>>92656155
>How would you price a magic item that gave you five charges of a "greater spell immunity" effect, at-will, versus a hostile spell? On one hand, its only five times rather than for x many minutes, on the other hand, it can be versus any spell (that isnt 9th level) at any time.
Using various methods, I've gone from as low as 18,000 to as high as 48,000 gold.
>five charges
>at-will
What do you mean by this, isn't it one or the other?

>>92656013
Got a link? I'd like to read their arguments for and against.

>>92657206
>https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?666738-How-to-calculate-ECL-of-a-True-Dragon-(Silver)-Mount

>>92657233
I'm inclined to agree with 'pabelfly'. RAW, they don't stack. Dragon Cohort goes keyed off of that table in Draconomicon, and Dragon Rider uses its own table, and requires you to use the Leadership feat. Making them stack would be a houserule.
https://dnd.arkalseif.info/classes/dragon-rider/index.html
https://dndtools.net/feats/draconomicon--92/dragon-cohort--3250/

Do you think otherwise? Why so?

>>92657465
Nope, that's my exact reasoning as well.
These are two things that exist parallel to each other, it's either one or the other.

>>92657514
Makes sense.

Okay. My question is a bit more obscure. Hopefully one of the "Eclipse" guys is around.

Martial Arts (p84).
You buy the Martial Arts your GM puts in the game with skill points, and at every odd rank you get to choose one of the abilities off the Martial Art's list. You can only use one Martial art at a time, but you can switch between them as a free action.

All of that, I get.

Here's what I can't figure out. It says if a PC invents a new martial art, it doesn't have a key ability, and it takes a few generations before a martial art has one. All of the examples in the book have one. The ones on his blog have one. Great.

But - so far as I can tell, you never roll your martial art for anything, except for the 'breaking' ability for breaking boards and whatnot, it's just a track of combat buffs & abilities, and fighting styles you can switch between. Right?

>>92657761
Even the Breaking ability only scales with skill ranks. It may be left over from an earlier draft, or the whole setup may only exist to shift combat mechanics into Skill Points.

>>92657189
Sorry, what I meant is that it has five charges but you can choose when to use them. So your enemies cant just drop five magic missiles on you only to follow it up with a blasphemy.

>>92658007
If it has finite charges, then I recommend going with the lower price. Once it's gone, it's gone, so don't punish your players for making the investment.

(Eberron) Primordial Troll Egoist. Good or bad idea?

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>>92658899
(forgot about image)

>>92657465
>>92657514
Iirc, you can not get more than 1 'Leadership' feat to begin with.
Even still, as mentioned, you are doing the same thing; the Dragon Lance book came out before the Dragon Cohort feat existed (which was taken from the Dragon Rider prc I suspect).

>>92657179
>finally get a copy of Lords of Madness
>has 40 aberration based adventure hooks
>1. Aboleths enslave a local lord

>>92659597
In my reading, they seem to mostly work on replacement rather than hard incompatibility. If you really wanted to, you COULD have Undead Leadership and standard at the same time, which usually matters for the follow-on feats because the former doesn't have a prerequisites clause.

>>92644767
Positive Energy Aura only cures HP damage - that's not nothing, but on scale of health problems its relatively low.

Because HP damage is something that will go away naturally within a week of rest and does not affect your ability to perform in an emergency. That translates to cuts and bruises.
Ability damage also goes away within about a week of rest but represents injuries that have tangible deterioting effect on physical and mental performance - so that's sprains, deep bruising, bone fractures.

It would be bigger deal that it seems today where so few of us do actual manual labor, and so on the job injuries are relatively rare. But again, we are talking about injuries that may be painful, annoying but do not actually seriously impede you.

Most of health care, and I am talking like 99% of health care is about dealing with injuries or long term, chronic issues.
So Cure Wounds effects are only valuable during an emergency situation. Outside of that, its all about Cure Disease and Restoration which can fix 'Ability Drain'

Some relatively trivial things that might pop up around a guy like that:
> Town organizes to keep track of this cleric's where-abouts so people with minor injuries can easily find him
> Any kind of martial training guilds / schools / military camps in this settlement will find that guy very useful because it would allow their trainees to not hold back as much and that makes a big difference for practical training.

That's from the practical side of things. People with cultist mentality can make a mountain out of any molehill and if you have enough of those around, all bets are off.

>>92661832
meant to write
Most of health care, and I am talking like 99% of health care is about dealing with DISEASE and long term, chronic issues.

>92656155
Here's the fuzzy part. Figuring out what the level of the spell will be with the changes. I'm not at my PC to dig through my spell design documents so I am wing in this part. You don't have to name the spell in advance, you can decide when it hits you, + 1 Spell Lv. You don't get 10 min / lv, you only get a single use, -1Lv

And then, assuming we can agree its an 8th level spell effect with a slot (like a ring)
8×15×2000÷2÷50×5 = 12,000GP.

How did you get 18k?

>>92661832
My more exaggerated effects absolutely had to do with kooks and placebo effect thinking the guy who flows and fixes cuts and bruises will help with everything else too. I was thinking about cults popping up around faith healers IRL.

