Did you want to go GFK? I will post the mechanics for my ninja class, and the one in Complete Adventurer is also available. Assassin is also possible- I think that class does it pretty well. The GFK is also ok. But mostly this is about, do you want to be from a ninja clan in Kuromera, on a mission? What alignment? Family history? Or something different?

I hate to press but I kinda need it to finish spinning this prologue, such as it is!

The last I heard he was planning on some sort of dual wielding melee guy.

Yep, Dual wielding fighter.

CN:

Human teenager from the mysterious east or equivalent.

Dual wielding Kukri or Scimitar's. Not sure yet.

On a quest to prove myself to my clan, ant eventually to fall into some kind of assassiny type prestige class.

Middle name is "Illcutyabitch"

Need more?

Don't you think you could spend 20-30 minutes on it? Coming up with a detailed backstory should really help you get a feel for your character. It makes it easier to role play once you have a sense of the character more than just a quick note.

Ok, that's something.

Alright, so firstly: to the east of Arcata (and not very far to the east, these nations are in very reasonable contact) is the continent of Pallia. Pallia is divided into two large countries. Here's the summary on that:



An excerpt on Kuromeran samurai and other martial artists:



Kuromera is the south. Ninja clans exist in both countries. Evil ninja clans are more common in Kuromera, but since you picked CN as an alignment, either will do easily. Here's an excerpt about Zeugeiran samurai and martial artists:




Basically, the Kuromerans have an "external" philosophy and the Zeugeirans an "internal" one.

Tell me if any of these ideas go along with what you have in mind.

Haruka Renkira, born to the Renkira ninja clan, located in northern Kuromera, near the Kuroshiran line (the occasionally shifting border). Your clan hides among the foothills, out of the reaches of the emperor. An ancient and rural clan, their name is known in all of central Pallia, but their exact location is a mystery (and can change from year to year). Noted for sporadic heroics when Kuromera is at war, peacetimes are spent spying and consolidating wealth and power, sometimes through raids of the rival nation in the north. Your father was Akenji Renkira, a noted ninja assassin, strict and serious. He fought in the recent war against the Dark Regions, but not openly: the head of the Renkira clan himself had made very profitable arrangements with members of the Kuromeran military, and these were executed without problem. However, Akenji disappeared on his return. This was all a blur to you, for your father left when you were very small, and instead of returning, your village was assaulted in the night by enemy ninja, believed to be from Zeugeira. They knew the location of the village, the Words to pass the wards, and even which path on that night was the only one not guarded by one of the magic-users. Your clan would have been wiped off the map, were it not for a Fu Lion, returned as booty from the war. This one guardian, the only one that Akenji did not know about, was the one that warned the village and resulted in fighting the enemy force to a standstill while the women and children were spirited away, and then after that to press them to their deaths and eventual retreat. One carried the head of Akenji with some parchment and quills and ink, and a spike. What message was to be left with the head? It is possible Akenji died honorably, and the location of the village was arrived at by other means. But it is more likely that he either broke under torture, or was successfully interrogated whilst dead- all signs of a weak or broken man. Much worse, and not spoken of, is the possibility that he sold out his family and clan, and was himself betrayed. Regardless, your position in the clan was diminished greatly even before you had anything you could possibly do about it. To make things worse, you showed little inherent talent for stealth: you took to the (kukri or scimitar) very well, an exotic weapon unlike the well known katana or wakizashi, and very much unlike the commonly concealable weapons that ninjas often specialize in- and you showed a freakish talent for fighting with both at once. You set out, with no one to command you, with the intention of winning back your family's honor.

(will add more ideas tomorrow, I have to be up early- I have an idea from another direction as well)


While Zem tolerated a silly name, I do not. Your character can name himself whatever he likes (something like Shadow or Killer is even an acceptable working title), but your parents didn't name you anything with “bitch” in it!

Also note that the wakizashi will be identical to the short sword in stats (light weapon, 1d6, 19-20x2), and the katana will be a bit different: it will be a two-handed weapon that deals 2d4 damage, 18-20x2. With XWP, you can treat it as a one-handed weapon. Why would you take the falchion over this? The falchion as listed doesn't appear to exist, so don't worry about that. I'm considering dropping this 2d4 to 1d8, but then I would need something to sit over the falchion, and why make a weapon up when one exists that should live here?

