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I got a question about an event last night.

I really wanted to stay up for it, but well. After the fifth restart I fell asleep waiting for the server to restart. I think it was 4-5 am at the time. In hindsight a nap might have been a good idea to prepare. But that is a reality of timezone differences and somethin' I'll have to keep in mind for the next late night excursion.

My question is what do I do about it IC? Do I say Dylan was knocked over the head and fell unconscious? Can I GM fill me in on what happened so that I can pretend I was there? Because given the high-level area we were in and the task I was given (butt-guard), I wouldn't have accomplished much even had I been present.

My biggest gripe is losing out on potential RP opportunities though.

Blame mad wizards with teleportation spells.

Basically come up with something creative that is relative to your character. I usually dismiss my 'disappearances' as my PCs needing to see to more important matters.

My favorite explanation for disappearing in the middle of a fight is that I got lost (on purpose or not) and all the rest moved forward, deciding that I was most probably slain on the way xD

I disappeared from Spine of the World event, which was three days I think.. Being there only the first day. I blamed being exhausted for casting spells during the first event. She is no barbarian with high con and stamina..

I'm trying to understand how I go about looking at arms and legs for Leto stuff (mainly humanoid sized dragon claws). Is there a link to images with reference numbers, or do I have to do this in the toolset?

Murex wrote:

I'm trying to understand how I go about looking at arms and legs for Leto stuff (mainly humanoid sized dragon claws). Is there a link to images with reference numbers, or do I have to do this in the toolset?

Does this thread help?

Nope. Nothing about arms there.

Anyways, I got yet another question-

Is Zuoken a god a character can worship on Amia (even if not supported mechanically)?

Murex wrote:

Is Zuoken a god a character can worship on Amia (even if not supported mechanically)?

I'm not sure that Greyhawk Gods carry over to Amia. Some carry over to F.R., but Amia has a different set of rules for that, I believe.

If it's part of canon FR, it's part of Amia (unless specifically changed at some point by DMs; in that case, it would be posted in R&L).

However, Zuoken is not an FR deity, like Kudark said. He exists, of course, since Oerth is parallel to Toril and you could travel between the two, but he holds no portfolio in Realmspace and is not widely known.

IronAngel wrote:

If it's part of canon FR, it's part of Amia (unless specifically changed at some point by DMs; in that case, it would be posted in R&L).

However, Zuoken is not an FR deity, like Kudark said. He exists, of course, since Oerth is parallel to Toril and you could travel between the two, but he holds no portfolio in Realmspace and is not widely known.

Yeah, got it from the Psionics Handbook anyways, so of course nobody cares. I'm just really bad at the complex and conflicting lore that falls under the umbrella of all that is D&D. Thanks for answering my question.

Any update on the Wiki fix?

Ohgodswhat?

I've always been led to believe that nearly all the dragons had the ability to shapeshift. It was part of their nature by default, and it always made sense since it explains why there are dragon-blooded creatures of all kinds, but now I am reading the lorebooks again and most of the mentions of dragons in 3/3.5 pages like the SRD20 and they all agree that the only dragons that can adopt an alternate self are LG trio. Even the Draconomicon states this, more or less, clearly.

Then so, I am lost here. Is this different in Amia? How is... stuff possible then? Stuff like this

Because I am not buying the idea of just casting polymorph and have at it.

Perhaps I am turning in some old hardass that don't like new stuff and ideas to deal with. *Harumphs*

You're not buying it? Too bad, because that's what the sources are selling. In third edition and beyond anyway (up to and including Draconomicon entries about dragon NPCs routinely masquerading as humanoids - they just cast Polymorph). Prior editions might have given all dragon types the Alternate Self capability, but I don't know for sure.

Oh and polymorph spells never change your sex cells, so shifters for example will always have the "DNA" of their original race.

That's it. I'm getting old.

How are name changes handled, and how does one go about such a request?

Murex wrote:

How are name changes handled, and how does one go about such a request?

The same way that all requests are! Tell us what and why! You can PM the request to any one of us or post it publicly. In general, complete name changes are not accepted; there needs to be some kind of original identifier in the new name.

LetumLux wrote:

Murex wrote:

How are name changes handled, and how does one go about such a request?

The same way that all requests are! Tell us what and why! You can PM the request to any one of us or post it publicly. In general, complete name changes are not accepted; there needs to be some kind of original identifier in the new name.

