DnD 3.5 Edition - Rookie's Start

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

I have resurfaced from a prolonged period of inactivity! And am bringing you this little 'interest' thread.


EDIT: I'm sorry, but I have to cancel this campaign due to overwhelming pressures in RL. I hope to be able to actually start something like this up again when things have calmed down on my end. For now, the hopeful campaign is dead :(
~~

The Adventurer's School is in its Final Exam Period!
You are a select few excellent students who are just about to graduate from the Adventurer's School with an Authentic Certificate of Adventuring! The esteemed scroll is within your grasp, and you only have to pass one last hurdle: the Final Exam. I do hope you're all ready for it!

~~~

I'm looking for between 4-6 players who are interested in (for now) a once-off DnD adventure (which may or may not become a short campaign) starting from level 1.

This is, in fact, a poorly-veiled attempt at me signalling all those RPers out there who have been interested in Dungeons and Dragons, but have never really managed to play it. If you've had no prior experience to this game, and would like to learn from the very start, welcome! If you are an experienced player but have developed the itch for playing, you're still welcome to join up!

Please include the following 'bio' (which will give me a basic idea of what you plan to play. Experienced players just list what you intend to play, I suppose.):

Character Playstyle: What do you like to play? A sneaky, backstabbing bastard? A prancy musician? A badass spell-slinger? Ballistic Support? A hippy? Etc etc. Make this as brief as possible. If you had to choose one playstyle in combat, what would it be?

Character Ideology/personality: What kind of person is your character? Is he a bit crazy and eccentric? Does he have a rigid moral and stiff upperlip? etc etc (Please lean towards more nice-ish personalities. This determines your alignment - and even then I'm probably going to be quite lenient towards any discrepancies... alignment sucks)

Character Race: for the new players, choose from: Elf, Human, Half-orc, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-elf. Experienced players please clear with me any race you want (You start at level 1. no level-adjustment races please, or races that make me saaaad)

Now that that's out of the way, I will probably arrange time for a character generation workshop for players who are new to the game. If some of the other experienced DnD players want to help, that might also be useful, since my Australian Timezone will be absolutely wonderful for arranging time...

Last but not least, experienced players we shall be operating on a 28 Point Buy system.

I... think that's all I need to really say for now!

~~

Very useful link with all the information rookies need to know (http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm)

Hey Look! I have an edupad with all the 'necessary' info to kickstart your characters! (http://edupad.ch/I3BzRtgjgY)

Interested:
1. Fenris (Bardybard or maybe a rogue.)
2. Overcast (Sniper Rogue or Wizzaaarrd)
3. Steel Shadow (Rogue)
4. Sifright (CLERIC?!)
5. Aldurin (creepy necro)
6. Flarecobra (monk brawler)

arghg haha too much interest expressed! For those who have interest after the 6 has been met, check back in the future for a second instalment!

[Overcast]

Overcast, snipey rogue or a squishy wizard.

May be true neutral or lawful neutral.

[Steel Shadow]

I'm interested. I've played a fair bit of DnD, though never in an extended campaign. I usually play a thiefy thief/rogue type of the pragmatic-good alignment. I know, terrible thing.

[Sifright]

So in it hurts.

Alignment will be Neutral good.

Character will be some kind of gish. Probably a cleric/something

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Sifright looks to be carrying the entire team on his back :P

Also, I will be using expanded books such as the Complete Series (for the more experienced players), and Spell Compendium (but you'll have to actually inform me what the spell does beforehand so's I can have an idea...)

2 more slots ehhhh.

Also, with the experienced players, I'm still looking for an online hosty thingy for character sheets. Ideas?

EDIT: for new players, you do not need any of the supplementary books. They are purely for minor tweaks and variations, currently of which will be too complicated to work with since they may sometimes add more crazy dynamics into the game I do not want to (at the moment) deal with.

[Overcast]

Actually if we are expanding on books I may want a psion.

[Aldurin]

Oh yes yes yes *shuffles through Dread Necromancer notes*.

IN!

[Flarecobra]

I'd like to give this a bit of a whirl, as I've never done ANY D&D stuff before. I got what basically amounts to an half-elven street fighter (read that as monk) that I can make into a character really easily.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I was sorta going to ask about psion as well, but I haven't really played DND before so I don't know a huge deal about the class.

If Psion is out of reach, would a half-orc Paladin be a viable character? I don't know if Orcs are like, always evil, or if they actually even have paladins or what.

[Sifright]

http://www.myth-weavers.com <----- Online character sheet place thing it's really good I use them to store my sheets.

