CR Value

I'm sorry, but were the designers of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 high when they came up with CR? How is one 5th level character a challenge at all for 5 5th level characters to fight? Pretty much, they lay waste to these encounters one after another.

I think I'm used to first edition where you had to wade through hundreds of encounters to level up. Now, you can fight fleas and after 12 or so such battles, you're up to the next level. That's ridiculous. I assumed that when looking at these new rules, the whole thing would boil down to a kind of Champions or Vampire situation--lots of low level grunts who you could demolish easilly with a real battle at the end of the adventure with someone who's a real challenge--but no. The modules designed for Dungeons and Dragons are the same format as the old. But of course, CR doesn't seem to have anything to do with those encounters. They'll list an EL rating for an encounter that's actually lower than the CR for the monsters in it. What the hell? This is the experience system they're screwing with here. It's sort of the backbone for the game.

As a DM, I'm findidng that the only way to make the combat interesting is to aim for a CR a point or two above the characters. This is working, but only because they're fighting one encounter a night. What are people doing who play through four or five battles a night. What? Is everyone supposed to be level 20 by the end of the month?

I don't know what they're doing for version 4.0, but my suggestion is that on the top of the list should be a fix for this.

feat index

Here is the complete index to feats. It's a bit daunting but I figure it's worth having a look.

Neri- as I understand it you still have a feat open. If so, may I suggest Alacritious Cogitation from The Complete Mage. It allows you to simply leave a spell slot open and fill it, at any time, with a spell of that level. So, basically, you don't have to prepare a spell in advance. The drawback is that the spell then takes a full round to cast, but for a lot of non-combat spells, that's not that big a deal. A round is 6 seconds long, by the way.

Fumble-aya

So, I've given this some thought. I think Slash was right that a fumble that ends up with you on the ground is pretty bad. So, here's what I've come up with. If you roll a fumble in melee combat, you have to make a balance roll to stay up on your feet. If you end up not on your feet, you can make a tumble roll to get up without provoking an attack of opportunity. This gives you two dexterity checks to avoid getting clobbered when you fumble.

If you fumble while using a ranged attack, you have to make a hit roll against a friendly unit in your arc of fire. If firing into hand to hand, the friendly combatent is automatically the target. In other words, if you fumble while using a ranged weapon and one of your friends is in front of you, there's a chance that you'll hit them.

Fumbes on skill checks are just automatic failures and carry no other ill effect.

Game Term Glossary

• Character Conception- This is the idea behind the character: your guiding principal about what the character is like, their place in the world, etc.. Strider’s character conception (from Lord of the Rings) might be: reluctant king who is shirking his responsibility and off wandering the planet. Conan’s might be: big guy who’d rather get drunk and kill then have a conversation. A character conception need not be totally formed (or formed at all) at the beginning of the game. Through the magic of revision, when you get one that you like, we simply rewrite what has come before a bit so that it seems like you’ve had your character conception in mind all along.
• Crit: Short for Critical hit. A critical hit is scored, in general, by rolling a natural twenty on the twenty sided die to hit. Some weapons crit more often. When you roll a crit, all damage done by you on that blow is doubled. As a rule for this game, monsters cannot crit against players unless the monster has a class level (a fourth level Ogre barbarian can crit, for instance; a regular Ogre can not) or the encounter is at the same CR as the characters. “Crit”ing a skill or ability check means automatic success regardless of penalties or difficulties.
• Fumble: A fumble is the result of rolling a natural 1. Fumbling is failure no matter what modifiers. Also, a fumble in combat may result in your falling down. It requires a Balance skill roll to stay on your feet.