I assumed so. Thanks!

I have a couple of questions about magical healing kit bags. I've seen them, I understand they hold a bunch (50?) of kits. My questions are: 1) Do they reduce the weight? and 2) Can they still be hotkeyed?

Thanks!

100 kits, in fact.
I'm not sure if it reduces weight - in fact, it always seems to weight 25.5 lbs.
They can be hotkeyed, but the thing only produces 5 kits when used - so hotkeying it is not exactly useful.

Ahh, thank you, so it works more like a mythal tube then.

I made a character with the idea in mind is for him to be a dirtbag begger/street urchin who is essentially crazy (or the only one completely sane) because he breaks the 4th wall by calling life a game- he speaks to others as if they are characters in a game, and he thinks of them as unenlightened for not 'knowing what he knows'. I was just wondering if this is permitted, or if most players would find this to be too meta. Kind of an open ended question, but I wanted to know how others felt about this.

Swap the word 'game' for 'play' and you're fine, I'd have thunk.

Those kind of characters look like a one-time joke to me. It's amusing for a random encounter, but not for a persistent character. I wouldn't like to have to deal with a character like that often.

Murex wrote:

I made a character with the idea in mind is for him to be a dirtbag begger/street urchin who is essentially crazy (or the only one completely sane) because he breaks the 4th wall by calling life a game- he speaks to others as if they are characters in a game, and he thinks of them as unenlightened for not 'knowing what he knows'. I was just wondering if this is permitted, or if most players would find this to be too meta. Kind of an open ended question, but I wanted to know how others felt about this.

Some of us get away with this in subtle ways, and people just call us "eccentric" instead of crazy. :roll:

Whether others think it's appropriate is beside the point. All that matters is whether you're good enough. Of course, it's hard to see whether negative reactions are because they're just too blind to see your genius or because you really are quite shit; you'd make either others or yourself look like fools. Sounds like a win-win to me!

IronAngel wrote:

Whether others think it's appropriate is beside the point. All that matters is whether you're good enough. Of course, it's hard to see whether negative reactions are because they're just too blind to see your genius or because you really are quite shit; you'd make either others or yourself look like fools. Sounds like a win-win to me!

Good point.

My general "go for it, you can fly!" sentiment aside, there is something to consider: you need to carefully consider whether your concept is intelligible within the setting. Ideally, a great character should both be setting-appropriate and work as such on the one hand, and gain additional meaning and wider application from player interpretation on the other. If you forget one aspect or the other, you'll end up either with bland characters who only tackle in-setting themes, recreate stereotypes without irony and are weighed down with minutiae, or with characters who are psychologically/historically unbelievable and only serve to communicate the author-player's intention, whether that be a joke or a jab or whatever.

So have a think about what your character means with "game" and if that's really the best model to communicate in setting-appropriate terms his madness. Crazy or not, he derives his language and imagery from surrounding society. When he says the word "game", it evokes in him and his audience ideas of pieces on a chess-board, perhaps dice, cards, different sports with balls and teams, often mimicking warfare. The idea of a game involving a fleshed-out character you control is probably unfamiliar to them - indeed to anyone in our world except a small minority of tabletop geeks before the advent of video games. So it's certainly possible for him to think that life is a game, but to him (and especially his audience) it wouldn't mean anything like Amia; probably it would either mean "nothing is serious, we're just trying to best each other and keep playing by these meaningless rules" or "we are pawns of the gods/fate, who move us on the board according to some grand plan."

So to get at what you want to say - the irony of this crazy character actually knowing more than the sane ones, from our perspective, and biting commentary on how our characters could only act as stupid as they do if they were controlled by a sadistic puppet-master - and stay setting-appropriate and intelligible at the same time, I'd take Ruce's advice and use the model of a scripted play, or consider some other alternative (sadistic alien/planar experiment, maybe?). That might actually be closer to your intention than the concept of a "game" which means something different in Amia than in our world.

It is ultimately your choice. The problem with the game angle is not that it's "too meta" - no such thing in my opinion - but that it might not be intelligible enough IC. You need to cover both aspects to be really great, IMO.