Bard I'd caution against playing a paladin, they don't work well in groups which sounds ridiculous but it's true, their limitations can also make them very unfun to play.

As a caution I won't be playing my cleric as the kind that throws out XdY healing each round, as thats a huge waste of a clerics abilities at least unless it's 100% needed to stop a player death any way.

I'll make up a character sheet tomorrow.

Rhiya have you considered using a program like gametable? it has a few nice pros like an integrated dice roller, tactical grid and the ability to store character sheets natively, it also gives you as the DM a chance to do secret rolls vs peoples saves with a single click.



Character Playstyle: Laid back cleric with a mostly live and let live attitude of course he opposes villainy but first he'll have a bit more of the sacramental wine.. and some of that toast... and some pudding.... Will use Summon spells to control the flow of battle, mostly based around tactical control.

Character Ideology/personality: Lazy, always tries to use minimal effort doesn't like to have to work hard at things and 'cheats' in various ways to get around technical limitations. That said he also likes to help people when he can, spreading happiness tends to be it's own reward as people reciprocate.


Character Race: Undecided at the moment, I feel this is mostly cosmetic with the idea i have in mind any way.

[Geminex]

If you can wait, like, 2 weeks I will be all over this like you wouldn't believe.

[Arcanum]

It doesn't look like there's room left in this for me, since there's like what, 6 or 8 people expressing interest already? Still, I totally want in because this is exactly the kind of thing I've been waiting for, having no experience with DnD and not having access to the books beyond ordering them online.

Anyway, on the off chance I can squeeze into this:

Character Playstyle: Someone who uses a tame bear (or monkey, or other animal) to fight his foes, while the character itself is mostly inept at combat. (I have no idea if this is even feasible or not).

Character Ideology/personality: Eccentric, partially insane, basically Chaotic Neutral.

Character Race: Whatever can help make the above playstyle possible.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Mmm... Sif, I'm pretty wary about psions. Cleric is fine.

For the people who expressed interest after the 6 players have been met: don't worry! After this starter game I'm actually going to run another more casual game that you can come in about. It will also be rather rookie friendly :)

[Bard The 5th LW]

Character Playstyle: Close range tank character. Ready to charge into battle. Warrior basically.

Character Ideology/personality: Quick to act, especially if heroics are involved. Wants to be a helper. Probably neutral-good.

Character Race: Half-orc.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Bard and arcanum. Sorry but I didn't expect so much interest in this. I'll run a second game after this one is over that you guys can join :)

Signups closed! If people are still interested I WILL be making a second game after this one is over!

[DanteFalcon]

Not particularly interested but because I approve of teaching people to play DnD and I have multiple years of 3.5 under my belt I can help with character gen if people need it.

[Aldurin]

Character Playstyle: A powerful Dread Necromancer who has the power to do things himself or have an undead horde do it for him.

Character Ideology/personality: Very logical and detached, with plots to create his idea of a utopia in his head (True/Chaotic Neutral since he disagrees with the good guys but has not necessarily evil intentions.)

Character Race: Undecided, but I'll figure it out after more research.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Not particularly interested but because I approve of teaching people to play DnD and I have multiple years of 3.5 under my belt I can help with character gen if people need it.

Thanks, DF! Lower levels do get a bit more tedious to play when you've got more experience under your belt, but it is refreshing every now and then to go "onoz I am squishy!"

new players can pm me for contact details so we can have a look at starting off character generating soon. I have various chat clients and will pop in to npf chat when I can too. The game will officially start in the rp section once people have linked their character sheets, and we'll try out the site sif recommended for character storage.

[Aldurin]

It may be good to use edupad for character creation at the very least, that way people can leave their works at any time and any experienced player can advise when convenient. It will also allow you to be able to check up on the pad at any time you want and help with and/or approve ideas. If it works out well enough we could keep using the pad and set an "everyone shows up on the pad at this time" sort of thing.

But since there's no pad yet, I have to ask. As a race, will you allow a Lesser Aasimar with the Magic-Blooded template (LA +0)?

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

State the books it is in, and will this be a powergaming move, since you specified a dread necro, yet are trying to play an angel-magic heritage race that shouldn't be involved with controlling undead at all? :p

[Aldurin]

Magic-Blooded is sourced to Dragon Magazine 306, and Lesser Aasimar is Player's Guide to Faerun. I don't have an exact description on Magic-Blooded but everyone on the various DnD forums agree it's +2 Cha, -2 Wisdom, LA+0. If that's too much then I can go ahead and settle for just the Lesser Aasimar part.

