Magical item bonuses - House rules

Binding magical items to characters is a complicated matter. The latter tends to pick new items through adventuring and discarding irrelevant equipment.
The following set of rules was created to enhance both the gameplay and the way characters (and players) feel towards their "collectibles".

Imbuing a weapon or a piece of armor with magical energy gives out a flat +1 bonus to the item. These items are mundane and usually discarded once a better piece of equipment is found, but what about +1 Keen swords ?
Should they be discarded as well?
For the purpose of crafting the item, it is treated as a +3 item.
In the new set of house rules, these sort of weapons (and armor sets) can be utilized with better efficiency as the character gains more levels up to the maximum of added bonuses from weapon properties using the following calculation:

• Up to level 8, +1
• For each four levels above 8, the item is treated with an additional +1 if enough properties are set on the item, thus a level 14 character wielding a +1 Keen dagger treats the weapon as if it's a +3 Keen dagger. At level 16 the item must be enhanced with additional properties in order to gain an additional +1.

Through these simple rules, characters gets to keep using their equipment, often attaching emotional and historical meanings.

Session scheduling

Running a successful campaign doesn't always have to be around the game world, scenarios or even the game system.
It's mostly about the ability to schedule playing sessions on a weekly basis to preserve a sense of continuety.
Last session was played in over a month back. The older you get, the more stuff you have to deal with on a daily basis and the less time you have to spend on your gaming needs. Tomorrow, we return to our weekly session, opening up the fifth installment in the "Age of Worms" campaign.

"Shipwreck" - Dice version

The object of "Shipwreck" is to gain as much distance from shore without experiencing shipwreck. Each participating team consists of a Captain and a Navigator.
Captain's job is to decide on the tricks to play.
Navigator's job is to make sure the ship runs it's course steady without falling apart.

The game is usually set for 5 rounds for a 2 teams game, for each additional team that plays the game add another 5 rounds to the number of rounds played.
On the beginning of each round, the teams place their bets. Ante is placed and then each team can bid higher or call.

Each ship starts off with 6 * Number of rounds Hull Points (HP). A ship that loses all HP is considered Shipwrecked and can no longer sail on course.

The winner of the contest is the ship that's as distant from shore, even if it went shipwreck.

At the beginning of the game, each Captain rolls 3d6 to set the starting distance.

On each round, the captain rolls 1d6 and decides which of the tricks he's going after as follows:
1 - 2 : Heal 2 HP or Inflict 1 HP on an enemy ship (Auto)
3 - 4 : Heal 4 HP or Inflict 2 HP on an enemy ship (Sail DC 5)
5 - 6 : Heal 6 HP or Inflict 4 HP on an enemy ship (Sail DC 7)

The Captain can choose to "lower" his die roll and pick any lower option available.
In order for the correct trick played to work, the Navigator must sail at least as many miles as the trick's DC.

After the Captain chooses the trick to play, the Navigator rolls the sailing miles (2d6). If the roll did not pass the trick DC that the Captain chose, The ship does not move and none of the Captain tricks is played.
The Navigator's roll can also impact the ship's hull if he rolls either 1 or 6 as follows:
1 - A roll of 1 grants the ship 1 HP and counts as 1 mile
6 - A roll of 6 counts as 7 miles but Inflicts 1 HP on his own ship.
** If the ship suffers HP damage from any roll of 6, the ship sails, but sinks at the end of the turn.

I might revise the post, if I get reports of uncoherency.

DM T.

XP handling

Experience points (XP) - one of the tools given to the DM to "control" the flow and growth of the player characters.

XP is generally handed out after combat scenes, the more a player accumulates, the more levels he can gain.
But combat is not the only thing that takes place during a game of D&D. Roleplay is also a part of the game, as well as clever use of skills.

I have a somewhat mixed feeling about the way the Dungeog Master Guide handles XP rewards, But only a small paragraph indicates how much should other features of the game grant XP bonuses.
The way I deal with it, is to award small xp bonuses on top of the combat rewards. If I notice that someone is roleplaying even during combat, I grant up to 15% additional XP for that player for that encounter.
For other Roleplaying encounters or just when the players talk amongst themselves In Character, these too may grant them XP rewards.

I found out that by using small XP bonuses (small compared to the combat rewards) I can help the players elevate their roleplay and encourage them to RP more (Since the rewards are small, I can grant them much more openly and freely without throwing the whole balance of the party).

Each player would like to have their characters gain levels, with the RPing ones, getting the upper hand, it's like a nice race of staying in-character.

New beginnings (Take 2)

TPK - Total Player/party Kill

A "perfect" ending to a trailing the rogues campaign that I secretly started to DM. As much as I tried, after a certain point, the doom was inevitable.

And with every end, there's a whole new beginning...
With this in mind, the players threw the dice and new characters took form before our eyes. Each with a whole new background and new personalities ready to tackle the new adventerous life I was about to cast them into.

The new campaign I chose to run uses the same settings that my "Trailing the rogues" used. I've decided to use "The Age of Worms", Dungeon magazine's latest 12 issues run from 1st to 20th level.

I think it's quite a good campaign, featuring a great mix of combat and political encounters, with plenty of opportunities to roleplay and rollplay. The only thing left for me to say is, GOOD LUCK to you, my players.... you're going to need it, hahahahaha

Potion identification in my D&D campaigns (House Rules)

Potions and Scrolls are those one-shot magical items that can help out in pressing and troubled times. Players love them as they can shift the situation and give them a better stance towards the encounter at hand.

Everything is cool if the players create them either through a known recipe (usually known spells) or through the combined use of Craft->Alchemy & magic.

But what happens when they stumble upon a few bottled potions that carry no obvious identification marks?
The D&D D20 system allows the use of casting the Identify spell that enables them to clearly understand what the potion does, but shelling out 100 gold pieces for every potion they find can be a bit troublesome and at certain point, it may even cause them to lose all interest in trying to find out what the potions realy are (Fortunately for them a simple Read Magic spell, can identify a scroll).

In order to address this issue, I have come up with a small formula that enables them to use the Spellcraft skill, to Identify a given potion. Each use of the skill takes from 10 to 30 minutes (game time, 10 minutes per potion spell level) to identify the potion.
A player can try to identify the potion if he has at least one rank in spellcraft and failure means that the same person can only retry once he aquires at least one more rank in Spellcraft skill.
I allow a synergy bonus of +2 if the player have at least 5 ranks in the Craft->Alchemy skill.

The formula I use to get the Identification DC is as follows:
DC = 10 + potion's spell level + potion's caster level

I also allow a player with at least as many ranks in spellcraft as the Identifying person to try and help out on the identification, granting another +2 if he manages a DC 10 Spellcraft check.

In the beginning...

Starting a new D&D Campaign is alway a big headache to some. You have this neat idea about how the setting would look like, but when you decide to begin fleshing it out, you suddenly find yourself lacking so much information that you just didn't think of...

That's when I decided to take the small steps on creating a tiny portion of the world and keep my mind open to anything I might come across. I began by picking up the main theme that I wanted my new campaign to have, Buccaneers and High Adventure.

I began by "founding" the major city in the area that the campaign would begin, Tavernhall. Once a cove used by pirates that evolved into a burstling town of Trade & Commerce.
I continued by populating the area with another small village/hamlet and another small port town on the frontier and thought to myself, that's where I'll base my beginning adventures.

I used a short Modified Dungeon Magazine adventure to bring the PCs together and establish the main theme of the campaign through it. I think it captured the spirit of the theme and set the PCs to find thier own ventures in the new campaign.