Author's Note: Still don't own D&D.

This is not part of the story, it's just the details of my worldbuilding. Feel free to skip it if you like.

Overview

This is (obviously) a D&D fanfic. Unfortunately, the last time I played was back when the cover of the DMG still showed an efreet holding a mostly-naked blonde. (Ah, the days of sexist marketing aimed at 13-year-old boys.) I've done a fair amount of reading since then, but my knowledge of the rules is going to be patchy; bear with me.

Speaking of rules, I am actually writing this according to a strict set of rules that I set for myself when I started. I realized recently, however, that I had never actually laid out what they are. I've mentioned some of them in response to reviews, but I'm going to spell them out so people know what to expect (and so that *I* remember).

Update Schedule

The story updates every Saturday of whatever time zone I happen to be in at the time. Occasionally bonus chapters will happen, and those could come any time or any day.

The Rules of the World

For purposes of worldbuilding, the rules I'm playing by are a bit of a hodgepodge. Below is the list of what I'm using; this list will expand periodically as I run into situation where I need to make a ruling on something and I need to remember which way I ruled:

The Deorsi and the Flobovians are both magical societies, but they've developed along very different lines. As a result, there are spells, items, and techniques that are known to one that are not known to the other. Unfortunately for the Flobovians, the Deorsi are primarily focused on battle magic, while the Flobovians are concentrated on economic magic—agriculture, craft magic, etc.

Real-world physics works. (When I pull any of this stuff, however, I'll do my best to get the numbers right.)

RAW (Rules As Written) trumps physics. Note that I'm going by a very strict reading of RAW. If the game designers screwed up or left a loophole, that is Not My Problem. (Of course, this works both for the heroes and the villains...) The rules I'm using are from these sources:

The SRD

A few items from WotC or Paizo blogs or other official online publications.

I don't currently own any of the rulebooks (core or splat). If I end up getting some, material in them may or may not start showing up. Even if something from a book shows up, that doesn't mean that everything in that book is now part of the world, so if you see (e.g.) Dark Way getting cast, don't assume that everything from Magic of Faerûn is now on the table.

I'm using a few house rules, most of which I've used since high school:

First and most important (especially for Chapter 6): Falling damage does not cap out...or, more specifically, I'm ignoring the falling damage rules completely. I house-ruled that years ago, when a high level fighter (played by a friend of mine) decided that, rather than wasting time climbing down a very deep shaft, he would jump—after all, he had plenty of hit points and falling damage caps out, so the fall couldn't possibly kill him! So he jumped hundreds of feet down, splatted on solid stone, and then immediately stood up and started cracking heads. Oy.

According to the Players Handbook, "A character can advance only one level at a time. If, for some extraordinary reason, a character's XP [experience point] reward from a single adventure would be enough to advance two or more levels at once, he or she instead advances one level and gains just enough XP to be 1 XP short of the next level." To this I say: HOGWASH! You can bloody well advance as many levels at a time as you can pay for.

Spells with obvious opposites have them. E.g, since Shrink Item is canon, Enlarge Item exists. Opposites have the same level and stat block as their canonical counterpart. A similar effect applies to the various Wall of X spells and other things similar to them; Rules As Written say "you can double the wall's area by halving its thickness." I will also allow halving the area in order to double its thickness, and I'll allow you to double / halve more than once. And, since the sizings on those walls say "up to x square feet", you can cast them as small as you want, or change the height and width however you like as long as you stay within the specified square footage—instead of a 10'x10' square you can have it be 5'x20', etc.

I gather that lightning bolts have been emasculated in v3-4; they now always bounce straight back to the caster. Sod that; in my game, angle of incidence still equals angle of reflection As Was Writ In The Book of Gygax.

The restriction on paladins not being able to advance their paladin level after taking a level in another class makes no sense to me and interferes with the story that I want to tell. Instead, I'm ruling that a paladin is free to take whatever levels they want so long as their paladin level is higher than any of their other levels. Also, if they take any levels in rogue they immediately lose all paladin levels and powers and cannot regain them while they still have rogue

I'm going to use the published monsters and treasure, but I'm also going to make up my own as the plot requires.

SIDE NOTE: Although it annoys the bejabbers out of me, I'm going to play Scrying as it's written. Seriously though—you can only scry on people, not on locations? And you can only see the area 10' around the target—you can't turn your invisible eye sideways to look around? Lame. UPDATE: A helpful reader pointed out that 'Scry Location' exists, and does exactly what I was wishing Scry did. Booya! 'Scry Location' is so totally a thing in the 2YE world.

There are a bunch of things you won't see, either because I dislike them or can't be bothered to learn about them:

Psionics (I've had a hate on for them since they were first introduced. If you want to play video games with 'mana bars' fine, but keep them out of my danged RPG.)

Anything Epic. No Epic spells, items, etc. No Epic Handbook. Characters can go past level 20 but they just continue at normal progression.

Prestige classes are unlikely to be used, although it's not a hard block. They irk my purist soul, but they are pretty interesting. (As far as "purist" goes, proper D&D classes are: fighter, paladin, ranger, barbarian, wizard, cleric, druid, thief ("thief", damnit. Not "rogue"!), and assassin. Oh, and sorcerors, because they're cool, and a variant that I've always thought should exist.

Most feats will not be used. I don't know the feat system terribly well and, for whatever reason, they break my suspension of disbelief. There will be a few (e.g. Two Weapon Fighting) where I knew that the actual activity could be done in real life and looked for the rules. But don't expect anyone to have the "Super Improved Master Apprentice Grand Poobah of Superior Crafting" feat.

Metamagic does not exist in the 2YE universe. It's a lot of fun, I like what it can do, and I think the game is stronger for having those rules. (Also, the Mailman build is epic.) The fact is though, it makes it too easy to break the game (cf the Mailman build). Instead of dealing with too many cases of "so, wait, the bad guy is smart enough to use metamagic, but not smart enough to really break the game with it?" I would rather simplify things by just not having the problem. There are already too many places where I'm forced to face the question "Why don't the Flobovians already [insert gamebreaking exploit here]" and the only answer I can give is "umm...well...because...hey, look over there, shiny object!"

UPDATE: It was pointed out to me that undead are immune to nonlethal damage and therefore cannot be knocked out. Oops. Well, new house rule: anything with a mind can be knocked out. You can't knock out zombies because there is no mind to be shocked into unconsciousness by pain. You can knock out a vampire or (in theory) a lich. You could even (really seriously in theory) knock out a ghost; how to inflict nonlethal damage on an incorporeal creature is left as an exercise for the Munchkins. I certainly have no idea how to do it, and do not intend to use the idea in the story.