General

1. Players may choose from the following races: human, dwarf, tomanth, elf, drow, drow'ari (with DM approval), sand orc, half-orc, and kobold.

2. Once retired, PCs become NPCs in the world of Gaeleth. Because the character continues to be the intellectual copyright of the player, the NPC is protected from death, essentially becoming 'immortal' in the campaign world.

d20, Dungeons and Dragons v3.5
1. Character stats are determined by using the Standard Point Buy rule found in the Dungeon Master's Guide, with 32 points. Although base points start at 8 in each stat, points can be subtracted on a 1:1 basis, resulting in stats below 8.

2. At character generation, each is entitled to a free feat, based off of their background or region.  The feat must be in accordance with their backgrounds or regions, and should not be used as a tool for taking advantage of the gaming system.  For example, all clerics who survived the War of the Undead could use Combat Casting, Extra Turning, and Improved Turning as their background feat. Nationality can also affect certain skills, as well as the available background feats. For more information, consult the appropriate entries in the nations section.

3. Also at character generation, players receive 3 + (Int Mod) skill points to represent their background and training skills received prior to becoming their initial character class. The skill points can only be placed in two separate skills, but those skills become inherant to the character -- in other words, they become racial skills, and can be treated as 'class skills' for purposes of rank spending. The two skills chosen receive a +2 racial bonus inherant to the character; the +2 bonus does not stack with other racial bonuses. These background skill points are spent prior to the 1st-level 4x(class skill points + INT bonus).

4. Characters purchase exotic equipment, based off of the Dungeon Master's Guide chart for character level starting goods. Basic equipment and items are free of charge; essentially, for character generation, I don't charge the player for items worth 500gp or less. For craft-based skills, "If you can make it, it's free", so a character with the Craft (armorsmithing) feat for example could craft himself a suit of masterwork scale-mail at no cost, although I cap 'free' non-magical items at 500gp. At 1st-level, the gold piece limit on magical items is 500gp value per item created.  At 3rd-level, this limit on magically crafted items disappears.  While there have been some concerns that this unbalances the game (such as for a 3rd-level wizard that starts game-play with 50,000gp worth of magical items), the balance is often quickly redressed, usually before the character even makes the next level.

5. Divine spell casters not required to memorize spells. They have the freedom to choose each spell, as needed, based off of their available spell slots. Priests and those that can cast priest spells are very powerful on Gaeleth, and the prayers of the faithful carry that power. This is called 'prayer casting', and is referred to as both 'divine spells' and 'prayer casting' within the game terms. Bards cast both arcane and divine spells on Gaeleth, for purposes of spell-casting.  Natural spell casters also fall into this category of 'not required to memorize spells'.  (For more information on the game mechanics of spells for Gaeleth, read the ADN Protocols.)

6. Many of the conjuration effects from 3rd Edition and 3.5 are not used in Gaeleth.  For one, Gaeleth was cut off from most conjurations outside of its own plane for nearly ten millennia.  (For further details, see the History of Gaeleth.)

A.

The Monster Summoning spells, as found in the Player's Handbook, could not function on Gaeleth until very recently, game-time.  Therefore, the monsters summoned by the Gaeleth-standard monster summoning spell, calls upon creatures found on Gaeleth.  Characters using the spell can choose a creature from the Monsterous Manual, with a number of Hit Die equal to twice the monster summoning spell.  For example, monster summoning III allows for the summoning of a 6-Hit Die creature from the Monsterous Manual. The players' choices are limited by the monster types: all 'animals', 'plants', 'vermin', 'oozes', and 'undead' are allowed to be summoned. Only some 'magical beasts', 'aberrations', 'elementals', 'giants' and 'humanoids' are allowed to be summoned. All other summonings are special considerations, and if it doesn't exist on Gaeleth, the monster cannot be summoned except by special ritual.

B.

A paladin's special mount, once called, remains in the service of the paladin that called it -- until dismissed or killed.  The mount does not come from another plane, although it is an enhanced creature, given to the paladin as a tool in the service of a god; thus, it still counts as a 'magical beast'.  Special mounts do not 'return' to other planes, but otherwise retain their abilities, as per the book.

7. Feats or skill points that are unused are not yet cannon, and can therefore be manipulated if need be. Once a feat or a skill is used with a character's allocated number of ranks in that skill, then those items are locked into place, and become a part of that character's history. For instance, if a character were to play from 1st-level to 4th-level, and had the feat Cleave -- yet never used it -- then the player could swap out Cleave for another feat that might be more useful to the character.

8. To better reflect real-word endurance issues, Stat Penalties are invoked at various times. For instance, characters that have been stealing through dungeons for a solid week, with no baths, no real rest, and no sign of sunlight in all that time, may be forced to take a mild Consitution and Charisma penalty to better reflect the toll dungeoneering has taken on them. A character that has ridden all day, nearly riding his mount to death, may take a moderate Constitution penalty -- such that a normal eight hours of rest would not be sufficient to heal him fully and undo the Constitution penalty. Feats such as Endurance can negate Constitution penalties (which are the most common Stat Penalties).

9. Elven armor on Gaeleth elicits no arcane spell failure chance (i.e. 0% spell failure chance) when worn by arcane casters.

10. There are no experience point penalties for multi-classing; players may reclass as they please, to whatever classes they please. Ordinarily, the multi-class penalty is to explain two things: fictional characters rarely going up in levels, and to represent how 'entrenched' and 'ossified' people often become in their lines of work, whatever it may be. The penalties are unnecessary for any story means, and if a player wishes to have a character that's only minimal levels in seven different classes, then so be it.

11. Prestige classes have an additional prerequisite: they can only be obtained by DM grant (i.e. for role-play, situational experiences, or as boons for specific jobs well done). The prerequisites listed for the prestige class will likely be considered by the DM, but are not necessarily a 100% requirement.