Skills & Powers presents several new ways of rolling a character's six ability score statistics, and then provides extra rules to enable the player to alter them. Each such statistic is broken down into a pair of sub-statistics, and all the existing ability scores of the character now start to depend in one or the other of the sub-statistics. Dec 14, 2019 AD&D 2nd Edition Character Sheet 3.4. AD&D 2nd Edition Character Sheet 4.6. So maybe you've been living in a box and haven't heard of Dungeons & Dragons. I've been playing since I was 10 and have gone through many, many character sheets. After all these years, I think I've developed a fairly comprehensive and flexible sheet for use with the 2nd. The AD&D 2E sheet even fills in the various attribute-related columns for you based on attribute scores (It knows if you are using Skills & Powers too!) The existing versions of the sheets are still available on the RPG Resources page, and here are direct links to download the new fillable versions. Half-Dragons; Race Pick Pockets Open Locks Find/Remove Traps Move Silently Hide in Shadows Detect Noise Climb Walls Read Languages; Bronze +5% —-5% +10% +10%. Character Sheets created by Mr. Exalted 3rd Edition. 2-Page Interactive Sheet; Exalted 3rd ED. 2-Page Interactive Sheet With Weapon Rage Charts; Exalted 3rd ED. 2-Page Interactive Sheet With Weapon Rage Charts and Excellency Indicators; Exalted 3rd ED. 2-Page Interactive Sheet With Excellency Indicators Only; Exalted 3rd ED. 2-Page Interactive Sheet With Excellency.
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Contents
- What is a Roleplaying Game?
- Basics of Play
- Playing the Game
- Using This Site
- Format of Rules Elements
- Understanding Actions
Players
Gamemasters
Pathfinder is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) where you and a group of friends gather to tell a tale of brave heroes and cunning villains in a world filled with terrifying monsters and amazing treasures. More importantly, this is a game where your character’s choices determine how the story unfolds.
Pathfinder adventures take place in a perilous fantasy world rife with ancient empires; sprawling city-states; and countless tombs, dungeons, and monster lairs packed with plunder. A Pathfinder character’s adventures might take them to forsaken underwater ruins, haunted gothic crypts, or magical universities in jungle cities. A world of endless adventure awaits!
What is a Roleplaying Game?
A roleplaying game is an interactive story where one player, the Game Master (GM), sets the scene and presents challenges, while other players take the roles of player characters (PCs) and attempt to overcome those challenges. Danger comes in the form of monsters, devious traps, and the machinations of adversarial agents, but Pathfinder also provides political schemes, puzzles, interpersonal drama, and much, much more.
The game is typically played in a group of four to seven players, with one of those players serving as the group’s Game Master. The GM prepares, presents, and presides over the game’s world and story, posing challenges and playing adversaries, allies, and bystanders alike. As each scene leads into the next, each player contributes to the story, responding to situations according to the personality and abilities of their character. Dice rolls, combined with preassigned statistics, add an element of chance and determine whether characters succeed or fail at actions they attempt.
The Flow of the Game
Pathfinder is played in sessions, during which players gather in person or online for a few hours to play the game. A complete Pathfinder story can be as short as a single session, commonly referred to as a “one-shot,” or it can stretch on for multiple sessions, forming a campaign that might last for months or even years. If the Game Master enjoys telling the story and the players are entertained, the game can go as long as you like.
A session can be mostly action, with battles with vile beasts, escapes from fiendish traps, and the completion of heroic quests. Alternatively, it could include negotiating with a baron for rights to a fort, infiltrating an army of lumbering frost giants, or bargaining with an angel for a strand of hair required for an elixir to revive a slain friend. Ultimately it’s up to you and your group to determine what kind of game you are playing, from dungeon exploration to a nuanced political drama, or anything in between.
The Players
Everyone involved in a Pathfinder game is a player, including the Game Master, but for the sake of simplicity, “player” usually refers to participants other than the GM. Before the game begins, players invent a history and personality for their characters, using the rules to determine their characters’ statistics, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The GM might limit the options available during character creation, but the limits are discussed ahead of time so everyone can create interesting heroes. In general, the only limits to character concepts are the players’ imaginations and the GM’s guidelines. During the game, players describe the actions their characters take and roll dice, using their characters’ abilities. The GM resolves the outcome of these actions. Some players enjoy acting out (or roleplaying) what they do as if they were their characters, while others describe their characters’ actions as if narrating a story. Do whatever feels best! If this is your first experience with a roleplaying game, it is recommended that you take on the role of a player to familiarize yourself with the rules and the world.
The Game Master
While the other players create and control their characters, the Game Master (or GM) is in charge of the story and world. The GM describes all the situations player characters experience in an adventure, considers how the actions of player characters affect the story, and interprets the rules along the way.
The GM can create a new adventure—crafting a narrative, selecting monsters, and assigning treasure on their own— or they can instead rely on a published adventure, using it as a basis for the session and modifying it as needed to accommodate their individual players and the group’s style of play. Some even run games that combine original and published content, mixed together to form a new narrative.
Being the GM is a challenge, requiring you to adjudicate the rules, narrate the story, and juggle other responsibilities.
But it can also be very rewarding and worth all the work required to run a good game. If it is your first time running a game, remember that the only thing that matters is that everyone has a good time, and that includes you. Everything else will come naturally with practice and patience.
Gaming Is for All
Whether you are the GM or a player, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game includes a social contract: everyone has gathered together to have fun telling a story.
For many, roleplaying is a way to escape the troubles of everyday life. Be mindful of everyone at the table and what they want out of the game, so that everyone can have fun.
When a group gathers for the first time, they should talk about what they hope to experience at the table, as well as any topics they want to avoid. Everyone should understand that elements might come up that make some players feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome, and everyone should agree to respect those boundaries during play. That way, everyone can enjoy the game together.
This is a game for everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences. It is the responsibility of all of the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.
Tools of Play
In addition to this site, there are a few things you will need to play. These supplies can be found at your local hobby shop or online at various sites (such as opengamingstore.com).
- Character Sheet: Each player will need a character sheet to create their character and to record what happens to that character during play. You can find a character sheet online as a free pdf. There are both full-color and printer-friendly versions of the official character sheets available.
- Dice: The players and GM will need at least one set of polyhedral dice, although most participants bring their own. Six-sided dice are quite common, but all the dice in the set can be found at hobby game stores or online at opengamingstore.com. See the Dice sidebar for more on the different kinds of dice and how they are discussed in the text.
- Adventure: Every table needs an adventure to play, whether it’s designed by the GM or found in a published resource. You can find a variety of exciting adventures from many publishers at opengamingstore.com, and even official Adventure Path campaigns at paizo.com.
- Bestiary: From terrifying dragons to mischievous gremlins, monsters are a common threat that the PCs might face, and each type has its own statistics and abilities.
- Maps and Miniatures: The chaos of combat can be difficult to imagine, so many groups use maps to represent the battlefield. These maps are marked with a 1-inch grid, and each square represents 5 feet in the game. Miniatures and illustrated tokens called pawns are used to represent the characters and the adversaries they face.
- Additional Accessories: There are a number of additional accessories you can add to your game to enhance the experience, including tools that help you track turns in combat, decks of cards for referencing common rules, digital character-creation tools, and even background music and sound-effect sets.
Basics of Play
Before creating your first character or adventure, you should understand a number of basic concepts used in the game. New concepts are presented in bold to make them easy to find.
Defining Characters
Players take on the role of player characters (PCs), while the Game Master portrays nonplayer characters (NPCs) and monsters. While PCs and NPCs are both important to the story, they serve very different purposes in the game. PCs are the protagonists— the narrative is about them—while NPCs and monsters are allies, contacts, adversaries, and villains. That said, PCs, NPCs, and monsters share several characteristics.
Level is one of the most important statistics of the game, as it conveys the approximate power and capabilities of every individual creature. PCs range in level from 1st, at the start of the character’s adventuring career, to 20th, the very height of power. As the characters overcome challenges, defeat foes, and complete adventures, they accumulate Experience Points (XP). Every time a character amasses 1,000 XP, they go up a level, gaining new abilities so they can take on even greater challenges. A 1st-level PC might face off against a giant rat or a group of bandits, but at 20th level, that same character might be able to bring ruin to an entire city with a single spell.
In addition to level, characters are defined by ability scores, which measure a character’s raw potential and are used to calculate most of their other statistics. There are six ability scores in the game.
Strength represents a character’s physical might, while Dexterity represents agility and the ability to avoid danger. Constitution indicates a character’s overall health and well-being. Intelligence represents raw knowledge and problem-solving ability, while Wisdom measures a character’s insight and the ability to evaluate a situation. Finally, Charisma indicates charm, persuasiveness, and force of personality. Ability scores for ordinary folk range from as low as 3 to as high as 18, with 10 representing average human capabilities. High-level characters can have ability scores that range much higher than 18.
