So I was just asked - seeing how I am willing to allow large amounts of insanity - if I would allow Finding Haleen.

I did not know Finding Haleen.

After reading it, I thought it was unusually powerful for a feat that has no prereqs.

Imagine my surprise when I reread it and realized it was a *trait*.

For those who, like me, are not aware of it, this trait gives you +1 hp and +1 skill rank each time you level up your starting class.

That's *on top* of your favored class bonuses for that class - and worry not, the trait also makes your 1st level class a favored one, regardless of any limitations you might otherwise have, because why not.

1 hp and 1 skill rank aren't going to break the game, but this is a trait that is not only strictly better than a feat, it's strictly better than *two* feats!

By level three, it's equivalent to Toughness and Fast Learner put together, and it guarantees that your starting class is a favored one -just in case you would normally be unable to pick a favored class, or make that particular class into your favored one, or you decided to have two favored classes.

I'll have an answer as to whether or not I am willing to allow this... Thing... When the shock passes.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:22, Sun 13 Nov 2016.

So, I had a chat with one of my old GMs, just to see if I was going insane or the world was, and he suggested I disallow campaign traits that are not from the campaign we are playing.

Since this is not a published adventure path/campaign/what have you, that essentially means I am not allowing campaign traits, even from Paizo sources.

As a compensation, I will allow you to choose a custom trait balanced against other existing one, or granting half the effect of an existing feat, as your trait for the Campaign category.

Which is strictly better even than picking a campaign trait from anywhere you like, and yet still not quite in the same category as a RAW Finding Haleen.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:49, Sun 13 Nov 2016.

A couple of homebrew traits up in the house rules. The race trait is taken from a gnomish one, it can apply to other races on a case by case basis.

Almost done. Just need to decide and record on equipment.

Lol. As a relative noob to this game...this does not surprise me. Probably put in by a disgruntled employee in the same way every update for WH40k nerds one thing and boosts the race that's been getting beat up in their office skirmishes.

To the group: I went with the linguistics ater all so aside from Draconic, which either Mage should have, I'm pretty ok with talking to people.

In reply to Mysterious Ancient Wizard (msg # 20):

Only Trait I found as bad as Haleen was Heirloom Equipment. At least until they rewrote if.

What did Heirloom Equipment look like before they rewrote it? Proficiency in that weapon type and a +1 bonus? Because that's, again, two feats for the price of a trait, so yeah, technically about as bad as Finding Haleen.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:14, Wed 16 Nov 2016.

Proficiency and +1, that's correct. That was a flat +1, too, not just limited to one maneuver.

Edited the house rules, added a section on bending the rules in order to carry an additional/concealed weapon or an extra quiver or bandolier. Note that your first quiver or bandolier has its own slot (and yes it's the same slot).

Here are the things that are supposed to be in your character sheet:
[ ] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[ ] HP (and levelup)
[ ] Feats (and levelup)
[ ] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup
[ ] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[ ] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[ ] Equipment as level 1
[ ] Big Six Wishlist by level
[ ] Other wishlists

Notes:
- HP and levelup: sometimes you won't want your favored class bonus to go to your HP, so your hp levelup isn't always straightforward.
- Skill levelup: for your main skills, mark "every level" (or "full"), or "every two levels" (or "half").
- A levelup list for ability scores will look something like:

STR STR DEX CON CHA

or

L4 STR L8 STR L12 DEX L16 CON L20 CHA

Or something of that kind.

- A levelup list for feats would look something like

L1 Weapon Finesse
L3 Power Attack
L5 Dodge
L7 I clearly have no idea what kind of build I want

And so on :P

- A big six wishlist will look something like this:

Headband (CHA, INT - Fly, UMD) at levels 4 (+2), 10 (+2/+2 OR +4), 12 (+4/+2), 14 (+4/+4)
Belt (DEX, CON) L6 (+2), 11 (+2/+2 OR +4), 13 (+4/+2), 15 (+4/+4)
Ring (Deflection) L7, L9, L13
Amulet (Armor) 7, 12, 15
Cloak (Resistance) 2, 6, 8, 11, 12
Weapon/Armor L3 (+1) L7 (+1/+1) L9 (+2/+1) L12 (+2/+2) L14 (+3/+2) L15 (+3/+3)


Please note: Level-ups and wishlists at least until level 5 would be quite useful, just so I have an idea which direction your character is going and which items you would like to have as they level up. That means you will get certain encounters rather than others, and certain items rather than others as a consequence.
If you have clearer ideas, level-ups up to level 15 are more than welcome. Up to level 20 even, but I doubt we will get that far.