The effects would be more pronounced if you had an aura of restoration or cure disease (even if it was limited, like giving you extra saving throws with a bonus).

>>92661832
Yeah I was thinking, most people probably don't take a lot of HP damage in their day to day lives. But the military would really like to have him, and might not take no for an answer...

>>92662070
All this custom item talk has me wondering. Is there a good magic item builder / random generator for 3.5/pf1? Program, webapp, google sheets, anything?Or is the closest just the NWN item maker?

Anyone else just fucking hate the concept of wands and staffs being "finite spells in a stick?"
I would much prefer a staff to have something like 5 charges a day, and you can use 1-3 charges to cast different spells from it, but I'm not sure how that would effect the pricing.

>>92663707
I like it fine for wands, but I'm with you for staves.

Have you looked at Runestaves (MIC), or these 'Eldritch Staves'?
https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/2024/03/28/eldritch-staves/

>>92663707
>>92664748
Yeah, many runestaff examples are direct adaptations of 2e staffs.

>>92664748
Runestaves are neat, but I dislike the formula for pricing them. Since it only substitutes one use of a spell for another, I feel like it should be a fair bit cheaper.

My idea was this:
staff of [whatever], gets 5 charges each to cast:
[3rd level spell], 1 charge
[5th level spell], 2 charges
[6th level spell], 2 charges

If this were a normal (50 charges) staff, the base cost would come out to 43,020 gp. I want the cost of my custom staff to be lower than that because I view the limitation on spells per day to outweigh the fact that there's no finite cap on usage over time.
And like this anon said, >>92658621 a staff is technically a "consumable" so their cost shouldn't outweigh just buying 50 scrolls of whatever.

My 13th level Cleric finally has enough spare funds for a Domain Staff.
What would be some cool options? I was thinking of going with a staff of the spell domain.
Anyspell looks crazy flexible.

>>92665760
Anyspell is nuts especially if your DM allows metamagic.

>>92666347
I'm also considering a staff of the Moon domain, since his deity is associated with the moon, and the Moon Blade spell looks sick as fuck.

Werewolf anon here, about to call my DM and ask about some of the stuff from last thread.
I have some worries, but overall, I'm actually very optimistic about what is coming up, no matter how it comes out.
I have an experience I've never had before, and a new challenge to see in a game I thought didn't have any surprises left for me.
>feelsgoodman:).gif

>>92669551
Tell us how it went.

>>92663707
From the view point of world building, I look at 3.5 staffs like a military weapon/munition.
Its not cost effective for an adventurer that expects to fight small skirmishes every day for years to come.

But from the perspective of a fort commander who might have no fights for a year and then have a small army with several hundred orcs backed up by two dozen trolls come down on his fort, being able to hand out several Fireball staffs to low level magicians in his garrison, without caring about which spells they prepared that day and how many are already expended would be a game changer.

So for an adventurer, buying a staff is a bit like finding a bazooka - you don't expect to use that regularly, but the whole point is being able to splurge out consistent damage.in a critical battle.

Staffs would be something every country's and city's military would accumulate and hoard for wars the same way modern nations build up tanks, munitions and aircraft.

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>>92670853
>Staffs would be something every country's and city's military would accumulate and hoard
This is good stuff, given that we have real-life documents of the armour stored in the London Tower for issue* for campaigns. If you were a poor knight who had joined up for Edward I's adventures in France but pawned your coat of plates, one could be issued to you from the Crown stocks; if you are a mage who doesn't have Fireball in your spellbook you can be issued a wand of fireballs.
*) inb4 "it's called STORES, if we were meant to give you stuff it would be called issues instead"

>>92671567
Stores as in storage, not stores as in shopping.

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>>92665760
>>92666347
Actually, the best way to use Anyspell is by having an actual spellbook, like a wizard, since scrolls are consumed when casting the spell, right?
Is there an easy way for a non-wizard to write arcane spells onto a spellbook?
That's not a hurdle, finding a wizard to copy scrolls to a spellbook for my character shouldn't be too hard, but if there's a way for my character do that by himself, all the better.

>>92669551
>I have an experience I've never had before, and a new challenge to see in a game I thought didn't have any surprises left for me.
That's dope.
The wealth of content really is one of the stronger point of 3.5e.

>>92663707
>>92664748
>>92670853
The issue with staff pricing in general is that the formula of "add all the spell prices but then cut the cost of lower-level spells by 75% and/or 50%" still doesn't make up for the fact that all those spells are still competing for the same finite number of charges. It overcharges you for versatility.

Going strictly by the default rules, most magic items are overpriced for what they do, and the writers themselves acknowledged this in the preface of the MIC.

>>92665020
I've been brainstorming this a bit. I do like the idea of staves being unlimited over time as compared to wands. So let's try a different formula.

Suppose we take each spell level times the caster level (always 11 in this case, since its the level needed for your highest spell), then multiply each by the spell trigger factor of 750 (we are using this factor instead of the command word factor of 1800 since it requires being able to cast spells).
Then, if your staff only holds 5 charges per day, you multiply each spell by (number of charges used for spell, divided by 5).
Then, since all those spells are still competing for the same number of slots, divide the grand total by (total # of spells minus 1).

