Eerongal

Starry Dragon Striax Glancing about the room, you don't notice anyone outwardly suspicious, though people are certainly giving your table some space. You feel confident that you would be able to identify another of these things, if you saw one, but you see no immediately apparent signs of one. Based off of your experiences and knowledge, you have a pretty good suspicion that the man was corrupted. Great evils can twist someone to such an abomination. (yeah, knowledge dungeoneering is needed for identifying aberrations. The roll is general 10+HD of the creature, which in this case was 1, so the roll needed would be 11. But, since we aren't worrying about rolling in this topic, we can just assume you recognize what he was)

Starry Dragon Seynir The scroll appears to have no discernible magic that you can find on it. Unrolling the scroll and giving it a quick glance over shows it to be a series of badly sketched tunnels and halls, with a few hastily scrawled annotations here and there. There's also a map of the local region, but oddly it puts the location of the entrance to the cave in a significantly different place than all other maps you've seen on the subject. You feel pretty safe in assuming it's forgery, and the location on the map may have even been a trap setup by some brigands in league with that...creature.

Starry Dragon Seynir From the throat of the drunk, you notice that, instead of blood, a very deep colored reddish-black ichor burbles out thickly. The liquid has an incredibly foul, tainted smell to it. Whatever this thing was, it definitely wasn't a usual human. The crowd stares on, an air of uncertainty fills the common room. From outside, you hear the muffled cries of "A murder! Get the city guards!" and "Someone's been killed!" as the entrance way begins to fill with fresh onlookers.

Starry dragon Seynir Your sand puffs into his face right as he begins to swing. Pulling his arm back at the last moment he begins to claw at his face and the beginnings of a shriek forms at his lips right as your sleep spell overtakes him. He sways momentarily fighting against the effect of the spell, but it proves too much for him. slowly, he sinks to his knees before collapsing in a heap on the floor. The bar is deadly silent as everyone watches. A few people stand and hesitate, seemingly unsure if they should run or fight.

Starry Dragon Striax, Umieri, & Seynir As the three of you chatted amongst yourselves, you didn't notice the drunk stand himself up. Turning your attentions back to him, you now notice him standing, mug in hand and head bent downward. He has a glint of pure murder in his eyes. Raising one gnarled hand, he sweeps it across the three of you and exclaims, "You three will pay for your intolerable crimes you've committed against me!" The bar immediately goes quiet as people turn and look at what's going on. With that, he swings the mug he was holding and splashes out the oddly musty smelling ale over the three of you. He turns towards Striax and raises the glass mug over his head as if to strike (Note: since this particular topic is freeform, we won't worry about doing initiative and formal combat like we will once you guys actually get in the dungeon. So go ahead and feel free to roleplay this "fight" however you want it to go. That is, for this particular instance, we won't worry about dice rolls or anything)

Aberrations are dungeoneering. the skill description for knowledge tells you what you need to identify creatures based on their type.

Starry Dragon Seynir Upon closer inspection, you notice a....dangerous gleam in the man's eye. Thinking about it momentarily, you realize that his stench, while primarily of booze, also reeks of something else, something you can't quite pinpoint. It's almost as if the smell of alcohol is covering up something....more foreboding. Getting a good look at his face, you also realize that while you had noticed this whole time that he was rather ugly, coupled with the new demeanor he took on, it seems the awkward curves and cuts to his face come of as something slightly more 'foul' than simply being uncomely

I just went and did a quick edit to the post so that the drunk "sees" him address Umieri, but kept the post mostly the same.

Oh, sorry, yeah, you get track. Forgot that one. You get a feat every third level, plus one at first level (not including bonus feats that your class states you get). So the next "normal" feat you would get is at level 3, then level 6, then level 9, etc. Also: the drunk is now a corrupted creature (though still a level 1 commoner), and thus an aberration, because it's certainly sounds like a VERY fun idea. Edit: also, you can certainly believe that Umieri is the aberration. Makes for a much more fun RP scenario.

Starry Dragon Striax Noticing a man coming up and talking to his friend, the drunken-looking man sitting with the other two narrows his eyes and looks directly at you. "I think," he begins and pauses to lick his lips, "That you have the wrong person, friend." Lifting his mug as if to take a drink, he continues "What I think you should do, is turn right around, and leave this bar right now. Or else."

