Power Attack. It looks fine at lower levels but as you get into the teens it’s just plain unbalanced.

Generally you get 1 for 2 (fighting defensively) or 1 for 1 with a feat (Combat Expertise). PA is the only feat or action that we can find that gives you a 2 for 1 return on investment (with a 2 handed weapon of course). On a critical with a 2 handed weapon this means you will get 4/1, 6/1, or even 8/1 RoI! No other Feat comes close to that! And this for the investment of 1 feat at first level. Joe put it best. A fighter with a 2 handed weapon already gets 1.5 Strength on their damage. And all fighters are trading the same thing (Base Attack Bonus) for the same thing (Damage), so why should wielding a 2 hander give you more damage on a PA? (As an aside, the 3.0 rulebook did not double PA damage for 2 handers. We think this was added without any testing in 3.5 to make 2 handers more attractive).

The brokeness of PA became clear to us with the “perfect storm” character in our current game. Matt’s current character (Avati) is a Fighter/Bladedancer (FR prestige class) who fights with a glaive (x3 crit). On a 10 point PA critical, before even rolling dice, the damage is at 87! Average crit damage in this case is 121, max damage in the 160 range. There are not many creatures in the Monster Manual with average hit points over 160. This has caused Kelly to tweak our opponents greatly so that they can’t easily be 1 shotted by Avati, which certainly causes a problem for the rest of the party if Avati goes down.

What to do, what to do. We talked about this at length. We proposed a number of different solutions. We tried some of them. They were not…satisfactory. Then we tried one that seems to work well, so far. We may change it again in the future, but for now, here is the Power Attack feat for ZitT games. The part in BOLD is our addition. We think this will allow PA to be a valid tactic to use in combat without unbalancing the game on crits. Only time shall tell if we are right.

POWER ATTACK [GENERAL]

Prerequisite: Str 13.

Benefit: On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn. The bonus damage from Power Attack does not multiply on a critical hit.

Special: If you attack with a two-handed weapon, or with a one-handed weapon wielded in two hands, instead add twice the number subtracted from your attack rolls. You can’t add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks), even though the penalty on attack rolls still applies. (Normally, you treat a double weapon as a one-handed weapon and a light weapon. If you choose to use a double weapon like a two-handed weapon, attacking with only one end of it in a round, you treat it as a two-handed weapon.)

A fighter may select Power Attack as one of his fighter bonus feats.

I have been cajoling the ZitT crew for months for their character info. Repeated email seemed to have no effect, yet I persisted. Finally! Joe sends me his writeups today, at which time I realize that during these months and months I never published my own character info. Great example I am.

That said, here are Joe’s characters. The pages are basic now, as I’m not totally sure on a format but would be even more of a doofus if I did not put it up now!

The coming of D&D 4e has gotten the ZitT gang talking a lot about rules in the game that don’t work for us as currently written. The 2 big players right now are Power Attack and Tumble. We figured that in a group with over 180 cumulative years of gaming experience we should be able to come up with a equitable solution. It might not be the best over all, but it will be the one we feels works for ZitT.

So before last nights game we had a discussion for at least an hour on the subject. A solution to our Tumble issues came together right quick, but first the problem we have with Tumble as written.

Our current game has 5 out of the 6 PCs using Tumble regularly to avoid Attacks of Opportunity, resulting in a lot of Tumble checks per night, and most of them are pointless. With Tumble being an unopposed check, and the characters being of sufficient level and skill to have a Tumble modifier of 20, it renders the DC15 “move by” check pointless and the DC25 “move through” check trivial. It also means that if you have enough skill you could Tumble right through Darth Vader’s square and the would have to stand there and take it like a chump. We feel that any active skill like this should never reach a point where the player does not need to put any more ranks in it, and with Tumble that is the case as soon as your modifier reaches 24 or so.

Making Tumble an opposed check of some type could fix this, but would add yet another roll to the DM’s list. Instead we tried a system where the DC of the check is modified by the Base Attack Bonus of the opponent who would get the AoO. It seemed to work well for that game session so we will keep it for now and see if it breaks. It also means that a character that wants to use Tumble will need to continue to put ranks in it to keep their risk down, which appeals to us. Here is the new Tumble rule:

Tumble the ZitT way

• 10 + opponents BAB - Base DC to Tumble through a threatened square
• +10 - to tumble though an occupied square
• +2 - per additional AoO you provoke
• -2 - per size category difference when Tumbling through an occupied square

Example 1
Fendrik attempts to tumble past a War Troll. Fendrik has an 18 Tumble, the Troll has a 12 BAB.