Thus: ((11 x 6 x 750 x .4) + (11 x 5 x 750 x .4) + (11 x 3 x 750)), divided by (3 - 1), which comes out 30,525 gp. Throw in the cost of a masterwork quarterstaff and that brings us to a nice sum of 30,825 gp. That's almost two-thirds of the cost of the original formula. If this feels too cheap, I suppose you could try increasing what would be the spell trigger factor.

>>92673262
>multiply each spell by (number of charges used for spell, divided by 5).
Whoops, got this backwards when typing. I meant, divide by (5 divided by charges spent to activate).

>>92671694
Not related and new anon, but Epic Handle Animals allows you to do what is in the pic.
I love 3.5

>>92673315
Wait no, that's still not right. If it uses one charge of the five each day, don't divide anything. If it uses two charges, divide by 2.5 (which is the same as multiplying by .4). The price is correct in >>92673262 I just didnt explain it well.

A question about staves, wands etc (there are also Scepters in Lost Empires of Faerun).
Runestaves and so are great, but what about a charge system similar to 5ed wands, with a repricing?

>>92673777
What do 5e wands do differently? Its been years since I touched 5e, and nobody used Wands.

>>92674079
This is an example, the Wand of fireballs (the equivalent of this was my first wand back in BECMI with my elf BTW, I know nobody cares but it makes me smile)

>Wand, rare (requires attunement by a spellcaster)

>This wand has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the Fireball spell (save DC 15) from it. For 1 charge, you cast the 3rd-level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot level by one for each additional charge you expend.

>The wand regains 1d6 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the wand's last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the wand crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.

Now for 3.5 it could be altered - the first thing I would do is to alter daily charges and delay the recharge mechanism to 1/day.

Going beyond my initial intention in answering you, I would increase the total charge, but make recharging conditional (say you need for this one some planar fire node, or for a druidic one you need to recie an incantation (as per SRD) in a fey crossroad.

>>92674210
There are wands like that in Eberron / MIC, right? Eternal wands or something with x charges / day? I dunno what the best way would be to slow down how fast x / day items recharge though. Like, if it's "3/day" and you make it recharge one a day, is that reasonably worth 1/3 the gold?

>>92674370
>I dunno what the best way would be to slow down how fast
Yep, that's my trouble, I am not sure about the pricing.
Eternal wands are just 2/day IIRC

>>92674210
>>92674370
>>92673777
>>92673262
>>92671567
>>92670853
>>92666403
>>92665020
>>92664748

What sources do you guys know of that expand or revise the magic item design / pricing rules beyond what's in the DMG?

>>92674210
A general recharge mechanic was excluded from 3e on the basis that you could just make another wand if you want a new one, but there are a few tricks available. The Nishruu, a 9HD Outsider from Lost Empire of Faerun, restores 1d6 charges to any item touching it when it dies, which is the most directly accessible option, particularly if you can convince your DM to let you edit your Summon Monster lists by spell research. My table actually has a small process involving the creature to generate a magic item charging tool, based on a magic item commonly found in Netheril but whose construction was forgotten, but that's not canon. Another very simple option is the Briar Staff from Dragon #326, which is both slow and expensive, but might be a useful basis for something if you're allowed to make custom items.

>>92674402
I use pathfinder's rules. Have not compared them to 3.5 actually, just figured the updated tables would be better because they came years later after more play testing.

>>92674210
Mechanically, the closest thing to that in 3.5e is probably a psicrown. Used and priced like a staff, with the following exceptions
>In place of charges, has a reservoir of power points equal to its manifester level x 50
>Use the wielder's ML to determine the maximum number of PP you can expend on a single power, and the crown's ML for all other purposes
>You can only increase the crown's ML by up to +5 over minimum, and for every +2 ML you also increase crafting costs as if the most expensive power were 1 level higher.

Since a 50-charge item is half the cost of an unlimited-use one, and a X/day item is X/5 the cost, we can come up with...

>Eternal Psicrown
>Contains power points equal to 2.5x ML (rounded down), which recharge each day.
>Otherwise has the same cost and usage as a standard psicrown.

>>92674429
There's an artificer infusion which grants an item temporary bonus charges.

>>92674429
>Another very simple option is the Briar Staff from Dragon #326,
>If buried, the staff regains 1 charge for every
7 contiguous days it spends underground.
This is great, see above the druid staff. It could be buried in a gfey crossroad or Stonehenge-like circle.

>>92674471
>it was updated to me in a dream

>>92674402
I open the SRD and look at the table for magic item gold piece values and just make my own. Fun fact, a single use item, that can be as simple as "tear this piece of paper," for any level 1 spell, costs 50 gold. Meaning you can have a bag full of True Strikes ready to use whenever you want and it costs pocket change.

>>92674496
There's also Channel Charge, also from Lost Empires of Faerun, as well as Thrall of Fraz'Urbluu (Dragon #333), the Imbued Staff (Dragon #338), and the improved domain power for the Magic domain (Dragon #342), but those are all less accessible. I am less familiar with Pathfinder, but there may be options there that he is allowed to import.

