Post by Joseph Barros on May 11, 2009 16:32:04 GMT -8
Only one house rule so far.
1) All books are OK to use, but anything coming from Dragon magazine must be cleared by me with at least a week's notice. If you don't give me at least a week you don't get to use it until I get a week.
Differences between mine and other DMs' games:
...In my game I am eliminating any and all penalties for death. If your character dies your next character will share the same XP. The main reason for having death penalties is to discourage players from intentionally killing characters or acting needlessly reckless for non-story related reasons as it is disruptive to the campaign and can weaken the immersion of other players in the fantasy game world.
We have a good group of people that are all interested in investing in one character and the story and I don't foresee anyone breaking that trust. In the future if I see players doing that I will bring the house rule back, but for now it hurts not only the party, but also unfairly punishes heroic deaths. If the main tank goes down saving the life of the warlock I believe that player should be rewarded not punished, because that guy paid the ultimate price to fill his role to the best of his ability. That's called role-playing and I'm not about to restrict that in any way.
...Most of you already know this about my games, but just being clear that crit misses and crit hits will apply only to attack rolls. They will not apply to skills and ability checks. This is not a house rule. Crit hits and misses in any edition were combat only. Applying auto success and failure to skills and abilities is and always has been a house rule and one I've never been fond of. I don't think it reduces the fun, because 20's and 1's on skill checks are just plain silly and often nigh-impossible to explain in-game. I'm sorry, but there should be absolutely ZERO chance of you having knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of beings like Orcus or Demogorgon if you have an arcana check of 1. Don't like being a moron? Take a skill training feat. You don't get to be Superman on an athletics roll of 20 anymore. Cry harder.
... 7/20/09 A double weapon with the offhand property doesn't allow you to use it as one handed weapon. It just means that when wielding the two handed weapon you can use powers and feats that require you to have an offhand weapon even while holding a single two-handed weapon. It is a huge stick. Unless you are a very large creature it is not nor will it ever be anything but an improvised weapon *at best*when held in just one hand. Any other interpretation, even if proven through poorly worded rules, is just ridiculous. Unless you can cast a spell or ritual that breaks the laws of physics here, this is how I'm going to treat staves.
I'm gonna say no to both jagged and daggermaster working with arcane powers. Obviously I have no problem with powergaming in general, but there is a point where quite clearly a character build starts to become a nonsensical collection of numbers that fit together only due to poorly worded loopholes and not because there is any sense or logic behind it. At some point you have to step back and go "ok. This is just silly." This is just silly.
So here's my final judgment call: Weapon Focus and Two Weapon fighting will grant their bonuses only to powers that have the weapon keyword. I think these two feats, and staff fighting as well, were intended for people who would actually be fighting with a weapon. The feats represent training in the usage of a weapon in a melee combat situation. There is no explanation as to how they would benefit the use of arcane energy since you are merely holding the implement. When you are 50 feet away from the enemy how will an enhanced understanding of hand to hand combat make your fireballs hotter or more accurate? Answer is they won't. And if I allow it to I just know I am opening a huge can of worms that will only get worse as further books come out.
As for Jagged and Daggermaster, despite what loophole may exist a jagged dagger is crafted in such a way to be more deadly when stabbing someone. I would allow blood iron however due to the justification that the rare form of iron has magical properties that would enhance arcane users. Daggermaster is also a big no. I mean come on, the encounter and daily power are melee powers! Quite clearly this PP was not intended for implement users. Yes there does seem to be enough there to justify getting a jagged dagger or taking Daggermaster for the class features and ignoring the powers from a legalese point of view, but I'm not running a law firm... I'm running a Dungeons and Dragons game. I'd like to strongly discourage exploitation of rules that can't possibly cover every single idea players come up with. That would easily double the size of the books. At some point some sense of reality and what is known as Read as Intended needs to come into play. I place a lot of value on RAW but only if there is at least a little bit of RAI involved.
Finally I don't think this latest ruling will be at all limiting to arcane classes, because there are plenty of good weapons and feats for arcane users that were actually intended for arcane users. Make good use of them!
