Indeed I do, fixed.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
Indeed I do, fixed.
- Location
- Germany
Well, too bad he didn't have time to transform and buff up, but at least he got a barrage of bombs out, it's something.
- Location
- Germany
Just a misslink, it was a level 4 spell.
Or Infusion to be precise.
- Location
- United States
Excellent...
Name: Anya
Class: Sorcerer 1/Favored Soul (Old Gods) 1/Fighter 1/Mystic Theurge 3 --> LEVEL UP
Name: Mia
Class: Wizard 6 --> LEVEL UP
Name: Shara Rogare
Class: Aristocrat 1/Rogue 4/Shadow Thief of Amn 3 --> LEVEL UP
Name: Sandor Clegane
Class: Fighter 13
Name: Argo the Cunning
Class: Minotaur 6/Fighter 5/Occult Slayer 1 --> Almost there
Not a bad outcome at all.
It's great to see the Inquisition agents steadily getting stronger.
- Location
- Germany
What was the plan here?
Further Theurge, or Abjurant Champion?
- Location
- United States
I'm guessing further Theurge. No point in letting the Divine spells fall to the wayside.
- Location
- Germany
She is melee though, if we go further on a half-BAB class like that she'll have a bad time for the next few levels, until she eventually gets Divine Power, if she ever gets that far.
With Abjurant Champion she could play to her strenghts, combining melee and magic further.
- Location
- France
There was no plan, this was Azel's baby and he's gone. Sadly, this PC doesn't have the required BaB to become an Abjurant Champion, so let's just go Theurge. Do note that she'll qualify for Spellsword one level before Abjurant Champion, so one level of Spellsword if a good Gish entry for AbjChamp.
She learns an extra level 2 arcane spell and gets a small amount of skill points and HP, but that's it. Underwhelming level there.
I suggest picking a Gish spell to fir the character. Perhaps Wraithstrike?
Oh, level 4 spells. Sweet!
I suggest learning Dimension Door and Solid Fog.
Let's progress Shadow Thief of Amn, it's strictly better than Rogue. She gets a bonus feat from a terrible list, but a feat nonetheless. I suggest Blind-Fight, it's great.Name: Shara Rogare
Class: Aristocrat 1/Rogue 4/Shadow Thief of Amn 3 --> LEVEL UP
Not a bad outcome at all.
- Location
- United States
Shara gets two feats if I'm not mistaken -- one from her class, and one for level 9. What should the second feat be?
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Shara -> Level 9!
Mia -> Level 7!
Anya -> Level 7
Not bad! Mia is now a 4th Circle caster, and Shara's nearly caught up with the Misfits (if it weren't for that one Aristocrat level...)
Anya ain't nothing too shabby either, she's now effectively got the spellcasting of a 5th Level Divine and Arcane mage.
- Location
- France
@Artemis1992 apparently Anya already has BaB +4 (we must be using fractional) so if you really want her to be a proper Gish and abandon divine casting, take a level of Spellsword (it's full BaB and advances arcane casting). It's quite good, even though its class ability is now irrelevant as all her spells ignore ACF. If you retrain one of her feats into Combat Casting (perhaps Alternative Source Spell, now that she has ACF reduction?) she'll be ready to enter Abjurant Champion next level!
If Goldfish prefers power over flavor, we may even have competing levelup votes for once!
@Duesal, she already has Blind-Fight and a mix of feats for throwing daggers and fighting with them, so I suggest the following two feats : Staggering Strike, and Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. She already has Weapon Finesse, but now she can retrain it into Craven.
If Goldfish prefers power over flavor, we may even have competing levelup votes for once!
@Duesal, she already has Blind-Fight and a mix of feats for throwing daggers and fighting with them, so I suggest the following two feats : Staggering Strike, and Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. She already has Weapon Finesse, but now she can retrain it into Craven.
@Artemis1992 apparently Anya already has BaB +4 (we must be using fractional) so if you really want her to be a proper Gish and abandon divine casting, take a level of Spellsword (it's full BaB and advances arcane casting). It's quite good, even though its class ability is now irrelevant as all her spells ignore ACF. If you retrain one of her feats into Combat Casting (perhaps Alternative Source Spell, now that she has ACF reduction?) she'll be ready to enter Abjurant Champion next level!