>>92674471
Its been a while, but from what I recall the PF1 item rules are straight up copied from the DMG, except for staves, and with a straightforward formula to swap xp costs for more gold. I don't recall it making any real changes beyond that, or adding any additional options.

>>92674429
Sorry for the miscommunication, but I'm specifically talking about expanded custom item pricing rules. Rather than a technique for recharging rechargeables, I meant more like an item with say:

X charges max, recharging 1 a day, or even recharging 1/wk. Its not a consumable, and it's not X/day either.

>>92674537
>allowed to Import
I'm the GM. I'll use whatever works. I just wanted to find or iron out some expanded guidelines for pricing custom items.

Might make a random python item generator at some point too, who knows.

>>92674561
Sorry, I can't really think of anything to give you a good reference. Well, consumables are considered part of your wealth, so they should be replaced when expended anyway by RAW; if it helps, you could think about consumables as being a "per adventure" type of value, and adjust the price based on the expected length of time. In this model, the Briar Staff is probably slow enough that I don't actually think its recharge mechanic should have a significant charge.

>>92673262
Same anon, I've realized a mistake. Been crunching some more numbers like an autist and the issue with trying to divide by any factor involving just the total number of spells means that you could pad out a high-level spell with several 1st level spells and it could turn out cheaper than just the high-level spell by itself.

Maybe if you put a restriction in place saying "each spell must be within 3 levels of each other" or something like that. In that case, perhaps something like "divide the total cost by (# of spells x .45), minimum 1)" could still work. A staff with three spells gets a nice 25% discount at that rate.

...fucking hell, I just want to give my players a staff that they can have fun with but that won't break every encounter.

>>92674992
What were your thoughts on Eldritch Staves? Looking at them, they seem pretty good to me (whether you upgrade its durability and make it a +1 weapon or not). It's pretty cool for an "extra slots for your cold spells without expending your slots, also you cast them at a higher CL." (or whatever other subtheme) - plus it'll hold 2 wands like Gandalf's staff holds his pipe, and you can add in a couple 3x daily spells to it that don't require you to have an appropriate spell on hand as well. And it runs on spell levels / day rather than fixed charges.

For me it seems to tick the right boxes.

>>92676774
>extra slots for your cold spells without expending your slots
that's ... actually really neat. I don't care much for the idea of a caster level bonus though, that seems like it could get broken pretty quickly.

>>92676974
Well, he breaks down the pricing, you can leave that part out and it'll make the staves cheaper. The CL bonus caps in his design at a +5 (presumably for parity with weapon enhancements), but you could skip that portion.

>>92674587
You might look at practical enchanter and see what it includes.

>>92673777
>scepters
Never got to use many as a player, but I loved seeding those things in treasure for groups to find.

>>92674471
Pathfinder's "play testing" was a marketing stunt, they didn't actually take any feedback into account.

>>92681835
That was the case with the 'Playtests' for basically all their books where playtesting happened. And they fully admitted that the vast majority of the game saw 0 playtesting before publication.

I remember seeing one post I found alarming when I played PF1, where one of the Devs were talking about how much more work the Bestiaries were because they had to get the balance right. And I thought. "Bro, What the Fuck. This monster is on the table for 30 minutes. How does it require more attention than the character-side shit we'll be using for a solid six months, what's wrong with you."

Anyways. Aside from the Bestiaries, you can assume everything in PF1 is a draft that got a quick readthrough and eyeballing to try to make sure everything in splat books is worse than its closest analogue in Core (they didn't always manage that, and IIRC Mark Seifter fought hard to get a better Monk and Rogue in Unchained, but that's why so much of PF1 player mechanics are shovelware).

The 3e designers also didn't put in enough work on design and playtesting, but they did more than PF1.

>>92681835
I am a late comer to the hobby. I assumed PF1 would take advantage of the preceding era of 3.5.
Though that said, when I actually decided to start playing and looked at it deeper, a lot of the changes PF1 made were undesirable.
my game is a hybrid and PF1 is usually the first source I go to simply because the d20pfsrd is so damn good and easy for me to navigate the find stuff. I then head to dndtools and d20srd for a second opinion. I also prefer 3.5 for some of the weird and OP options. Never saw it as bloat, I am a 'moar content, moar!' kind of fan.

>>92682780
PF1 "took advantage" of 3.5 the same way a dude with a white van and a bag of candy "takes advantage" of the local grade school. It's glorified homebrew made by people who thought the issue with martial/caster discrepancy was that martials were too strong too quickly.

>>92681835
>they didn't actually take any feedback into account.
That's interesting. Got some examples of feedback from the majority that they ignored to the detriment of the game?
I don't much care for PF, their archetypes, granular feat chains, and a number of other things aren't to my liking, but I'm always interested in a history lesson.

>>92683005
NTA, but IIRC a ton of playtesters asked for nerfs to the Candle of Invocation but it's identical to the 3.5 version.

>>92683005
Lots of people pointed out problems with the firearms mechanics and how much of a mess it was to have shitty guns with bullets you can dodge fine but armour doesn't help, but was still ultimately an overpriced shit weapon. They said the firearm mechanics were not for review, only the gunslinger class features. It was shit.