---

Character sheet status:

- Aran Kalisar:
[P] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[P] HP (and levelup)
[v] Feats (and levelup)
[v] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup (every level, every two levels, ad hoc)
[v] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[v] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[ ] Equipment as level 1
[P] Big Six Wishlist by level
[P] Other wishlists

- Dakash Szagdala:
[P] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[v] HP (and levelup)
[P] Feats (and levelup)
[v] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup (every level, every two levels, ad hoc)
[ ] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[ ] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[ ] Equipment as level 1
[ ] Big Six Wishlist by level
[ ] Other wishlists

- Gron Stonestriker
[P] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[P] HP (and levelup)
[ ] Feats (and levelup)
[ ] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup (every level, every two levels, ad hoc)
[ ] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[ ] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[ ] Equipment as level 1
[ ] Big Six Wishlist by level
[ ] Other wishlists

- Leonia Sunstorm:
[P] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[P] HP (and levelup)
[v] Feats (and levelup)
[v] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup (every level, every two levels, ad hoc)
[v] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[ ] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[P] Equipment as level 1
[ ] Big Six Wishlist by level
[ ] Other wishlists

- Norroar Milner:
[P] Ability Scores (and levelup)
[P] HP (and levelup)
[P] Feats (and levelup)
[P] Skills at level 1
[ ] Skill levelup (every level, every two levels, ad hoc)
[v] Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
[ ] Class Features levelup (including spells)
[P] Equipment as level 1
[ ] Big Six Wishlist by level
[ ] Other wishlists

---

This message was last edited by the GM at 12:39, Fri 18 Nov 2016.

What's our wealth for level 1 characters? Rolled, Max, or Average?

Also, what do your notation (P, v) mean?
This message was last edited by the player at 12:52, Fri 18 Nov 2016.

"v" is actually a poor man's checkmark, so it means "done". "P" means "Partial".

Your wealth for level 1 is "up one item for every slot you have, as long as it's not magic; any reasonable carried items; all your meals and stays in inns are considered paid".

I don't want you to count pennies. Just avoid having stuff that is clearly not meant for level 1 characters, and don't try to sell any extra equipment.

So this means no scrolls?

A reminder, please.

What are The Big Six?

From the players-only OOC thread:


The big six bonuses are the bonuses that tend to be most unbalancing, as well as suck the fun out of the game, since players tend to focus on those rather than more interesting (though less deadly) magic items.

They are also the bonuses addressed by the Automatic Bonus Progression, which is what we use to determine at what level, roughly, a certain bonus is appropriate.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:05, Fri 18 Nov 2016.

No scrolls on the first day, though the wizard gets one single solitary scroll of a spell she knows, that she crafted herself as a final exam of sort.

You may ask your employer for some consumables when he assigns you the first mission, and he might be willing to distribute about 200 gp worth of consumables.

Added a house rule (under RTJ) for fast crafting for cheap items to account for that. The wizard is likely to like it. The sorcerer might like it too. :P
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:14, Fri 18 Nov 2016.

Can I just hang on to my starting gold, then? There's not a whole lot I want to spend it on at the moment, unless you have any suggestions.

I should mention that any serious purchases in Carp on the Wall will go through your boss, who, if you read the IC thread so far, is the village's closest-thing-we-have-to-a-Mayor.

Your starting gold is as likely as not to be useless to you, since you will essentially get gold rewards scaling with your level that will often happen to match the amount you need to close the gap between what you have and what you need :)

Bottom line: don't worry overmuch about your starting gold. If you need mundane items, chances are they will be made available to you through a gentlemen's agreement.

I would suggest looking into the standard starting kits just to see if anything catches your eye.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:35, Fri 18 Nov 2016.

