Worse for Wizards.  Their starting HP tends to be single-digit.  Play one of those solo and you can probably die from a strong gust of wind, hehe.
Level 1 quests for them involve knitting competitions and cook-offs (beware of sharp needles and red-hot pots though!)  ;)

Artificers get cool tricks though.  If I ever play a 5th Edition game, I'm playing an Artificer again :)
This message was last edited by the player at 12:52, Mon 24 Oct 2022.

I remember playing Baldur's Gate, back when that first came out (on four or five CDs :D), and early on you meet a couple of NPCs who want to join your party, one of which is a wizzy with like, 4hp who can therefore be one-shot by pretty much anything. Obviously that doesn't use Fifth Ediiton because that wouldn't be out for another couple of decades, it's Second Edition but still. Fourth Edition has the least-squishy characters, I think.

Yeah, it's the difference between heroes literally starting to learn their craft in the field and heroes who are freshish but have done some stuff first. Like Buffy from the film vs Buffy at the start of the TV show :p

Having never watched Buffy, I'll take your word for it - I didn't even know there was a film :D.

Like Tony Stark will eventually be Iron Man, but first he's gotta sort himself out and figure out how to build a suit of powered armour out of a box of scraps in a cave to escape from captivity...

Spiderman had to get bitten by a radioactive spider (anything involving spiders is likely a traumatic experience!) and have his poor old uncle bite the dust before he figured out the whole power/responsibility thing...

Superman...
Nah, actually, he had it pretty easy.  Started off at the highest level.  Flashy git!  Total min-maxer, I bet he only took that weakness to Kryptonite to get extra skill points, I mean how much Kryptonite do you find on Earth?!  :|

Oh yeah, it's like Toby / Andrew Spiderman who are completely newly bit versus Tom who we see has settled in to himself a little.

If these had been TV shows, there would have been a longer build up with Toby/Andrew getting good and learning to Spiderman.


Obviously some people prefer to start from scratch mechanically, hence it's been the default of most RPGs including D&D, but players actually want to feel cool from the start, hence the 4th edition characters. Very funny many people rejected the best version of that, which they still want even now when D&D's gone back to soft, squishy starting characters. Though wizard progression in spell effects does seem to have increased in speed so you don't need to level up too far to have busted big fireballs, etc :)

"I think I'm too powerful to start with.  I want to be a beginner, just starting out on the road to adventuring.  Can you make my character a bit weaker at level 1?"

Ok...

"NOT THAT WEAK!!!"  :o

hehe :)

They have fewer levels too.  20, as opposed to 30.  So you get less time to get good too.  So the power-up curve is likely a lot steeper.

That said, there are a few homebrew mods that add extra levels.  And a lot more that add other stuff, so if you want it in 5th, it's probably out there somewhere.
I found a whole site of them that I've been drawing on heavily.  So this game I'm running is very heavily house-ruled and with cool bits bolted on compared to a 'normal' 5th Edition game.
(The Rule of Cool still overrules all other rules though!  I know my player is capable of coming up with some amazing ideas, and I want her to feel free to throw them in there.  And sometimes, you just gotta blow stuff up in epic style!)  ;)

I'm pretty sure Fourth Edition is the only one where you can level to 30 - the others are 20 or lower, as far as I'm aware, though fan-made "expansions" exist for at least some (definitely 3.5 and Pathfinder) to go past that. I've heard that, at least for Fifth Edition, there isn't much support/content once you get past level 15 because then it becomes super broken and even more unbalanced than at the lower levels, or something.

Old D&D let you go up to 36th level, but you were basically going to demi-god and godhood when you started those later levels.

3rd edition had uncapped epic levels after 20, which is what 4th edition was mapping with levels 20 - 30.

