Yesterday, Kev’s sickness led us to cancel the game. (I hope you’re feeling better today.)
This upcoming weekend, David and Chris are coming to visit us from out of town, so we’re not going to be available. The following weekend also looks bad– we’re due to celebrate Cheryl’s birthday in Reno (and stay over for a weekend of gaming.) So, at the moment, Friday August 4th looks like the next session.
An issue with Magic Items is the way creating them costs a feat, time, gold and XP. They do need to be restricted– if you allowed unlimited production without a cost, spell casters would be turning them out by the truckload at tremendous profit.
The standard system doesn’t work very well though, especially for our group, since we’re eager to keep everyone the same level, with the same XP rewards and the like. Here are a few options I’ve seen or dreamed up.
a) Do nothing; enforce the rules in the books. The rules setup some assumptions and it’s good to carry them through if you don’t have a good replacement. Unfortunately, the way the XP affects levelling and group cohesion is a drawback. *A common variant is to allow the person the item’s being enchanted for to pay the XP, instead of making the caster do it.
a1) Do almost nothing. Use the standard rules, but make each person in the group contribute XP equally. That keeps PC levels together, and remedies the situation where a caster pays XP for someone else. It succeeds completely on keeping everyone level, but may anger people who are having XP drained for someone else’s benefit.
a2) Use a WOTC XP transference system– evidently, they came to the same conclusion I did.
b) Altered costs. In the Living Ebberon games, they’ve altered the cost of items for their environment. Instead of costing 50% Book GP + XP equal to 4% of Book GP, they instead have it cost 66% Book GP.
c) Level limits. Allow casters to create magic items = 1% of their current XP each level. (So a first level character has a 10XP budget, a fifth level character has 100 XP budget, etc. You could combine this with an “overdraft”– say, if you use more than 1% (and less than a 5% hard limit), then you’re drained by the experience. (The game effect would be a negative level, which as usual effects you until you level again.)
d) Limit the total XP available for items to what’s found. Allow casters to “disenchant” items to free up the XP locked in them… and perhaps 1/2 the cost of the item sacrificed (the same amount as selling it, or the cost to enchant it.) This also allows for special treasure; balls of material for storing XP, just waiting for a disenchant.
e) A good thought you have? Leave ideas in comments.
f) From Jonathan Drain’s D20 source: Rare Components for Spells and Magic items. There’s a similar idea for using Item components to power metamagic.
Let everyone know if you’ll have a problem with gaming this Friday. As far as I know, we’re all still OK.
As ever, I’ll try to update the log— if you get there first, that’s great.
OOC: Do we have a plan we can implement? If not, let’s brainstorm, so we don’t waste the whole session figuring out what we’ll do.
(Well, Next Game: Friday, June 30th has become Next Game: Friday, July 7th. No other changes necessary.)
Having dealt with a nasty “rebel pirate” attack, it looks like our liner’s on course to hit the station next session. With our good friend, the administrator’s nephew, we’ll enjoy a little light gambling on station… and maybe figure out a good plan for taking the place for the rebellion. (As ever, I’ll update the log during the week, unless you beat me to it.)
Mechaton is a lego wargame of giant robot warfare. Mechaton Core, Short Game rules, all linked together.
AG&G Wiki, for Vincent’s fantasy game.
Aspect wiki , filled with handy examples of Aspects and their invocations.
Monkey Do, Monkey See a design and general interest blog.
We’re looking forward to the next session of the game, as we approach Cloud City and prepare to make the way safe for the tibanna gas harvesting. As ever, I’ll try to update the log with at least a rough outline of last session.
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You scored as Either. You brain is neither specifically male nor female dominated in the way you perceive things and as bad as this sounds it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both limiting gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not nec. mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, though it might.
Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* |
I’m looking forward to continuing our the adventures of our Star Wars group in two weeks. We should be able to string together a couple of games in a row.
If you have any problem with resuming on the 17th. let us know!
— Scott
PS: As ever, there’s an up to date skeleton of our adventures at New Republic Log. If you want to flesh it out, that helps everyone.
Charles and Hilzoy have a dialogue about Islam:
Charles begins with a post; Hilzoy responds, and later then she expands her point. Thereafter, Charles writes a post grappling with Hilzoy’s inclusion of cultural humiliation as a factor. Hilzoy explains why cultural humiliation is important to understand, then she continues to explain how technological progress does and doesn’t relate to the concept.
UPDATE: After miscommunication, the session was canceled.
Maybe. We’ll need to make sure Dad thinks he can make it, since he’ll be headed up to Kristen’s graduation from CSUS the next morning way too early. In comments, please indicate which weekends you’re free to game. For now, Jim, Scott, and Jen are big drags this month.
May 26th: Unavailable
June 2nd: Good (Dad’s off to Kristen’s graduation the next day, but he’s sucking it up. Yay game!)
June 9th: Unavailable [Dad’s off to Eric’s]
June 16th: Good [though we’re off to Chris and Holly’s wedding the next morning]
June 23rd: Good [so far…]
The campaign log has session five sketched in. Expand on whatever interests you.