Joël's campaign (transition toward Shadow Rift adventure))

[IanFordam]

I think other approaches (normal leveling up) could work too, but for campaigns that do not last 20 years

Agreed! What matters is what works for each particular group playing a particular campaign.

[Joël of the FoS]

Thank you for the extensive answer. Your players are very lucky indeed. Do the players ever have different characters for different adventures. Are there adventuring groups? Or has each player only ever had one character until if/when that character dies?

In my campaign, the caracters are the same six since the start, minus one that died in a Darkon prison and was cremated. The player rolled another caracter.

But PC death happens in the campaign (14 times so far), and the players always found a way to get their caracter raised from the dead, either with found items, or help from friendly NPC.

Joël

[Mephisto of the FoS]

But PC death happens in the campaign (14 times so far), and the players always found a way to get their character raised from the dead, either with found items, or help from friendly NPC.

[Joël of the FoS]

well, may be not that way

[moonglum]

Thank you for the extensive answer. Your players are very lucky indeed. Do the players ever have different characters for different adventures. Are there adventuring groups? Or has each player only ever had one character until if/when that character dies?

In my campaign, the caracters are the same six since the start, minus one that died in a Darkon prison and was cremated. The player rolled another caracter.

But PC death happens in the campaign (14 times so far), and the players always found a way to get their caracter raised from the dead, either with found items, or help from friendly NPC.

Joël

Awesome. One last question, given that you are still running 3.5.

In retrospect, do you prefer all of the changes to 3.5 from 3.0 after all of this time? I found that 3.0 was less reliant on miniatures (many combat rules were changed to reflect the use of a grid in miniatures, which are listed as required in 3.5 and were just a quick recommendation in 3.0), a lot of the rules are simpler and leave more room for DM adjudication, monster sizes made more sense, a lot of the flavor and spell descriptions was far more rooted in AD&D which the game really moved away from in 3.5...the list goes on. Still, I can list just as many things I liked in 3.5. But overall there were easily over a thousand small changes that really altered the tone of the game.

What were your feelings on the change? And do you use 3.0 RL stuff as is?

[Joël of the FoS]

Can't answer, we started in 3.5, can't compare!

[moonglum]

Can't answer, we started in 3.5, can't compare!

Fair! Is the whole group still into 3.5 as the ruleset of choice? Do you have house rules? Are you happy with how it works for your style of campaign?

I imagine the group knows it really well and it just flows for you at this point.

[Joël of the FoS]

Can't answer, we started in 3.5, can't compare!

Fair! Is the whole group still into 3.5 as the ruleset of choice? Are you happy with how it works for your style of campaign?

Yes! We love long battles so we have plenty of space in 3.5 to please the tactician in us.

Do you have house rules?

Yes, many!

First, when Pathfinder came out, we read the whole thing to 3.5 to fix things or add interesting possibilities. For example, we adopted the feats Toughness and Dodge from this set of rules.

A fun one, a sorcerer can take a clerical domain and have access to these spells too.

[moonglum]

Can't answer, we started in 3.5, can't compare!

Fair! Is the whole group still into 3.5 as the ruleset of choice? Are you happy with how it works for your style of campaign?

Yes! We love long battles so we have plenty of space in 3.5 to please the tactician in us.

Do you have house rules?

Yes, many!

First, when Pathfinder came out, we read the whole thing to 3.5 to fix things or add interesting possibilities. For example, we adopted the feats Toughness and Dodge from this set of rules.

A fun one, a sorcerer can take a clerical domain and have access to these spells too.

Do you have all of them documented anywhere? I love reading peoples 3.5 house rules.

[Joël of the FoS]

Not available quickly, I have a player documenting these for the group. I'll ask.

[moonglum]

Not available quickly, I have a player documenting these for the group. I'll ask.

Thank you!

[moonglum]

Not available quickly, I have a player documenting these for the group. I'll ask.

Did you ever end up getting ahold of this?

Also, looking back over some of these posts, I meant to ask, is the Forgotten Realms campaign 3.5 as well? And is that documented anywhere?

[Joël of the FoS]

Do you have house rules? Do you have all of them documented anywhere? I love reading peoples 3.5 house rules.