DC: 10 + 12 (Troll BAB) = 22

The tumble is no longer the “gimme” it was before, but is still easy.

Example 2

Fendrik attempts to tumble through a War Troll. Fendrik has an 18 Tumble, the Troll has a 12 BAB.

DC: 10 + 12 (Troll BAB) + 10 (tumbling through) - 2 (size Large vs Medium) = 30

Now it is more difficult for Fendrik to Tumble through the troll (DC 30 vs DC 25), which we feel should be hard!

You cannot just Tumble willy nilly past an equally matched or superior opponent, especially if you have not kept up on your Tumble skill. The size modifier was added because we felt that it is easier to get by a smaller opponent (tumble over) or a larger one (tumble under) but an opponent your size presents the toughest challenge.

The discussion on Power Attack is a lot more involved due to a “perfect storm” in our game, so I’ll get to that in the next post.

Not as many games as we might like recently (it’s that time of year where people get sick) but the campaign has take an interesting twist. We are now headed into the Underdark to wrest a Fire Giant Scepter from whomever has stolen it so that the giants will give us the astrolabe plate we seek. Caves were not on our agenda so the party is not well prepared for them. Should be fun!

Since we are in the Underdark, Colin wanted to try lighting some of our game pictures appropriately. You can see the results in the Gallery where they appear to be at least moderatley successful. All “cave mood” lighting was done with a keychain LED. Every gamer should get one for Xmas.

Do you sense a theme?

My last post about “The List” got me thinking about death and the ZitT gang. After much pondering, and consulting with the group, I have determined that no one has ever had a character die and had to re-roll in the middle of a campaign.

Not once.

Ever.

In 5 and a half years.

I have a feeling that is rare for a gaming group. Not that people have not died. In many cases it was in an act of sacrifice where the player was fine with dying and was formulating, at least in the back of their mind, a new character. Yet no one stays dead.

It is possibly an artifact of our play style of high magic fantasy where Raise Dead and other such spells are readily available. Certainly a contributing factor in our D&D games has been the Spell Compendium, which contains many spells that are great at preventing Death in the first place (yay for Close Wounds). But by far the reason I think we always find a way to bring back deceased party members is that we like them. We like the interactions our characters have with them, we like the flavor they bring to the group, or we like their characterization of a certain archetype.

I wonder how other gaming groups deal with Death.

Every gaming group has a way they deal with PC deaths. For some it is a traumatic, personal experience. For others the dice immediately come out and a new PC is born. If you die in a ZitT game, you go on The List.

The List is both a metaphorical and a physical place. When a PC dies we write their name and the death date on the whiteboard, so as to commemorate the event. Death as a permanent state has proved elusive in ZitT games, so going on The List does not mean that PC is gone forever, but it does provide ample fodder for remembering the Heroes and the Unlucky. If one of the players misses a game, the first question often asked is “Did anyone go on The List last week?”.

Dan made The List twice on one night, dying to a trapped treasure chest then, after being raised, the victim of a D&D 3.0 Girallion rend. At time, Nick seems to make The List through sheer determination to die. The others have all made The List at one point or another, though heroics or dumb luck. There are deaths we recall frequently, for PC death is as much a part of the gaming experience as PC victory, and in many cases that death spawns better stories.

No one has made it on The List in recent weeks, but not for lack of trying.

Sorry about no update last week, the company I work for was moving to a new facility and that sucked up all my free time.

The October 1 game saw 2 big things. Foremost, it was my birthday and I got to play D&D, how cool is that? In addition it was the first gaming night in our new den: Joe’s Gaming Room. Joe has been a gamer just about forever and has a huge gaming collection, as well as a room to put it all in. It’s good to be a homeowner. As you can see from the pictures, the room is large enough for a pool table which we use as our gaming table. The day before the game, Nick, Matt and I went to Joes to help organize the room and to work on a mystery project.

I had planted a bug in Joes brain a few months ago. I saw this picture and thought it would be cool to have something similar for our game. In addition to his predilection for gaming, Joe is also an excellent woodworker and has a complete shop in his garage, so he decided that we’d make one for our game.

