d20

Welcome to the d20 point-buy section! 

   Eclipse Classless d20 Character Construction Cribsheet and Sample Character List

   If there are any special requests, rules questions, or things anyone wants to know how to do in point-buy, simply leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you on it as soon as possible. The links on this page have now been updated and organized: I’ll try to keep them up to date from now on. Non-d20 material can be found on its own tabs – or you can take a general survey of everything on the site on the Index tab. If you’re looking for the most recent entries try the Home tab and scroll down: the main index and this page are organized by topic, not date.

   All of our campaigns use the classless point-buy rules from Eclipse: The Codex Persona and the magic design rules from The Practical Enchanter (both available via the links below). Eclipse is the only d20 character-creation and power book we’ve needed in quite awhile – and none of the local players are willing to use anything else any more anyway – so all of the various characters, races, and templates listed under the general d20 or specific campaign settings are suitable as sample designs. Since Eclipse is fully compatible with 3.0, 3.5, Modern, Future, and many other d20 products, there should be something here for most d20 gamers.

The Books We Use:

  • Eclipse: The Codex Persona: Print Edition (Lulu.Com), Electronic Edition (Lulu.Com), Electronic Edition (RPGNow.Com), Shareware Edition (at RPGNow.Com), and Shareware Edition (Box.Net Download).
  • The Practical Enchanter: Print Edition (Lulu.Com), Electronic Edition (Lulu.Com), Electronic Edition (RPGNow.Com), Shareware Edition (at RPGNow.Com), and Shareware Edition (Box.Net Download). Handy for designing special powers and items. There’s a nice RPGNow Staff Review too.
  • Paths of Power (a free d20 magic supplement, including a revised spell and psionic ability acquisition method with numerous new paths, domains, spells, and other systems). Paths of Power II, Monstrous Pathsis available in PDF form HERE. The Complete Paths of Power – combining the two – is available in Print Here.
  • Eclipse Web Expansion One: a free expansion for Eclipse: The Codex Persona. Includes races, a level-by-level sample build, levels without XP, d20 without levels, and FAQ.
  • Magic the Gathering; The RPG. This was originally designed as a submission to WOTC, but they were uninterested in any submissions related to M:TG. The system stretches d20 to the limit, since it uses magic cards as character attributes - but since the playtesters havelet the draft files out, here it is. Who knows? Maybe Wizards of the Coast will see it and decide to pick it up after all (not likely, but we reserve any commercial rights that may apply just in case). The playtesters had a lot of fun with it, and – for personal use in its current form – it’s entirely free.

   General d20 Point-Buy Sample Characters, Races, and Templates: Similar information for particular settings can be found under the campaign headings.

 Random d20 information:

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Federation-Apocalypse Campaign:

Subpage: Since this is the primary game in play at the moment, it gets its own subpage for updates… 

Federation-Apocalypse Characters and Templates:

Federation-Apocalypse Background Information:

Federation-Apocalypse Campaign Log: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, Session 4, Session 5, Session 6, Session 7, Session 8, Session 9, Sessions 10-11, Sessions 12-13, Session 14, Session 15, Session 16, Session 17, Session 18, Session 19, Session 20, Session 21, Session 22, Session 23, Session 24, Session 25, Session 26, Session 27, Session 28, Session 29, Session 30, Session 31,  Session 32,  Session 33, Session 34,  Session 35, Session 36, Session 36a, Session 37, Session 38, and Session 39, Session 40, Session 41, Session 42, Session 43, Session 44, Session 45. Session 46, Session 47,  Session 48, Session 49, Session 50, Session 51, Session 52, Session 53, Session 54, Session 55, Session 56, Session 57, Session 58, (due to interludes, Session 59 was Marty’s Vacation,  but has been listed after session 60 to keep thing in sequence), Session 60, A Draconic Interlude (Part I, Part II, and Part III), Marty’s Vacation Interlude, Session 61. Session 62, Session 63, Session 64, Session 65, Session 66, Session 66a, Session 66b, Session 66c, Session 67a, Session 67b, Session 68, Session 69, Session 70, Session 71a, Session 71b, Session 72, Session 73, Session 74a, Session 74b, Session 75a, Session 75b, Session 76, Session 76b, Session 77, Session 78, Session 79, Session 80a, Session 80b, Session 80c, Session 81. Along these lines we have a the Current Timeline (and the previous  Timeline Update), a Current Projects list (and the older Things to Do list), and a Session Timeline to help keep track of plots and developments.