An ability score that’s above the average increases your chance of success at tasks related to the ability score, while those below the average decrease your chance. This adjustment is called an ability modifier.
Your player character is also defined by some key choices you make. The first choice is a PC’s ancestry, representing the character’s parents and heritage, such as human, elf, or goblin. Next up is the PC’s background, which describes their upbringing, from lowly street urchin to wealthy noble. Finally, and most importantly, a PC’s class defines the majority of their aptitudes and abilities, like a wizard’s command of powerful arcane spells or a druid’s power to transform into a fearsome beast!
In addition to these key choices, player characters also have a number of feats— individual abilities selected during character creation and as the character increases in level. Every feat has a type to denote where its explanation can be found (for example, elf feats can be found in the elf ancestry) and its theme (wizard feats, for example, grant abilities that deal with spells). Finally, characters have skills that measure their ability to hide, swim, bargain, and perform other common tasks.
The World As A Participant
Aside from characters and monsters, the world itself can be a force at the table and in the narrative. While the presence of the larger world can sometimes be an obvious hazard, such as when a powerful storm lashes the countryside, the world can also act in subtle, small ways.
Traps and treasures are just as important in many tales as cunning beasts. To help you understand these game elements, many of them use the same characteristics as characters and monsters. For example, most environmental hazards have a level, which indicates how dangerous they are, and the level of a magic item gives you a sense of its overall power and impact on a story.
Creating a Narrative
Characters and their choices create the story, but how they interact with each other and the world around them is governed by rules. So, while you might decide that your character undertakes an epic journey to overcome terrifying foes and make the world a safer place, your character’s chance of success is determined by their abilities, the choices you make, and the roll of the dice.
The GM determines the premise and background of most adventures, although character histories and personalities certainly play a part. Once a game session begins, the players take turns describing what their characters attempt to do, while the GM determines the outcome, with the table working together toward a specific goal. The GM also describes the environment, other characters’ actions, and events. For example, the GM might announce that the characters’ hometown is under attack by marauding trolls. The characters might track the trolls to a nearby swamp—only to discover that the trolls were driven from their swamp by a fearsome dragon! The PCs then have the choice of taking on an entire tribe of trolls, the dragon, or both. Whatever they decide, their success depends on their choices and the die rolls they make during play.
A single narrative—including the setup, plot, and conclusion—is called an adventure. A series of adventures creates an even larger narrative, called a campaign. An adventure might take several sessions to complete, whereas a campaign might take months or even years!
Playing the Game
Three modes of play determine the pacing of each scene in the story. Most of your character’s time is spent in exploration, uncovering mysteries, solving problems, and interacting with other characters. The world abounds with danger, however, and characters often find themselves in an encounter, fighting savage beasts and terrifying monsters. Finally, time moves quickly when the characters enjoy downtime, a respite from the world’s troubles and a chance to rest and train for future expeditions. Throughout an adventure, game play moves between these three modes many times, as needed for the story. The more you play the game, the more you’ll see that each mode has its own play style, but moving from mode to mode has few hard boundaries.
During the game, your character will face situations where the outcome is uncertain. A character might need to climb a sheer cliff, track down a wounded chimera, or sneak past a sleeping dragon, all of which are dangerous tasks with a price for failure. In such cases, the acting character (or characters) will be asked to attempt a check to determine whether or not they succeed. A check is usually made by rolling a single 20-sided die (a d20) and adding a number based on the relevant ability. In such cases, rolling high is always good.
Once a check is rolled, the GM compares the result to a target number called the difficulty class (DC) to determine the outcome. If the result of the check is equal to or greater than the DC, the check is successful. If it is less, the check is a failure. Beating the DC by 10 or more is referred to as a critical success, which usually grants an especially Positive outcome. Similarly, failing the check by 10 or more is a critical failure (sometimes called a fumble). This sometimes results in additional negative effects. You also often score a critical success by rolling a 20 on the die when attempting a check (before adding anything). Likewise, rolling a 1 on the die when attempting a check often results in a critical failure. Note that not all checks have a special effect on a critical success or critical failure and such results should be treated just like an ordinary success or failure instead.
For example, in pursuit of the wounded chimera, your character might find the path blocked by a fast-moving river. You decide to swim across, but the GM declares this a dangerous task and asks you to roll an Athletics skill check (since swimming is covered by the Athletics skill). On your character sheet, you see that your character has a +8 modifier for such checks. Rolling the d20, you get an 18, for a total of 26. The GM compares this to the DC (which was 16) and finds that you got a critical success (since the result exceeded the DC by 10). Your character swims quickly across the river and continues the pursuit, drenched but unharmed. Had you gotten a result less than 26 but equal to or greater than 16, your character would have made it halfway across the river. Had your result been less than 16, your character might have been swept downriver or, worse, been pulled under the current and begun to drown!
Checks like this are the heart of the game and are rolled all the time, in every mode of play, to determine the outcome of tasks. While the roll of the die is critical, the statistic you add to the roll (called a modifier) often makes the difference between success and failure. Every character is made up of many such statistics governing what the character is good at, each consisting of a relevant ability modifier plus a proficiency bonus, and sometimes modified further by other factors, such as bonuses or penalties from gear, spells, feats, magic items, and other special circumstances.
Proficiency is a simple way of assessing your character’s general level of training and aptitude for a given task. It is broken into five different ranks: untrained, trained, expert, master, and legendary. Each rank grants a different proficiency bonus. If you’re untrained at a statistic, your proficiency bonus is +0—you must rely solely on the raw potential of your ability modifier. If your proficiency rank for a statistic is trained, expert, master, and legendary, your bonus equals your character’s level plus another number based on the rank (2, 4, 6, and 8, respectively). Proficiency ranks are part of almost every statistic in the game.
Exploration
Most of the time, your character will explore the world, interact with characters, travel from place to place, and overcome challenges. This is called exploration. Game play is relatively free-form during exploration, with players responding to the narrative whenever they have an idea of what to do next. Leaving town via horseback, following the trail of a marauding orc tribe, avoiding the tribe’s scouts, and convincing a local hunter to help in an upcoming fight are all examples of things that might occur during exploration.
Throughout this mode of play, the GM asks the players what their characters are doing as they explore. This is important in case a conflict arises. If combat breaks out, the tasks the PCs undertook while exploring might give them an edge or otherwise inform how the combat begins.
Encounters
In the course of your adventures, there will be times when a simple skill check is not enough to resolve a challenge— when fearsome monsters stand in your character’s way and the only choice is to do battle. This is called an encounter. Encounters usually involve combat, but they can also be used in situations where timing is critical, such as during a chase or when dodging hazards.
While exploration is handled in a free-form manner, encounters are more structured. The players and GM roll initiative to determine who acts in what order. The encounter occurs over a number of rounds, each of which is equal to about 6 seconds of time in the world of the game. During a round, each participant takes a turn. When it’s your turn to act, you can use up to three actions. Most simple things, such as drawing a weapon, moving a short distance, opening a door, or swinging a sword, use a single action to perform. There are also activities that use more than a single 10 action to perform; these are often special abilities from your character’s class and feats. One common activity in the game is casting a spell, which usually uses two actions.
Free actions, such as dropping an object, don’t count toward the three actions you can take on your turn. Finally, each character can use up to one reaction during a round.
This special type of action can be used even when it’s not your turn, but only in response to certain events, and only if you have an ability that allows it. Rogues, for example, can select a feat that lets them use their reaction to dodge an incoming attack.
Attacking another creature is one of the most common actions in combat, and is done by using the Strike action.
This requires an attack roll—a kind of check made against the Armor Class (AC) of the creature you’re attacking.
Strikes can be made using weapons, spells, or even parts of a creature’s body, like a fist, claw, or tail. You add a modifier to this roll based on your proficiency rank with the type of attack you’re using, your ability scores, and any other bonuses or penalties based on the situation.
The target’s AC is calculated using their proficiency rank in the armor they’re wearing and their Dexterity modifier.
An attack deals damage if it hits, and rolling a critical success results in the attack dealing double damage!
You can use more than one Strike action on your turn, but each additional attack after the first becomes less accurate. This is reflected by a multiple attack penalty that starts at –5 on the second attack, but increases to –10 on the third. There are many ways to reduce this penalty, and it resets at the end of your turn.
If your character finds themself the target of a magical lightning bolt or the freezing breath of a fearsome white dragon, you will be called on to attempt a saving throw, representing your character’s ability to avoid danger or otherwise withstand an assault to their mind or body. A saving throw is a check attempted against the DC of the spell or special ability targeting your character. There are three types of saving throws, and a character’s proficiency in each says a great deal about what they can endure. A Fortitude saving throw is used when your character’s health or vitality is under attack, such as from poison or disease.