We also pointed out tons of balance and pricing inconsistencies in the ARG. They didn't fix them before publication. After those I stopped keeping track.

Paizo was just generally lazy with game design for the whole edition, and Jason Bulmahn was a terrible game designer in general.

>>92683728
Whoops, forgot to mention, I am also not >>92681835

>>92673777
>>92674210
I dunno, treat it as a Rod?

Has anyone here ever tried the 3d6 variant in UA? How was it? I'm combing through GURPS Basic set for stuff I could use in my next campaign (I've found a few bits I like so far), but it occurred to me that if the 3d6 rule in UA plays okay it would be a good bit easier to convert between GURPS 3d6 roll under attribute to 3d6 roll over DC.

>>92687571
Yes. Bad. Made save or lose more overpowered.

>>92687873
Ah. Yes. I can see how that would buff save or lose spells. That's a shame. The GURPS reaction / Influence table looks like it would be a big upgrade from d20 social skills, but it wouldnt work with a flat probability spread unless it was a d100 or bigger.

It plays reasonably nice with d20 scaled modifiers if expanded to as 3d12 though. Maybe I will just make influence rolls (diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, use the 3d12 reaction table instead of a d20? Kinda janky though).

>>92688028
Maybe the way to go is start from your 3d12 table and have players make a skill check to modify it before doing anything rather than replacing the initial reaction roll. Then someone can still try diplomacy to get a better deal from a merchant without 3.5 diplomancy shenanigans or needing to have 3d12 skill checks.

>>92688028
And then you can still apply table modifiers to skill checks where appropriate, like for a xenophobic NPC or for a hideous PC - are you going to convert any of the GURPS advantages and disadvantages to d20?

>>92688155
I was thinking of at least doing the ones for the reaction table. Beyond that, I don't know. I quickly converted the rules surrounding for long tasks and working overtime and time-based task modifiers. I also grabbed a couple bits from FantasyCraft and True20's skill rules. And I dumped the GURPS basic set skills so I can comb through it for skills worth including or stuff to expand the 3.5 rules with.

>>92688145
Maybe. I'll have to take a look at that.

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Bump.

Board's moving faster at night the last couple days.

>>92665760
>Domain Staff
Those are really good for Clerics wanting to play blaster casters who worship a deity without good blasting domains.

Anyone got experience with Savage Tide?
Wrapping up Age of Worms and thinking about moving on to that next.

Greetings, I only have like an hour <.<

I need some non-combat encounters for a party of x2 Lv8~9 players and an NPC who is pretending to be the person they are looking for. They are traveling through a mageocracy, in a desert. The NPC is wasting their time chasing a mythical creature to prevent them from bring her to their destination (the jig is up, she is not who she says she is). She is trying to side track the characters, when not outright sabotaging them.

Currently she got them to jump into quicksand to save a seagull, destroyed the shade in their cart to prevent them from successful long rest (hot sun, exhaustion on beast mode), and threw away her own food supplies to leach off of their stockpile. They think she is an important NPC, so they probably will not kill her. . .

>>92694668
What does the npc knows about that place and the party?
Are there other external factors, people, factions, events, that could pop up to thwart the party?

>>92694777
Dragon Cult is fucking about, I'm generally going with a poison enemies theme.

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>>92694777
>What does the npc knows about that place and the party?
The NPC knows the area and that they will likely be arrested for impersonating the particular VIP.
They only know the party through happenstance, since the NPC is was met robbing a location the VIP was expected. A series of hilarious rolls led to the current circumstance.
>Are there other external factors, people, factions, events, that could pop up to thwart the party?
As stated before, there is a dragon cult utilizing undead and demons. Bandits are running wild! a shady shop owner is fencing their ill-gotten gains, so their more present in this area. The magocracy is in an arms race, so generally they are not present in many cities. A rival artificer/gunslinger nation is sending in agents to steal "ancient alien" technology (arms race related). The dragons are divided into two factors, one around destroying what humans make while the other hordes it. Basically. . . one set of dragons wants to destroy the others horde. Exhaustion and Poison are the primary damage/status theme of my champagne.

Is there anywhere I could get some actual play transcripts or play by post text logs?
I want long transcripts of people playing D&D 3.5e.

>>92696049
Strange request but probably discord is your best bet, I've seen massive servers before where players contribute to a open world one game at a time. I'm sure there are some RP(G) forums. . . Gaia Online, lol.

>>92696101
For forums I know Rpg codex has a lot, but I'll have to write a scraper.
Discord sucks for that kind of thing, but I suppose there's should be an API I could use to download the messages.
Yeah, that's not a bad idea.
Do you know of any D&D 3.5e PBP discord servers? I've only ever seen 5e and PF 2e before.

>>92696049
Giantitp forums used to have play-by-post games all the time iirc. But I don't know how often people there play 3.5 these days so they might be trapped behind the forum software blocking old posts from people without accounts.

