Hey I Can Chan

You Play Your Gender: If you are male, you’re character’s male. If you’re female, you’re character’s female. Things are easier on me that way.

Ability Scores: Your ability scores are 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18, arranged how you want. Okay, Jason, so you don’t want an 8. Fair enough. Anyone can instead choose 10, 10, 12, 14, 16, 16. I guess if you wanted to you could go 10, 12, 12, 14, 14, 16 or even 12, 12, 12, 14, 14, 14. I’m not sure why you’d want to—this is Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, after all—, but any of those are options for everyone.

You can’t begin play at an age greater than middle age −10% (Player’s Handbook 109). This avoids age shenanigans and willful extremism (“I want to be venerable with Str 5 and Int 21!”).

Open Locks: The Disable Device skill includes the Open Locks skill. All references to the Open Locks skill instead reference the Disable Device skill when the Disable Device skill is used to open locks. I don’t want to have to decide what’s a lock and what’s a device and have it really matter.

Precision Damage: Precision damage applies only to living creatures with discernible anatomies—constructs, oozes, undead, plants, and incorporeal creatures lack vital areas to attack. Any creature that is immune to critical hits is invulnerable to precision damage. Precision damage isn’t multiplied on a critical hit. This is probably quantified somewhere, but it’s here because it’s important. This is a mechanical decision to make writing easier. Sneak attack and skirmish damage is precision damage; favored enemy damage isn’t—favored enemy damage is I-hate-those-assholes damage (seriously, that’s actually not a house rule—I’m just clarifying).

Item Creation Feats: When you take an item creation feat as a permanent feat (i.e. the feat doesn’t go away when you regain spells or is granted by a magic item or spell or whatever), you gain an XP pool of 25 XP × your level when you gained the feat. You can spend this XP only for creating items with your permanent item creation feats. You can spend your XP instead of or in addition or in any combination with XP your item creation XP pool.

Some Spells and Effects Aren’t Banned, But…: PCs have access to very few I-get-to-pick-what-appears illusion spells (e.g. silent image), no spells that allow I-get-to-pick-what-I-change-into shapechaging (e.g. alter self or polymorph), very few high-level long-distance travel spells (e.g. plane shift, teleport), very few spells that allow long-distance spying (e.g. scrying), almost no spells that grant invisibility (e.g. invisibility, greater invisibility), almost no spells that do nothing but change your size category (e.g. enlarge person), and no spells that create areas of silence (e.g. silence and suspended silence) or darkness. Spells that bring other creatures onto the battlefield are also limited. I had bad experiences with these spells, trouble playing a game with these spells being commonplace, or know how hard it is to adjudicate their effects because they’re poorly written. You can still, during play, access these spells (such as through magic items or careful feat selection or knowing a dude who can cast them), and your opponents might have access to them, but I’m not going to give them, at least in quantity, to your class. It’d be really cool if you respected my decision to try to keep them out of the PCs’ grubby hands, but if you feel that you must have them, seek them out. Just be prepared to bring with you all of the books, errata, Sage Advice columns, rulings, and FAQs that are associated with them so we can work out how they should be gamed together.

If you have or gain access to a spell I don’t like (even if I gave it to you), be prepared for me to play the spell to absolute letter of the rules. Also, be prepared to solve any problems I would have with the spell—if you have considered beyond-the-obvious counters to it, let me know. Finally: I have the world to manage; you have one PC. I can’t have your single trick monopoloize the spotlight. If you can turn into, for example, an itty-bitty fish, you should have an itty-bitty fish stat block prepared before you hit the table, along with page references so I can anal retentively make sure you’re right. Same thing for complex effects like invisibility and charms. I don’t want the game slowed because you don’t understand what you can do.

“Can I Get This?”: My default answer is yes. That’s my superpower as Dungeon Master—the ability to say yes. Everyone else at the table can sigh and tell you, “Hell no, nobody would ever let you have that!” or, “Holy shit, that’s going to totally snap the game!” and I will still say yes. I will ask you, however, why you want something. If you want something because it leads you to something else, tell me what that is, and let’s discuss that instead. If you want something because you want to break the game with it, tell me how you plan to break the game with it so I can plan for that and figure out why no one has ever done it before. If you want something because it will give you an absurd unbeatable numerical bonus, explain to me why you want that—I mean, do you really want your character to be invulnerable? Why is that fun for you? What sort of adventures does an invulnerable character have? You could just play video games—with save points and restarts—by yourself instead of hanging out with us. If you’re going to rule the campaign world with what you pick, you can do that, but what stories can be told about after that?

I know it sounds geeky, but whenever your character gets something, that something should lend itself to telling more and bigger stories. That’s really what we do at the table. I don’t want to have to say no. Saying no means that you had something in mind—had an image for your character—that I have just squashed, and you only get that one character while I get the whole damn world. It’s inherently unfair for me to limit you. But it’s also unfair for you to choose to make the game less fun. Pick things that are fun. Pick things that tell bigger stories. Don’t just chase numbers.

Remember: You're not multiclassing; your custom class should do everything you want it to do without the need for multiclassing, so the choices you make are things like feats, allocation of skill ranks, selectable class features (every class has some), skill tricks, and sometimes spells. If you want to multiclass to get some class feature your class doesn't have because that multiclassing class feature fits your concept, let's fold it into your class instead.

Psionics, Action Points, Auras, Chakras, Essentia, Invocations, Martial Maneuvers, Mysteries, and Other Piles: I have no particular bias against things unmentioned in these rules, but I don’t know them that well, so many classes don’t do anything with them. If you really want to incorporate one of these other piles into your character, I’m not adverse, but you have to find a way to do so on your own, and you’re going to have to explain the rules to me and how those rules interact with everything else in the game. Usually, each pile has a way for you to get a few benefits from the pile using your feats—if that’s how you want to go, rock on. Just try to keep it fun.

If there’s something reasonable that you want to do that can only be done with more than a passing dip into a pile, let’s find a way. If we can’t, I’ll just make shit up.

Leveling Up: You gain 1 level for every 4 session in which you participate. The game skews to the highest level PC at the table, and for every level you're below that, the value of the session increases by 1 for your PC. For example, if 1 PC is level 4 and another is level 1, the level 1 PC's session counts as 4 sessions, and he'd level up at the end of it. In other words, you'll catch up rapidly if you're behind, but you still gotta tough it out. I'd prefer everyone start at level 1 even if the group's way beyond that, but that's something that can be discussed at the table.

Useful References: There are different kinds of special abilities—extraordinary, spell-like, supernatural, and natural (Player’s Handbook 141 and 180, Dungeon Master’s Guide 289). Things with no Ex, Sp, or Su tags are natural abilities.

Next: Spellcasting (spoiler: All PCs cast spells.)