Dungeons and Dragons Blog

In part one, I talked about the muscle.  Today, we’re going to be a little more subtle with Calix the Ranger.  Calix grew up and spent a lot of his time under the stars and roaming the King’s Forest.  He’d spend his days trying to track both men and animals in the forest as well as making his way through the wilderness without getting spotted.  As he reached his early teens, he finally realized he wasn’t the only person doing these things and that he was actually being watched quite often as the resident Ranger and protector of the forest (still have to come up with a name) decided to take young Calix under his wing and teach him the ropes.  For days, Calix would disappear only to come back with a few new tricks of the trade.  In the meantime, he trained with Rothgar in swordcraft but practiced with his favorite weapon, the longbow.

I kind of hate to call Calix the leader because you have both Aragorn and Tanis as “leader rangers.”  Instead, I like to call him the glue that keeps the party together.  He’s even tempered to where Ronax (the Rogue) doesn’t get on his nerves and he’s tough enough to stand up to Rothgar.  He’s not the strongest, the fastest or the wisest, but he’s probably second best at all of those.  So he’s the jack of all trades in the party and he’ll be the guy the party relies on as they make their way through the wilderness.  And then he also provides a secondary fighting option and the primary guy when it comes to a ranged weapon.

Calix ended up with some pretty good scores.  He had 16s in both Dex and Con, and then a 14 in Wis.  To round things out, he has 13s in Str and Cha and then a 12 in Int.  When combined with his solid base saves, he’s has a pretty good saving throw modifier in all three categories.

When it came to skills, I maxed him out in a lot of the typical Ranger stuff.  He has four ranks in Handle Animal, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Nature), Spot and Survival.  I then gave him two ranks in Climb, Heal, Hide and Listen.  I gave him the alertness feat which basically gives him a four rank in Listen and then he has Weapon Focus - Longbow.  His favored enemy is the Goblinoid.

As far as equipment, he has his longbow and short sword.  No shield but I gave him studded leather armor so while he’s not as capable of fending off attacks like Rothgar (who has an 18), his 16 AC is nothing to scoff at and should give most low level monsters a tough time.  He’ll be the guy who keeps the enemy busy from a distance while Rothgar can move up and do some real damage with his sword.

Next up will be Ronax, the rogue in the party.  I actually had a lot of fun with him and while creating him, I almost wanted to run out and get Complete Scoundral because that’s exactly how he turned out.

Alright, I might not have too much time to spend on this over the next few weeks but for me, the hardest part about any task is starting it so I’m going to at least try to push forward.  For several years, I’ve had a very cool campaign idea.  I’ve tried starting to write it up, made some progress then I wouldn’t pick it up for six months or even a year.  And when I started it, I was still using 2E (yes, it’s been that long) so what I did, I would have to convert.  On top of that, it’s on an old laptop so I’m just going to start over. 

So what I’m going to do first is roll up some sample players, work on the campaign, and play it out to see how it works.  Yes, it’s time consuming, but since I’ve never ran a 3.5 campaign, it’ll allow me to get used to the rules.  I do have one friend who wants to play, but we’re both in our mid-30s, have kids, and we’re an hour away from each other so it makes getting together tough, much less creating a three hour block of time to play.

Just some things about my style.  I love creating the story behind a campaign, but I’m not as into the artistic things.  So what I usually end up doing is taking maps that have already been created and bending them to be what I want them to be.  Same goes for campaign settings.  I used Faerun for a couple of reasons.  First off, there’s a lot of information out there to where if I need background on a city or nation, it’s there.  Second, the maps are already there (and I have the old Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas) which comes in handy.  So while I play in Faerun, I don’t neccesarily follow everything that’s in all of the Forgotten Realms products.  So things start in Cormyr, but I won’t be following everything to the letter.  In fact I drop my own cities and keeps where I want them.

The story starts in Tyrluk, which is northwest of the King’s Forest in Cormyr.  It centers around a group of five orphans who know little about their past and they’re raised in an orphanage run by a Dwarf who goes by Puck.  He’s cared for the boys as long as they remember and none of them have any recollection of their parents.  Now they’re all reaching adulthood (age 17-19) and all have pretty much chosen their path.  They’re life long friends and while they have their sibling squabbles, they generally get along.

The first character I rolled up was my fighter, Rothgar.  The plan was have to have a solid frontline attacker and I think I ended up getting one.  I rolled the old way (4d6, ignoring the lowest number and then shifting the numbers around how I like) and my limits were I could have only one 18, one 16, and then nothing higher then 14 for other 4 abilities.  I hit gold on my first roll and got 6,6,6,1 so I got a quick 18 which went right to strength.  After that, it went downhill though.  I did get a 16 which went to constituion and the rest of my rolls were 13, 10, 7, 7.  I pushed the ten down to nine and gave him a 14 dexterity.  I then gave him a nine wisdom, seven intellegence and a seven charisma.

As I put the abilities down, Rothgar’s story began to shape.  He’s slightly disfigured, doesn’t talk well but he was always the bigger then the other kids so he wasn’t made fun of (and he also had his four friends to back him up).  Rothgar turned out being huge.  He’s now 6′7″, 245 lbs of muscle and he’s probably the strongest person in the city.  Puck began working with him at an early age with a variety of weapons but Rothgar seemed to take a liking to the longsword so once Puck taught him everything he knew, he sent him to the local academy to learn more swordplay with the seargant of the town’s militia.  He’s now a reserve member of the town militia and helps out wherever he can.

Because of Rothgar’s low intellegence, he doesn’t get many skill points.  The eight he got (four for his class and four bonus for being a human) went all to climbing and jumping.  His three feats went to weapon focus - longsword, athletic (to help with his climbing) and improved intiative.  I equipped him with scale mail, a large metal shild and a longsword in addition to some typical trail equipment (rope, backpack, bedroll, that kind of stuff).

One down, four to go.  Next up will probably be the ranger, Calix.  He’s sort of the parties leader and jack of all trades.

UPDATE ONE

I forgot to mention this, but Rothgar’s alignment is chaotic good.  So his standing in the town militia is as a reserve not because he can’t fight, but it’s because he’s poor at taking orders.  Also because of his low charisma, he’s not a real leader.  The party is going to be a mix of chaotic good (Rothgar, the rogue and the wizard) and neutral good (Calix the Ranger and the cleric).

Since there’s not out there to talk about, I might as well start in with The Campaign. This has been in my head for about ten years. Some of it is down on paper, but most of it is in my head. It’s a cross-setting (mostly Forgotten Realms, but a little Greyhawk) super module that starts the characters at first level and takes them through where they basically save the world. I might even have a chance to take someone through this soon, so I’d appreciate any comments. I’ll be spinning you through as a player, so there won’t be any spoilers. The campaign is best played with a five character party, with two fighters, a cleric, a wizard of some sort, and a rogue.

I’m also hoping as I go through this, that I’ll put more pen to it then I have right now. Like I said, most of it is in my head in some sort. Eventually I’d like to get it all down on the computer, but as always, time is the key.