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Twilight Isles Setting:

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Shandar Campaign 

  Shandar was the original test setting for Eclipse: The Codex Persona. As such, the players were allowed to go hog-wild with their builds. They needed to: the place was incredibly lethal.

  • Shandar: The Fallen World. An introduction – History, the World, the Balefire of the Cinghalum, Glowstone, and Languages.
  • Starting Areas. A selection of starting locations, with the advantages, disadvantages, and usual character types for each.
  • Glowstone Alchemy: the Basics (including the benefits and costs of using Glowstone) and the Items – for when you want to introduce radioactive temptation into your world.

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Ironwinds Campaign

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Atheria Campaign

Sample Characters:

Atheria Background Material:

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Darkweird Campaign

Sample Characters:

Campaign Character Design Sheet. The restrictions and bonuses which apply to all Darkweird characters.

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Cemar Campaign Setting:

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Thera Campaign Setting

  • The Book of Thoth: The count of ages, the great cycle, the prophecy, and the relationships between the elements, races, gods, and powers of Thera.
  • The Mystic Companion Prestige Class. For aides, assistants, and familiars.
  • Thera: The Runelord Epic Class and the Epic Hero Class. Thera’s two possible epic paths - the Path of Godhood and the Path of Exaltation.
  • Thera: Channeling Exotic Forces. Rules for channeling order, chaos, fire, transformation, and many other forces beyond positive and negative energy.
  • Thera: Magical Basics. Rules for Mana, acquiring and casting spells, using items, the Rule of Three, and working circle and rune magic on Thera.
  • Thera: ShuKenja. The spell-improvising wizard-priests of the eastern empire.

10 Responses

  1. Bill, on February 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm Said:

    Just curious,

    On p 189 of Eclipse: The Codex Persona there is a blurb saying:

    “If you want to run a game without using experience points at all, you’ll want to consult our OGL web supplement. We can’t tell you how to do that in a d20 product”

    What exactly was this referring to and what became of it?

    Reply
  2. Thoth, on February 18th, 2008 at 8:19 pm Said:

    Hmm. Checking back, it looks like that file went missing when the original site was hacked. I’ll get a revised version up here shortly. As for what it was, well, the d20 license – as distinct from the open game license – prohibits including rules on how to apply experience to a character to advance their level. Ergo, no experience point chart and no options for doing without one.

    Reply
  3. Bill, on February 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm Said:

    I’d love to see that file if you have it somewhere.

    Reply
  4. Tony Boyd, on June 9th, 2009 at 8:36 am Said:

    The Practical Enchanter says that curses can be cast by people who do not have magical abilities, yet then it goes on to categorize curses as spells with levels. If curses are spells and commoners have no spellcasting ability, how’s that work?

    Reply
  5. Thoth, on June 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm Said:

    It’s easy enough: almost uniquely, the spell level modifiers on a curse can reduce it’s level below zero – and there are no requirements for casting such “spells”. For example, if an ordinary person – possibly after being aided by someone who kept them from dying or having a lingering death for dramatic purposes – is cursing a child of theirs (-2) who personally inflicted a mortal wound on them (-2), and is willing to suffer severe backlash (-2), and fuels the curse with (1d4 x 500 XP) (-1), they wind up with a net modifier of -7 spell levels. If they attempt a curse with a base level of 6 or less, they’ll wind up with a net spell level of (-1) – which anyone can manage.

    Of course, that’s an extreme example, and a rarity even under such circumstances. Most people don’t have the focused malice, the concentration, or the inclination to lay good curses – although this does provide a reason to avoid pointlessly slaughtering the peasantry. Even minor curses can be annoying.

    Still, if the foul Prince Karnacht stabs his father the King with a poisoned blade and leaves him to die (a prelude to blaming a neighboring kingdom for his death and declaring war upon it while simultaneously seizing the throne), he should not be surprised to find that his father, while only an eighth-level noble with no spellcasting ability, has cursed him with his dying breath and words written in his own blood “to be brought down by the children of his deeds”. As a sixth-level curse this Affliction can use a “Suggestion” effect six or seven times per day – which it will use against the King and his commanders to try and allow the occasional vengeful child to escape the upcoming massacres. When a few such children grow up and become adventurer’s (thanks to more subtle Suggestions), King Karnacht may well meet his doom at their hands. After all, the avengers will be mysteriously “lucky” enough to have an suggestible old servant absent-mindedly reveal the location of the secret passage to his chambers…

    Now that’s a pretty classical plot, but now you actually have some reason for it; King Karnacht often failed to follow the rules of the Evil Overlord List because he was being magically manipulated. His officers mysteriously took pity on the occasional child, or committed obvious blunders, for the same reason. Why did the kids come together? Why did they become adventurers? Why did they stay determined to seek revenge? Why were they the only ones to stumble on the secret passage? Because the curse is fulfilling it’s wording. There may be more efficient ways to get things done, but this is a curse, not an engineer on assignment.

