Official Blood and Bewitchment Character Creation Thread

[LD]

1. Llum- Ok.

2. Steerpike- Sadly another question. Since I am at LA 1; do I gain racial HD levels for HP? That is, do I gain another 4 or 5 HP because of my race. (I was comparing HP and noticed that I had quite a bit less than the other characters.)

3. Would you like me to email you (I assume there is an email address in your profile) a word document with everyone's characters in a formatted sense?

I was trying to compare characters and found it much easier to place it in a word document with table of contents (as I have been doing bit-by-bit with Cadaverous Earth). There is a lot of reading material there (at last count over 20 pages) (!)

4. Re: Glory points and flying. Thank you.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Llum]Leechkin Warmout, heavy. It doesn't make a ton of sense for a leechkin to ride a horse around (for me anyway), so I was wondering if there was a more flavourfull variant.[/blockquote]Hmm, leechkin come from jungles and swamps - not terrain well suited to riders.  Some possibilities, though:

- Giant spider!  Bred by the lilix as mounts, sometimes sold in the other cities. Treat as a large monstrous spider (in the SRD).

- A dire maggot.  These things are sometimes used to pull carriages, and I had a character ride on in a short story.  Treat as a large monstrous centipede (also in the SRD).

- Some kind of bizarre, stitched-together, fleschrafted mount-thing with too many limbs.  Treat as a zombie warhorse.  I might charge you 50 obeloi more for this one, though,

- A mechanical horse or other riding animal, powered by a bound demon in the furnace.  Not sure how we`d stat this - probably like a construct warhorse.  Again, this one`d be about 50 obeloi more.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Light Dragon]2. Steerpike- Sadly another question. Since I am at LA 1; do I gain racial HD levels for HP? That is, do I gain another 4 or 5 HP because of my race. (I was comparing HP and noticed that I had quite a bit less than the other characters.)

3. Would you like me to email you (I assume there is an email address in your profile) a word document with everyone's characters in a formatted sense?

I was trying to compare characters and found it much easier to place it in a word document with table of contents (as I have been doing bit-by-bit with Cadaverous Earth). There is a lot of reading material there (at last count over 20 pages) (!)

4. Re: Glory points and flying. Thank you. [/blockquote]2. I wasn't originally planning on it - I appeal to Cataclysmic Crow, who helped me with the balancing.  Should jatayi have racial HD??

3. That would be excellent!

4. No worries!

[Nomadic]

My character is officially finished, including the fluff. The only noticeable drawback with him at the moment is that he is carrying a medium load. However what is causing him to go into that category is all packed inside his backpack, and thus can be dropped as a standard action. Plus I plan on using the mount spell quite regularly so it should be largely nullified by that.

My plans for him are to get a couple levels of witch and the rest in gunslinger. Possibly go for Witch 4/Gunslinger 16 or 5/15 depending on what I think is more important.

Finally a question for steerpike. Can I have my weapon gain power as I do? I want it to be my primary weapon from level 4 to wherever we stop. I was thinking I could balance it by just paying for the enhancements as I went. It's just that fluff-wise I want to stick with Meteor for the entire game.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Nomadic]Finally a question for steerpike. Can I have my weapon gain power as I do? I want it to be my primary weapon from level 4 to wherever we stop. I was thinking I could balance it by just paying for the enhancements as I went. It's just that fluff-wise I want to stick with Meteor for the entire game. [/blockquote]This sounds like an excellent idea.  I have two possible ideas on the mechanics and explanation of this:

1) You pay the difference in cost between enhancement bonuses to upgrade Meteor whenever you please, adding on new glyphs to make the weapon more powerful.

2) There is a demon or other spirit bound within Meteor.  As you gain in power and continue to use Meteor - and as the weapon claims more souls - new glyphs begin to appear on the barrel of their own accord.  However, the demon's presence begins to grow stronger; it begins to whisper to you, and implant dark suggestions.  It hungers for more souls.  I would ask you to roleplay this (your choice of how to do this); in addition, you would have to make a kill with Meteor once per week per point of enhancement bonus, or the weapon would attempt to seize control over you (a contested Charisma check, with the enhancement bonus as Meteor's Charisma bonus).

I really like Eereg's background fluff, by the way!

[Llum]

Leechkin Warmout, heavy. It doesn't make a ton of sense for a leechkin to ride a horse around (for me anyway), so I was wondering if there was a more flavourfull variant.[/blockquote]Hmm, leechkin come from jungles and swamps - not terrain well suited to riders.  Some possibilities, though:

- Giant spider!  Bred by the lilix as mounts, sometimes sold in the other cities. Treat as a large monstrous spider (in the SRD).

- A dire maggot.  These things are sometimes used to pull carriages, and I had a character ride on in a short story.  Treat as a large monstrous centipede (also in the SRD).

Alright so a Large Monstrous Spider or a Large Monstrous Centipede. My first question is, do they count as quadruped creatures for the purposes of calculating load? (That means x3 strength value). Otherwise we may have some problem, as the Spider has strength 15 and the Dire Maggot has strength 13, wich make loads quite small.

That being said, I'm favoring the Dire Maggot, because while it's weaker in combat it is 1. way cooler and 2. faster, 40ft base speed. While I have the Run feat (So I can run 100 feet as a full-round action unmounted), this would let me keep up or overtake people in an overland chase.

[Steerpike]

Yep, they both function as quadrupeds load-wise.