A Reflex saving throw is called for when your character must dodge away from danger, usually something that affects a large area, such as the scorching blast of a fireball spell. Finally, a Will saving throw is often your defense against spells and effects that target your character’s mind, such as a charm or confusion spell. For all saving throws, a success lessens the harmful effect, and scoring a critical success usually means your character escapes unscathed.
Attacks, spells, hazards, and special abilities frequently either deal damage to a character or impose one or more conditions—and sometimes both. Damage is subtracted from a creature’s Hit Points (HP)—a measure of health— and when a creature is reduced to 0 HP, it falls unconscious and may die! A combat encounter typically lasts until one side has been defeated, and while this can mean retreat or surrender, it most often happens because one side is dead or dying. Conditions can hinder a creature for a time, limiting the actions they can use and applying penalties to future checks. Some conditions are even permanent, requiring a character to seek out powerful magic to undo their effects.
Downtime
Characters don’t spend every waking moment adventuring. Instead, they recover from wounds, plan future conquests, or pursue a trade. In Pathfinder, this is called downtime, and it allows time to pass quickly while characters work toward long-term tasks or objectives.
Most characters can practice a trade in downtime, earning a few coins, but those with the right skills can instead spend time crafting, creating new gear or even magic items. Characters can also use downtime to retrain, replacing one character choice with another to reflect their evolving priorities. They might also research a problem, learn new spells, or even run a business or kingdom!
Using This Site
This site is organized to make finding the rule you need as easy as possible.
Homepage/Introduction
This introduction is designed to help you understand the basics. This section also includes the rules for building and leveling up a character. The section ends with an example of building a 1st-level character.
Ancestries
The rules for the most common ancestries are in this section, including their ancestry feat options.
Backgrounds
The rules for the most common backgrounds are in this section.
Classes
Each class entry includes guidelines on playing the class, rules for building and advancing a character of that class, sample builds, and all of the class feats available to members of that class. This section also includes rules for animal companions and familiars, which can be acquired by members of several different classes. At the end of this section are the rules for archetypes—special options available to characters as they increase in level.
These rules allow a character to dabble in the abilities of another class or concept.
Class Summaries
- Alchemist: You can learn a variety of new discoveries or study the new toxicologist research field.
- Barbarian: Achieve new feats of strength and brutality, or gain your rage from the new superstition instinct.
- Bard: Perform new compositions, learn new and unusual tricks, or find a muse in the heat of battle.
- Cleric: Find new ways to gain additional power and guidance from your deity, including premonitions to help protect you from harm.
- Champion: You can engage in new feats of heroism, or you might even eschew such things completely and devote yourself to evil tenets.
- Druid: Your connection to nature teaches you new primal techniques, including feats to sow seeds into weapons and spells alike.
- Fighter: Learn a variety of new martial techniques, including flourishes, presses, reactions, and a new stance.
- Investigator: Clever and insightful, the investigator solves mysteries and teems with knowledge. In battle, they play out every possibility in advance, striking true when the time is right. Their methodology grants them an edge, and their high Intelligence and number of skills mean they almost always have the right tool for the job.
- Monk: Master new and exciting forms of martial arts, with many new stances for monastic archers and clever scrappers alike.
- Oracle: The oracle is a paradox of divine magic, able to tap into and manipulate energies from disparate sources throughout the universe that would overwhelm anyone else. These mysteries grant unusual powers and revelations, as well as a double-edged curse—which they must learn how to simultaneously endure and exploit.
- Ranger: Discover a brand new type of focus spell called warden spells, as well as additional martial and wilderness techniques.
- Rogue: Pick up all sorts of new tricks, or dig into new rackets: the scheming mastermind or the magical eldritch trickster.
- Sorcerer: Sorcerers tap into secrets hidden in their bloodlines.
- Swashbuckler: To a swashbuckler, anything worth doing is worth doing with style. This dynamic daredevil performs bold feats of derring-do and mixes their own unique style with flamboyant attacks. The swashbuckler tumbles around the battlefield, befuddling their foes to set them up for powerful finishing moves.
- Witch: The witch is a versatile spellcaster who learns a variety of magical lessons from a mystical familiar, sent to them by a powerful and mysterious patron. The witch’s mastery of potent hexes from their patron allows them to supplement their other spells with special tricks to solve any problem.
- Wizard: Research powerful new magical secrets, including the staff nexus thesis.
Skills
The rules for using skills are presented in this section, and they detail what a character can do with a given skill, based on that character’s proficiency rank.
Ancestry, background, and class can define some of a character’s skill proficiencies, and each character can also select a few additional skills to reflect their personality and training.
Feats
As a character advances in level, they gain additional feats to represent their growing abilities. General feats and skill feats (which are a subset of general feats) are presented here.
Equipment
Armor, weapons, and other gear can all be found in this section, along with the price for services, cost of living, and animals (such as horses, dogs, and pack animals).
Spells
This section starts with rules for casting spells, determining their effects, and getting rid of foes’ spells (called counteracting). After that, the spell lists for each spellcasting tradition are included, making it easy to quickly find spells by their level. Next are rules for every spell, presented in alphabetical order. Following the spell descriptions are all of the focus spells—special spells granted by specific class abilities and feats. While most spells appear on multiple spell lists, focus spells are granted only to members of a specific class and are grouped together by class for ease of reference. Finally, at the end are rules for rituals, complicated and risky spells that any character can cast.
Playing the Game
This section contains the universal rules needed to play Pathfinder, including rules for the various modes of play, the basic actions that every character can perform, the rules for combat, and the rules for death and dying. Every player should be familiar with this section, especially the GM.
Game Mastering
Packed full of guidelines and advice, this section helps Game Masters tell an interesting and compelling story.
It also includes advice on creating a fun and encouraging game space and guides for empowering players to create characters they want to play. This section also includes rules that are particularly important for the GM to know, such as rules dealing with traps, environmental dangers, and afflictions (such as curses, diseases, and poisons), as well as guidance on setting DCs and handing out rewards to player characters.
Crafting & Treasure
The treasures characters find during their adventures take many forms, from gold and gemstones to powerful magical weapons. This section details guidelines for distributing treasure to characters, as well as descriptions of hundreds of magic items. This section also contains the rules for alchemical items.
Conditions
This page includes rules for all of the conditions that you will find in the game.
Glossary
This page includes a comprehensive glossary of common terms and traits that you’ll encounter in the game.
Format of Rules Elements
Throughout this site, you will see formatting standards that might look a bit unusual at first. Specifically, the game’s rules are set apart in this text using specialized capitalization and italicization. These standards are in place to make this site’s rules elements easier to recognize.
The names of specific statistics, skills, feats, actions, and some other mechanical elements in Pathfinder are capitalized. This way, when you see the statement “a Strike targets Armor Class,” you know that both Strike and Armor Class are referring to rules.
If a word or a phrase is italicized, it is describing a spell or a magic item. This way, when you see the statement “the door is sealed by lock,” you know that in this case the word denotes the lock spell, rather than a physical item.
Pathfinder also uses many terms that are typically expressed as abbreviations, like AC for Armor Class, DC for Difficulty Class, and HP for Hit Points. If you’re ever confused about a game term or an abbreviation, you can always turn to the Glossary and Index.
Understanding Actions
Characters and their adversaries affect the world of Pathfinder by using actions and producing effects. This is especially the case during encounters, when every action counts. When you use an action, you generate an effect. This effect might be automatic, but sometimes actions necessitate that you roll a die, and the effect is based on what you rolled.
Throughout this site, you will see special icons to denote actions.
[1A] Single Actions
Single actions use this symbol: [1A]. They’re the simplest, most common type of action.
You can use three single actions on your turn in an encounter, in any order you see fit.
[R] Reactions
Reactions use this symbol: [R]. These actions can be used even when it’s not your turn. You get only one reaction per encounter round, and you can use it only when its specific trigger is fulfilled. Often, the trigger is another creature’s action.
[0A] Free Actions
Free actions use this symbol: [0A]. Free actions don’t require you to spend any of your three single actions or your reaction. A free action might have a trigger like a reaction does. If so, you can use it just like a reaction—even if it’s not your turn.
However, you can use only one free action per trigger, so if you have multiple free actions with the same trigger, you have to decide which to use. If a free action doesn’t have a trigger, you use it like a single action, just without spending any of your actions for the turn.
Activities
Activities are special tasks that you complete by spending one or more of your actions together. Usually, an activity uses two or more actions and lets you do more than a single action would allow. You have to spend all the actions an activity requires for its effects to happen. Spellcasting is one of the most common activities, as most spells take more than a single action to cast.
Activities that use two actions use this symbol: [2A]. Activities that use three actions use this symbol: [3A]. A few special activities, such as spells you can cast in an instant, can be performed by spending a free action or a reaction.
All tasks that take longer than a turn are activities. If an activity is meant to be done during exploration, it has the exploration trait. An activity that takes a day or more of commitment and that can be done only during downtime has the downtime trait.