1 feat that you get to choose for being level 1 Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow, and shortbow for being an elf (which is overriden by ranger anyways) The following for being a ranger: simple and martial weapon proficiency with all weapons of that category light armor and shields proficiencies Edit: Off hand, i dont know of any creature that can do that. However, he could have a template on him! Such as corrupted creature (which could explain his general lack of hygiene in a more sinister way) , which makes him into an aberration. And since this makes it fun way to introduce a character, i certainly have no problem with it!

Huh, that's odd. What rules of the spam filter was that username violating that caught it? It doesn't look that suspicious to me (but im not a computer program, so.....)

The man appears to be the usual tavern lout. He wears stinking garb that reeks of old food and beer, and his clothes are barely a step above what the common beggar would wear. He strikes you as the sort of man who likely spends everything he gets on drink, and likely the way he gets his coin is through depravity in the first place. In short, not a man to be trusted. The other patrons seem to generally ignore and avoid him just from what you've seen so far. The others avert their gaze when they catch him looking as if to avoid drawing suspicion. (Just looking at him, a safe guess would be a 1 HD commoner. In short, extremely weak and not worth your time. He doesn't seem to have any particular friends among the crowd that you can tell)

off hand, im not sure if persistent works on summons. It might. Also, skeletons on their own are mindless. Mindless undead, if given no particular command, do nothing. so if you were to lose control of a mindless undead creature, it would stand around until it comes under the control of someone else (control undead, rebuke, etc.), or gets killed Edit: Bit of a funny D&D story related to this. Back when me and my group were running this same module (world's largest dungeon), my younger brother played a necromancy focused wizard, and took the skeletal familiar alternate class feature. We basically started using the creature as a pack mule to carry our junk, and because he didnt want to lose him in a fight, my brother gave him the command to "follow the party, but don't attack", so he did. Eventually, my brother's character died, but his skeleton was still alive, so the skeleton continued to follow out the orders to the best of his abilties. Further down the line, the skeleton sort of became a standard for the party, and we stopped explaining to new characters as characters died off (and new ones introduced for the player) why it was following us beyond "it carries our stuff". So right about level 6 or so, the last character who KNEW the origins of the skeleton died off, so now everyone in the party just knew there was a random skeleton following the party that was carrying our suff. We ended up naming him "Skelly Belly" and would dress him up in any funny clothing we found.

oh, ok. I was thinking it let you cast a spell but gave it a permanent duration Which would take quite a number of days to cast 10,000 times (and would require you to invest in stalls, feeding, grooming, etc. while you built up your horse army)

well, if you did that you wouldnt get that many spells of it, then, since you only have 4+bonus spells of 9th level spells per day at max level.

Heh, yeah, that would be kinda....a rough thing to happen to anyone. And you could do it, too, it would just be expensive, because you would need all the scrolls to cast it that many times. As far as encounters go, that's the "expected" amount, but that changes depending how the party is shaping up for a given day. They may decide to take it easy after a few brutal encounters, or press on past 4 if everyone still has plenty of spells/abilities left for the day. And there's no real set number of monsters per encounter. It operates on a challenge rating system that basically goes "X number of creatures at Y challenge rating are considered a significant challenge for the party". So it could be 1 creature with a high challenge rating (or CR) or a bunch of weaker creatures whose combined CR is considered that high (it's not a straight "add the CRs together thing", there's a bit of a formula to follow) Edit: wizards only end up with 2 attacks at level 20 (look at your base attack bonus progression). That's ok, though, because as a wizard, you generally shouldn't need to be attacking things, at least not at later levels (more attacks dont let you cast more spells)

Yeah, that's threat range. Because of the weapon, the skeleton has a crit range of 18-20, that means if they roll a natural 18 or 20 (the die shows these numbers) they they could possibly crit, so long as they confirm the crit. I think the spell you're thinking about is mount. It summons a light horse or pony for 2 hours/level. It will also attack, but its not a warhorse, so its not nearly as powerful as a horse trained for battle . It's more of a utility spell than a combat spell Also, 10 encounters per day is a lot. The entire game is built around the assumption of 4 encounters per day, at all levels, so 10 encounters is 250% what the game is built around Edit: also, i suppose i should point out that horses will generally ran as opposed to fight if they arent war horses, so they'll only fight if trapped

huh. That's weird, i wonder if it got caught on some sort of spam filter out there. What was the username you tried before? Also, welcome to 17th shard!

