Making up ground…

So… I’ve been discouraged from making terrain by the raw and incontrovertible fact that it is a bloody pain in the arse to make all the floor blocks in the Hirst block molds.

So I decided instead of whining about it and doing nothing, I’m just going to focus on making all the friggin’ floor blocks I can stomach for the next few days. I’ve been wanting to try some experiments with the plaster anyway, using coloring or mixing in other stuff to make the result harder, or more flexible, or whatever.

So I’m just using the floor pieces for experimenting. I bought some ink and I’m using the ink to color the blocks, I used some paint and some food coloring. I’ll try some other stuff.

But the bottom line is…

I’m gonna have me some floor pieces to work with…

Totally epic dude!

Well, we did it. My 4e group finally hit epic level. Level 21 introduces us to the whole new realm of epic adventuring.

Our first quest appears to be to hunt down and subdue the Tarrasque.

My ranger, Kataar, is as close to a munchkin character as I’ve ever played. He is a melee monster. A damage dealing dervish of demonic destructiveness. It’s sorta embarrassing how much damage he can do.

Which brings me to epic-ness…

I was expecting to see some bump in effectiveness for reaching epic level. I figured it would be more than a simple level up situation.

But I was amazed after going through the online Character Builder tool and comparing my post-epic Kataar to my pre-epic Kataar.

Basically he has gotten significantly better in every area he was already pretty darn good. The epic path he picked allows him to add a +2 to any two ability scores. Of course he picked dex and str. Plus crossing the epic boundary provides a boost to several feats just for moving from the “paragon” tier to the “epic” tier. For example, his “power attack” damage bonus goes from +6/+4 (main hand/off hand) to +9/+6. His weapon focus feat goes from +2 to +3. Etc.

The end result is that his attack modifier went from +24 at level 20 to +27 at level 21. Usually you see about a one point boost in your attack modifier per level. So in that sense moving from level 20 to level 21 is like advancing three levels in one step.

The question is going to be whether epic level encounters factor this sort of jump in, or if the AC, Attack and Damage progression is pretty linear for them. I guess I will find out.

I’ve only played a couple of characters in my 30+ year D&D career that got higher than level 12. Usually the campaigns I am in start at level 1 and peter out somewhere around level 10 or so. Playing a demigod-type character is an unusual situation for me, and it has its own entertainment value.

I am looking forward to our next session so I can see what sort of impact all these combat boosts have in, well, combat. 🙂

Cheese or not cheese?

There is nothing that generates arguments between gamers like the accusation of “cheesing up” a character, animal companion or familiar.

But nobody has the same definition of what that means. I’m not even sure of the derivation of “cheese” to mean exploiting some corner rule case or unexpected synergy to create a totally overpowered result.

So I’m going to list several items and ask “cheese or not cheese?” for each one. Here we go:

1. Giving your familiar wands which are triggered by the command word “ook!”
2. Taking a dinosaur raptor animal companion when your druid never encountered a dinosaur.
3. Using double-barreled pistols in each hand for a gunslinger.
4. Buying a dozen CLW wands.
5. Crafting wondrous items several levels above your caster level (using the +5 to DC rule for missing requirements for crafting).
6. Using your animal companion for a mount.
7. In point buy character building, dropping an undesired attribute below 8 to boost a desired attribute.
8. Crafting a “ring of true strike”.
9. Building a two-weapon fighting shield basher with shields on each arm.
10. Taking the “leadership” feat to create your own personal healbot.
11. Taking an ape as an animal companion, boosting its int to 3, giving it humanoid magic armor and magic weapons.

Magic item crafting and in-game profiteering

Here is a question for you all.

Is it proper behavior for a good-aligned character in a heroic adventuring party to charge a premium on magic items they craft for other members of the party?

For example, let’s say that the party witch has the “brew potion” feat. A CLW potion costs 50g. But it can be made for 25g. Would it be proper for the witch to sell the potion to a party member for, say, 30g? That saves the purchaser 20g, and nets the witch 5g in profit. Is that OK?

Navigation issue

Huh… so I just noticed that my “older” and “newer” links have disappeared from the bottom of my blog. They reappear (and also appear at the top) if you choose a category, but if you are viewing the blog’s main page with all categories visible, there is no way to navigate to older posts.

I am pretty sure that used to work. Not sure why it stopped, nor what to do about it. On my other self-hosted wordpress blog I’d just edit the appropriate php file, but that’s not doable here.

Anyone have any ideas?

Blog’s not quite dead yet.

It’s only pining for the fjords…

So I finally posted some photos of the stuff I’ve been working on lately. Lots of miscellaneous accessories, including barrels, crates, doors, bags, etc.

I’ve got a lot of these things now. The photos are only a small subset of what I’ve actually painted, and I’ve got more I haven’t painted.

I’m getting pretty set with terrain now… I just need to start using it.

Chests, barrels and bridge

OK, so I once whined about not having enough barrels… Now I’ve got tons of barrels. This is only a few of the ones I have. I like the treasure chests too. More from Hirst Arts.

Campfires, buckets, skulls and bags

These are all from the “cavern accessories” mold from Hirst Arts. I should have taken the time and trouble to paint them different colors. I’ll do my next batch different colors so I can mix and match them and it’s not so obvious that I painted them all at the same time…

Doors, logs and bags

I was trying to do too much with the same colors and so my wooden and metal doors came out looking about the same color. Not intentionally, but that’s what you get when you’re trying to be cheap.

Small crates or boxes