Wednesday - D&D

[dr4b]

Tonight we had our first session of our new D&D campaign at Josh and Megan's house. Justin is running the City of the Spider Queen.

I felt really bad because my character wasn't ready before I went over... but then I got there and nobody else's characters were ready either :)

Things are stabilized -- Cory is playing a rogue (with 2 levels of rangers), Mike is playing a half-orc monk (no joke), Josh is a badass fighter/cleric of strength&war, and I'm an eldritch knight. This is gonna be a great character because I have to figure out my instincts of wizard vs. fighter. In today's session I did a little of both... I mean I'm going around with essentially Greyhawk-Janthina's stats and equipment, down to the longbow and longsword and +2 elven chain. I was joking I should just name this character Janthina actually, but eh, that'd be silly. By my naming trend I think this character has to be Faustine because it's the most elven-warrior-sounding but I haven't quite decided. (So far used for characters: Calandra, Hannah, Janthina. Unused: Abigail, Faustine, Gardenia. If you know why, I will give you a cookie.)

Anyway we basically kinda just had the characters start off and we got into a fight against an undead wizard dude who basically cast improved invisibility and then we took 1.5 hours to defeat him. It got kinda ridiculous. I started off the battle shooting arrows, then went into combat casting mode and started counterspelling stuff. See, the undead dude kept casting lightning bolts and I had a few memorized so I was like "harr.. COUNTERSPELL!" Justin wasn't expecting that, but it worked really well, I countered the guy's lightning bolt and haste and TRIED to counter improved invis with a dispel magic but failed. Ah well. Still it was interesting to walk in as a fighter and walk out as a wizard. I may do that a lot.

I decided to specialize in Evocation, go figure (platypuslord would probly like this character really), nuking Enchantment and Necromancy. I haven't fleshed out my character's entire spellbook yet, but to give you an idea of her style, besides that she walks into a room in armor and carries a mighty composite longbow +2 and a longsword and looks like an elven army sergeant, my memorized spells were: 1 - (E) Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Feather Fall, Identify, Grease, Shocking Grasp 2 - (E) Scorching Ray, Invisibility, Levitate, Darkvision, Bull's Strength 3 - (E) Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Haste, Dispel Magic, Fireball 4 - (E) Ice Storm, Dimension Door, Lesser Globe of Invulnerability, Shout. Seriously... I'm telling you, this character likes to go out and blow shit up. If only they hadn't nerfed Spell Focus so it's only a +1... ah well. I'm thinking her alignment will be True Neutral, tending towards Chaotic Neutral. These guys have only seen me roleplay my wussy lawful good druid last campaign so it'll be a nice change. :)

Comments

[mithramuse.livejournal.com]

Ah... roight. My local campaign has only made the switch to 3.5 in limited cases, like the ranger. In general magic is per 3rd edition, so that's where I'm thinking differently.

Seems kinda stupid to not allow skipping divination. Okay, fine, it can hose your character, but if you want to why not allow it?? ~shrug~ Though of course you can play however you want.

[ryouga42.livejournal.com]

Incorrect. Detect Mag is Universal. Dropping Div is usually part of a "we know this school is the most useless from a PG standpoint" set, where they say "drop Div and these two schools, two schools that AREN'T (Divination and Necromancy, I think), or Evocation." At least, that's what my 3.5 handbook said. If you drop Evo, you don't have to drop anything else because Evo is HUGE. Certain schools require you to drop less; for instance to spec Divination you can drop any one other school for the same reason that you can't just drop it and one other for other schools.

I'll look it up but I believe these rules are still in effect as of 3.5.

[dr4b]

Whaaa? No, it just says "you drop any two other schools to specialize in one school; you can't drop Divination; Universal is not a school".

I have no idea why anyone wouldn't want to drop enchantment and necromancy anyway. Ooh, I come up to a bunch of things and SLEEP them! Woo!

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

No no no... you Sleep them, and then you Enervate them. :)

Enchantment got a lot better in 3.5, but really, they should just merge Enchantment and Illusion and get it over with already. :) The crossover between those two schools is pretty bad.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Detect Mag is Universal
Not according to my 3.5 Player's Handbook here, which lists it as a divination.
Divination makes more sense for this spell anyway--I'm pretty sure the only reason it was Universal was to prevent 3.0 specialist wizards from screwing themselves over if they drop Diviniation.