In case you need to talk about it, I'd rather not fill up the private messages board.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 16:09, Mon 20 Jan 2014.

 All characters will be human with animal totem (see House Rule 00 - link to a message in this game)

 They will start as level 2 adventurers (with 2,000 xp so halfway to level 3)
 They are thus novices, close to becoming journeymen and starting off on their own.
 Some may already know on what adventures they want to go or their circle/guild/chapter wants to send them ; some might have no idea.
 All need to have a Maester that they can talk to (they do not necessarily get along though)

 Only core for base classes and spells (exceptions may apply, notably scouts and marshals are ok)

 Most material from WoTC will be accepted for feats/alternate class features, though you'll need to get it approved first.

 Some House Rules will apply (see link to a message in this game)

 No Psionics, no racial templates, no material from magazines

 Stats will be point-buy, 28 points ; upon becoming journeymen (L3), you get a +1 to two different stats, and again upon becoming Maesters(L5).

 HP are max at fist level, and average rounded up thereafter.

 Starting gold : double the max random starting gold for your class, +100 gp

 The setting will be more low magic than before.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:42, Fri 24 Jan 2014.

 So basically disregard all the size changes, physical differences, stat modifiers and suchlike from possessing an animal totem this time around?

 Rather a shame that, I liked that it made us individually distinct in more than just cosmetic fashion.

So, a skill-monkey is still limited in skills they can take... Would people prefer more of a charismatic or a dexterous rouge sort?

 No no no no, don't worry. Animal totems and the changes they brought to the game were a core aspect of this setting and they are not going to change.

 I was considering implementing a point system to balance the totems. Clearly the Bear, Tiger and Croc were overpowered when compared to the Owl, the Dog, or even the Jaguar and the Wolf. Which is why I didn't write about it yet.

 But then I figured, if there's only the three of you, and maybe one or two others down the road, it's probably not worth the trouble.

 I have to say though, the Nile Crocodile Totem was a bit of a monster. Based on the rough outlines I sketched for a point system, it was a 24-point build. Bear and Tiger were 20 ; Frog and Hare 18 ; Wolf and Jaguar 15 ; Owl and Dog 13.... But then I realized, the Bat was 8, and the Gorilla 13, so I thought that maybe my point system was not that good.
 You can still see the Totems there :
 link to a message in another game

 Korentin, perhaps you could create a Totem for Gharial/Gator/Caiman/Desert Crocodile, that would basically be a modest version of the Nile Crocodile ?

 Anyhow ; feel free to make up your totem the same way you did back in Animal Kingdom. I'll try and keep it balanced.

 (as a guideline, note that combining potent features like Pounce, Imp. Grab and Powerful Built are a bit of a game-breaker at low-level )

 Winger, you'd probably be better off with a dexterous rogue ; although bluff/diplomacy is never to sneeze at...

 Hmmm, I based it on the other large character totem and powered it down if anything, but there's no particular reason I had to lump mad powerz on it. A younger Solus wouldn't have his level of training, so I'd probably go with unarmed combat (because: gang member) as my only feat and not have to worry too much about it. Drop improved grab, stick with most of the rest... Should do it, right?

 I definitely agree that the Rhino Totem I gave as an example was overpowered as well. And it wouldn't matter much past level 7-8, because by then the wizards and clerics start being ridiculously strong with their spells, so it's ok to have optimized tanks along.

 Here at level 2 though, it would matter.

 I was actually thinking of giving all martial classes Imp. Unarmed Strike for free, since you all have natural weapons anyway... you may pursue with Imp. Grapple.

 We'd also need to figure out how natural armour translates with the armour as DR rule.

 Maybe AC+2 becomes AC+1 & DR1/-.

 That seems fair. Half your AC bonus, round down becomes DR, the rest of it is AC. A nice, simple rule, although the default is:

 http://www.d20srd.org/srd/vari...sDamageReduction.htm

 Which I think is mainly for the benefit of keeping monsters with higher natural armour hurt-able.

 Yes, I've seen that. And that's what I will use for monsters. Although mind you, there won't be monsters with natural armour over +10 any time soon.

 So, have you though about your organization yet ? It could be either a local Chapter of the Church of Pelor, or something more specific to the region.

 Yes.

 I don't know if you've ever read the Paksanarrion books, but the War God series by Weber and the Curse of Chalion books by Bujold all have interesting takes on the notion of the God-touched, the last incompatible with the other two, sadly.

 The first two set up a Generic Fantasy Church with central divine figure, mostly non-adventuring, non-magic-wielding priests and a modest order of perfectly functional church militant troops in varying degrees of shiny armour pledged to protect the weak and all the rest. Some of these two are occasionally gifted with the power to do more, as a result of prayer or training. Every now and then however, The God steps in, picks someone - quite often someone thoroughly unsuitable in the eyes of most of the regular hierarchy - and tells them to get on with it.