Though it is said that only gods can grant cleric spells, it is possible for clerics to gain spells from devil lords - and possible demon lords and even Far Realm entities, by extension. Also, Servant of the Fallen allows a cleric to gain spells from a dead god (which I interpret more as drawing on an old philosophy rather than the IMO more arcane explanation of siphoning away energy). And then there's Ur-Priests.

So like many things in FR, it's all a bit muddled. Which leads me to:
1. Is it possible for a FR cleric to draw his spells from a philosophy/alignment, as they can in vanilla? Which de facto would mean empowerement trough faith alone.
2. Alternatively, is it possible for a cleric to draw spells from a plane? So you could have a cleric who serves "Celestia" - and by extension the gods and rulers of that plane - as the embodiment of the Lawful Good alignment?

Regarding your interpretation of Servant of the Fallen - is there any actual basis for this in the splatbooks aside from personal preference? Don't get me wrong, your explanation does sound nicer than what I've seen described in canon sources (which I only vaguely remember and probably aren't even the ones you've looked at), but you're using that interpretation as the basis to reach further. I feel that might be a slippery slope. (Edit: On reflection I can sort of see where you're coming from, in terms of certain gods filling in for dead/absent gods that are thematically similar or allied in the complex divine soap opera, but still I'm not sure where you're getting it from)

1. The FRCS is pretty much explicit when it says "no" (pg 22, under Cleric). There might be some incredibly obscure allowances but whatever form that might take, it would not be "as they can in vanilla". It's a pretty specific exception. On Amia (and possibly also in FR) they might broaden the list of deities to include certain high-powered extraplanar beings, but the key word there is still beings - I'm almost positive Amia still disallows clerics to pursue alignments/philosophies for their spells.
2. Still pretty explicitly no, see "Beings clause" in 1. Many things in FRare indeed muddled, but they seem quite keen on keeping to that (I could almost swear they're trying to market action figures with the way they're insistent that players get to know the setting's gods). Ur-priests? Still drawing via gods. Servant of the Fallen? Still serving a fallen being.

The answer to an "is it possible" -question is generally "possibly."

The Eldreth Veluuthra have learned to draw druidic and ranger magic from nature, with the help of some ice lich thing.

But we are, indeed, speaking of obscure exceptions. I do think it may be doable, and I do think DMs should work with players who are interested in something like that, but the exact "how" should remain unclear and I don't think a purely philosophical faith with no reference to a mythological figure would work well in the setting. I can see people who don't think they worship an individual deity getting spells from a deity anyway, or people thinking they worship a deity who doesn't really exist getting spells from somewhere, but people with neither a belief in a deity nor a deity (or other divine entity) behind them does not seem appropriate.

Divine power tends to come from an entity, a being of some sort (like Serbiris noted). In the Eldreth Veluuthra's case, I think we can suppose an uncaring "nature" or "Toril" as the entity that grants the magic. A philosophy would have to be embodied in a being - and such embodiment is probably how deities are born, though that faith-matter tends to gather around a historical individual - in order to act as a divine entity. Servant of the Fallen depends on beings that represent certain portfolios/philosophies, even if they're dead.

Personally, I interpret Servant of the Fallen as very much connected to the dead deity in question. You're not so much evoking a spontaneous response from a sleeping entity when you two really like the same ideas, but rather performing forgotten rituals, recalling past faith, recreating that time when the deity was still powerful. Essentially, it is a performance of specific, historical worship (so the class would involve research of old ways) which stimulates cosmic synapses and causes the familiar reaction in the Weave. Although Servants of the Fallen have looser standards in interpreting the dogma and morality of their patron, I like to think they have much less leeway in how they perform their rituals because that is the only thing connecting them to the memory of the dead god and church.

I think that, within the context of this discussion, it might also be good to consider clerics and alignments. Do clerics serve a particular deity because it embodies their beliefs (as in the cleric follows a deity because that deity corresponds to a certain alignment) or do clerics embrace certain beliefs because their deity embodies them (as in the cleric shifts towards a certain alignment because his deity embodies that alignment)?

The other way around, I would think. A cleric-to-be can wave his hands around trying to get deific attention all he wants, but it's ultimately the god who decides who gets to be a cleric and who doesn't. The alignment spectrum isn't just a few personality traits, to gods, it's part of their essential essence. A god wont want followers, in general, who are incapable of seeing their side of morality, and who don't in some way embody the god's tenets and ideals.

