Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

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HEEGZ
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Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

Post by HEEGZ »

This post was edited by shad0wfax on 2015-05-16 to reflect a change in the House Rules.

Baldur's Gate DMs

A list of current BG DMs may be found in this link:

Current BG DM list

If you wish to DM on BG please contact the HDM before applying. BG DMs are expected to abide by all ALFA and BG house rules. Additionally, DMs should have a working knowledge of the FRCS and three core rule books: PHB, DMG, & MM.

Baldur's Gate House Rules

Here are the current house rules for BG.


The following are EPC or Exceptional Player Character races and classes:

Races:

Drow
Half-drow
Duergar
Svirfneblin
Tieflings
Aasimar
Genasi
Grey Orc
Yuan-Ti

Classes:

Any Prestige Class (PrC)
Favored Soul

Heritage Feats:

Fey Heritage
Fiendish Heritage

Please contact any BG DM with questions. Thanks!
Last edited by HEEGZ on Sun May 04, 2014 7:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
HEEGZ
Dungeon Master
Posts: 7085
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
Location: US CST

Re: Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

Post by HEEGZ »

Last edited by HEEGZ on Sun May 04, 2014 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
shad0wfax
DM Admin
Posts: 679
Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:57 am

Re: Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

Post by shad0wfax »

The wiki entry was more clear than this original post was, so I've edited this post.

House Rules have been updated.

Please read the actual wiki post for details and links. Below is a brief summary with some examples:

Highlights include clarification of tech-rez, loosening of outdated crafting House Rules to comply with current mechanical "Standards approved" system and the lifting of the old "level-restricted crafting" that we had.

Crafting:
SRD/DMG will be followed, and that means that the Caster Level (CL) and spell requirements will be followed wherever possible.

As an example:

Gloves
As an example:

By the DMG, Gloves of Dexterity are a CL 8 item requiring Cat's Grace. The only difference between +2, +4, and +6 is the xp cost and gp cost. All three versions of the item are made at CL 8.

The benefit is that a +6 stat item is available now on ALFA, and +4 items are within reach of PCs, rather than only one player. The disadvantage is that a +1 won't be available at level 4. (Nothing says that a DM can't drop a +1 item though.)

Gauntlets of Ogre Power are +2 and CL6, but belts of giant strength at +4 or +6 are both CL10 by SRD. This is still a large improvement over ALFAs old house rule.

All DMA/Standards rules for legality of items, item pricing, and character advancement will be followed rigorously.

This is a mixed-blessing for characters at the lowest levels but a significant advantage at the mid to high levels. This should make it easier for crafting PCs to reach existing wealth targets.

I have updated the House Rules to bring them in-line with Standards/DMA rules for item creation both magical and mundane.

Crafting projects for magical items have been long-approved as a functional mechanical interface in-game and allowed the crafting of 1,000 gp worth of magical item progress once per in-game rest cycle (as per SRD). The previous House Rule still stated once per real life day, which was more restrictive than DMA rules are.

This same once per in-game day time frame now holds true for DM handled crafting project and NPC crafting project time-scales as well.

Mundane items still use the annoying GP converted to silver pieces, with Skill Check * Craft DC in silver pieces progress per day, as per DMG/SRD, but Skill a checks will be made once per in-game day, just like with magical items, rather than on e per real life day.

This brings the magical and mundane crafting requirements in line with current "Standards approved" systems existing in-game and also with SRD, given our compressed time-scale. This is a vast improvement for player crafters, especially mundane crafters.

Technical Resurrection
I have updated the House Rules to bring them in-line with DMA rules regarding Technical Resurrections, with some additional reminders on how to handle PC death and avoid metagaming.

Players are reminded that they may not communicate the location of their corpse to other players in any fashion; metagaming will not be tolerated.

Players who find a corpse and wish to discover whether or not a character would want an in-character resurrection should seek a DM to handle In-Character solutions to determine this (such as the spell Speak with Dead); do not ask the player of a dead character if they would accept a resurrection in an out of character manner.

Technical Resurrections will be given only when there is a bug, engine, or module failure that is demonstrable or well-documented. If you wish to request a tech-rez, please document it and submit it according to the wiki entry via a PM to me, and request that a DM screenshot the location of your corpse and then move it to the DM OOC area. (This will prevent your corpse from being looted by other player characters.)

This brings us in line with ALFA's pillars, that we follow Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms and that we have Perma-Death.
shad0wfax
DM Admin
Posts: 679
Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:57 am

Re: Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

Post by shad0wfax »

An extremely simplified summary, for ease of reading:

BG House Rules are here on the wiki.
  • Technical Resurrections (Tech Res): Outside of a DM event where a DM grants a tech-res due to unintended consequences, DM mistake, or for furtherance of the plot, tech res will be granted only by HDM approval on BG, with a very clearly documented server bug, unintended spawn, DM griefing, or other catastrophic failure of the BG system to function properly. Tech reses outside of DM events will be very rare.
  • Character Validation: Do not validate players who come to BG from other servers and are quarantined. Our portal reset timers should be short enough that all players can use the portals without issue. BG has portals to and from MS, TSM, and WHL, so players should not need to be validated on BG for any reason other than the use of teleport spells or non-scripted portals. I'm seeing too much hand-waving of travel time, and players are (predictably) taking advantage of it, being lazy, and expecting DM validation rather than logging in a few minutes early to walk their character to a portal in-character.
  • DM assisted mundane items now take ~78% less time to craft and follow ALFA time compression just like magical items do in the ALFA crafting automation scripts.
  • DM assisted magical item crafting follows the same time compression as ALFA ACR crafting projects.
  • Item caster level and spell requirements no longer follow a "test" version of the 8 year old house rule brought in unofficially from alfa1, then made more restrictive. We follow SRD/DMG now for caster level and spell requirements.
  • The new rule makes very low level PC crafted items slightly less accessible to PC crafters, but makes mid and high level items much more accessible to PC crafters.
  • DMA/Standards still have full control over advancement, pricing, and character wealth limits. The net result of the house rule is to provide another means for mid and high level character wealth for PC crafters to be brought closer to target.
shad0wfax
DM Admin
Posts: 679
Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:57 am

Re: Baldur's Gate DMs and House Rules

Post by shad0wfax »

Interim rules removed after successful resolution with DMA. Thanks boom.
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