If Goldfish prefers power over flavor, we may even have competing levelup votes for once!
@Duesal, she already has Blind-Fight and a mix of feats for throwing daggers and fighting with them, so I suggest the following two feats : Staggering Strike, and Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. She already has Weapon Finesse, but now she can retrain it into Craven.
Craven does not really fit Shara, maybe grab Garin's variation on it, the one that makes him impulsive.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
So I think I get it now, I thought it was a bit weird that Dionysus was just getting up to standard cult shit. It doesn't fit with the trend of giving each evil faction some actual nuance and reason for their diabolic activities. The Devils being what they are would try subversion before diplomacy so any kind of devil plot just ending with standard subversion, treachery and quiet murder makes sense, demonic and daemonic plots being corruption-based and filled with violence also, but I come to expect some driving motivation greater than merely ideological from anyone else. Tiamat at least wants to add to her hoard, and how she does that can manifest in as many ways as it does with Viserys.
There are better ways to throw a big-ass party that won't get interrupted by an angry dragon, so one has to wonder...
There are better ways to throw a big-ass party that won't get interrupted by an angry dragon, so one has to wonder...
- Location
- United States
We've got the corpse of the Grand Cultist, so we can ask some very pointed questions.
- Location
- France
Define "related". Are you looking for a D&D fic? For a long quest to read that isn't just CKII number-crunching? For something about a sorcerer, an Emperor, or a Dragon?
I mean, I'm currently rereading Divided Loyalties and it's great. Good D&D fics are thin on the ground.
If you're looking for D&D stuff, I have several recs :
- The Two Year Emperor. This is a D&D fic, and it knows it. Basically some guy is summoned to be an Emperor of a D&D world for two years (no, this doesn't follow Isekai or industrialisation!insert tropes - it's old). Things are going amazingly badly for the nation he's in charge of, and for him personally too. This fic plays the insanity of D&D's rules absolutely 100% straight, and it's great! Seriously, it leads to some insane worldbuilding that I won't spoil here. You just can't use IRL logic anymore. The plot is also quite solid.
- Here is a review from Goodreads that doesn't include many spoilers, but I spoilered it for length. I agree with the review.
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[*]This book will appeal to a very particular fan base, and anyone not in it is likely to simply be baffled.
It's a work of "rationalist" fiction, a genre in which a particular fictional setting's details are dissected by the author and an attempt is made to figure out what would "really" happen. These sorts of stories typically focus on a protagonist who's very clever at figuring out exploits and workarounds for the rules he's operating under. This particular one focuses on third-edition Dungeons and Dragons.
Dungeons and Dragons is well known for having sometimes rather arbitrary and obscure rules, and also for having players that do their darndest to exploit those rules, so this could sort of be seen as a regular Dungeons and Dragons campaign in which the Dungeon Master isn't allowed to say "no" to the ridiculous exploits the player comes up with - though he is allowed to have the NPCs occasionally come up with exploits of their own. If you're not familiar with the rules of third edition D&D this story will pretty much go over your head.
The story starts out with a pretty basic and standard plot (a fact that the protagonist himself remarks upon): the protagonist is a scientifically-minded engineer and roleplaying nerd named Jake who is ripped from our "real world" and set upon the throne of a kingdom in D&D Land (or "Stupidworld", as the protagonist comes to refer to it internally). By the laws of the land he is absolute ruler for the next two years, after which he will be rewarded for his service and released. Unfortunately, he is brought there in a time of crisis; the kingdom is being invaded by a powerful foreign nation.
It doesn't stay "standard" for very long, though. Over the course of the book the nature and identity of the bad guys and the conflict the protagonist is having with them takes an abrupt 90 degree turn on multiple occasions as revelations come out about what's really going on. New exploits and tactics are developed in a steady escalation of brokenly overpowered tricks, both by the protagonist and by some of the entities he's up against. For example, one of the very earliest ticks he comes up with is an "infinite money" exploit based on the fact that firewood costs 1 silver piece, quarterstaves are free, and merchants have no limits on how much of either of those that they can buy and sell. From that point forward money is literally no object and anything in the equipment list can be had for free.
