Gaining A Familiar

      This table replaces Table 3-18: Familiars on page 51 of the Player's Handbook. All other rules apply normally.

Experience System

      Experience will be based solely on your role-playing for the evening. The DM will track every character's awards in each of six categories (Overall Role Playing, Ideas and Solutions, PC Interaction, Conflict Performance, NPC Interaction, and Alignment Compliance). Points earned are tallied and multiplied by the character's current level for their night's experience total.

Combat

The Surprise Round

      "Whether one side is aware of the other or not, the... first round of combat as a surprise round. In this round, only partial actions are allowed. Only those on a side aware of the other side can take any action at all."

Critical Hit: Specific Area

      On a successful critical hit, the DM will roll the body die. If an appendage is rolled, see the Damage to Specific Areas rule. If 'torso' or 'head' is rolled, the struck character is considered clobbered.

Critical Hit: Instant Kill

      "When a player rolls a natural 20 on an atack roll, a critical roll is made to see if a critical hit is scored. If that critical roll is also a 20, it is considered a threat for an instant kill. Now, a 3rd roll, an instant kill roll is made. If this roll scores a hit on the target in question (just like a normal crit roll after a threat), the target is instantly slain. Creatures immune to critical hits are also immune to instant kills."

Critical Misses: Table

      If a player rolls a natural 1 for an attack roll, it is an automatic miss, and he must make another roll to see if it is a critical miss. If the second roll is also a miss, then a critical miss chart will be consulted by the DM to determine the outcome. If the second roll is not a miss, the roll is considered an automatic miss.

Clobbered

      "If a character takes half her current hit points in damage from a single blow, she is clobbered. On her next turn, she can only take a partial action, and after that turn she is no longer clobbered."

Death from Massive Damage Based on Size

      "If a creature takes [massive] damage from a single attack, she must make a fortitude save or die. This rule exists primarily so there is at least a nod toward realism in the abstract system of hitpoint loss." Massive damage is defined as 50 points for medium-sized creatures, 40 points for small-sized creatures, etc.

Damage to Specific Areas

      "When a specific body part takes damage, you can apply a -2 penalty to any action that the character undertakes using that portion of his body... a character [may] make a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + damage taken) to "tough it out" and ignore the penalty."

Undead Turning

      Any attack against a turned undead by any member of the party breaks the turning effect.

Skills & Feats

Critical Success or Failure

      "If a player rolls a natural (unmodified) 20 on a check, allow him or her to make another check. If the second check is successful, the character has achieved a critical success with the use of that skill or ability, and something particularly good happens. Likewise, if a player rolls a natural 1, he rolls again. If the second check is a failure, the character has achieved a critical failure (made a critical blunder), and something really bad happens."

Knowledge Skills

      All official (WotC) skills are eligible for characters to learn. Any additional skills are subject to DM approval. For every two ranks in each of the following sub-skills, you may choose one additional topic that your character has learned. If you have not learned a topic, you may make an untrained Intelligence check to see if your character has the knowledge in question.

      If a topic lists 'region', choose one of the regions from Table 1-4: Character Regions on page 30 of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. A 'general' topic covers Faerun as a whole. For example, a (Geography - general) question would be finding Sembia on a map of the continent.

      Region-specific knowledge skills work similarly to the Perform skill. There is only one skill, and one skill modifier, but it may be applied to more than one region. For example, there is no such thing as Knowledge (Cormyr local) or Knowledge (Sembia local) that get separate ranks. There is just one skill Knowledge (local - Cormyr, Sembia) just as there is Perform (sing, dance).

      At character creation, you automatically gain two ranks in any region-specific skill. This applies only to the region you grew up in and no other. After 1st level, divide the number of ranks in the skill by 2 and round down to determine how many other regions besides your home region you may select skills for. The same skill modifier applies to all regions selected; ranks are not tracked separately by region.

      Note that for Knowledge (Local) in particular, a character may only select a region for this skill if he has lived in that region for at least 6 months.

Equipment

Spell Component Pouches

      Not liking the idea of unlimited spell components so long as a character has their pouch, we've placed a restriction. A full spell component pouch is considered to have 30 spell reagents. Each spell that requires material spell components that would normally be covered by the pouch cost one reagent per level of the spell (1/2 reagent for 0-level). You may obviously refill your pouch, usually through the purchase of more reagents from a wizard's guild for the price of 1gp per reagent.

Spellbooks

      Spells only take one page per level, half a page for 0-level spells. The cost per page is normal.

Piecemeal Armor

      In the interest of realism (hey, this is what all the 3e artwork is about anyways!), the DM has adopted the Piecemeal Armor rules as presented in the 2nd Edition Complete Fighter's Handbook and converted to Third Edition by Colin Chapman. You can find the rules in .rtf format at the Community 3E Website.