Go ahead and beef their Strength up to 16 - makes sense if they were bred to carry you into battle.

[Llum]

Yep, they both function as quadrupeds load-wise.

Go ahead and beef their Strength up to 16 - makes sense if they were bred to carry you into battle.

Alright, for a 16 strength Dire Maggot it has a carrying capacity of 400lbs x4 x4(28 str carrying capacity, x4 for 38, x4 for 48)  x2 (for Large size) = 12800lbs light load. Seems crazy.

So, would it be possible for me to make a ride-check to make my Dire Maggot burrow into the ground (without me on it) and just kinda chill until I call it again? Maybe something like DC 15? What about a burrowing dismout (where I dismount while it burrows) as DC 25? Something along those lines. Just because Dire Maggots are great burrows. Also, I think they'd nix the Large Monstrous Centipedes climbing skill and ability.

[Steerpike]

Eh, maggots can climb I think - plus they can scramble up their tunnels more easily that way.

The burrowing thing would take a Handle Animal check of DC 15 (teaching it to perform a trick - specifically to "stay").  A burrowing dismount would be DC 20 after a successful Handle Animal check.

[Nomadic]

[blockquote=Nomadic]Finally a question for steerpike. Can I have my weapon gain power as I do? I want it to be my primary weapon from level 4 to wherever we stop. I was thinking I could balance it by just paying for the enhancements as I went. It's just that fluff-wise I want to stick with Meteor for the entire game. [/blockquote]This sounds like an excellent idea.  I have two possible ideas on the mechanics and explanation of this:

1) You pay the difference in cost between enhancement bonuses to upgrade Meteor whenever you please, adding on new glyphs to make the weapon more powerful.

2) There is a demon or other spirit bound within Meteor.  As you gain in power and continue to use Meteor - and as the weapon claims more souls - new glyphs begin to appear on the barrel of their own accord.  However, the demon's presence begins to grow stronger; it begins to whisper to you, and implant dark suggestions.  It hungers for more souls.  I would ask you to roleplay this (your choice of how to do this); in addition, you would have to make a kill with Meteor once per week per point of enhancement bonus, or the weapon would attempt to seize control over you (a contested Charisma check, with the enhancement bonus as Meteor's Charisma bonus).

I really like Eereg's background fluff, by the way!

I like the spirit in the gun idea but the problem is unless I was constantly killing people I'd be constantly losing control. I think I'll just pay the difference in cost. Fluff wise though, as Eareg uses the gun he becomes more and more linked to its eldritch presence and begins unlocking its powers. When he first linked with it he heard strange whispers that he couldn't understand coming from the weapon. As he grows in power the link will become more pronounced and these strange whispers will begin to become intelligible as arcane rituals that upon completion will unlock new powers within it. Crunch-wise the rituals will require materials equivalent in cost to the upgrade given. Perhaps at a certain power level the weapon will awaken as Eareg feeds its strength. Though I would rather not have one actively opposed to him, perhaps one that is greedy and vain, demanding that he get it a pretty cover and polish it and buy it decorations and only the best quality bullets. It would also be amusing if it was jealous and would damage or destroy other guns left near it.

[LD]

Email should be sent.

[Steerpike]

Received!  Thank you very much - looks excellent!

[Superfluous Crow]

On jatayi: The entire point of LA is that you don't get racial hit dice. It's simply a "handicap" you'll have to pay to be able to use some of their stronger abilities. If you really think they are too weak, Steerpike should probably rather come up with some small extra ability (perform bonus?). But then again, they really do have excellent flying.
I'm a bit behind on the fluff compared to the other characters. I'll try to write it today.

On magic items: Keeping in mind that this system is balanced for essentially no magic items, are you sure you have this under control Steerpike? Most everybody seems to have one or more magical items, which is understandable as you said that we could pretty much only get it at character creation. But right now it seems that every person who ends up in the pits has a magical weapon :p
Mastering Iron Heroes has a chapter on magic items. They essentially balance this by each weapon having some arcane flaw. Their examples are Domination (it takes control), Doom (enemies crit you more often), and physical dependency (drains str/con if not used). But you might have better ideas on this.  

[Nomadic]

On jatayi: The entire point of LA is that you don't get racial hit dice. It's simply a "handicap" you'll have to pay to be able to use some of their stronger abilities. If you really think they are too weak, Steerpike should probably rather come up with some small extra ability (perform bonus?). But then again, they really do have excellent flying.
I'm a bit behind on the fluff compared to the other characters. I'll try to write it today.

On magic items: Keeping in mind that this system is balanced for essentially no magic items, are you sure you have this under control Steerpike? Most everybody seems to have one or more magical items, which is understandable as you said that we could pretty much only get it at character creation. But right now it seems that every person who ends up in the pits has a magical weapon :p
Mastering Iron Heroes has a chapter on magic items. They essentially balance this by each weapon having some arcane flaw. Their examples are Domination (it takes control), Doom (enemies crit you more often), and physical dependency (drains str/con if not used). But you might have better ideas on this.  

I'm fine with taking the dependency flaw for my weapon. Would add extra flavor :)

[Ghostman]

Looking at the spell lists at the d20 SRD site, I'm wondering if we could make some custom, CE-oriented spells. Especially Necromancy seems rather lackluster at the lower levels, whereas it would seem that in Cadaverous Earth it'd be more ubiquitous. Renaming/reflavouring the existing spells is good but can only go so far. Ensuring game balance could be a problem though.