1) All books are OK to use, but anything coming from Dragon magazine must be cleared by me with at least a week's notice. If you don't give me at least a week you don't get to use it until I get a week.
Differences between mine and other DMs' games:
...In my game I am eliminating any and all penalties for death. If your character dies your next character will share the same XP. The main reason for having death penalties is to discourage players from intentionally killing characters or acting needlessly reckless for non-story related reasons as it is disruptive to the campaign and can weaken the immersion of other players in the fantasy game world.
We have a good group of people that are all interested in investing in one character and the story and I don't foresee anyone breaking that trust. In the future if I see players doing that I will bring the house rule back, but for now it hurts not only the party, but also unfairly punishes heroic deaths. If the main tank goes down saving the life of the warlock I believe that player should be rewarded not punished, because that guy paid the ultimate price to fill his role to the best of his ability. That's called role-playing and I'm not about to restrict that in any way.
...Most of you already know this about my games, but just being clear that crit misses and crit hits will apply only to attack rolls. They will not apply to skills and ability checks. This is not a house rule. Crit hits and misses in any edition were combat only. Applying auto success and failure to skills and abilities is and always has been a house rule and one I've never been fond of. I don't think it reduces the fun, because 20's and 1's on skill checks are just plain silly and often nigh-impossible to explain in-game. I'm sorry, but there should be absolutely ZERO chance of you having knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of beings like Orcus or Demogorgon if you have an arcana check of 1. Don't like being a moron? Take a skill training feat. You don't get to be Superman on an athletics roll of 20 anymore. Cry harder.
... 7/20/09 A double weapon with the offhand property doesn't allow you to use it as one handed weapon. It just means that when wielding the two handed weapon you can use powers and feats that require you to have an offhand weapon even while holding a single two-handed weapon. It is a huge stick. Unless you are a very large creature it is not nor will it ever be anything but an improvised weapon *at best*when held in just one hand. Any other interpretation, even if proven through poorly worded rules, is just ridiculous. Unless you can cast a spell or ritual that breaks the laws of physics here, this is how I'm going to treat staves.
I'm gonna say no to both jagged and daggermaster working with arcane powers. Obviously I have no problem with powergaming in general, but there is a point where quite clearly a character build starts to become a nonsensical collection of numbers that fit together only due to poorly worded loopholes and not because there is any sense or logic behind it. At some point you have to step back and go "ok. This is just silly." This is just silly.
So here's my final judgment call: Weapon Focus and Two Weapon fighting will grant their bonuses only to powers that have the weapon keyword. I think these two feats, and staff fighting as well, were intended for people who would actually be fighting with a weapon. The feats represent training in the usage of a weapon in a melee combat situation. There is no explanation as to how they would benefit the use of arcane energy since you are merely holding the implement. When you are 50 feet away from the enemy how will an enhanced understanding of hand to hand combat make your fireballs hotter or more accurate? Answer is they won't. And if I allow it to I just know I am opening a huge can of worms that will only get worse as further books come out.
As for Jagged and Daggermaster, despite what loophole may exist a jagged dagger is crafted in such a way to be more deadly when stabbing someone. I would allow blood iron however due to the justification that the rare form of iron has magical properties that would enhance arcane users. Daggermaster is also a big no. I mean come on, the encounter and daily power are melee powers! Quite clearly this PP was not intended for implement users. Yes there does seem to be enough there to justify getting a jagged dagger or taking Daggermaster for the class features and ignoring the powers from a legalese point of view, but I'm not running a law firm... I'm running a Dungeons and Dragons game. I'd like to strongly discourage exploitation of rules that can't possibly cover every single idea players come up with. That would easily double the size of the books. At some point some sense of reality and what is known as Read as Intended needs to come into play. I place a lot of value on RAW but only if there is at least a little bit of RAI involved.
Finally I don't think this latest ruling will be at all limiting to arcane classes, because there are plenty of good weapons and feats for arcane users that were actually intended for arcane users. Make good use of them!