So, was it good? Kind of a tricky question, as evidenced by my mixed star rating. I found the characters hard to empathize with (this had plot significance in one case but for most of them they were just kind of flat and one-dimensional. Perhaps appropriate to the setting, but not so fun to read about). The exploits sometimes got a little bit too silly; I can't say they broke suspension of disbelief (because that's really not applicable here) but they did sometimes make things harder to care about when it seemed like anything could happen. Occasionally a literal god would have to step in and tell Jake "no, even though that's allowed by the book, it's just too broken and I'll smite you if you do it." Got so bad one of the gods left a full-time consultant with Jake so he could check if what he was doing was a smiteable offense before trying it. But there were a couple of exploits that were such amazing gems of absurdity that I can forgive the excesses.
The absolute best one was when Jake mercilessly exploited the grappling rules (widely recognized as the most arcane and twisted section of rules in third edition D&D) to produce something he called the "meatball of doom." I'm not going to spoil it, if this is at all your style of book it's something you need to see for yourself. The city of Gryfhamr was also a marvel of broken-rule-based architecture that I really need to rip off for a setting of my own someday.
One thing that I didn't excuse so easily, unfortunately, was the meddling of the gods beyond the occasional smackdown-for-the-sake-of-sanity. The gods get heavily involved in the plot, leading to literal deus ex machina outcomes. By the end it's kind of hard figuring out what Jake accomplished on his own and what was simply spoon-fed to him in secret.
Anyway, overall it was an enjoyable experience for the D&D nerd in me, but not so much as an actual story.
[*]
- The SilverClawShift campaign archives. Someone was good at writing and was playing an amazing series of D&D campaigns. They wrote them all up. It was good.
- Stranded in Fantasy. This is a diary from a bunch of earthlings dumped into a fantasy universe. Some starve, some die, and some survive against the odds. Shockingly good (and shockingly SFW) considering it was originally posted to 4chan.
- Fire and Dust. A Sensate (basically this) gets involved in a murder investigation on Sigil, the city of Doors that connect to all D&D planes (it's canon! The Lady of Pain rules there, and she's stronger than the Gods!). A solid fic, but not a comedy and not about the insanity of D&D. This is fundamentally an investigation/adventure story with a crazy setting and some magic added in. A nice read.
And if you just want something good to read on the internet, check out Mother of Learning! It's great! It's also the only timeloop story done right I've ever seen. Character development, amazing plotline, great worldbuilding... And it's almost complete and still updating once a month !
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I'm going to try to do more from Port Moraq to round the day off but no promises, it's getting late
- Location
- United States
Fingers crossed for Asha successfully recruited Harren Half-Hoare.
And for Theon successfully converting the Ironborn in that ship away from the Drowned God.
- Location
- France
Hey @das_slash, I've edited my reading rec post. Give it another look!
- Location
- Mexico
Is it hard to get into Divided Loyalties if I don't really know much about Warhammer? Just what has soaked in from popular culture.
- Location
- United States
Not at all. Especially if you are ok with a little bit of wiki delving.
I recommend it too. Just binged it.
- Location
- France
I know nothing about Warhammer, and didn't touch the Wiki. I loved it anyway. It's amazing, incredibly friendly to newbies, and very well-written.
For examples, if I had to rank the stories I mentioned there according to which have the best characters and character development, it would go :
- Divided Loyalties
- Mother of Learning (so much protagonist growth in this one! And a great cast! Amazing story without the usual boring grind and powerwank of a timeloop!)
- [huge gap]
- Stranded in Fantasy (weird for a diary fic, but there is some)
- Fire and Dust (interesting characters, but they don't change much once you've figured them out. The whole story takes place in less than a week, after all.
- Everything else (those barely have characters, or are campaign archives that are a little too summarized for character and personality to be felt)
- Location
- Mexico
Alright, I'll to check out divided Loyalties and keep mother of learning in mind, thank you.