Ah well, who needs godlike powers anyway? :)

Although I do have one NPC intended to appear in the late part of the game who uses a homebrewed Archmage type of Wizard build called the "Grand Caster".  It's probably close to the power level of a 30th Level Wizard.
Comes across as a kind of "arcane demigod" type of character, a bit like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, but is still mortal and only slightly less-squishy than a normal Wizard.  Though with better tricks to keep themselves from getting squished, such as an ability that lets them actually use a sword as more than just a spellcasting tool (they're still nowhere near a Fighter's skill with weapons, but can actually use a sword to fight enemies that get up close and personal with them now).

Might be a bit overpowered for a normal game, but if a solo player wanted a magic-user who actually stood a chance of survival without tougher characters to hide behind all the time, it could be a good option...

You can't go wrong with a Gandalf character. :D  I do like how you can look at the hobbit as an RPG campaingn in that regard, with Gandalf sort of around to set things off and help but isn't always helful, or will just walk off :p And of course has to tell the player characters constantly 'don't insult this person! Do you want me to leave you to it?' :p

The Swordmage class in Fourth Edition is basically "spellcaster who does the magic stuff through their sword, up close". I'm petty sure other editions have had some kind of equivalent, though I'm not entirely sure. I think there's a class called a Bladesinger somewhere, which might be along similar lines, although I'm not sure. DnD also already has at least one "uber Gandalf-ish mage dude" in the form of Elminster from the Forgotten Realms.

Yeah, that was the fluff text behind the Grand Caster class design.
Some powerful Archmage from ancient times somehow reincarnated into the present time, but remembering their old skills.

So, yeah, if you ever wanted to actually play as the likes of Mordenkainen or Elminster, that might be close enough :)

Hey, since I see you both occasionally bounce through here, just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and all that! Hope things are going well, and if not that 2024 will be better :p

Oh yeah I'm still poking into RPOL every day, evne though I haven't been in a game here since...erm...I don't even know, actually...a couple of years, maybe? I just got a bit demotivated to really look for games to try and join because of how they die out so quickly, and it's rare enough to even see one in DnD Fourth Edition :(. One day I'd like to play the characters I've made for previous games that didn't go anywhere.

Anyway yeah, happy midwinter gluttony-and-gifts period :D.

Merry whatever and happy things and stuff from me too!  :)
(Yeah, this has NOT been the best year, in fact it's a perfect candidate for the worst! So, glad to see the back of it!)

I mostly just check in here from time to time 'cos I'm still in one game.
(Keeping it going mainly because I'm the only player in it, so if I leave, it dies, and I'd feel like even more of a horrible person than usual for doing that!)

But yeah, I miss this.  I still have a few characters I'd love to play in a game, but I don't want to start one if it's going to just fall over and die suddenly, rather than run to a proper ending.  Every forum-based game I've played has gone that way.
It's like getting into a novel that you really like, only to find someone ripped out most of the pages, so you never find out how it ends!  :(

I'm still doing occasional world-building stuff for my own setting though.  Going slowly because my time is rarely my own these days, but, yeah.
Never did get around to starting that game with my friend 'cos we both keep getting snowed-under with offline stuff.  But, it remains as a distant dream we have in an uncertain future.  Maybe someday, Azrien's story will be told.  (That's the name of the character she created to play in it).

Anyways, I still check in here at least twice a week, so I'll respond to any messages when I do :)
This message was last edited by the player at 10:13, Sat 23 Dec 2023.

I've had a couple of games that ran to conclusion. One was the first forum-based game I ever joined, which wasn't here - it was the forum me and Wuffy both came from before here (and I still check there every too, I've been a member for over twenty years now :O) and it was Wuffy who was running the game, in fact. That went for about two real-life years but only two in-game days :D.
There was also a game on here that I was in that lasted a couple of years before getting a proper ending of some kind that I can't really remember now. Oh wait you were in it, as Swift Fox :D.
I've joined a bunch of other games here but mostly they've died pretty quickly. One was over before it started but the GM turned out to be kind of an arsehole, so I'm not gonna join anything else they're running ever again. If either of you fancy running some good old Fourth Edition at some point, let me know and I'll bring one of my dudes :D.