Reading Rules
This site contains hundreds of rules elements that give characters new and interesting ways to respond to situations in the game. All characters can use the basic actions, but an individual character often has special rules that allow them to do things most other characters can’t. Most of these options are feats, which are gained by making certain choices at character creation or when a character advances in level.
Regardless of the game mechanic they convey, rules elements are always presented in the form of a stat block, a summary of the rules necessary to bring the monster, character, item, or other rules element to life during play.
Where appropriate, stat blocks are introduced with an explanation of their format. For example, the Ancestry section contains rules for each of the game’s six core ancestries, and an explanation of these rules appears at the beginning of that section.
The general format for stat blocks is shown below. Entries are omitted from a stat block when they don’t apply, so not all rule elements have all of the entries given below. Actions, reactions, and free actions each have the corresponding icon next to their name to indicate their type. An activity that can be completed in a single turn has a symbol indicating how many actions are needed to complete it; activities that take longer to perform omit these icons. If a character must attain a certain level before accessing an ability, that level is indicated to the right of the stat block’s name. Rules also often have traits associated with them (traits appear in the Glossary and Index).
Spells, alchemical items, and magic items use a similar format, but their stat blocks contain a number of unique elements.
Action or Feat Name [actions] Level
Trait 1Trait 2…
Prerequisites Any minimum ability scores, feats, proficiency ranks, or other prerequisites you must have before you can access this rule element are listed here. Feats also have a level prerequisite, which appears above.
Frequency This is the limit on how many times you can use the ability within a given time.
Trigger Reactions and some free actions have triggers that must be met before they can be used.
Requirements Sometimes you must have a certain item or be in a certain circumstance to use an ability. If so, it’s listed in this section.
This section describes the effects or benefits of a rule element.
If the rule is an action, it explains what the effect is or what you must roll to determine the effect. If it’s a feat that modifies an existing action or grants a constant effect, the benefit is explained here.
Special Any special qualities of the rule are explained in this section. Usually this section appears in feats you can select more than once, explaining what happens when you do.
for AD&D 2nd Edition
'Munchkinism' — also known as 'power gaming,' 'min-maxing,' 'twinking,' playing 'Monty Haul' characters, and playing 'disgusting characters' — is the fine art of creating the most super indestructable killing machine character imaginable. I use the term 'character' here loosely because piddling little details like personality, family history, friends and loved ones, etc., only get in the way of the really important details, such as how to maximize your hit points, armor class, THAC0, damage, attacks-per-round, saving throws, experience levels, and general sense of godhood.
The problem all too often faced by a novice player is not knowing how to take advantage of a gullible Dungeon Master or of the many loopholes in the rules. It's a sorry sight indeed to see an otherwise invincible player-character walking around with only straight 18s in his abilities or a +5 longsword that isn't even an artifact. This list of important tips and tricks was written with that wayward soul in mind.
(Note: Throughout this document, I use 'he' to refer to the Dungeon Master and other players. This is not because I am trying to save space by not writing 'he or she'; it is because, at the time I started writing this, I had never met anyone of the female persuasion who took any interest whatsoever in munchkin-style fantasy role-playing, and I did not believe that such a creature existed. One female munchkin e-mailed me to tell me I was mistaken, but 'she' might have been E. Gary Gygax in disguise.)
Make sure you have a psionic Wild Talent
Wild Talents are explained in chapter 1, pages 19-21 of The Complete Psionics Handbook. (You do have The Complete Psionics Handbook, don't you?) Any character of any race or class may have a Wild Talent. The chances of having one aren't very good, but hey, you're the one rolling the dice here, right? (Wink wink.) So, once you've 'rolled' a 01 on those percentile dice, you get to roll on Table 12 (page 20) to see which Psionic Devotion you have.Did I say 'Psionic Devotion' in the singular? What was I thinking? Look at the 88-89 entry in Table 12. It says 'Roll three times.' Not 'Roll three times ignoring this result hereafter.' If you were to keep 'rolling' an 88 or 89 over and over, you would get each and every Psionic Devotion on this table. But you can do even better than this. Notice the following:
- Table 12 (page 20), entry 91-99, says 'Roll on Table 13: Sciences.'
- Table 13 (page 21), entry 86-88, says 'roll three times.'
- Table 13, entry 89-92, says 'Choose any science or devotion.'
- 'Roll' any number 91 through 99, which takes you to Table 13.
- 'Roll' an 86, 87, or 88, which lets you roll 3 more times.
- 'Roll' an 89, 90, 91, or 92, and pick one Science or Devotion your character does not already have. (Note that you are not limited to choosing only those devotions/sciences that appear on Tables 12 and 13.)
- 'Roll' an 89, 90, 91, or 92, and pick another Science or Devotion your character does not already have.
- Repeat steps 2-4 until you have every psionic Devotion and Science in the book.
Best of all, after your character has thus acquired every psionic power in the book, your character now gets to start out with a number of Psionic Strength Points (PSPs) equal to the minimum PSP cost to use every single Devotion and Science you now have. Plus the PSP cost of running all of your 'maintainable' Devotions and Sciences for 4 time increments. It says so, right there in the second paragraph of page 20. (Even the old Sage Advice column agrees, as evidenced by the very first question-and-answer in this Sage Advice article.) This is far, far more PSPs than even the most powerful member of the Psionicist character class starts out with. I've gone through and added up the minimum PSP costs for using (and maintaining 4 times) every Psionic Devotion and Science listed in the 'Summary of Powers' at the end of The Complete Psionics Handbook. I operated under the assumption that any Telepathic power whose PSP cost is listed as 'Contact' actually costs the minimum number of PSPs required by the 'Contact' Devotion, because, hey, if you need contact before you can use the other power, you'll have to pay the PSPs for establishing contact, right? Right. With this in mind, the grand total is 3566 PSPs. And this is what your Wild Talent character starts out with at first level. This will surely be enough psionic power to annihilate any of the lesser foes your character is likely to encounter at the start of his quest for ultimate power.
Create your own character class
Let's face it, the character classes in the 2nd Edition
Player's Handbook are far too limiting. Even with the 'kit' classes in the Complete Handbook series, your characters are going to be pretty wimpy. Even at 6th level, none of those character classes could hope to kill even a monster as insignificant as Tiamat without a large arsenal of magic items! (Of course, by 6th level, your character will have a large arsenal of magic items, but that's not the point. You shouldn't need magic items to pound one paltry 5-headed dragon goddess into the ground by the time you're 6th level.) What you need is a brand new character class, one tailored precisely to your special munchkin needs. And the way to convince your DM to let you play this character class is to combine capabilities from existing character classes. No DM would think of rejecting a new character class whose every attribute has already been play-tested for balance in other, existing character classes. Right? Right. So, first, you'll need to dig out those old 1st Edition rulebooks. They have character classes in them that aren't in 2nd Edition, and which provide a valuable, ahem, starting point for creating your own class. The 1st Edition Player's Handbook has the monk. Unearthed Arcana has the barbarian. Oriental Adventures has the kensai, the samurai, and the ever-popular ninja. Look through the descriptions of these character classes. Look for class capabilities that are useful, e.g. the monk's open-hand combat abilities. Pay special attention to capabilities that increase with level and have no upper limit — these are going to be important when your character reaches super-colossally high experience levels. Ignore those class capabilities that would restrict your character, e.g. can't wear armor, must donate excess wealth to charity, must abide by code of conduct, etc.. Finally, mix all the good stuff together, adding similar bonuses to each other whenever possible (e.g., monks get +1 weapon damage every 2 levels, and samurai get +1 damage every 3 levels, so your new character class should get a total of +5 weapon damage every 6 levels).