As for justification, it can be attributed to the disconnect from standard Aasimar culture and morals due to not being a full-blown outsider, combined with the idea that it's the best tool to use to make the perfect world he dreams of.

[Overcast]

So is that a no to my psion if so I'll be thinking over my concept another day.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

So is that a no to my psion if so I'll be thinking over my concept another day.
I don't mind psions. I just don't know the mechanics to them, and you'd have to spend the first various combat feedings explaining every single thing you do to me, which would probably be a lot of effort since I'm a bit dumb in that regard. At least with the other classes (even in some of the expanded books like the complete series) they use a more conventional means of combat that's easily explained.

If you really want to play psion I won't stop you. But you're going to use a lot of energy just simply trying to tell me what you can do, which may slow down the game a lot and cause confusion to the newer players?

[Sifright]

Mmm... Sif, I'm pretty wary about psions. Cleric is fine.

For the people who expressed interest after the 6 players have been met: don't worry! After this starter game I'm actually going to run another more casual game that you can come in about. It will also be rather rookie friendly :)

So errr, was that you liking my character concept or..


So yea Psions are very much like wizards in computer games where in spells cost mana rather than spell slots. Psions have the special ability to overload their spells allowing them to be useful later into the game than say a wizard would with a level 1 spell.

The downside is that psions have a very limited repertoire of spells/abilities compared to a standard wizard, I think Balance wise Psions are on the same level as wizards and they also dont have the same kind of stamina as a wizard in terms of maximum output.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Ok, so overloading will be something of a new idea to me.

I can allow it for this game I suppose. The mechanics will probably still confuse the hell out of me, but since this will be a little bit of a standalone (for the new players to get a hang of things before thinking about moving further), I'll be happy to accomodate Psions. Just... don't expect me to quite understand any weapons/enchantments/items that you guys may want to have...

Aldurin: I don't mind Magic-blooded, but will still be a bit wary about the Aasimar bit. I've played lesser tieflings before and they're fine on their own, and I expect the same for Aasimar. What say you just keep it at Lesser Aasimar without the added blood thing?

[Aldurin]

Ok, that's acceptable. Here's the mostly done version of my character (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=424543) minus name (I'll figure that out soon), age (unsure if you want a specified age range so I'm leaving that open for now) and equipment (starting gold is unspecified for Dread Necromancer and I'd prefer to wait for your ruling on budgets).

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Also: For the new players! An edupad is up (http://edupad.ch/I3BzRtgjgY) for those who want to kickstart their character! (generally ability scores, class selection, etc)

[Flarecobra]

Ok, I got my character sheet made up... So I'm about ready for the next step in the process.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Woohoo! link?

[Overcast]

Coincidentally also done with mine, will be putting it into the website soon.

And soon is now.
http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=425992

My death shall be quite unglorious I imagine.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Sorry I vanished for a week. I foolishly involved myself in a paintball competition and was crazy busy.

How are people going with their characters?

[Flarecobra]

I'm about as ready as I'll ever be. I do not have a link though, so how should I go about showing what my character is?

[Aldurin]

Here's the CS for the rogue I'll be playing for this round, since I want to delay my Dread Necromancer for a game long enough for him to be worth it.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=381920

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

sure think Al.

Flare, if you would like to use Myth-weavers (just make your character sheet public and linking it would be fine), it's pretty simple to use. Otherwise you can copy/paste into the Pad and I'll chuck it up into a character sheet ready to go!

Other things to note: Starting gold (items purchase, etc) is rolled on dice depending on what class you are. I'm going to say we'll operate on an honesty system for dice-rolling in game (because timezone is fuuuunnnn). Pick what dice-rolling online system (or unloaded die you have at hand), and we'll go from there!

Lastly just really waiting on Fenris I think to talk to him about how to make his character.

[Meister]

You could use Orokos (www.orokos.com) for dice rolling. When you make a roll it's stored in a database and you're given a code to link to it.

[Flarecobra]

Posted it in the 'pad. Format it as you will.

[Fenris]

Lastly just really waiting on Fenris I think to talk to him about how to make his character.

Sure! Blame it on the new guy!

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

I'm sorry, all. Due to an overwhelmingly increase in RL pressures I'm going to be unable to actually even start this campaign. For now, the potential campaign is on Hold until some future notice when everything calms down around me.

So very sorry all :(

[Flarecobra]

Oh well, I'll hang on to the sheet, perhaps I can use it in a future thing.