Well, we decide to play a strict 3.5 PHB+DMG campaign. When the other companion books came out, we had a rule that a new spell, feat, etc. from these new books should be approved by the DM before they are added to a campaign.

That is to make sure whatever we add to our game is balanced and fun.

The player can read any companion book and suggest new additions, and it’s up to the DM to accept or refuse. Me, I keep what’s working with the RL darker / gothic flavor, and refuse what is too fantasy, or of course what is not working with RL’s spells guidelines - see below. The FR campaign DM can approve other things according to his campaign’s flavor.

The DM has more room to make a villain unique by using a feature not currently known to the players to have an element of surprise. Ex corrupted magic, or introduce witch magic.

So there are not really new house rules but selected additions we made to our game, but things we added to a strict PHB+DMG ruleset.

As I said, a sorcerer can select a clerical domain and have access to these spells too. This makes sorcerer more variable and we think it fits that “wild gift” they have.

When Pathfinder 3rd ed came out, we borrowed some things in it that we prefer :

The feats Toughness and Dodge we use are from Pathfinder.

We use the rules for dying from Pathfinder’s.

Some other feats we accept are Practiced Spellcaster (Complete Arcana), Mobile Spellcasting and Natural Bond (C Adventurer), Companion spellbound (PH2), augmented healing (C Divine).

New spells for RL: Blessing of the Righteous, Energy Aegis (Player Handbook II), Light of Faith, Sacred Item (Complete Champion), Resist energy mass (C Arcane), Visage Of The Deity, Lesser (Complete Divine)

When I started this campaign on 2003, I quickly decided that some spells do not exist in my RL campaign to make the campaign more gritty: fireball (too fantasy, it males the wizard more creative by having to use something else), continual light (not fun in Ravenloft’s dark ambiance the DM is trying to make. Bing! Full light!), Fly (too fantasy, everybody stays on the ground where they can be chased ) and Stoneskin (too fantasy, can’t be scared if you can’t be touched). Unless exception, the villains won't use these either.

I also decided that wizard do not automatically get new spells as they level up. They only have access to spells they found during the game or copied. There is no pink bunny delivering new spells each time they get a new level. It makes friendly wizards in RL more cooperative in sharing spellbooks. More roleplay and favors asked. The spells they find here and there includes the spells found in Ravenloft books.

And this is the summary I gave my players in 2003 at the start of the campaign:

Guidelines for spell casters in Ravenloft

There is no astral plane in the lands of the mists, so all spells requiring this plane do not work. However, teleport works through the mists instead. This is to say the following guidelines sometimes work with subtlety and should be used as this, i.e. useful guidelines.

There is a border ethereal, but the deep ethereal is still to be found.

It is very dangerous to call beings from other planes, as they can’t go back after the conjuration time has ended. Be careful if you summon an evil creature, you might get more then you can bargain with… Spells of Abjurations (returning a creature to its own plane) doesn’t work as rumoured elsewhere: it teleports the creature to a random location in the land of the mists.

There is a danger with “death” spells, by the way. Sometimes they come back. Spells with the “evil” descriptor, or necromantic spells are dangerous too, unless you choose this dark path.

Shadow magic is healthily stronger however.

You can only summon creatures from the area where you are. You can’t summon fiendish rats, only dire rats.

No spells can detect alignments, ever.

Some attack spells are tuned to affect specific alignment only. You have to specify instead the ethic alignment, ex: lawful. Your spell will then affect all lawful creatures, i.e. good, evil or neutral.

However, with spells such as protection from evil, or a paladin’s smite evil, where the effect is not visible, they work normally but you do not know if or how the spell affect the target.

Divination is notoriously untrustworthy in the land of the mists, except perhaps in the hands of the vistani. Be careful, some arcane spells involving scrying might create a ghostly eye.

[Joël of the FoS]

Meanwhile, while QtR's golem is under test phase, here's session 111 - still in the Servants of Darkness adventure. Hags and witch burning!

You will see the start of another investigation, Dominica Vimus's death. Dominica is the sister of a PC, Tora Vimus.

Use this link. Journal 111 + Dominica's journal.

Joël

[Joël of the FoS]

And here's session 112 - still in the Servants of Darkness adventure, but this time meeting Loht and bringing us toward Keening.

You will see that I made many changes to the original adventures, removing some of the things I thought as illogic.

Use this link

Joël