My Weapons Master character class is a preliminary example of what such a class should look like. But, as you can see by reading the weapons master class description, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Weapons masters can't wear armor or use shields. They don't add the effective armor class of the kensai and the monk together. They can't cast spells. And they don't get the barbarian's 12-sided hit dice. Surely, you can do better than this. You want a class more like my over-the-top Death Machine character class. At minimum, your class should have the following features:
- The barbarian's hit dice and constitution bonus
- ... with the monk/1st Edition ranger's initial count of 2 hit dice
- ... and the monk's maximum of 18 hit dice
- The thief's experience point requirements for level progression
- ... with the 10% experience point bonus for high dexterity
- The monk's open hand attacks per melee round
- The monk's open hand damage per attack
- ... with the strength modifier for melee damage
- The monk's effective armor class
- ... with the dexterity bonus to armor class
- ... and the kensai's effective armor class
- ... added together
- ... with armor and shield
- The samurai's damage bonus
- ... and the monk's damage bonus with weapons
- ... added together
- ... with the strength modifier for melee damage
- The specialty wizard's spellcasting capability
- ... with each school of magic as the specialty school
- The cleric's priest spellcasting capability
- ... without the cleric's limits as to which spheres his spells come from
- ... alongside the cleric's power to turn undead
- The fighter's ability to be a weapon specialist
- ... and to be a weapon master, high master, and grand master (c.f. Player's Option: Combat & Tactics)
- The fighter's access to all weapons and armor
- The fighter's privilege to roll for exceptional strength if strength 18
- The barbarian's initial number of weapon proficiency slots
- The monks's rate of acquiring new weapon proficiency slots
- Membership in all class groups for purposes of saving throws and magic item usage
- All monk powers
- All samurai powers
- All kensai powers
- All druid powers
- All paladin powers
- All ranger skills
- All barbarian talents
- ... particularly that ability to hit creatures struck only by magic weapons without a magic weapon
- All thief skills at the same initial percentages as a thief
- All Psionicist powers and capabilities, including PSPs gained per level
Make sure your race is human
That's right. If you can't make up a new character class with all the powers of the other classes combined, then you absolutely positively must play a human character. Yes, I know humans don't get infravision or a constitution bonus to their saving throws. But humans get something much, much better. While all the other races have to slog through the muck of playing 'multi-classed' characters, humans, and humans alone, get to be dual-classed characters.Don't let the name 'dual-classed' fool you. A dual-classed character doesn't have to be two different character classes at once. He can be any number of different character classes at once. The 2nd Edition Player's Handbook explicitly allows a character to change classes any number of times over his adventuring career. Now, if you have a printed copy of the 2nd Edition Revised PHB, it will state that the new class you switch to cannot be of the same class group you just switched from, e.g. a fighter cannot become a ranger. So be sure your DM is using the non-Revised 2nd Edition PHB, so that he won't know about that restriction. (This is easier than it sounds; the AD&D Core Rules 2.0 CD-ROM collection allegedly contains digital versions of the 2nd Edition Revised rulebooks, but its Player's Handbook doesn't contain that restriction on class-switching and is probably the pre-Revised text. Just show your DM this digital copy and he'll be thoroughly convinced that you can switch from mage to evoker to illusionist to transmuter to necromancer to....)
Oh, if the authors of 2nd Edition only knew what a Pandora's box they had opened by allowing human characters to switch classes more than once. Mua ha ha ha ha!
Now, it is true that it takes just as many total experience points for an elven mage/thief to become 10th/13th level as it does for a human mage-turned-thief to become a 10th level mage and a 13th level thief. But unlike a multi-classed character, a dual-classed character doesn't have to keep wasting experience points raising the level of classes that don't benefit from being really high level. It's basically pointless to raise a thief above about 20th level, but not so with a mage. So, you could become a thief, rise to 20th level, then switch to become a mage and go up to, say, 100th level after a few Monty-Haul gaming sessions. A 100th level mage/20th level thief! Try doing that with a multi-classed character!
A dual-classed character also has an opportunity to gain far more hit points than his multi-classed equivalent. The 2nd Edition Player's Handbook says that, once a dual-classed character reaches a higher level in his new class than his maximum level in any of his previous classes:
'he earns additional Hit Dice (those of his new class) and hit points for gaining experience levels in his new class.'Now, some people have interpreted this to mean that a dual-classed character only gains hit dice in his new class if his new class is not yet at a high enough experience level to stop gaining hit dice — e.g., if a 9th-level fighter switched to being a mage, he'd gain an additional 4-sided hit die (plus up to a +2 hit point bonus from his Constitution) for going from 9th level to 10th level as a mage, but if he then went from 10th level to 11th level as a mage he'd only gain 1 additional hit point, because mages stop gaining hit dice after 10th level. The people who say this are obviously pansies. A mage is entitled to 10 total hit dice. If he doesn't start gaining these new hit dice until 10th level, then by golly, he should keep gaining one new hit die each level thereafter until he reaches 19th level! And if this 9th level fighter/19th level mage then changed classes again and became a thief, he'd gain a new hit die for each thief experience level he gained from 20th level through 29th level. A dual-classed character can eventually gain all the allowed hit dice from each of his classes.
A dual-classed character with a Psionic Wild Talent also gets a real break when it comes to gaining Psionic Strength Points (PSPs). The second paragraph on Page 20 of The Complete Psionics Handbook says that a Wild Talent 'receives four additional PSPs every time he gains a new experience level.' Every time he gains a level. Not merely every time his new level exceeds the highest level of any of his previous classes, like it is for hit points. If a fighter with a Wild Talent worked his way up from 1st level to 9th level (for which he'd gain 32 PSPs on top of what he started out with), and then switched to being a mage, and then gained one lousy level as a mage to become 2nd level, he'd gain 4 more PSPs. When he became a 3rd-level mage, he'd gain another 4 PSPs.
Of course, there is a disadvantage to being dual-classed, in that once you quit your old class you can't gain experience levels in that class anymore. This means you must judiciously choose the order in which your character goes through all the character classes in the Player's Handbook. (You are planning to have your dual-classed character eventually become every class in the Player's Handbook, aren't you?) There are three overriding concerns when choosing what level to switch character classes at, and what new class to become:
- The level at which the class gains no new useful abilities. Thieves get boring early on (at around 20th level or so), while clerics take a bit longer. Warrior classes are always useful to progress, if only for the hit points and THAC0. Paladins are probably the best of the warrior classes to progress ad infinitum, because not only do they get hit points and THAC0 at the rate a fighter does, they keep getting 2 additional points of hands-on healing per level and another cure disease every 5 levels.
- Hit die progression. Each new class starts to gain hit dice only when it exceeds the experience level of the highest-level previous class. So each new class should be allowed to gain 9 or 10 levels over the highest previous class before you switch it to something else. Switching earlier deprives your character of valuable hit points, while switching later means you'll only get those paltry +1, +2, or +3 hit point per level adds that characters gain after they stop getting new hit dice — which, as you have no doubt been made grudgingly aware, you do not get to add your constitution bonus onto.
- Alignment restrictions. A paladin loses all of his powers if he becomes any alignment other than lawful-good. A thief is not allowed to start out lawful-good, but nothing in the rules causes him to relinquish his thief abilities should he later become lawful-good. So, become a thief first, then become a paladin. Ultimately, you'll want to switch to something other than a paladin as your final class, though. (A wizard class makes a good choice, as the Complete Wizard's Handbook gives both mages and specialist wizards unlimited spell progression, and even if it didn't, all the good spells have their range and duration based on the caster's level.) The reason you don't want to stay a paladin forever is that paladins are required to tithe, donate their excess wealth, and never have more than 10 magic items. Bleah. However, if a paladin switches character classes, there's nothing forcing him to keep abiding by those restrictions. He'll only lose his paladin powers if he stops being lawful-good — not if he stops tithing/donating or acquires more than 10 magic items.
- Druid, 20th level
- Bard, 30th level
- Ranger, 39th level
- Fighter, 48th level
- Thief, 58th level
- Cleric, 67th level
- Illusionist, 77th level
- Abjurer, 87th level
- Conjurer, 97th level
- Diviner, 107th level
- Enchanter, 117th level
- Necromancer, 127th level
- Transmuter, 137th level
- Invoker, 147th level
- Psionicist, 156th level (bringing his Wild Talents along for the ride)
- Paladin, unthinkably high level
- Mage, unthinkably high level +10
Gems, gems, gems
Tables 85 and 86 in the 2nd Edition (Revised) Dungeon Master's Guide tell the DM how to randomly generate the values of all the gems in a treasure horde. Look at table 86:| D6 Roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stone increases to the next higher base value. Roll again, ignoring all results but 1. |
| 2 | Stone is double base value |
| 3 | Stone is 10-60% above the base value |
| 4 | Stone is 10-40% below the base value |
| 5 | Stone is half base value |
| 6 | Stone decreased to next lower base value. Roll again, ignoring all results but 6. |
again, until he gets another 1, and then he has to roll again, ad infinitum. A stone must, therefore, keep on increasing its base value forever. The only upper limit is a little footnote right below this table, which reads in part: No stone can be greater than 100,000 gp.The upper limit was a whopping 1,000,000 g.p. back in the days of the 1st Edition DMG. But even with the highest gem value being one-tenth the 1st Edition amount, one out of every six gems you find on your adventures should be worth a hundred thousand gold pieces!!
Show this to your DM. I'll bet he's been ignoring this important little rule all this time, and it's high time you brought him into line with the way random gem values are supposed to be generated. Trust me, he'll thank you for it.
(Warning: Don't get your DM to look at the tables too hard. There is a little note between tables 85 and 86 indicating that only 10% of all gems should get to roll on table 86 to have their value altered. This decreases the chance of a gem being worth 100,000 g.p. from 1-in-6 to 1-in-60. However, I didn't notice this note when I first scanned the section on gem values, and if you can get your DM to read this section quickly enough, neither will he.)