 I imagine the Pelorite Church is a modestly successful generic church of light, modestly but not critically corrupt at the higher levels where politics is involved, but on the whole essentially a decent bunch. Within the church you'd have a small number of adventuring priests using their miraculous gifts sparingly to remind people that a God is watching them, then you'd have a modest militant order called something like the Swords of Light or Swords of the Sun or something similarly derivative and terribly inspiring. All shining steel armour and sons of the nobility who want to 'do something worthwhile with their lives'. Second sons for the most part, I should imagine. Every now and then you get a real Paladin raised from amongst their ranks and everyone's very impressed.

[Private to GM: Solus on the other hand, stole from a Pelorite poor box after beating up some street kid or other, and spent the next five or six weeks in a lethal fever getting spiritually bitch-slapped, then woke up to find out he'd been cared for by the priest he stole from, who as happenstance would have is a dinky little otter fellow who turned to Pelor after coming back from whatever interesting war happened a while back. He followed the spiritual original bitch-slapping with a great deal more physical bitch-slapping as he taught the strong but fundamentally unskilled young less-a-punk-than-he-was the things he couldn't learn on the street, such as elementary weaponskill and the healing arts, because the thing about a real Paladin is that they're swords that save lives, not take them. Besides, it's a good living and that's not to be sniffed at. As the story opens, he'll basically be handed a half-decent blade, some mediocre armour and told to get out there and do some good, while the priest remains in deeply humorous correspondence with his old C.O. in the knightly order, waiting for what happens when the Sword finds out about their newest Paladin - who pretty much by definition would be a senior brother in their order by sheer grounds of who picked him.]

If you are planning on only having the three of us, it might be good to either give us some additional bonus or let us be gestault characters or something. Three is an awful small party... And we are likely to be missing either a cleric or a wizard...

Thoughts on a race:

What do people think of:

Indri (a type of lemur)
+4 INT, +2 DEX, -2 CON
Medium
Speed: 30, Climb 20
+2 Jump, Tumble
Agile Leaper: May use DEX instead of STR for climb and jump checks
Lore: As bardic knowledge

 Don't worry about the party being small ; I'll match the challenges accordingly.
 Besides, you're to travel with a couple of clerics at some point.

 Still, there are a couple of players from Animal Kingdom that I wouldn't mind adding to this cast, if they do show interest.
 [Private to Nimble Fingers:
 Namely,  Roaming Shadow AKA Snorri   and/or   rentiger1 AKA Horril
    and perhaps,   RaistlinMuyo AKA Kristjana    ]

 About the Indri Totem :
  We might want to name it something more straightforwardly recognizable, like Indri Lemur (I for one had no idea what it was before reading this)
  Features look good, although lore seems a bit random.
  On the other hand, I've just read that Indris have a peculiar "sun worship" habit ; more like sun basking actually. Maybe you could add something in line with that.

 Korentin :
  Note that Pelor does not personally intervene in mortal affairs.
  The Church of Pelor is very successful in Lineus. It speaks to some 2/3 of worshippers, but most of them also worship other gods (Boccob, Fharlangh, etc.) as well as minor divine figures linked to a place.
  There are a few organizations that train Paladins, some linked to Pelor, some to others Gods. As with most organizations, few amongst the novices (squires) become journeymen (knight errand), and fewer even reach a rank of Maester (Lord? Knight? ).

 So, no adventuring clerics, no actual paladins then?

 Well, yes there are adventuring clerics. Some of Pelor, and some of other Gods.
 Likewise, there are paladins. Most of them are worshippers of Pelor, Heironeus or St Cuthbert.

 Since you're going to be the paladin in the party, I recommend you design your own Order, like I did here  :
 link to a message in this game

 Basically, Clerics and Paladins follow the same rule as other "base classes", to gain levels in them you have to be part of an organization, and follow the novice>journeyman>maester path.

 You three will start as novices, about to become journeymen.

 Note that I tuned the whole setting down, meaning that as journeyman, you're pretty much stronger than any one you will get to meet -except for other journeymen, obviously.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:40, Mon 27 Jan 2014.

 It's pretty much one or the other really. I wasn't suggesting that Gods turn up high, five folks and stroll off, but it's a pretty low-end spell to commune with a divine presence and several divine classes require and receive a measure of oversight. My feeling on the divine is that it's best handled through visions, occasional lucid dreams and the occasional omen, no actually appearances of angelic forces or avatars required or expected.

  Names :

 As Novices, you don't get to be known by a nickname just yet.
 Which means you still bear a patronymic name.

 In Animal Kingdom, I asked to follow the Icelandic name pattern, and everyone got on board to the point of using very Icelandic sounding name. Actually what I meant was to use names of the form {[first name] son/daughter of [father's name]}.

 This is still in use today in Iceland, but it used to be the norm in most European countries (and probably many other places as well). I'd like to introduce some of that diversity.

 If I go roughly through the regions of Lineus, as described before, the name patterns would be :

 The Norse : -son -dottir ; ex : Snorri Gunnarson
 Lion Lands : Fitz- -zoon -kin ; ex : Julius Fitzpatrick
 Highmarch : O'- Mac- Nic- Kil- ; ex : Deirdre Nic Angus
 Outer Forest : -vich -ovna ; ex : Petra Jovovna
 The Singe : Ka- Bar- ; ex :  Shaka Ka-Taran
 Olive Sea : -ez -atos -escu ; ex : Hernan Alvarez
 Ayalite Peninsula : Ben- Ibn- -zada -nejad ; ex : Alim Ben Urik
 Ôm Riverlands : -putra -putri ; Susilo Sudharputri
 Slender Mounts : ?
 Erwingrad : any of the above...

