House rules

[Michael]

At start of game your type will change to prime bound fiend.

• Outsider progression for HD type, saves, BAB, skills
• Fast Healing 1 per minute.  Combat useless, but means you pretty much heal up out of combat
• Immune to dismissal, banishment, cannot be hedged by protection spells etc.
• Not bound by the blood war
• You have a medallion which is engraved with your true name. This item is effectively indestructible. I advise against losing it.
• You have some memories of your previous selves. You receive a +15 racial bonus to knowledge, the old planes. This skill is of no help whatsoever regards the Prime plane.
• You will never gain the summon ability of your races
• To go up a level, a Prime Bound Fiend must eat it's body weight in freshly killed good aligned creatures of at least half it's level (round down). After eating, you go into a cocoon state for a number of days equal to your new level, during which time you are kind of helpless.
• You gain the ability to polymorph into a humanoid form. 
• Unlike outsider natives, prime bound fiends need to eat and drink like regular folk

Special polymorph form rules

• This is a specific individual form which once selected, cannot be changed.
• In this form you lose physical attacks, armour bonus etc but maintain senses and magic abilities. 
• The form can be selected anytime in the first 3 levels
• You can change 1/day/3 levels, and the change lasts 1 hour per level.
• You can choose to doppelganger a humanoid you have seen.  You will become a perfect physical replica of that person but gain none of their memories or knowledge.  Well, probably not.  What if you ate them beforehand.  Who knows?
• The special polymorph can hide your alignment, and is undetectable and undissmissable.  It is a "true" alternate form of you.

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Michael (see edit history)

[Michael]

Pre game is set in a standard DND wheel cosmology.  Game actually takes place in Eberron, with its very different Orrery cosmos.  Characters (not necessarily players, obviously) start with no knowledge of Eberron.  There is a new skill, "knowledge old planes". Which you have a racial bonus in and may help a bit in this world.

I intend leveling as I see fit rather than handing out xp.  As such crafting magic items is problematic, as is the artificer class.  Open to suggestions to "fixes" if someone wants to play such a class.

Combat will use roll20, as previously mentioned.

Regards combat, all monsters will have a single init, unless they are special NPCs. Combat will generally take the form

• All the characters that go before the monsters
• The monsters
• All the characters that go after the monsters

Within an init group, actions will be carried out in posted order, regardless of inits, this is to speed the game up and by and large benefits you. I am fine if you post OOC or by PM to ask someone to wait until you have posted before posting, because say you want to get that flank attack before they move away.

Regular enemies do not crit.  special NPCs do.

The following skills do not exist

• bluff
• intimidate
• diplomacy

All such social interactions you will have to rp.  Any source of bonus to these skills can be redirected to another non str or dex based skill.  feats, abilities etc that have these as pre-reqs have those pre-reqs removed.

The listen skill does not exist, and is subsumed into spot.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Michael (see edit history)

[Michael]

Cocooning

Once you have enough exp, and have eaten your body weight in good aligned creatures of half your level, you will immediately be overcome with extreme fatigue and drowsiness, in preparation for your cocoon hibernation as you moult/pupate to your next level. During this time, you are effectively comatose and helpless.

From the beginning, your skin begins to secrete a sticky exudate which eventually hardens into a cocoon structure. If you are in an appropriate environment, you can roll around in the dirt/rub up against a tree and cover yourself in bits and pieces, effectively giving you a +5 circumstance bonus to a hide roll. In addition, if you can resist the call of sleep for long enough, and are not distracted, you can take 20 on the hide roll. As with any use of hide, there has to be something to hide in/behind.

Each minute after you finish your meal, you must make a save to avoid falling asleep and beginning the cocoon process immediately
You can choose fortitude or will, but must stick with the choice for each save in a given cycle (you can change to the other for the next level's rolls)
the DC for the save is 1, and it increases by 1 for each minute that passes, so by minute 10, the DC is 10, and by minute 20, the DC is 20.

[Michael]

PvP

You're fiends.  You've had all your stuff taken away due to the treachery of the other fiends (ignoring the treachery of your own).  However, wrt PvP

1) The players involved should ENTIRELY agree beforehand, and also agree to a quick choreograph of what happens. Do it in PM or private thread.
2) It should be short, no more than a couple of "rounds"
3) It should not involve any dice
4) It should not involve any permanent damage or injury
5) It should happen rarely

Remember, you are no longer bound by the blood war, you are alone in a world that hates you, and this is a game we're all supposed to enjoy.

Having said that, the 1st iteration of this game I played a few decades ago in 2e with a brilliant DM, and he allowed me to steal everyones amulets and hand them to a powerful mage in return for a special familiar (was playing an arcanalolth).  In other words, I probably will allow non combat treachery if interesting.

[Michael]

I have unarchived a previous iteration of this game on old MW

https://www.myth-weavers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=51485

[Michael]

A note on languages

I like languages, and I find they have a role in role play.  As such, I am nixing tongues, comp lang, and similar abilities. Anyone that gets these spell like abilities may replace them with another divination spell of equal or lower level, and it should be grouped in with lesser, normal, greater powers as per usual.  Similarly, telepathy only works if you share a language with the target, and you have to choose the language you are telepathising in.  Languages will be the same across dimensions (so common is common everywhere)

Edited May 18, 2023 by Michael (see edit history)

[Michael]

A note on movement powers

teleport is considered a greater power.  you get it 1/day at 1/3 your LA=HD cap, 3/day at 2/3, and at will at cap, that's assuming you get the power.

flight is considered a lesser power, and gets the 1/day, 3/day, at will as per other lesser powers.  You get your full speed and manoeuvrability. If you have wings the duration is 10min/lvl.  

[Michael]

power grouping

You at will and other powers should be mapped back to their spell equivalents and be put into the lesser (spell lvl 1-3), normal (spell lvl 4-6) and greater (spell lvl 7-9) buckets.  Each has 3 steps, 1/day, 3/day, at will. However, you never get more uses of a power than listed in the monster desc, so if you have a power that is 1/day thats all it ever is.

 

If we call your HD+LA your monster max, then generally speaking:

lesser powers step at lvls 2, 4, 6

normal powers step at 1/4 max, 1/2 max, 3/4 max

greater powers step at 1/3 max, 2/3 max, max

[Michael]

Creature selection

Any fiend, or something with a fiendish template (so it's an evil outsider). Must have LA. (which is to say it cannot have a "-"  in the LA entry, so you cannot play a balor.)

32 pt buy, max hp at start.

Needs to be HD + LA >= 12

Specifically regards the tauric template both halves have to have LA and both LAs are included in the final tally as well as the template cost.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Michael (see edit history)

[Michael]

A note on size:

 

Regardless of your final size, you may start the game as small or medium (unless your final size is small or less, in which case start with what ever size it is). At equal points along the progression you will size up, so small - med, med - large at half max, or small-med-large at 1/3rd max intervals

 

Having said that, you can't be larger than large, it's make my job much harder. Factoring in size related stat and other bonuses/penalties means more complexity for the progression so we will just ignore them.