The only exception is the Ur-priest, who is really less of a priest at all and more like someone who intercepts people's mail.

That is a misleading question, implying that those are the only options and that there is an answer that applies universally. There are as many answers as there are clerics. Personally, I would stress the portfolio of a god;that is the most slient and unique feature of a deity. Alignment seems beside the point to me.

I am not sure how exactly this bears on the previous question, though?

bidocks wrote:

I have a couple of questions about magical healing kit bags. I've seen them, I understand they hold a bunch (50?) of kits. My questions are: 1) Do they reduce the weight? and 2) Can they still be hotkeyed?

Thanks!

Ice wrote:

I'm not sure if it reduces weight - in fact, it always seems to weight 25.5 lbs.

As the number of kits in the bag are reduced, so does the weight of the bag.

Toolset question: How do I access the stuff under the appearance tab in creature properties? I want to change out arms so I can see what options I have for my character pending a Leto request.

I have a question regarding a summon reskin. In the request forum was stated, that the stats, feats and everything else of the summon will stay the same with the reskin.

However, I wanted to know if I could still enchant a summon with an armor/weapon originally with gmw etc., even though the reskin does not feature weapon nor armor.

It'll still have that stuff, and equip/show the weapon if its a monster skin that allows such too (and shield)

Murex wrote:

Toolset question: How do I access the stuff under the appearance tab in creature properties? I want to change out arms so I can see what options I have for my character pending a Leto request.

I belive you can only access it on Dynamic models. These are Basic human, Elf, Dwarf, Half elf, Half orc, Halfling and gnome. Standard creatures do not have adjustable appearances, such as imp, pit fiends or most undead.

That is if i think i understand what you're trying to do.

Mythal crafting question/possible bug

The axe, The Rune and Ruin of the Dwarves has

Damage bonus vs Giants: 1d4 acid
Enhancment bonus vs Giants: +4
On Hit: Fear

I mythaled it to

Damage bonus vs Giants: 1d4 acid
Damage bonus 1d6 sonic
On hit: Fear

This should now be 3 powers but when I wanted to add Enhancment +4 or Vamp regen +2, both of which are supposed to be 1 power, it said I breached the power limit by 1

I thought the On hit property might be more than one power but I've mythaled other items with On hit properties and it was always registered as 1 power. So, is the axe buggy or am I really breaching the power limit here?

Which is better, brew potion/craft wand/scribe scroll? If I had to pick two?

I have a cleric, she's a Salandran. I'll be taking some bard levels too. She'd want to create healing supplies and have as many people as possible be able to use them (potions), but I know wands are also in demand. It would be nice to have a back up supply of scrolls, wands etc. while on adventure.

I know plenty of mages make scrolls etc. but I'd like to be able to fill the cleric market. I'm not interested in making money, I might charge just so I don't go into debt, but overall I want to be useful to the server and players

For a salandran, get scribe scroll. Greater Restoration scrolls are a must have.

People swear by Scribe Scroll for clerics and yeah, Greater Restoration really is that good.

However I think wand is better, so I'm really glad you said "pick two". Craft wand means you can make Death Ward wands, and if you have the right domains there are some other good spells in reach too.

Is it allowed to send people links for downloading D&D sourcebooks?

Ask your legal representative.

He's too expensive. :/

Can someone explain, or give a hint to me as to how/where I can get strong poison for my assassin? I've been baffled by this problem for years. I don't think it can be made from the job system, so I assume it can only be purchased. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Sorry if I am not the first person to ask that, but is it possible to request an item that will be one type of weapon, but will look like another, without changing its stats? For example to make greatsword look like katana with same attributes of greatsword.

Improbable. It'd take a hak update as well you would need someone to create a new model texture for the weapon (which isn't easy, as far as I can tell)

It's not possible, nor can I think of a reason why that would make sense to allow. As for poisons, unfortunately NWN made poisons essentially worthless, and as such there are no good ones available. Adding in better poisons would presumably need a Hak update.

Can someone point me to an Amia-approved (3.5e right) list of outsider physical traits that pertain to that ancestor? Whenever I make an aasimar or tiefling I'm never sure what physical traits are available and if then, what lineage that makes my outsider have. I've only ever seen really short lists like "gold eyes, or a tail"

I've looked all over FR wiki and d&d wiki (I know you guys don't always approve those sites)

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