Mechanically:

The kukri does 1d4, and has the "good" crit range (18-20). It is a light weapon, which means that you need less feats to wield it properly, and you can use it while grappled. It's probably the "best" of the light weapons. To dual wield it, you would want Two Weapon Fighting- that's it. You cannot power attack with a kukri, because it is a light weapon. It is not a rare weapon in Pallia, but it is believed to hail from southwest Arcata. If you take the kukri as your weapon, you'll probably want to take more levels in rogue or ninja, so that you get more "sneak attack" damage- your damage will be more precision based.

The scimitar does 1d6, and has the "good" crit range (18-20). It is a one-handed weapon, which means if you want to dual-wield it, you will also want to take Ambidexterity, which will allow you to not have the penalties for no light weapon. Being a one-handed weapon means you can power attack with it normally. Scimitars ARE a rare weapon in Pallia. They are believed to come from Queris, but certainly they are a useful weapon. Mechanically, this is normally your soundest option.

Another pairing is the scimitar AND the kukri. This is similar to the previous, except that your power attack only works for your mainhand. The changes I'm making to Weapon Focus and friends allow you to not have to split the feats: you would buy "Scimitar" your primary weapon and "Kukri" as your secondary, and whenever you are using a Kukri offhand and a Scimitar mainhand, you would get the bonuses.

Katana and wakishi would be more traditional, and double katanas concerns me as being too attractive mechanically- it's similar to the double scimitar, but has a decent damage bonus for the exotic weapon proficiency required.

I am considering eliminating or reducing the power attack penalty to off-hand, because it would keep a lot of reasonably cool character concepts from working as they should. I'm not even saying you need power attack or anything, I just don't like the differences!

John. Check your PM's.

This is like watching an episode of Get Smart, and we are all outside the Cone of Silence...

Silence is a sphere.

Oooooo... well played

Silence has a surface area of 5027ft^2 and a volume of 33510ft^3. And, of course, it is at a temperature of absolute zero and who the hell knows what would happen in that? I suppose we ignore that part.

Something something SPIKED CHAIN!!!

Indeed. In the Silence, no one can hear you say "Are you seriously swinging a chain with little spikes on it? There are only a handful of more moronic weapons, such as the gnomish pick and the mercurial greatsword."

Shhhhhhh!!!! You guys are talking too loudly!!!!

Your character is a chaotic evil librarian?

This also showed up in my image search...

That's pretty freakin' awesome.

Conan the Librarian is from UHF. Because this is the insane super futuristic 21st century, we can link to this, in a hyper fashion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZHoHaAYHq8

This is the snippet from the movie. UHF is about the 8th best movie of all time.

Also nothing about silence implies absolute 0. If the magic transmutes those mechanical waves into something else, then it's no problem. For instance, I can't hear you guys right now, because I'm in Virginia. It's not because there's absolute 0 between me and you, it's because any sound waves you generate are relatively quickly transmuted into other forms of energy, ones you can't hear.

John. FTLOG, check your PM's again.

Please look in the Fairies in Drag private forum for some ninjarrrrrrr

Oh please. Sound and temperature are basically the same thing. One molecule hits another, and that continues on. Besides that, the sound waves can't exist for them to be transmuted away because if they existed, then you could cast spells. I don't think there is a requirement that your buddy has to hear you, only that the sound exists. Well, once it is created, it exists. Therefore, it can never exist in the first place. In order to stop all sound, you must stop all motion. But even if you could transmute it away... so what? Once it's gone, you're back at absolute zero.

Let's say you have wind blowing past your head. You can hear it because it's hitting your ear drum. When does it stop being motion and turn into sound? You can't eliminate (or transmute away) all frequencies of sound and still have motion. It's all just little vibrations, and they either exist or they don't.

The speed of sound in a gas is equal to the square root of (gamma * Rm * T). Gamma is a fixed value based on the gas in question, and Rm is a constant. In order to stop sound, the speed of sound must be zero, and that's where T is zero.

