Me and my two little brothers have recently taken interest in playing D&D. Having played Temple of Elemental Evil and every other turn based CRPG that can be played hotseat-style, we’ve decided to try out D&D. I bought the 3.5 DM guide, Player’s Guide and Monster guide and downloaded a bunch of pre-made adventures from the official site. I know the 4th edition rules are out but we figured instead of constantly having to keep up to date on the new rules we’d just dive into the wellspring of adventures made for 3.5
Most of my questions I’ve been able to find answers for in the books or by looking online. We played nearly completely through the adventure "A Dark and Stormy Night" we found on the official D&D website. We got up to the part where you meet the Dark Knight and he attacked, then they had to go to bed for school in the morning.
There are 2 questions we came across in playing that for the life of us we can’t find the info for.
First off: When you sleep, is there any chance of being attacked? I know that in games like Baldur’s Gate you can get attacked when you rest, but there doesn’t seem to be any modifier or dice roll or whatever to determine if you get attacked while sleeping. If so that’s fine, it’s just it seems odd that you can just rest a bunch of times till fully healed with no apparent repercussions (And if so why gain so little HP for an 8 hour rest?) So yeah, is there a die roll or something used to determine if they sleep unmolested?
Second, they’ve found several magical items so far. However I dunno if I’m supposed to just tell them what the item does off the bat or make them identify it. There are no wizards in their party (Just a barbarian and a ranger) but that’s cuz I’m letting them play as whatever they wanna roleplay as. (I figure if we ever do an adventure that requires a mage for any reason, I’ll create one to join them just for that adventure)
As DM, I told my brother (The ranger) that I’ll allow him to use Identify Item scrolls even if he doesn’t meet the requirements for it so that they don’t have to constantly go to shops and pay 100 GP every time they want to identify something.
However in Baldur’s Gate, I recall my Ranger being able to automatically identify some items (usually the weaker ones) so what determines that? In the description of the items it always reads as:
Item Name
Item description (What it does)
Then in itallics it says "faint" "Moderate" etc. and then a type of magic like "Abjuration" or "Conjuration", then CL and a number (I assume that’s the character level required to use the item?) then what type of item it is (Forge Ring, Craft Wonderous Item, etc. which I assume is to determine it’s base cost) and then some random skill name in ittallics like "Bull rush" or "Comprehend language."
Is there some wisdom or knowlege (insert type of knowledge) check used to determine if they can auto-identify it like my ranger can in Baldur’s Gate? And what does the "Faint, moderate, etc." "Type of magic" mean?
Thanks in advance for all your assistance.