    In classical terms, the existence of such curses equates to the purported ability of dying people to curse their murderers with terrible fates and with the supposed ability of parents to lay curses and blessings on their offspring – a notion goes back as far as we have records, and can be found in sources ranging from Sumeria to pre-dynastic China and the old testament.

    In d20 terms, spells with negative spell levels are only possible if they’re either bits of folk magic with no actual game effect – such as kitchen charms to keep cakes from falling, cellar charms to help keep the bugs out of the stored vegetables, cleansing charms, and a thousand other tiny items – or if all the real work is carried out by someone else. Thus you have the occasional efficacy of perfectly ordinary people offering prayers to gods or cursing their tormentors. There are things out there that listen – sometimes even to people who don’t have the magic to reach them directly and reliably.

    Reply
  6. Tony Boyd, on June 10th, 2009 at 6:43 am Said:

    Hey, thanks for the great reply. Before I read your response, I had thought about a system like what you described. I had a problem with it because I would think a spell level cap would apply even for a -1 spell. In other words, you need an ability score of 10 + the spell level to cast that level spell. So for a -1 curse, you’d need an ability score of 9 to cast it. But what ability is used, for commoners who have no main spellcasting stat? Also, how do you calculate the DC?

    Also, with your system curses are very easy to pull off, and even players would get into the action, casting them “for free” all over the place.

    So… I posted to En World a different homebrew method of applying your book. That is here:

    http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3rd-edition-house-rules/257391-curses-those-who-cant-cast-spells.html

    It’s far more harsh — it sets level -5 spells as the only ones that are free, and it eats up levels instead of just a bit of XP (my problem with the XP cost as it normally stands is that it is a HUGE cost for a commoner with no XP, but is downright insignificant to a level 20 fighter, making them super-cursers). By eating levels instead, it seems to reign in the overpoweredness.

    Anyway, although your system is probably much simpler and much more enjoyable to you, I hope you can appreciate at least some aspects of my proposed implementation. I’m wishing for a way to combine the ease of your system with the “only gets used in rare situations” structure of mine.

    Feel free to add my alternative system to your document, if you wish. Just keep my name in there somewhere if you do. :)

    Reply
  7. Thoth, on June 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm Said:

    Easy enough again:

    Normally spell level caps don’t apply to effects with negative levels. As noted, those include things like folk magic and “praying”, which seem like they ought to be available to anyone. That would also mean that the save DC would normally simply be (10+Effective Spell Level) – which, since the spell level is normally (-1) or less, means a DC of 9 or less. This will work sometimes – but most high-level opponents are likely to have at least a +7 will save after bonuses (and may have some method of making occasional rerolls too) – hence such targets will only fail to save on a 1 and 95% or more of all unskilled curses directed at powerful opponents will be wasted. That’s a definite pain if you’re using the “fueled with XP” modifier.

    If you want to use a spellcasting attribute you can either use constitution (as used with monster abilities), use Charisma (following the tradition of innate-magic Sorcerers), or just let whoever’s laying the curse pick one if you’re feeling really really generous.

    Unskilled curses by player-characters are unlikely to include any “Target is” modifiers (major villains usually aren’t a player character’s children, close relatives, or beyond their ability to harm otherwise), and usually haven’t personally killed the character laying the curse, that means that the maximum modifier they can stack up is (-6) – including automatic backlash, an escape clause, and a lengthy delay in taking effect. That’s enough for a curse with a base level of 5, but not enough to put it outside the range of curses that can be removed with “Greater Remove Curse” (exactly like Greater Dispel Magic). They can throw in the “extremely difficult to remove” modifier, but that will both weaken the curse and make it even harder for them to get rid of the backlash.

