DM Post: Tweaking PCs

Tweaking PCs

It is common to make a new character, play it in its first session and decide that something should have been different in your character build. For this reason you are allowed to do some tweaking. But you must follow these guidelines. Admittedly, these allow anywhere from minor adjustments to total rebuilds. As long as players are not “gaming the system” and do their tweak in good faith, I don’t see any reason to disallow tweaks.

If the idea is to make a new character that is small to fit through an opening and then next session show up with “gnome-tweaked-into-an-ogre” to smash all the bad guys beyond the small opening that the ogre wouldn’t fit through in the first place, this type of tweak is considered “in bad faith” and an untimely demise of your tweaked character will no doubt result from this situation with loss of all treasure that would have been gained, perhaps from a house fire or a tunnel cave-in on top of the treasure pile pulverizing it to powder. Just remember, don’t be a squid-player.

·        When? You may only tweak your character before it gains its first level in game play, whether it’s a new 1^st level character or a new 9^th level character doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a new character that has never gained a level from game play.

·        How Often? Each character may only be tweaked once.

·        Ability Scores Your original ability rolls must remain the same, however you may move them around as you desire. Apply racial modifiers after you shuffle your original rolls, as normal.

·        Race and Class You can change your race and/ or class levels as you desire. Keep in mind that everything must still be legal at each character level of the build.

·        Hit Dice and Hit Points If you change your class, no doubt it will change the kind of Hit Die you gain as well. Use the same percentage of hp per HD you had before. If, for example, you had 3 hp on a d4 before the tweak (which is 75%) and then tweak-change to a class that uses a d12, now you have 9 hp for that HD (still 75% of the die). Always round down. If you don’t know what hit points you had on each HD, you cannot change your type of HD by changing classes.

·        Buying Hit Points with XP You may not buy hit points during a character tweak. Any experience points you have already spent remain spent even if one or more of your Hit Dice change.

·        Experience Point Total The current total experience points for your character does not change during a tweak.

·        Alignment You may change your alignment to any other alignment, within the limitations of your tweaked character build.

·        Gear, Equipment, and Money You have two choices:

o   Choice A) Either keep all gear, equipment, money and treasure your character has gained up to this point, or

o   Choice B) Lose all of that stuff and begin with starting gear from PHB2 as normal for a new character.

o   If you try to “game the system” by having your friend hold your favorite item while you tweak your gear, the item is still lost. Don’t be a squid-player.

·        Feats and Skill Points You may change any or all of your feats out for new ones. You may reallocate your skill points as you desire; indeed you must do so if you tweaked classes.

·        Guilds, Affiliations, Achievements, Teamwork Benefits, Owning a Home, Owning a Business, etc. You may not tweak any of these sorts of things.

o   Guilds and Affiliations You remain in the same guilds and affiliations with the same standing, unless your new build disqualifies you. If your tweak does disqualify you from being in a certain guild or affiliation, you lose membership entirely and do not automatically replace it with another membership

o   Achievements You do not lose or gain any achievements by tweaking your character, even if the new tweaked version of your character would not be able to earn the same achievements.

o   Teamwork Benefits You remain part of any team and continue to benefit from the teamwork, unless your tweak disqualifies you from the team.

o   Owning a Home, Owning a Business You continue to own these things, regardless of your tweak. If your original character was a gnome and bought a gnome-sized house, and you tweaked into an ogre and thus can no longer fit through the front door, you might want to sell your house.

Acquaintances and Events Despite all non sequiturs that occur, your tweaked character still did all the things your original character did, met all the same people, had all the same social interactions, maintains all the same acquaintances, etc., etc., etc.

(All of the above information has also been added to the Aryathan Jiil Campaign Setting.pdf and uploaded to the google drive.)