These "black holes" in RPoL's service are killing me. And they always seem to happen during the 2-3 hours that I am available to do serious writing. I hope they get the issue fixed cause this is three times now.

It seems jase also removed the status.rpol.net site (which was, believe it or not, hosted on his own private ADSL at home) that would let you know if rpol was up.

Not sure what's going on, RPoL never struck me as excessively needy, in terms of resources, and they always kept the server reasonably up to date, which usually meant it had plenty of horsepower to handle a normal load.

Recently there have been several unexpected black outs, not to mention severe slowdowns, and no announcements as to what caused them. Hope they figure it out soon.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:11, Sat 19 Nov 2016.

Me likey....

The good news is, pages that yesterday were generating in 400 to 4000 ms are now generated in 42-96 ms. The bad news is, not sure how many people are around to take advantage of that :P

Updated the crafting house rule so that wizards and alchemists can no longer make 20 to 40 items per day. It was a bit much.

---

Edit: Well, here's hoping RPoL is back to full functionality. Most pages are now generating at less than 0.1 seconds for me, so whatever the problem was it seems to be gone for now.

---

If you can find the time to complete your charsheet, please drop me a line afterwards so I can have a look at it, and ideally and mark it as done.

The important bits for this month (i.e., the ones needed so that we can start the game) are:

- Ability Scores (and levelup)
Ideally you already figured out your stat level-ups while assigning your ability scores, so saying "DEX DEX DEX CON CHA" or something of that sort that shouldn't be *too* hard.

- HP (and levelup)
Here the question you want to answer is: "where am I you putting my favored class bonuses"? Everything else is a fixed value, so it should be fairly simple to write down your hp advancement, even if just in the form of (+x/lvl); even if they change, it should be fairly easy to figue out. Say you pick up toughness at L3, and raise your CON to 14 at L4, and get a belt of +2 CON at level 6: you can write:

HP 10 (+7/lvl) [27 +8/lvl @L3; 39 +9/lvl @L4; 63 +10/lvl @L6]

That is fairly reasonable, and it covers you all the way up to at least level 12, even if for some reason you focus your ability score increases and magic items purchases on CON. Since nobody is playing a scarred witch doctor, I'm not sure why they would, but there you have it :P

- Feats (and levelup)
Ideally, you would know where your character is going. Figuring out what you want to spend your first 3 or 4 feats on shouldn't be too hard. Remember you get two free traits, and can get an extra one if you pick a drawback. Incidentally, if you have a caster level, consider picking up craft arms and armor at level 5, and/or craft rings at level 7, so that the entire group can benefit from some additional discounts. I will remind you that your local blacksmith cannot craft magic weapons, only magic armor, so you don't get a discount there unless somebody in the group picks up the feat.

Example time again: a melee-type non-fighter might do something like

L1 Power Attack
L3 Furious Focus
L5 Cleave
L7 Great Cleave

It doesn't seem that bad, does it? It should be fairly simple for you to figure out something like this for your own character, since you probably know what you want to do with them.

- Skills at level 1
- Class Features at level 1 (including spells)
- Equipment as level 1
This is the bare minimum to start the game, should be pretty self-explanatory.

---

The scary stuff, explained:

- Skill levelup
This only *looks* bad, and that's because you probably don't realize that, by and large, you've already done it.

Here's how it works:
* Some skills you will want to keep maxed. Just put (full) at the end of the skill line.
* Some skills need to keep leveling up, but one rank every two levels is enough. Put (half) at the end of the skill line.
* Some skills are important because they are a prereq for something. For instance, you may want to pick up Dervish Dance at some point, and you need two points in Perform. For those skills, put a short reminder at the end, e.g. (L1, L2).
* Some skills you want a single rank in (e.g., swim and climb, or maybe a Profession skill for flavor). You don't have to do anything there, put in the line as normal and don't add anything at the end.

Do note that, if you have skills that you want only a single rank in, you will be left with some unused ranks after the first few levels. If you want to add one "flavor" skill per level with a single rank, maybe put the level you are going to pick it up at after the skill line, as a reminder for yourself as much as anything else.