    Players are quite welcome to have their characters start throwing around curses; after all, with each curse they throw, they’re intentionally demanding the attention of malevolent spirits that like to cause trouble for people. Ergo, the note about “Backlash” occasionally occurring even if you don’t use the modifiers that force it to. Player characters who throw a lot of curses are likely to cause a great deal of trouble for themselves. That’s why cursing is traditionally a last resort. Player characters may throw curses to give their friends an advantage against the foe that just struck them down – but this is poor strategy, since they’re likely to inflict long-term problems on themselves in exchange for a very short-term advantage. Most of the time the player characters either win or fall back anyway; total party kills are relatively uncommon.

    As a secondary problem, characters who attempt to select specific results and the mechanics thereof , rather than wording a dramatic curse and letting the game master pick the exact mechanics to fit within the level of the curse they’re using, are subject to the +2 level penalty for “worded in terms of game mechanics”. Players who try to min-max the mechanics for maximum efficiency are thus automatically penalized.

    Now, the base range of a curse is touch, +1 level for +1 range category (Close +1, Medium +2, Long +3, Unlimited +4). That makes it awkward to strike back at people you can’t see. I was assuming that Prince Karnacht either touched his father while pulling his dagger out of his back or later passed through the hall or room where his father’s curse was waiting for him, but that seemed reasonable enough.

    The final requirement for an unskilled curse is that it be backed by a powerful emotion – preferably by “festering bitterness” and a sense of powerlessness. Player characters are rarely powerless – and are usually involved in making practical plans for dealing with or escaping their opponents rather than in brooding over their grievances. Trying to curse their enemies as a tactical maneuver simply isn’t likely to work.

    The same goes for most NPC’s. Most dying people focus on prayers and professions of faith, providing for friends and relatives, issuing final instructions, the pain and other symptoms, trying to cling to life, disbelief or denial, and sheer shock, rather than on spewing vindictive curses. Most people throughout history have believed in the power of dying curses – but they’re still unusual.

    Many real deaths are much more lingering than is usual on d20, which is why I allow mortally-wounded or just-deceased characters to issue some final words or take some small action if they want to have a dramatic death scene (if they were merely mortally wounded, the strain of doing this automatically kills them). Presumably their soul animates their body for a few final moments before taking it’s leave. That actually comes up more with NPC’s than PC’s; it means that a technically dead – and thus beyond the reach of healing magic – individual can speak a few final words, or entrust some item or errand to the characters, without the pesky party healer simply fixing him or her up. I’m sure you’ve seen that routine when the Game Master tries to be dramatic:

    “The dying man is gasping through the blood that’s dripping from his mouth. He feebly pulls you down so that you can make out his dying request to save his daughter from the bandits before he falls back – dead.”

    Except for the fact that the pesky healer will inevitably announce “Cure (Whatever) Wounds” around the third or fourth word. Ergo, the “Death Scene” rule.

    I’ll take a good look at your alternative system this evening or tomorrow, and probably mirror it here as an alternative. More options are always good.

    Reply
  8. long term curses? - EN World D&D / RPG News, on June 10th, 2009 at 8:03 pm Said:

    [...] Having written that house-ruled system, I also asked the author about it, and he posted that anything below a cantrip/orison was clearly a freebie. So his rule is actually almost exactly like mine, except that he made level -1 spells free. My [...]

    Reply
  9. Alzrius, on September 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm Said:

    Over a year ago, I wrote my own version of a section of The Practical Enchanter regarding the number of unique spells in a game world, stretching it out a bit to also include a population breakdown. Looking back, I think that I completely forgot to mention it to you, even though you wrote the original essay.

    Here’s the link: http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/alzrius/732-spells-spellcasters-campaign-world.html

    I’ll say it again: The Practical Enchanter is a SPECTACULAR book! ^_^

    Reply
    • Thoth, on September 24th, 2009 at 1:49 am Said:

      Well, it’s always nice to see people putting the material to use – and I’m glad you’re evidently still enjoying the book!

      I hope that you’ll find some of the other material on this site useful as well – although I must admit that there have been a lot more questions about Eclipse (mostly “how do I build this?”) than about The Practical Enchanter.

      That’s a nicely-developed essay over there; I fear that restricting things to one page wasn’t really enough to do the topic justice.

      I have considered going back and fixing the left-out modifier in the campaign resources section – but it wouldn’t change the basic result and, so far as I know, you’re the only one who’s ever noticed. Still, I really must get to it one of these days. So many projects, so little time.

      Reply

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