More inspiration here :
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..._family_name_affixes

( I sometimes feel like I'm spending a lot of time worrying about meaningless stuff ... )

 Maybe I misunderstood you. It felt like you were suggesting that Pelor appeared (in whatever form) and picked someone to become a cleric/paladin. Which he does not.

 The idea is that if one is to become a Paladin, they have to join an order (or be forced into one, for whatever reason), start as a page and work their way up
 Upon reaching level 3, they become journeymen and start adventuring.
 Upon reaching level 5, they become Maesters and can officially call themselves and pledged Paladin.

 Same thing works for Wizards, Fighters and even Rogues.

 Which is fifty percent towards the notion I was putting forward, which is that those orders produce mostly fighters kitted out as knights, some of whom later become Paladins, usually at a high church ceremony where everyone is very pleased with themselves... But that sometimes someone is chosen, directly (without a manifestation beyond some lucid visions) to become one. They don't get the skills, but what they get is the potential, which must then be trained - in Solus's case by a mustered-out veteran - although that training is usually 'arranged' by the divinity in question through indirect means, thus neatly putting Solus (for example) inside the character class with a trainer who is in communication with certain upper-echelon sorts within the order who know better, but at odds with the rather better-born rank and file who are going to be mostly noble second sons and wealthy merchant sons (the equipment is expensive), mainly for the purpose of shaking up their certainties, which is likely to happen every generation or two.

 Actually the idea is that only those with the potential (and that would include the PCs here) do move forward to become Paladins. The others remain pages with expensive suits of armour.

 Same thing works for druids/rogues/sorcerers ; many will join the Order of the Oak/Crimson Guild/Conjuration Covent, but only those actually capable will move on to become journeymen, prove themselves and become Hierophant/Master Thief/Warlock.

 The notion may seem pointless, put it's actually important as it explains why not everyone in the world spends their life gathering xp and becoming 10th level experts with more hp than a young dragon.

 While the outside world (nobility, politics, merchants, etc...) may work on a nepotist basis, the idea is that those organizations (metagame : generic term for any group that trains people with levels in a base class) are all about meritocracy. Not because it is nice, but because it is the only way that it works.

 It hardly seems all that necessary, all you really need to do is what you have done, which is basically say that 'Epic levels start at 6' to explain why there aren't more tenth level characters, then dramatically reduce the amount of nominal experience ordinary, day to day activities represent while acknowledging that hit points are, to a certain degree an abstract measure of destiny and luck as well as wound resistance.

 Additionally, it presents the problem that some of those paladins/druids/sorcerors would have to be fighter(acoylte) or warrior 1-2 first, which when you've got itty-bitty room to level up in is a bit of a kick in the goolies. If you don't get the class until you level up, what happens to the prior knowledge and what happens to those who get the same training, but aren't chosen? Sure, being a Sorceror is a fairly bootstrapped profession (you've got it or you don't, now go get training) but a cleric, druid or paladin all need external approval for their power, and not all will get it.

That's what being a biologist does, lets you know all about different sorts of random animals out there :) And, therefore, to get these ideas of good critters to be and then need to build a totem around them.

Of course I'm fine with calling it an Indri Lemur.

Lore, in some ways, is a bit random. The Indri and the Orang-utan are basically the two animals that are considered by locals to basically be equivalent to humans, even brothers to humans. I therefore wanted something special, something not normal to most animals, something sort of unique, for one of their special abilities. Lore seemed reasonable while being pretty unique.

Further, the reason I thought that would be beneficial to the rougey character, is that as a skill-monkey,  even a rogue doesn't have enough skill points to dabble in "thief-like", charisma-based, and knowledge based skills. Having a lore ability would allow me to still cover knowledges without being nearly as specialized, although obviously our Brilliant Mind will have far more specialty and ability in those areas.

I imagine that, given their sun worshipping predisposition, a fair number would be in the church of Pelor. That might actually be something to work out with the character somehow being affiliated. I really can't think of a good ability to give someone who worships the sun, I was thinking that would be more of a role-playing thing...

Heavy Muscle, are you planning to be with the church of Pelor?

Fawn, if we do at some point qualify for a prestige class, will we be able to take those?

Also, you might have said, but I don't see it - how much gold do we start with?

Hi guys, creating my character is actually taking much longer than anticipated for the main reason that E6 rules have quite a major impact on magic users.

Being limited to a few low-level spells is quite a challenging prospect, I must admit! Mind you it will force me to be more inventive :)

For now, I'm looking into either a summonner or an enchanter, two classes I've never actually played before.
The enchanter is more appealing to me in terms of rp, because I'll turn it into a seducer/manipulator, a theme I'm quite fond of :)
The summoner would be more 'efficient' I suppose, especially in combat situations.

Now, enchantment is fun but only if the baddies/monsters we encounter are not immune to mind-affecting spells... :) Can you give us a spoiler, fawn? :)