Mix lots of potions together
You'll notice from table 111 in the 2nd Edition (Revised) DMG that many bad things can happen when you mix two potions together. Ignore these bad things. If you mix potions together in the privacy of your own home, you can always, ahem, 'roll' a 91-99 to get one of the two potions to act at 150% of its normal efficacy, and then mix this with a third potion and 'roll' a 00 to make its effects permanent.If you're DM is a real push-over, he might even allow you to bring in a spoon of stirring from Unearthed Arcana. Although the spoon of stirring wasn't included in the 2nd Edition DMG, the Encyclopedia Magica contains every AD&D magic item that has ever been published anywhere, going back to the beginning of time; and since the Encyclopedia Magica was published after the 2nd Edition rulebooks came out, it's obviously part of 2nd Edition, so everything in it counts as a valid 2nd Edition magic item. Including the spoon of stirring. This seemingly innocent magic item has a 1 in 100 chance of doubling the strength of any potion stirred with it. (And home alone, you can easily roll the required number each time, right?) Just imagine what drinking a double-strength permanent potion of invulnerability can do for you. To say nothing of drinking double-strength permanent potions of storm giant strength, ESP, levitation, speed, fire breath . . .
And speaking of potions of giant strength, it has been brought to my attention that nowhere in the 2nd Edition rules does it say that the damage bonus bestowed by a potion of giant strength isn't cumulative with the damage bonus from your natural strength score. Oh, sure, the DMG's description for a girdle of giant strength says that its effects aren't cumulative with normal or magical strength bonuses, but a potion of giant strength has no such limitation. If your character has a natural strength of 18/00, which would normally give him a +6 damage adjustment in melee, and he imbibes a potion of storm giant strength, which bestows a +12 damage bonus with any hand-held or thrown weapon, then he should get a total melee damage bonus of +18. And if your character had wished his strength up to 25, for a damage adjustment of +14, then a potion of storm giant strength should raise his melee damage bonus to +26. I have not found a Sage Advice article anywhere that contradicts this assumption. Note that a potion of storm giant strength at 150% effectiveness would add 150% of its normal damage bonus, or +18 damage points, on top of the damage adjustment for your character's natural strength, and a double-strength potion of storm giant strength would of course add a damage bonus of +24.
Wear more than two rings
You know as well as I do that the rule against wearing more than two magic rings at a time was put in there only to keep NPCs from getting too powerful. No game is any fun when the NPCs are more powerful than the Player Characters, and one way to keep them down is to ensure that they never gain any benefit from wearing more than two magic rings at the same time. You shouldn't have to suffer for those NPCs' transgressions. Player Characters were obviously meant to be able to wear and use as many magic rings as they want at the same time.If your DM doubts this explanation, just show him this webpage. This page is on the Internet, so everything it says must be true. And if he still won't believe it, make yourself some gauntlets of infinite ring-wearing (you can wear them over your gloves of missile snaring and underneath your gauntlets of ogre power). Or just cast a wish spell and wish for the ability to wear an unlimited number of magic rings that function simultaneously. But remember:
Be careful what you wish for
The authors of the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook really screwed us over by adding this sentence to the description of the 9th-level wizard spell 'wish':Casting a wish spell ages the caster five years.There was a sentence in the 1st Edition DMG which said that wish spells age the caster by 3 years, but it was squirrelled away in the little 'unnatural aging' subsection on page 13, which was obscure enough that the DM had a good chance of missing it. There's no way he's gonna miss it when it's right there in the spell description, like it is in 2nd Edition. I'll bet the authors of 2nd Edition were just jealous of us. But, lo and behold, there's an easy way around it — as well as an easy way around the 2d4 days of bed rest required if the wish spell improves your status. Namely, wish spells will give you exactly what you wish for. It's all in the phrasing of your wish. Instead of phrasing your wish like this:
'I wish Asmodeus were dead and I got all the experience points from killing him and all his treasure.'. . . phrase it like this:
'I wish Asmodeus were dead and I got all the experience points from killing him and all his treasure, and that I were de-aged 5 years and didn't need 2d4 days of bed rest.'Boom! Problem solved. Poor ol' Asmodeus never even saw it coming. And you can go about the rest of your daily chores without so much as breaking stride.
Now, a party-pooper DM might insist that these are actually 3 different wishes — a wish that you killed Asmodeus, a wish that you were de-aged 5 years, and a wish that you didn't need bed rest. I hasten to remind such a DM that this wish is phrased as one sentence. That should be good enough. And no fair going and transporting the player-character back in time 5 years, you naughty DM — he only wished to be de-aged, not younger.
If you accidentally forget to add this phrasing to one of your wish spells, and the DM hits you with that 5 year sentence, you can always cast another wish spell in which you wish to be de-aged by 10 years, or drink an elixir of youth or two. And if one of your character classes is hierophant druid, aging by 5 years won't affect you anyway. . . .
Mix-and-match the rules in the DM Option: High Level Campaigns supplement
Some of the rules in the DM Option: High Level Campaigns rules supplement are quite good. And by 'good,' I mean they will make you more powerful. It has spell progressions for bards and clerics beyond 20th experience level, and it has those swell 'true dweomer' spells which are essentially 10th-level spells. These rules are obviously important and should be embraced and used immediately.However, it also contains some bad rules, which should be summarily ignored. For instance, it limits the 'cone of cold' spell to doing 10d4+10 damage points. This is ridiculous. If the authors of the Player's Handbook hadn't wanted a 60th level mage to be able to cast a 60d4+60 cone of cold, they would have said so. And worse, far worse, they have the audacity to say that characters should not be allowed to progress beyond 30th level! That's absurd! It's absolutely unthinkable that your characters should be restricted to such a piddling low level. Why, even the Complete Wizard's Handbook has spell progression charts that go up beyond 30th level! And that's a 2nd Edition rules supplement just like DM Option: High Level Campaigns is, too! These two supplements can't both be right. There is only one logical explanation: the authors of the High Level Campaigns supplement obviously made a typo when they said 30th level was the highest experience level a character can achieve. They probably meant 30 millionth level or something.
The new way of doing saving throws against magic in the DM Option: High Level Campaigns rules supplement needs special attention. This rule reduces the chance of the target making its saving throw if the spellcaster is of a very high experience level. Obviously, such a rule should never be applied to saving throws made by your character; if the PHB says you have a base saving throw vs. spells of 4 or better, then by golly, you should save on a 4 or better even if the spell is being cast by Baalzebul or Yeenoghu or Bahamut or even an enemy munchkin character. However, it would be awfully nice if all the characters and monsters your character cast spells against had to abide by the new 'adjusted-for-caster-level' saving throw rules. You should point out the new adjust-for-caster-level rule whenever you cast a spell that allows the saving throw, but 'conveniently' forget to mention it (and quickly read off your 'regular' saving throw from the PHB and roll it before the DM can object) whenever an opponent casts a spell against you.
Buy your magic items
Don't waste time waiting around for the DM to dole out a few paltry magic items to you as part of a treasure 'horde.' He uses random treasure determination tables to figure out what magic items you're going to get anyway, which means you'll end up with a whole bunch of crap you can't use, like a spade of colossal excavation or a saw of mighty cutting. Or, worse, a figurine of wondrous power — what good are a pair of golden lions against the beings you normally expect to encounter, such as Asmodeus, or Bahamut, or Demogorgon and Orcus out on a Sunday stroll together, or a room full of Tarrasques? And even if the lions did help you defeat your enemies, this only means that they'd get a share of the experience points that would otherwise have gone to you! No, randomly generated magic treasure is only useful insofar as your ability to sell it so that you can get the higher x.p. value for all the gold pieces it's worth.Now, the 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide is very stingy when it comes to selling magic items. The authors assumed that no one would ever want to sell any magic items. Ever. Not even if all you're trying to sell is a lousy philter of love. Thus, they don't bother to list the gold piece sale value of any of the magic items listed therein. You have to get hold of an old copy of the First edition Dungeon Master's Guide — or, preferrably, the 1st Edition Unearthed Arcana rules supplement — in order to get the price tables for magic items. (The Encyclopedia Magica also has the gold piece sale value of all magic items, but they're not condensed into convenient table form.) You must have one of these price tables if you ever hope to be able to sell off all your useless magic items and get the higher gold-piece-based experience point awards for them. They are a vital gaming accessory for the successful munchkin. You can tell the DM that a sword +2 is worth 5 times its x.p. value in gold pieces (and thus will net you 5 times as many experience points if you sell it), but without such ammunition as these pricing tables, he might not believe you.
But think about this. If you're selling a bag of beans or a horn of Valhalla, it means somebody out there has to buy it. Darn it, there's a market for magic items out there! If you can sell a sword +2 for 4000 gold pieces, you should be able to buy a sword +2 for 4000 gold pieces! Theoretically, this mysterious 'magic item market' should have everything, considering how many magic items you've sold over the course of your adventuring career, right? Of course.