>>92696136
That's a nice one, maybe they have an archive somewhere.

bump

>>92696126
As it turns out, RPG Codex has a print mode which makes it super easy to scrape the data.
Fuck yeah boys.
Gonna try and make myself an AI dungeon master.
It doesn't even need to be good, just good enough to replace the usual solo gaming tools and be somewhat aware of the rules.

>>92700237
Good luck. Let us know if it becomes anything.

>>92696126
>>92700237
The Codex didn't seem really into 3.5 when I was there, more AD&D grogs who later fell for the "old school" pandering 5e was doing before the Critical Role bandwagoners showed up.

>>92701255
NTA but I was definitely suckered in by the idea of "the best of AD&D and 3.5 but without these pain points you have with them, and we fixed the Forgotten Realms to be back like it was in 2e/3e, we've learned from how much we alienated people with 4e and this will be a return to form". I have a few hundred dollars of 5e books I bought (heavily discounted from Amazon, but still) that at the end of the day, I regret buying. They got more than a few of us.

>>92701201
It's nothing too fancy, just some janky jerry rigged setup for my own use.
If I get it to work well, I could refine it I guess, but don't hold your breath.
I suppose I should get some solo play tables and transcripts to feed the damn thing too.

>>92701255
The 3.5e subforum has a huge archive of 3.5e games.
It's quite impressive.

>>92701407
I don't need one that fully replaces the GM, but one that was better at spitting out ideas and NPC stat blocks & writeups and loot and shop inventories on the fly would be neat.

>>92701559
Just speeding up some of the more prep-heavy tasks. I tried to get chatgpt to make more herbalism a la pathfinder a few different ways, and while it gave a few that were interesting, the numbers were useless and everything will need a thorough exiting before its usable. Still though, coming up with hundreds of different fleshed out ideas to evaluate without it would have taken me longer than the hour I spent messing with it to get the ones I got from it. Haven't had a chance to go through them all yet to try to extract something usable. Hopefully some are good.

>>92701559
That's pretty easy to do currently with cloud, and even some local models, although the accuracy part is still a bit of an issue.
It's doable, and getting better by the day.

What is your all's favorite 3.5 adventure module (Either official or 3rd party.)

>>92701407
>3.5e subforum
I don't think we're talking about the same RPG Codex.

>>92701782
Oh fuck, sorry, I read that as RPG Crossing.

>>92701608
Which cloud thing are you referring to? Regular chatGPT gives totally random and absurd numbers even when fed examples and a format. Seems to be the same as it was a year ago.

Preparing this herb? DC127 Botany. Worth: 100GP. (Etc).

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>>92704455
Regular ChatGPT can work okay-ish if you give it a bunch of well formatted information and examples.
There's this website https://labs.perplexity.ai/ where you can use some models for free. Claude Haiku and Mistral Medium can read a bunch of information at once and respond to your prompts.
But yeah, accuracy is still an issue if you don't guide the thing's hand so to speak.
Cohere's coral (https://coral.cohere.com) is also pretty good. It uses their Command R+ model that has a huge "memory" (context window).
The paid versions like ChatGPT 4 have options like vector DB and RAG where you can add documents like pdfs and .doc files for the thing to use as a reference dynamically.
You can do that on your own computer too, but the models you can run with consumer hardware are nowhere near as powerful, but it's still a neat thing to plaw around with.

>>92701710
Intro for newbies? Sunless Citadel.

Overall favourite?
Waterdeep, expanded with the 2e Waterdeep box and skull port for non-mechanical stuff.

Pretty Good and most comprehensive all in one campaign with a plotline too?
Ptolus

>>92704528
Hmm. In my experience it matches the formatting but you'll need to redo all the numbers and even then you'll have to throw out a bunch.

I did not know about the PDF reference on the paid version. That's neat.

I hadn't heard about those others. I'll have to check them out. Thank you.

>>92701710
For FR, I liked using Silver Marches and Lords of Darkness as starting hubs, but City of Splendors really elbowed its way in after it released. I absolutely love City of the Spider Queen, but I've only been able to run it once.
Also, Ghostwalk is a great alternative when a group wants something different.

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>>92704831
The Coral one apparently has web search, recovery from documents, and recovery from web links for free.
Nice.

>>92705143
>image
Warlock's power is from his bloodline, not pacts.

>>92705143
>>92704528
Which one do you think I would best choose for paraphrasing game mechanics without changing the meaning?

>>92705143
Not bad, but it doesn't seem to have grasped incarnum. In fairness, incarnum isn't the easiest thing for an AI to grasp.

>>92705192
It seems to be referencing the second paragraph on
>https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/baseCarc/warlock.html
>Many warlocks are champions of dark and chaotic powers. Long ago, they (or in some cases, their ancestors) forged grim pacts with dangerous extraplanar powers, trading portions of their souls in exchange for supernatural power.
But yes, it will sometimes give out information that's completely wrong, reference the wrong edition, that kind of thing.

>>92705333
That's a tough one.
It's often about knowing how to phrase questions and wrangle the damn things to get what you want.
I have a hunch that either Coral or Claude (Claude Haiku via Perplexity.ai) would be the best bets.
Can you give me an example for me to try out?

Hey guys, gameplay question here.
What's the proper way to resolve multiple characters with a loaded Contingency of "If combat begins and I don't go first, cast Celerity on myself"?