I think that one was cut a little short too, wasn't it?
Still, it got close.  It's the closest I've ever gotten to an ending on here.

If anyone is thinking of running a game, feel free to ask me about specific characters you might want in it.
I got a list.

Rowan - Wise slightly-eccentric Shaman from a distant land
Kallista the Firestorm - An adventurer with a literal fiery temper!
Doran - A wandering Skald with a mysterious past who fears the future.
Maeve the Magnificent - Crazy, just crazy!

Among various others...  ;)

Back from my winter travels! Happy New (and hopefully better) Year!


Yeah, there's very few games that's I've been in that continued to a conclusion. The one I ran for Ameena, etc, and one I ran on here with some of the people from Tower of the Sun / Project Aon that was a 'quiet' single day advernture that ran five months. Note those two actually ran concurrently and basically ended together :p  Those had definitive end goals though. Harder to run a continuous or very long campaign since life always changes. Sadly the more draining work environment that led to me needing to drop this game hasn't gone away, in fact it's only gotten worse, so I'm afraid I'm unlikely to run anything any time soon or even play in anything requiring any sort of timely participation  :(

So yeah I've only had some very short 'one shot' games I've played in as a player actually come to an end. And only seen one or two externally keep going.

It was quite annoying to not have the Rebirth of the Kai game have a proper ending, given we were so close and had basically made all our choices. Oh well, it effectively got to the end so let's count it!

I think the game that pulled in some of the players that ended up in Rebirth of the Kai ended before it's time. I had a couple of villian games stop dead. I'm currently in one (pathfinder one) that goes slow enough to keep making contributions to it, that seems to be managing to last. However the slow pace does feel like we'll probably have it need to stop way before the actual story ending :(

Also not sure I like the new forum layout :p

Yep, really hate the new layout.  No idea why they needed to change it, as the old layout worked perfectly well.
But that's modern web design.  They see a site that works perfectly well and think: "How much can we get away with obscuring the actual site content with additional unnecessary bells and whistles and throwing in a bunch of 3rd-party scripting that utterly breaks the functionality for anyone using a script filter plugin?"

I used to be on DeviantArt before they forced everyone onto the new site interface, and when that happened I couldn't even log in any more because the site wouldn't load properly for me, so, yeah.  Not going back.
At least this site still works for me.  Hopefully they won't mess with it further.

Anyways, happy new year.  Can't be much worse than the last one.

Hopefully will be able to make some more progress on world-building here over the next 12 months.  Starting to think I may have been a bit (or a lot!) over-ambitious with it!

Ugh yeah I don't like it either. When I first logged into it a week ago or whenever they changed it, my old green colour scheme was still there. I went into my preferences screen to see if I could tweak anything about the horrible new layout and noticed that the "Character Portraits" and "Rmail Enabled" things were showing as neither "On" nor "Off", so I clicked them to "On" and hit "Update details"...and it wiped my green colours and put it to the default crappy white one instead. I clicked through the ones that were in the list to see if I could get mine back but none of the ones change the background, just the panels and stuff, so for now I'm  just using "light green". There is a "custom" one but that was like, it had a million different aspects that can be changed and buggered if I have any idea which is which or which RGB values the old theme had :P.
I also don't like how wide the main page is - it takes me a second to see which lines have the red numbers in for new posts, and I mis having hte menus along the top instead of down the side. I hate when they change something so it's "better for mobile users" and I'm like...okay, but I'm not on a mobile, I'm on a PC and you've now made it all crappy for me :P.
Anyway yeah, happy new year and all that, lol.

Hmm, seems they've changed the layout a bit.  Makes it easier on the eyes at least, but still feels a little awkward.  Have to give it time I suppose...

Argh, losing stuff you've managed to sneak through a change sucks worse cause you think you've gotten away with it :p

Purple theme actually looks really trippy now...
(@_@)'