds. Over the course of 70 seconds, this talent will give 2.8*35 or 98 more health.