>>92707066
If an enemy goes first, everyone's Celerity fires off. If a player tops the initiative roll, everyone except that character activates. If this is pvp, you might have to make a secondary initiative roll that takes place as all character attempt to act simultaneously.

>>92705456
>An example to try out.
Sure. The skill rules for Jump.

I'm thinking about having it paraphrase my house ruled game mechanics so I could publish it without worrying about people being litigious that I clearly started from copy pasting from various other sources then changed them as needed.

>inb4 OGL.
They're not all OGL/d20 based original sources

>>92707679
>publish
Not that I'm expecting it to make me any money. Just thinking about whether I could avoid lawsuits without manyially rephrasing everything.

>>92707799
*manually.

>>92707799
You're going to spend just as much time copy-editing the machine's output as you would manually rewriting shit, with the added hassle that it won't have standard wording or resolve ambiguity with context.

>>92709624
I thought maybe it could handle something as simple as rephrasing text segment by segment. Still expecting too much?

>>92701710
I love Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. There are a few things I change when I run it (as with any DM & any adventure), but it is a much tighter adventure than Curse of Strahd.

I have run it several different ways, including once as a one-shot, more comic session with "count chocula" vibes.

I also ran it as a straight-faced play-by-post game with just one player. He ended up sticking with me for about 10 years IRL time and, damn, was Barovia a fun sandbox to visit three or four times a week for a decade.

It's a good mix of constrained and open ended. You don't have to railroad, but the closed-system nature of Barovia means an autist DM can really let his INTJ flag fly and start anticipating different outcomes in a way that's fair but satisfying.

My two favorite D&D villains were Strahd and Tasha, so I feel like a hipster now that 5e is out.

>>92709979
I'm not familiar with the particular tools the other anon was referring to, but in my experience with similar LLMs and chat programs, yes. Even the cutting-edge ones are prone to fabrication of data/"hallucination" as well as the insurmountable issue of being unable to maintain context.

Take jumping for example. You know that a jump check is supposed to serve both as a form of progression wherein a d20 roll is added to a skill modifier to let the player jump further/higher and that the DCs should scale with roughly the number of skill points a player can get at particular levels of play, and also this should serve as a somewhat reasonable translation of how jumping works in the real world with gravity and bipedal anatomy. LLMs break down when trying to fit multiple contexts like that, and even if you prime one well enough to do that once, it's not going to be able to use that same contextual understanding in other metaphorical ways. They're extremely good at giving approximate answers because they're aggregation engines that run off averages, but averages always break down once you get to specifics because that's the intrinsic nature of an average.

>>92709979
>>92710066
What this means in the context of section by section substitution is even if you want to avoid using D&D phrases in particular (which I'm not sure why you're bothering, the OGL exists for a reason) it's going to be absolute dogshit at keeping the phrasing consistent which is rule number one for games with large, complex, and interrelated rulesets. Even if you want to swap every instance of "skill check" with "competency roll", you still don't want the AI subbing in "talent investigation" or "specialization query" at random.

>>92710085
>OGL exists for a reason 2e and GURPS and Rolemaster and Hârnmaster are not in the OGL, and they're where a lot of the bits I'm adapting to change 3.5 are from. The OGL might work fine for bits I might want to use from 3pp sources or PF1, assuming those parts are listed as OGC (which they might not be). The only parts the OGL is a consistent source of copy-pasteable text are the SRDs. A lot of people wanted to benefit from copy pasting from the OGL while trying to lock down their work as much as possible.

But you can't copyright mechanics, so if you don't use the same wording you don't need an OGL.

>Even if you want to swap every instance of "skill check" with "competency roll", you still don't want the AI subbing in "talent investigation" or "specialization query" at random.

I see what you mean.

>>92710148
>>92710085
>OGL exists for a reason
2e and GURPS and Rolemaster and Hârnmaster are not in the OGL, and they're where a lot of the bits I'm adapting to change 3.5 are from. The OGL might work fine for bits I might want to use from 3pp sources or PF1, assuming those parts are listed as OGC (which they might not be). The only parts the OGL is a consistent source of copy-pasteable text are the SRDs. A lot of people wanted to benefit from copy pasting from the OGL while trying to lock down their work as much as possible.

But you can't copyright mechanics, so if you don't use the same wording you don't need an OGL.

*added the missing line break.

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What are the WORST class features ever, in your opinion? Base classes only.

>>92713876
Basically every monk ability. Immunity to nonmagical disease? +2 bonus on saving throws against enchantments? They're a joke for a reason.

>>92714116
Agreed. Monk is terrible. I think you could make a different shaolin / wudang monk themed class that was good, but it would look quite different, and a lot of these monk abilities would be revalued and reworked as the minor flavour effects they already are.

>>92714116
What about improved uncanny dodge?

>>92715566
Improved uncanny dodge doesn't help a lot when the rest of the class is shit. It's fine on a real class.

>>92713876
Mountebank turning you into an NPC and Risen Martyr forcing you to catch a Plane Shift ride with strong implication you're SUPPOSED to become a Celestial NPC are some strong contenders.