So, armed with these pricing tables, we discover that if you've just found a pair of swords +2, you should be able to sell them both for 4000 g.p. each, netting you a total of 8000 g.p. (and thus 8000 more x.p. for the adventure, since every g.p. worth of treasure you cart off is worth an experience point). If you have an additional 2000 g.p. lying around as gems or platinum pieces or other similar forms of loose change, you can then take the 10,000 g.p. you now have and use them to buy yourself a sword +4. And you might as well make it an intelligent sword +4, because nowhere in the DMG does it say that intelligence increases a weapon's sale value. Weapons with maximum (17) intelligence get 3 primary abilities and one extraordinary power, but if you roll the dice just right you can increase this to eight extraordinary powers and eight special purposes. (Roll 99 or 00 for all 3 primary abilities, which turns them all into extraordinary powers; then roll 95, 96, or 97 for each of these 4 extraordinary powers, which doubles their number; then roll 00 for each of these 8 extraordinary powers, which attaches a special purpose to each one. But be careful — at low experience levels, an intellgent weapon with that many powers and languages can have a bigger ego than you do, if such a thing is possible.) Now we're getting somewhere! With this new +4 intelligent weapon at your disposal, you'll easily be able to dispatch more powerful monsters, and as we all know, more powerful monsters always have more treasure. After acquiring another 8000 g.p. from this next set of monsters, you can sell your sword +4 and get your 10,000 g.p. back; and with this new 18,000 g.p. total you can buy yourself a sword +5, defender.
An important magic item to buy lots and lots of times is the sword +1, luck blade. They're only 5000 g.p. each, and each one can contain up to five (5) wish spells. Since you're buying it yourself, you're going to make sure it has all 5 wish spells intact, of course. That's only 1000 g.p. per wish spell, and since these wish spells aren't being cast by you personally, you don't have to piddle around with getting aged 5 years or being stuck in bed for 2-8 days. But most importantly, after you've used up all 5 wish spells, the sword is still a sword +1, luck blade — which means you can sell it for the same 5000 g.p. you bought it! The net cost to you is zero, and you still get 5 wishes out of the deal. (Even if your pinch-penny DM insists that no one would buy a sword +1, luck blade with no wishes left on it for the full 5000 g.p. sale value, you should at least be able to sell it back for the 2000 g.p. price of an ordinary sword +1.) Best of all, each of these wish spells can be used to raise your stats. Sure, you started out with straight 18s across the board and an 18/00 strength (you did start out this way, didn't you?), but the character ability tables in the Player's Handbook go all the way up to 25. It takes only 10 wish spells (2 sword +1, luck blades) to raise one of your abilitites by 1, which means it takes 70 wishes (14 sword +1, luck blades) to raise one of your abilities all the way from 18 to 25. 420 wishes (84 sword +1, luck blades) will raise all of your abilities from 18 to 25. Another 10 wishes (2 more sword +1, luck blades) and your strength should go up from 25 to 25*, the * indicating that you are now imbued with Atlas Strength and there is no upper limit to the amount of weight you can carry. (Having an unlimited carrying capacity is particularly important when you have to haul 84 sword +1, luck blades back and forth from the magic item shop.)
But the fun doesn't have to stop at the magic items listed in the DMG and the Tome of Magic and The Complete Wizard's Handbook. You shouldn't have to choose between having, say, a sword +5, defender and a scimitar of speed. For one thing, Unearthed Arcana's magic item tables have a sword +6, defender. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to have such a weapon in a 2nd Edition campaign. You're a munchkin — you deserve a +6 sword! Why should the Unearthed Arcana folks have all the fun? But more importantly, now that you've got enough gold pieces for it and don't have to be limited by the whim of a random magic-item generation table, you should easily be able to convince your DM that, in theory, it is possible to have combination magic items.
Now, I'm not advocating that you go around creating new magic items out of thin air. In fact, you should tell your DM that you're not advocating creating new magic items out of thin air, either. It'll help convince the gullible little sod that what you're proposing is perfectly reasonable. (And it is — isn't it reasonable to want to give your character the best of everything?) What you're proposing is that, if a sword +6, defender costs 30,000 gold pieces, and a scimitar of speed +1 costs 9,000 gold pieces, then for 39,000 gold pieces you should easily be able to find someone willing to sell you a sword +6, defender of speed. See? All you've done is created a combination of magic items that are already part of the game. That's not nearly as bad as, say, inventing a +6 Sword of Killing Everything Instantly!
Not that you can't use this trick to create a +6 sword that actually can kill everything instantly. You'll notice that an arrow of slaying only costs 2500 gold pieces. An arrow of slaying must be designated to slay a particular type of creature, of course, so you can't just plunk down 2500 gold pieces and get an arrow of slaying everything; 2500 g.p. will only get you an arrow of slaying, say, undead. But why not add that ability onto your sword? There's nothing that says a magic sword can't have the powers normally associated with a magic arrow, is there? Naw, of course not. If 39,000 gold pieces can buy you a sword +6, defender of speed, then 41,500 gold pieces should be able to buy you a sword +6, defender of speed and slaying undead. The only difference between using this weapon against an undead creature and using a regular arrow of slaying undead is that, since this isn't an arrow, you can reuse it over and over and over and over. . . .
There are 20 different kinds of creatures that arrows of slaying can be designated to slay, listed in the 2nd Edition DMG. Logically (assuming your logic is munchkin logic, of course), since adding a single 'slaying' ability onto a magic weapon costs 2500 g.p., you should be able to add all 20 slaying abilities onto a magic weapon for 50,000 g.p.. This will make it capable of instantly killing just about anything it hits, with no saving throw allowed. Just to be safe, though, you'll want to throw in a slaying ability against a 21st type of creature — the 'everything else not already listed under arrow of slaying in the DMG' creature. This is quite a bargain for the extra 2500 g.p. it costs. You can now have a sword +6, defender of speed and slaying everything, at a cost of a measly 91,500 g.p. That's less than the sale value of many artifacts!
And speaking of artifacts:
Make up artifacts and buy them, too
I do not advocate making an artifact that can do anything. Such a thing would imbalance the game, and worse, the DM might not allow it. Tell your DM that you're going to limit yourself to using only those artifact powers found in Appendix B of the 2nd Edition Book of Artifacts, which have already been playtested for balance and, thus, couldn't possibly upset anything. He'll be delighted to let you buy all the artifacts you want . . . provided you can establish, using existing rules, how many gold pieces your artifact should cost.Take a look at the entry for the Teeth of Dahlver-Nar in table (III.E.) special in the 1st Edition DMG. That's the table that shows the g.p. sale value of artifacts. Each of the teeth of Dahlver-Nar is worth only 5000 gold pieces. Each of the teeth of Dahlver-Nar is also an artifact with one artifact power/effect and all the other things that go along with being an artifact.
Therefore, you should logically get to apply what I call the Teeth of Dahlver-Nar rule:
Artifact powers may be added to any magic item at a cost of 5000 g.p. per artifact power.Now, unfortunately, the artifact powers and effects tables from the 1st Edition DMG are no longer with us. The 2nd Edition Book of Artifacts has totally replaced the 1st edition artifact rules. But . . . artifacts still have powers. And the 2nd Edition Book of Artifacts has still laid out these artifact powers on random tables in Appendix B, similar to the way they were laid out in the 1st Edition DMG
. Thus, I can't see any reason why the DM shouldn't let you add any of the powers listed in Appendix B of the 2nd Edition Book of Artifacts to your existing magic items for 5000 gold pieces each. If a sword +6, vorpal defender of slaying everything costs 132,500 g.p., then for 137,500 g.p. you should be able to buy an identical sword that grants you a constant protection from fire (Appendix B, table 33, entry 14). Even if you don't think you need any of those artifact powers (which, believe me, you do need), it's still to your benefit to give at least one artifact power to every important magic item you own. Why? Because adding that first artifact power to an item will raise it out of the mire of being a lowly run-of-the-mill magic trinket to being a real artifact, and just the fact that a magic item is an artifact has some wonderful consequences. An artifact gets a much better saving throw against a rod of cancellation than any non-artifact magic item does. Artifacts will operate inside an anti-magic shell, while all other magic items will have their powers suppressed. Mordenkainen's disjunction only has a 1% chance per casting level of affecting an artifact, and even if this chance succeeds, the artifact gets to make the same saving throw that an ordinary non-artifact magic item does. The only drawback is that all artifacts have to have some special procedure that can un-make and destroy them. You'll have to come up with a process by which each of your artifacts can be un-made. It should look something like this:
Procedure to un-make Stupendous Man's artifact sword +6, holy vorpal defender frost-brand flame-tongue sun luckblade of wounding, dancing, sharpness, thunderbolts, life stealing, nine lives stealer, slaying everything, speed, quickness, venom, disruption, and throwing with 17 intelligence, speech and telepathy, read languages, read magic, 10 languages spoken (in addition to Common), eight extraordinary powers, eight special purposes, and too many artifact powers to list:While standing at the center of a supernova, grasp the artifact in all 7 of your hands and stab yourself repeatedly with it while reciting the Bible (including the apocrypha) backwards, from memory. Then, have Orcus put the artifact in a bag of holding and carry that bag of holding with him into a portable hole. Then find the artifact again (with or without Orcus) and carry it with you as you jump into a sphere of annihilation. If you can make it back out of the sphere of annihilation, the artifact will be successfully un-made.
