Character creation instructions

[dalamb]

Subscribe to the Announcements thread. Read all the house rules; there are many. Ask character creation questions here, aside from discussions about the house rules, which go there. Please don't PM me unless you need to ask something that can't be character creation Q&A, can't be house rules discussion, can't be public OOC, and can't be discussed in your character thread even in private tags. I suspect that's a nearly empty set of possibilities other than personal chit-chat.

Post a separate public* thread with your application in this thread group

• The first post should be your complete application (so you should just start with "complete application goes here" and edit it as you make decisions).
• The second post should be a summary of how you built your character: how you spent your character points, where you got your skill bonuses and miscelaneous bonuses on your character sheet, and so on.

The rest of your thread will be about character-specific questions and answers, or posts where you do rough work. See the template in the second post of this thread. On your sheet, when you refer to some feat or ability or magic item not in the online SRD, use book abbreviation and page number to remind me where to find it.

* If you have some strong reason for making your thread private, PM me and we can talk about it, but bear in mind your thread (or a copy of the critical parts of it) must become public if you are accepted.

Basics: Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e, Level 9, gestalt, quite a few house rules.

Posting rate: 3/week initially, possibly modified by consensus of accepted players.

Application deadlines:

• Start a character thread by XX.

• Complete your application by YY, aside from mundane equipment.

• Acceptance tentatively by ZZ, which starts a discussion among accepted players about adjustments to balance character spotlight time and manage any overlap in roles and abilities.

• Game tentatively starts on WW.

Ability scores: 25 point buy, which can be bought up in 5-point increments with character creation points.

GP: Wealth by level (36,000 GP)

• No more than 1/2 on any one item.
• Pre-game crafting allowed, with the possibility of “buying” a crafting reserve XP pool so if you craft, you don’t lose a level.
• Research for "new" spells (those not in any of the listed sources) are part of a character's Wealth By Level. Normal spells are assumed to have been acquired at no cost.

HP: max at all levels

Feats:

• One per level instead of per level divisible by 3, with additional house rules.
• One free feat from Stormwrack.
• Leadership is banned, for now, but might in the very long term be possible if y'all break free of the campaign setup and start your own ship.

Alignment: no evil. Always Evil races are Always EvilWhich makes no rational sense for sentient creatures, but neither does alignment in the first place..

Traits and flaws (optional): up to two of each, but the negative side must affect your character in playe.g. Noncombatant is a no-no for a primarily ranged character. Flaws and the downside of traits *will* come up to your disadvantage in play, as time and plot permit.

Classes: any from the allowed sources. Note the house rules for some classes.

Deities: Any from the allowed sources.

Sources:

• Players’ Handbooks I & II

• Dungeon Master’s Guide I & II

• Monster Manual I, II, III, IV, V

• Environment series: Frostburn, Sandstorm, Stormwrack

• Complete series (Adventurer, Arcane, Champion, Divine, Mage, Scoundrel, Warrior)

• Races of series (Destiny, Stone, the Dragon, the Wild)

• A few things from Savage Species; request what you want in the character creation discussion thread.

  Approved Requests

  • Feats: Multigrab, Greater Multigrab
  • PrCs: Scaled Horror

   

• Others (in alphabetical order)

  • Book of Exalted Deeds

  • Magic Item Compendium

  • Planar Handbook

  • Spell Compendium

• Unearthed Arcana generic and variant classes, with some house rules.

 

[dalamb]

Character Thread Template

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Include the following information in the first post of your character thread in some format where the information is easy to find.

Status: of the application e.g. "just getting started", "withdrawn", "complete", whatever other intermediate states make sense to you

Basics

• Name: (with link to character sheet)

• Gender:

• Race: plus nationality

• Class(es):

• Alignment:

• Role: What you expect to contribute to an adventuring party

• Office: What role(s) do you expect to play in the command structure of the ship.

Appearance

• How someone else would describe you on first meeting. Can be omitted if you find a picture you consider reasonably good.

Personality

• A brief statement about how you interact with other people; also likes, dislikes, quirks.

• A picture if you find one you like. Can be omitted, in which case write a somewhat longer Appearance section and probably delete all the table-related tags.

Background

• 2-3 paragraphs, including how you wound up in the starting location. This is partly a writing exercise that could influence whether I choose your character if it's comparable in suitability to some other submission; I need to know if it will be rewarding for me to read what you write.

In a private (to you and me section): one or at most two plot hooks -- things about your character that might lead to interesting events or NPC interactions in the game, e.g. "running from the authorities in Rodana" or "secretly working for the Sahaugin"

[dalamb]

Writing "Plot Hooks"

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A plot hook is a short description of something from your character's past (or desired future) that might lead to interesting interactions or even full adventures as the campaign progresses. A couple of sentences is sufficient, and multiple paragraphs are too much. I don't want to put too many limitations on your creativity, so the following is just a set of suggestions.

• Some goal your PC has for themselves that might come up in play, such as saving up to buy a farm for your impoverished sister and brother-in-law.

• A non-prominent NPC you've interacted with, directly or indirectly, who might do something interesting if we met up with them later in the campaign. For example, someone to whom you owe money; the true source of some unfortunate incident in your backstory; someone you helped who might grow into a position where they could help you. It's fairly easy for me to approve this kind of thing because it's relatively unlikely to require much work on my part to incorporate it into the campaign.

• A generic group active in the campaign, such as the crew of some other ship, the police force of some city, the bankers trying to foreclose your parents' farm. This requires a little more work from me to figure out where that group fits and what other effect they may have on the campaign, but not necessarily a lot.

• Some NPC or group one might expect to be highly involved in the campaign world, such as court intrigue in Queenston. This requires negotiation and more work on my part, which I'm willing to do if it seems interesting enough.

[dalamb]

Completing Your Application

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When you complete your app make sure to change the status in the first post and post a note at the end that it's complete so I can spot when you're done and move you to the yet-to-be-created Completed folder. Completed means all the fluff done and a draft sheet; it can leave out mundane equipment and how to spend the 1000 gp for shared goods. If you'd prefer to negotiate spell selection with the group after acceptance that's OK too.

Once I move your app to the Completed folder, make at least one post in the Purple Dolphin IC thread. How you write will be one part of judging your app, but don't sweat it; I'm not demanding novel-length prose, just an idea of how interesting your in-game stuff is likely to be for me to read.

[dalamb]

Other Advice

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You're working for a privateer, not a pirate. If the Rodanese are nearby, an Iverinan ship that captures you has to treat you as a prisoner of war. You don't wantonly slaughter captives, and prefer to capture combatants instead of killing them.

You could be at sea for days or weeks between shore visits, oceans being what they are. Plan for not being able to run back to town between encounters.

The best favoured enemy for a ranger is probably human. Maybe undead second. Not dragons; there are none that anybody knows about.

Some people may want to write backgrounds as though they're part of the crew already. The premise of the pre-game IC thread is that you're prospective new hires (to explain why y'all don't know each other all that well yet) to replace officers transferring to the newly-captured prize ship. If not accepted, the premise is that you're on the new ship and offstage. If you have been on the ship for a while, you'll know more than most about the Captain than most. We'll work all that out privately.