I think you guys need to institute the Mythbusters practice of "Warning: Science Content"

Before, I thought that Zemmy was kidding. But now I'm not so sure.

You do know sound has nothing to do with temp, right?

It's a compression wave.

So maybe silence pulls a slight vacuum. Or maybe it just talks to the air molecules and convinces them not to gossip for a while...

Way to take the fun out of gaming.

Sorry, Cooley, but at a molecular level there is no difference between temperature and sound. They are both just one molecule hitting another. If you stop one, you stop the other. That is why the speed of sound through a gas is linearly dependent on the square root of the temperature. Gamma, the other factor in that equation, is a function of the shape of the molecule. Two little atoms stuck together (O2, N2) work out to 1.4. It's because of the way in which they can store energy.

The point is the whole sound thing is instigated when one bunch of molecules hitting another bunch of molecules move faster than expected. Are you going to stop that movement? That would be odd. It's like you slam down your foot, but your foot won't move. Anyway, then the original motion causes molecules to get on with bumping. It's the exact same bumping as caused by having a non-zero temperature, it just has a little more direction to it. Are you going to stop that bumping? Because that's an absolute zero temperature case.

I suppose you could have a system where it's a bunch of tiny little portals or something that balance out any pressure differentials. There are a few problems with this.
1: The sound must be created before it can be dissipated. Casting would be possible.
2: Winged flying creatures would call this "A very bad place to be."
3: Anything with a heart or diaphragm will be extremely pissed off.

No, at a molecular level there is no such THING as sound, and on the scale of a single molecule, there is less of a thing as temperature.


If you accelerate a molecule, did it get hotter? At the point where the temperature is just linear with velocity, you lose the utility entirely. Temperature is an aggregate phenomena. So, for that matter, is sound. A single molecule doesn't really have temperature, and it most cerrtainly doesn't have audio_volume. A Silence or Darkness spell has NEVER suppressed all molecular movement (or all EM exchange). Instead, they act over short distances to remove the aggregate behavior that results in these perceptions. Speaking? Speak with your mouth closed. You can speak, right? But someone standing next to you will have a hard time understanding that- for two reasons. First, your vocal chords make noise, the your tongue sculpts it, then your mouth finishes it. Second, of course, you are muffled. With your mouth closed, or your tongue disabled / injured, you can't speak very coherently, and you can't cast spells. A silence spell dissipates the wave into either harmless background heat, or radiation into the ethereal plane, and it does so to all coherent compression waves above a certain threshold. It certainly doesn't need to weld your boot to the floor to accomplish this, or to stop the vibration of your vocal chords for reaching any of the manipulative surfaces in your mouth- or even your ears.

My vocal cords, tongue, and mouth all work the same way in the silence. If you're assuming that because deaf people sound like tards when they speak and therefore cannot cast spells, then Deafness just became a far more powerful spell. Also, I would take feats and/or skills to overcome that.

I assumed it was understood that when I said "at a molecular level" I was referring to a bunch of molecules who got together for drinks. I am familiar with the free molecular regime in the upper atmosphere.

Heat and sound are the same thing. When there is an explosion where the air is rapidly heated, is it sound or heat? Well, it's both. They both propagate by having one molecule hit another, and that's it. There are no other forces or functions at work.

If I took a bunsen burner and turned it up and down rapidly, you would see waves of changing density going away from it. You wouldn't consider it sound because it's too slow to affect your ears, but at the basic level there's no difference. If you could turn up the frequency, you would hear it.

Molecules bounce off one another at some frequency based on temperature. That IS sound, regardless of whether or not you can hear it. If you want to eliminate some frequencies, fine, but when you eliminate all sound you also get rid of the vibrations between molecules.



Darkness would make you cold. Not deathly cold unless you were already pretty chilly, but it would be the same as radiating to deep space while inside an atmosphere. It would function like ancient "refrigeration." On a clear night you could put shallow trays of water high up on a hill, and even if the ambient temperature was in the upper 30s it would still freeze. Radiation is cool.

If I had moderator privileges here, I'd ban you both.

To which plane?