That's is. It's nothing new, and you probably have a fairly clear idea of what you want to do here, I'm just asking you to formalize it a little :)


- Class Features level-up (including spells)
This is a bit more complex, but again, by and large you've already figured it out: your character needs to make certain choices as they advance in level, but presumably you know what those choices are going to be, at least for the first five to ten levels. Note that five levels of class features, for most classes, amounts to three, maybe four choices, one of which you've already made at level 1.

- Big Six Wishlist by level
This is probably the most complicated and easiest list of all - because you're not really used to it, but the Automatic Bonus Progression table pretty much spells it all out for you.

For instance, it says "3rd Resistance +1", and then the next time it says "resistance" it's at level 8, and then at level 10, so you can list:

Cloak: L3, L8, L10

And you are copying the table. Since you get a discount, you will usually be able to afford objects one level earlier, so you would write

Cloak: L2, L7, L9

And since it's a Big Six item, we know that the cloak is actually a cloak of resistance.

So, why am I asking for it? Mostly because the list says "physical prowess", and maybe you want DEX, maybe you wnt ST, maybe you want CON. The list says "mental prowess", maybe you want INT, maybe you want WIS, maybe you want CHA. The list says "+2/+2 or +3" (btw, if you have a +x shield, you get to keep it when you level up and get a +y armor: you don't have to trade it in for the additional +1) and I need to know what exactly you would like that +x to be.

Also, some armors and weapons are special (e.g., Celestial armors, or weapons with a special, non-+x bonus), and we will have to discuss those: not springing them on the GM will result in you actually getting the closest reasonable thing to what you want (which may be the exact thing you wanted, or maybe even something stronger).

You may have noticed that, if I cannot give you what you want, I try to give you something better - if in a different way.

So, tell me what you want, and see if I end up giving you something better ;)

- Other wishlists
This should be the fun part. You get to kit out your character with magic items that aren't in the big six list. Some of them will be consumables (scrolls/potions/wands/other), some of them will be useful items, some of them will be things that you looked at and said "hey, this sounds fun!"

As an example of useful stuff... Would you like some Muleback Cords*? A Handy Haversack? Maybe a Circlet of Persuasion?

Your WBL at levels 2/3/4/5 is 1000/3000/6000/10500; you need to spend half of it for non-big-six stuff, so you have 500/1500/3000/5250 gp to put here.

You get a 40% discount too, so Muleback Cords only cost you 600, a Handy Haversack 1200, and a Circlet of Persuasion is a steal at 2700 gp.

If you add them to your list at levels 3, 4, and 5 respectively, you will also have some money left over for consumables.

And here comes the other funny part: you can choose your consumables using whatever money you have left over from buying other cool items, and you get to 1) keep them as you level up and 2) refill them after each adventure for free. Yep, starbucks-style potions, you get free refills :P

At level 2, you pretty much have 500 gp worth of consumables, and it only gets better from there.

Good times.

Now, you might be thinking: wait, didn't I spend 600 for that cloak of resistance?

Well, I already mentioned I don't want you to count pennies, so, to keep things simple, half of your WBL goes to consumables and fancy items, even if technically you spent a little more than half on the big six bonuses.

If you get a little more WBL than you strictly should, the Sun will still rise in the morning.

Just try to be sensible: if something is supereffective, you should probably try to limit its use to big encounters, otherwise I'll have to make every encounter big enough to warrant its use.

A good rule of thumb is "try not to start an arms race with your GM, because the GM always has more arms than you do" ;P

* Muleback cords aren't necessarily useful for our game, given the special rules for carry weight that I apply, but 1) I will actually try to find a way to make them useful if you do in fact want them, and 2) it's a good example of a relatively low-level item that is normally both useful and just expensive enough that they make you think "I have to save up for my cloack/belt/headband/whatever, I can't afford those".
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:30, Sat 19 Nov 2016.

Where can we find this Automatic Bonus Progression table you speak of?

Same as everything else:

Here

or

Here

I meant to ask this at the start of the week, but are we putting our [memorized] spells on our character sheet, or in a separate thread that we will update after each rest period? Either way is fine with me, but I understand some GMs get nervous when their characters keep editing things on their sheets every day. ;)