This sounds to me like a perfectly reasonable formula for un-making an artifact, and I'm sure your DM will agree.Some artifact powers in Appendix B need special attention:
Table 31, entry 12 gives you a permanent +1 to all your saving throws. There's no reason you can't take this power more than once. Take it enough times and you're sure to bring all your saving throws down to, say, -30 or better. This is especially important if you have a scarab of protection, which gives you a saving throw of 20 against all spells which normally allow no saving throw. The rules for the scarab of protection are even nice enough that they explicitly allow you to add all your saving throw bonuses to this saving throw of 20. (Sometimes the rules just hand you invincibility on a silver platter!) Take the table 31, entry 12 power 19 times and you'll save against no-save spells on a 1 or better — even if you left your artifact at home.
Table 24, entry 12 adds +20% to your magic resistance. Now, back in the days of 1st Edition, magic resistance wasn't quite so useful. For every experience level of the spell-caster above 11th, the target's magic resistance was reduced by 5%. But that rule is gone in 2nd Edition. A 50% magic resistance means everybody's spells — yours, Gandalf's, Odin's, Zeus's — have a 50% chance of totally failing to affect you in any way. So, take the table 24, entry 12 power 5 times and you've got 100% magic resistance. Hostile magic spells and spell-like powers will not affect you at all. (Okay, that's not quite true. There's a spell in the Tome of Magic called 'lower resistance,' against which only half your magic resistance applies. Thus, you'll need to take the table 24, entry 12 power 10 times, for 200% total magic resistance.)
Table 27, entry 4 gives you double the overland movement rate. Does that mean that taking table 27, entry 4 twice gives you quadruple the overland movement rate? I don't see why not. A normal munchkin character with a base movement rate of 32 (that's the base move for a 17th level monk, which you of course incorporated into that roll-your-own character class of yours, right?) with the table 27, entry 4 power taken once will have a base movement rate of 64. Take the power twice, and he'll have a base move of 128. Three times, and he'll have a base move of 256. Theoretically, there's no upper limit to how fast your character's base move can become, although your DM may wish to impose an absolute maximum movement rate of 550,000 (that's the speed of light outdoors).
Table 12, entry 5 provides double attacks per round, but only when the artifact is being used as a weapon. Now, suppose your character is a high-level fighter who has attained grand mastery (c.f. Player's Option: Combat & Tactics) with the longsword. He would therefore normally be entitled to 7 melee attacks every 2 rounds with a longsword. (Of course, whatever character class you've designed will figure out a way to get even more base attacks per round. I'm just using the 7/2 attacks of a fighter with grand mastery as a cheap example.) However, if he wields an artifact longsword with the table 12, entry 5 power, he will be able to attack 7 times per round with the artifact. In addition, note that this power doesn't say you only get double attacks per round with the artifact. You only have to be wielding the artifact as a weapon. What if you're wielding an artifact longsword with the table 12, entry 5 power in your right hand, and a plain non-artifact dagger in your left hand? Surely, the 'double attacks per round' power of the sword should apply to the number of attacks per round you get with the dagger, too! And what if the dagger is also an artifact with the table 12, entry 5 power? Then, darn it, each artifact weapon should double the number of attacks you get with both itself and with the other artifact weapon you're wielding. You ought to get quadruple attacks per round with each weapon. Whine about this to your DM until he sees the obvious, flawless logic of such an assertion.
Table 33, entry 14 gives you protection from fire constantly in effect as long as the artifact is in hand. Now, according to the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, there are two different ways the 3rd-level priest spell 'protection from fire' can operate. If it's cast on someone other than the spellcaster, it gives that person a +4 to saving throws against fire and cuts magical fire damage in half. If it's cast on the spellcaster, though, it absorbs 12 damage points of fire damage per level of the caster. (Artifacts are considered to be 20th level spellcasters with respect to spell effects, according to page 138 of the Book of Artifacts.) The question is, which version of the protection from fire spell does an artifact give you? Purists would argue that since the protection from fire bestowed is constant, it should be the kind of protection afforded to creatures other than the spellcaster, because that version doesn't require you to count damage points, and besides, it sounds rather absurd to have an effect that stops after a certain number of damage points are absorbed and is constant at the same time so that it doesn't stop. I say, though, that this doesn't sound absurd at all. It makes perfect sense that an artifact's constant protection from fire spell would absorb 240 damage points, then 'stop,' but since it's constant it actually wouldn't stop, and it would be instantly ready to absorb another 240 damage points, even if those next 240 damage points were from the same fire attack. It would provide complete and total immunity to fire forever and ever. This is obviously the best interpretation of the table 33, entry 14 power. A munchkin character like yours shouldn't have to be bothered by trivial annoyances like taking fire damage.
Cast stoneskin and invulnerability to magical weapons
The threat of an arrow of slaying — or more to the point, the threat of another munchkin armed with an artifact weapon with the arrow of slaying's slaying effect — is very real. No saving throws are allowed against the slaying effect of an arrow of slaying. TheAd& D 2nd Edition Skills And Powers Character Sheet Pdf
scarab of protection's saving-throw-versus-no-save-spells won't help you against it, because an arrow of slaying is not a spell. Magic resistance won't help you either, because an arrow of slaying isn't a spell-like power. Even an anti-magic shellAd& D 2nd Edition Skills And Powers Character Sheet Music
will be useless if the slaying-imbued weapon is an artifact.And don't go bragging about your negative triple-digit armor class, either. In the arms race of THAC0 versus AC, THAC0 improves a lot faster with experience points than AC does. Even if you're a kensai. So trust me, if another munchkin of approximately your own power level attacks you, you will get hit.
The only two defenses against an artifact weapon of slaying wielded by another munchkin are the stoneskin spell, and the invulnerability to magical weapons spell (the latter spell being from the Complete Wizard's Handbook). The thing is, neither spell is perfect. Stoneskin can be negated by a number of attacks (physical or magical) equal to half your level plus 1d4. Worse, your DM might get a sudden attack of curmudgeonyness and insist that the rule in DM Option: High Level Campaigns be enforced, which limits the duration of a stoneskin spell to 24 hours. The bastard. Invulnerability to magical weapons, meanwhile, lasts 1 round per level — this doesn't sound like much until your wizard level starts getting up into the quadruple-digits, and you realize that there are only 60 rounds in an hour and 1440 rounds in a day. For a 10 000th level mage, an invulnerability to magical weapons spell would last a week. However, invulnerability to magical weapons can easily be bypassed if the attacker discards his +5 holy vorpal frost-brand luckblade and draws a non-magical longsword. (Sure, you also have a permanent potion of invulnerability in effect on yourself, but the other munchkin might be part kensai or part barbarian, and would therefore be able to hit creatures 'struck only by magical weapons' with that non-magical longsword of his.)
Ad& D 2nd Edition Skills And Powers Character Sheet Form
The solution is, cast them both. Then you'll have the invulnerability to magical weapons spell's limitless duration and the stoneskin spell's immunity to non-magical weapons. And, logically, all magical weapon attacks should be assumed to strike the invulnerability to magical weapons spell first and not go against the attack-absorption total of the stoneskin spell. (You don't have to worry about attack spells going against the attack-absorption total of your stoneskin spell either, because you've got 200% magic resistance from your artifacts, of course. Which, come to think of it, should also prevent a dispel magic spell or a Mordenkainen's disjunction spell from bringing down your stoneskin and invulnerability to magical weapons spells.)
Ad& D 2nd Edition Skills And Powers Character Sheet Art
These two spells taken together will protect you from the slaying attacks of other pernicious munchkins, unless they decide to cast an anti-magic shell first. Now, I used to suggest that, in order to prepare for such a circumstance, you should make sure that one of your artifacts has the table 20, entry 17 power of 'cast stoneskin (1/day),' because as everyone knows, an artifact will continue to function even inside an anti-magic shell. However, the 'Sage Advice' article in Dragon magazine, issue #156, page 55, says that within an anti-magic shell — or, for that matter, within the anti-magic ray of a beholder — any spell-like effects produced by an artifact will be suppressed. Hmph! If your DM throws a munchkin NPC at you who's armed with an 'of slaying' artifact weapon and an anti-magic shell, you will need to hide that issue of Dragon so that said DM can't find it.
Ad& D 2nd Edition Skills And Powers Character Sheet Test
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