Check out the pictures to see how it came out. It has lights underneath, so we can see our reference materials, the top is 3/4″ plywood with a laminate top glued on, and the legs go into screw mounts so we can change the height if we wish. We tried it at 15″ but that was too high so we went to 8″ this past week and that seems about right. Far enough up so we can use the space underneath, but not so high that the shorter of us cannot see what is going on on the gaming surface.

Kelly is sending us up against a stronghold of Fire Giants (plus other stuff I am sure) currently and we are having a great time. Joes character, Sven, is inspiring a whole new order with the church of St. Cuthbert while Dans character, Slip, is performing deeds as the Face of Rudd. Super fun stuff that I hope they will write up for us.

Oct 1 Pictures

Oct 9 Pictures

Who are always looking for better ways to challenge the players of our game. When it is put like that the only possible reponse is “Duh!”, but the subject matter of Chris Thomasson’s blog on the WotC boards is particularly relevant. You should check it out, post #9.

We had a great game this week in our new digs at Joe’s place, but I’ll write about that tomorrow when I get the pictures ready. There’s a surprise.

But not in a bad way.

Sure we completed a story arc in the Will of the Saint campaign last night, defeating a host of demons by the skin of our teeth, but the big news is that the game is moving.

After almost 5 years of gaming in Josh and Nick’s Moms living room the game will now take place at Joe’s house starting on Monday next. There were 2 main reasons for making the move. The most important to us is that 3 of our guys have made a 1 hour plus trek down to the game every Monday for 5 years. We felt it was time to reverse that, and now the other 4 of us will make the commute up to Joe’s instead. The other reason is that though Mom loves having us all around, she is working on a house remodel and we would have had to relocate for some time in any case. Joe does have a dedicated gaming room so we will be able to leave things set up week to week, which will be nice, but we’ll all miss Mom. We’ll have a game night in her newly remodeled house sometime next year, just so she does not miss us too much.

So at midnight last night we started loading Joe’s truck with all the stuff, and it sure is a lot of stuff:

• 1 entertainment center turned into a storage cabinet
• 18 Army Transport cases full of painted mins (some are D&D pre-paints and have been based and touched up)
• At least 2 of every Dwarven Forge set
• lots of plastic drawer units for storing said Dwarven Forge pieces
• 2 plastic tubs of terrain
• our white boards, pens, and magnets

Here is what the storage looked like before we moved it all.

Check out Joe’s truck full of it all.

The gang will be meeting at Joe’s on Sunday to get everything settled for Mondays game. Pictures of the new setup coming soon.

It has been a thorn in our side for quite some time. The 3.5 rules really seem geared towards 4 players, causing a lot of monsters to die rather quickly when facing our parties. At lower levels we have managed this issue fairly well, but at the higher level we are playing at right now it has made it less than fun for Kelly as we mow down his carefully crafted encounters.

One of the potential issues we identified relates to our house rule on “fate chips”. To mitigate the game breaking effects these can have, while still allowing the players the ability to use them heroically, we are currently limiting each player to 1 chip expenditure per encounter. This worked well last night. Chips were still spent, but with a bit more discretion than in the past.

The other issue we have certainly identified, as have the D&D developers, is that it takes 3 encounters to deplete enough “resources” from the party to potentially present a truly challenging encounter. As a group we are not of the “let’s rest to get back spells” mind set, but even so it can be hard for Kelly to deplete enough of Vaal’s spells and our other renewable resources to make it a challenge. In the current campaign Kelly has employed a “deadline” method as well as many “linked encounters”.

When on a deadline the party cannot rest or the “bad guys” will win, so they have to operate on fewer and fewer resources to complete their mission. This can be a lot of fun and was the primary method he used in our hostage rescue in the City of Brass. We had some very entertaining running fights and chase scenes.

Linked encounters give the players no opportunity to rest as one encounter leads directly into the next, ala Aliens. That has been the story this week as we entered a demi-plane to rob an ancient demon temple of an artifact. The party had to fend off 2 abyssal drakes as a warm up and now are assaulting this demon temple. Lots of fun!

Pictures of this weeks game are up in the gallery. They are a bit darker than I’d like so I will color correct them and re-upload later today.