Rules we live by. Mostly R.A.W.
CAN’T MAKE A SESSION?
Your character will be played by someone else, to the best of their capabilities, with DM guidance, but it’s not the same and your character may miss out on chances to shine. No one knows your character better than you.. The missing player will not receive any experience for that night. And if your character dies while you didn’t make a session, that sucks, but sorry…
A player missing a session affects the game more than anything else, try to make it if you said you can. Stuff happens in real life though and we’ll accommodate as best we can but the story continues with or without you at the table.
NEW CHARACTERS in AN OLD GAME
New characters start with XP equal to the LOWEST character XP in the game.
MULTI-CLASSING
Nope. Just, no. There are enough classes and sub-classes to choose from across several books that you don’t have to double up on classes to get what you want. Too confusing, OP at low levels, and not part of this game.
CHARACTER CREATION
Rolling for ability scores is 4d6, take best three, straight down the line. These rolls must be at the table so we can all laugh or cheer at your rolls.
HIT POINT ROLLS
and LEVELING UP
You can take either the medium roll or roll for hit points, either way, has to be decided and done at the table. Leveling up is fun together, so do it in session to help each other, laugh at bad rolls, and celebrate your character advancement.
IF you make a poor choice in new abilities selections (like sub-class), you have until the next game to come to the DM to fix it. Don’t wait. Players are expected to read and learn about their character abilities between games.
Come prepared, the character is the player’s responsibility, not the DM’s.
CHASES
In a pursuit situation (like when monsters are running away), movement occurs simultaneously at the beginning of the round. If a creature or vehicle wishes to spend its action dashing or some other maneuver that affects movement, then those actions are resolved at that time too. So it breaks it down into a movement round for everyone at same time, and then the initiative order for all other actions for everyone. DM will decide when this occurs.
ABILITY CHECKS
The DM decides when they happen; please tell the DM what you are doing and they’ll let you know if a check is in order. You can’t just say you investigate the room hoping for an investigation check for anything secret in the room. You can say you are searching the bookcase for anything suspicious, and if there’s time, you are making a thorough search of the entire room which may trigger an ability check at the DM’s discretion (could be an investigation, could be perception, could be a passive perception roll by the DM).
CRITICAL HITS
Player chooses, max damage or double the damage roll.
CRITICAL FAILURES
A 1 means you screwed up, badly. Most times the effect of it is to describe how much you suck at what you were trying to do and make you look bad (in a fun, not sorry, kind of way). BUT the DM has the option to make it real, like shooting into a crowd of foes and allies with a longbow and rolling a 1 will definitely see that arrow hit a friendly. Dumb choices combined with a bad roll may see some consequences.
DICE ROLLS
All dice rolls have to be on the table and visible to others. The dice decide all our fates.
DM has final decision in all matters. Take it, keep playing, discuss another time if needed. Let’s not drag a game to a crawl due to rules. Lots of time between games to figure it out.
CLASSES
CLASS ABILITIES
like KI Channel Divinity, Sorcery Points, etc.
Ki is magic (Pg. 76, The Magic of Ki) and so are all class effects BUT are not considered spells, so can’t be countered with Counter Spell. Spells that affect magic on a fundamental level DO affect external manifestations of these abilities. Generally if internal effect, like buffing your own character, no worries, but if you’re pulling fire from the heavens, an Anti-Magic Shell will take that down. Anti-magic spells are a very high level spell, don’t think your cantrip style player ability circumvents that even though it’s not “a spell”. Magic courses through all those wonderful effects and CAN be negated. The DM will avoid use of AntiMagic shell unless for plot development so the fun doesn’t get negated, see next point.
SPELLS
COUNTER SPELL
Lame. Not banned, but almost. Spells should be allowed to happen, there’s enough chance of failure versus someone pulling out a “Nope” card. Used too much and I’ll ban this spell or give it to the NPC baddies just to show how unfun this spell is. I like seeing the effects of all this cool magic on both sides of the table.
So, to balance this, players HAVE to decide to cast this spell BEFORE the effect of the spell is apparent or announced. Why would anyone know what spell is being cast by an opponent until they see the effect of it? If Counter Spell is a possibility, DM’s and players need to announce they are casting a spell, and the people with Counter Spell have to decide to counter without knowing what the spell is before the spell effect happens.
HEALING SPIRIT SPELL
Fundamentally a broken overpowered spell as written. To fix this, the spirits are only attracted to combat and will only heal participants of combat while combat is happening.
GOODBERRY
Players need to have the berries to cast this spell on. Fresh berries are part of the spell components and they don’t just appear. Any adventure of resources & attrition is destroyed by this spell so to limit it, the player has to find fresh berries top cast it on.
FINALLY
At the end of the day, it’s a game, keep it fun.