Well, at 1st level, no wizard ability is considered particularly powerful. Wizards start out weaker, but get stronger than basically EVERY class in the game. at later points, you can start summoning 1D3/1D4 creatures, which last 1 round/level, that you can cast once per round, so you start amassing a huge mob of creatures, then it gets incredibly powerful. Especially once you get gate and can start summoning Balors and other such elder demons/celestials. They're considered powerful because you're adding a number of extra actions every round, because of all the extra creatures. And these extra creatures don't cut into your loot or EXP gain. First level is a bad level to look at to consider an ability weak or strong. Fighters start out pretty strong at first level, but by the end of things, theyre basically the weakest class Also, the 18-20 is likely threat range for a critical hit, but i'm not sure specifically what you're referring to without seeing it. Got a link to what you're talking about? Edit: also, summons have the advantage of taking damage for you. A spell that deals 1D6 damage can't also take a hit for you in most instances Damage, that i might add, that your cleric doesn't need to worry about healing, because the summon is temporary anyways.

Nah, you could only put two ranks into it at first level (cross class skill). Also, speak language is a bit different than other skills. Every time you get a full rank in it (2 points for everyone but wizards, who get it as a class skill), you pick a new language you learn. So if you were to put 4 points in it at level 1, you could add two new languages you can speak, on top of those you got based on your race. Edit: I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking if you can ONLY spend on your class skills? because you can spend them on any skills you want, class and cross class just determine your max and how much they cost.

your max is your level +3 for class skills at ever level. At level 1, the max ranks in class skills is 4, cross class skills is 2 (and those two cost 4 points, because cross class skills cost 2 point per rank) Classes that aren't considered to have strong skill-based things usually get 2+ int modifier (like paladin, and fighter and wizard), but classes that are supposed to be considered skillful (like rogue) get a lot more. However, wizard is actually in a pretty good position for skill points, because their main stat is int, so they're better off than, say, a paladin. And summon spells have a short duration because they're considered very powerful. Even the most powerful summon spell, gate, still has a 1 round/level duration. Though you could modify them at higher levels with things like extend spell to make them last longer. They're considered powerful because you're essentially increasing the size of your part and giving your party extra attacks/actions during a fight, and actions are basically the most precious resource you have. Also, at higher levels, the summon spells start calling in more than one creature.

Starry Dragon Seynir & Umieri A brief flash of irritation crosses the drunk's face. Pulling the map back towards him, he continues talking, in a noticeably more irritated tone. "I'm sorry, friend, but I'm afraid I can't let this go for cheap." Pausing, he takes a drink from "his" mug, "You talk of healing, so you must be a cleric, eh right? Well, why don't you just visit a temple of whatever bloody god your worship, and take a small priest-loan or whatever it is you all do. I would think they would be interested in procuring a one of a kind relic such as this" Glancing about the common room quickly, he slides his chair back a bit, as if anticipating standing in just a moment. He stares at Umieri, waiting for his response.

Skill points are distributed on skills. The max you can have in class skills is level + 3. The max you can have in cross class skills in half that. Class skills cost 1 skill point, cross class cost 2. Your class will list out what your class skills are. If it's not listed in the class, then its a cross class skill. And rangers have a full BAB progression with all weapons. That is, their BAB is the same as their level. Edit: That's the formula for your total skill bonus. Ranks is the number of skill points you put in it (see above) attribute is the modifier for whatever attribute its tied to (for example, if its a skill tied to strength, you add in your str modifier) and misc. is any other misc. bonuses you get, due to feats, race, class, synergy bonuses, etc.

The progression for each HD size is in the character creation and FAQ topic. It's basically "Half" each level, alternating between odd and even (with the lowest "first", starting at 2nd level). (that is, a D6 would alternate between 3 and 4 each level all the way up to 20). You also add your con modifier every level. So if you're level 20, and you have an 18 in con, you have 4x20, or 80 extra HP. Con increases are also retroactive, so if you go from a +1 modifier to a +2 modifier at level 4, you go from getting +4 from your con score in total to +8. Edit: Yeah, i'm using standard progression method instead of rolling. It makes easier for people to level themselves up without needing to roll (it explains in the DMG somewhere)