So - I'm pondering bolting on a subset of GURPS skills as the default list (doubling the sizes of modifiers to get it to play nicely with a d20 roll because math), and then expanding on it with d20 skills. On the surface it appears to work pretty well.

Here's my question: How do you guys feel about dropping the variable DCs, and having DCs converted into penalties and bonuses to the roll, rather than having bonuses, penalties, AND floating DCs to keep track of? Your DC to remember would just always be 20. If you attempt something easy the DM might tell you to roll with a +10, or even a +15. Math-wise, it's equivalent, but it's one less thing to remember for the PCs, and it's how GURPS is already set up, which would save me time on the rewrite.

- Note: I would only be making this change for skills. Saving Throws and Attack rolls, I would not be rewriting.

Terrible Idea? Good Idea?

>>92717795
(Available skill points would be expanded to go along with the bigger list, either way).

>>92717795
I feel like rolls in 3.5 already have enough modifiers and keeping track of even more would be more work than just looking at the DC.

>>92717858
3.5 Already has Circumstance modifiers, this would just be making Difficulty a Circumstance modifier as well, and the player would just need to remember to beat a 20. But that said, I'm iffy about changing it for skills unless I change it for attacks and saving throws as well, and I don't really want to rewrite the other rules sections. I think I will just put the extra time in to reformat the GURPS skills to have both stuff for setting the DCs and stuff for circumstance modifiers. I was mostly just wondering to see what you guys thought, and if you guys thought 'players just need to remember 20 is the target' would be an improvement.

Thanks for letting me know. I already had some doubts.

>>92718662
>But that said, I'm iffy about changing it for skills unless I change it for attacks and saving throws as well, and I don't really want to rewrite the other rules sections
Pretty sure the same done to attack rolls is just THAC0 operations.

>>92718679
Ha! I suppose so. Well, THAC0 I suppose tells you what to roll on the dice, right? Whereas this one tells you you need to beat a total of 20. But it's the same kind of transformation.

No worries.

I will say, I really thought converting GURPS skills to 3.5 math would be harder than it is. There's some tedium, but it's not terribly difficult. By standard deviation, d20 is a little less than double 3d6, and doubling the modifiers seems to match those scales nicely. Where it talks about things requiring effective skill levels, that's a bit more nuanced. But I feel like D&D +20 = GURPS Skill Level 20 isn't an unreasonable conversion, and then D&D +0 = GURPS 10, letting me roughly convert those requirements with the rule of "-10; x2".

The only part that's a big question is how I should convert the GURPS critical success / failure rules to 3.5. 3.5 Tends to operate on more of a "succeed / fail by 5" paradigm, which is fine, but the GURPS Critical successes / failures only happen 2-5% of the time (depending on how good you are at the skill), unless you try something *way* beyond your abilities, like "I failed by 20" equivalent, and they have more dramatic effects because of that rarity.

Mostly I wanted to start with it for Knowledge skills, but then I realized that I like them better in general, and I'd be better off using 3.5 skill rules for spot-filling.

I suppose, that and the GURPS Skill Difficulties, which essentially have them start out with staggered base proficiency values. Which, in 3.5 I suppose is probably most easily just giving easier skills lower DCs, and slapping the tag on it so players know it doesn't require as much skill point investment to do it.

(I won't be using all of them, since some are decidedly high-tech, and I may merge some of them, but you could, if you're running a d20 SciFi game or something).

Anyways. GURPS Skills in 3.5, isn't too shabby so far. I look forward to using it.

>>92682174
>eyeballing to try to make sure everything in splat books is worse than its closest analogue in Core (they didn't always manage that, and IIRC Mark Seifter fought hard to get a better Monk and Rogue in Unchained, but that's why so much of PF1 player mechanics are shovelware).
They didn't even do that much until 2e.

>>92718827
How will you convert defaults? Great, the penalty doubles, but what about when it defaults to just an ability score?
And what about skills that mention modifiers from advantages and disadvantages?

>>92719287
>Default to Ability Scores
Yes double the default penalty modifier. And then I was thinking you could just add ECL as your 'rank' in the Ability. With most things getting between a -8 to -12 penalty when using just your ability modifier, You'll still never be better off with your default.

>>92719287
> Advantages and Disadvantages
Those I haven't figured out how I will handle yet. I dunno if I can come up with a decent point conversion formula, may just have to convert them one by one as needed.

>>92719845
There are a few instances where the attribute default is more generous than other skill defaults. You'll want to tweak those ones, otherwise the other defaults would become meaningless.

And in many cases the ability default is the same as the other skills, in which case the gap would only usually be a +3 from ECL to HD+3, with the skill being an expensive investment and the attribute you have increasing automatically. It'll make defaulting to ability score too good compared to defaulting to other skills. Maybe scale the ability score bonus by half level or something, so it'll still always be worse than proper skills.

Any good sourcebooks on cormyr and the dalelands?

>>92725652
2e has them, Volo's Guide to Cormyr and VGtDalelands. As far as I remember, 3e has nothing comparable, which is weird considering even Thesk and Aglarond got their day in the limelight with Unapproachable East.