The Unwavering Path
Ok, this is my first post. WOOT! Before I get started, I'd better tell you a bit about what I plan to do here. First, this was not my idea. My wife talked me into starting this blog because she's sick of hearing me rant about D&D stuff to her every day. So instead, I'll rant to the internet void and see if anyone cares to listen. Now, what I want to do with this thing is to take questions from readers regarding Dungeons and Dragons RPG rules and such and try to answer them as best I can.
So a little about me so you know who you're asking: I'm a 23 year old psychologist-in-training (I believe that's my official title) who greatly enjoys the D&D game and has for some time. I started playing in middle school in 2nd edition. There was a lengthy hiatus where life prevented me from playing. However, I have now picked up the 3.5 edition rulebooks and rekindled my love of the game. Personally, I think that 3rd edition is an incredible improvement over 2nd, and you are free to disagree with me, but you're wrong ;). So if you have a problem in a game that you want a third party to cast a deciding vote on, advice on character building (note: I most likely will not hand you a build that makes you practically invincible, I just look for good combinations of abilities, unique combinations, or easier ways of achieving a stated goal in order to speed up gameplay and make it more rewarding), or interpretations for vague rules send me a letter to "majorheadaches at gmail dot com".
Now down to business. The first thing I want to mention (and it's first just because it's recent) is the new Unwavering Path quest that was posted as a web enhancement at www.wizards.com.
Basically, this quest allows monks and paladins to freely multiclass without incurring the normal restriction that they can no longer progress as monks or paladins respectively. Personally, I've never liked that rule anyway. Especially when a character takes a prestige class in a very monk- or paladin-like class. It really penalizes the character in a way that's not really balancing, just annoying. For instance, let's say you have a monk character. By level 6 your monk could easily meet the requirements for the Initiate of Pistis Sophia (Book of Exalted Deeds: I love it!) prestige class. Now, this prestige class seems to be designed specifically for monks, levels in it even stack with monk levels for some abilities.
What I like about this, aside from allowing a character to overcome a rule I have problems with, is that it's scalable. It's a quest, so if your DM wants to hold onto the rule, but doesn't think it's all that important, it could be a rather simple, yet meaningful quest. But, if your DM thinks that the rule is integral to the nature of these classes, s/he could make the quest quite lengthy and difficult. So that, by the time you complete it, you will have earned the right to ignore the rule. Plus, it allows for some nifty role-playing aspects to enter your game, and that's always good... maybe....
So a little about me so you know who you're asking: I'm a 23 year old psychologist-in-training (I believe that's my official title) who greatly enjoys the D&D game and has for some time. I started playing in middle school in 2nd edition. There was a lengthy hiatus where life prevented me from playing. However, I have now picked up the 3.5 edition rulebooks and rekindled my love of the game. Personally, I think that 3rd edition is an incredible improvement over 2nd, and you are free to disagree with me, but you're wrong ;). So if you have a problem in a game that you want a third party to cast a deciding vote on, advice on character building (note: I most likely will not hand you a build that makes you practically invincible, I just look for good combinations of abilities, unique combinations, or easier ways of achieving a stated goal in order to speed up gameplay and make it more rewarding), or interpretations for vague rules send me a letter to "majorheadaches at gmail dot com".
Now down to business. The first thing I want to mention (and it's first just because it's recent) is the new Unwavering Path quest that was posted as a web enhancement at www.wizards.com.
Basically, this quest allows monks and paladins to freely multiclass without incurring the normal restriction that they can no longer progress as monks or paladins respectively. Personally, I've never liked that rule anyway. Especially when a character takes a prestige class in a very monk- or paladin-like class. It really penalizes the character in a way that's not really balancing, just annoying. For instance, let's say you have a monk character. By level 6 your monk could easily meet the requirements for the Initiate of Pistis Sophia (Book of Exalted Deeds: I love it!) prestige class. Now, this prestige class seems to be designed specifically for monks, levels in it even stack with monk levels for some abilities.
- Ok, so you're a level 6 monk, and want this PrC (prestige class), so you take it making you a monk 6/Initiate 1. Great! But, now you can't gain any more levels in monk. Oh well, you've still got this monk-like class to level in.
- So you go all the way up to level 16 as monk 6/Initiate 10. Now there's a problem. You can't advance a PrC farther than 10 until you're a level 20 character (provided the PrC has 10 levels of progression already listed). So what do you do?
- Take 4 levels of something else... it's doable, but that may force some monk purists into making choices they didn't want.
- This situation can, of course, be prevented by taking 10 levels of monk before taking the PrC, but some players can get very impatient with this especially if they see the PrC as defining what their character "truly is".
- Or you could choose a race with 4 HD... that can run into many other problems.
What I like about this, aside from allowing a character to overcome a rule I have problems with, is that it's scalable. It's a quest, so if your DM wants to hold onto the rule, but doesn't think it's all that important, it could be a rather simple, yet meaningful quest. But, if your DM thinks that the rule is integral to the nature of these classes, s/he could make the quest quite lengthy and difficult. So that, by the time you complete it, you will have earned the right to ignore the rule. Plus, it allows for some nifty role-playing aspects to enter your game, and that's always good... maybe....
Tags:
Labels: D and D, d20, Dungeons and Dragons, monk, paladin, quests
posted by Jono at 4:16 PM
3 Comments:
Yeah nice try, but I had just gotten done reading your comments on Tracy's blog :)
ah! But I WAS in school! We have computers here, and wireless internet service.
you could cross into a prestege class that allows you to switch back to the monk class, or would that not work the expanded psionics book has such a class with low enough recs.
Post a Comment
<< Home