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Brother Cadfael: The Sanctuary Sparrow

Friday, November 5th, 2010

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters

Putting aside the fact that Brother Cadfael, a crusader/monk who smites and heals, is one of the best literary examples of a cleric, medieval details from a historical novel can spur encounter ideas. Here, a monk is singing Matins:

The height of the vault, the solid stone of the pillars and walls, took up the sound of Brother Anselm’s voice, and made of it a disembodied magic, high in the air.

Take this effect and make it into an actual magic effect in a dungeon. In a vaulting chamber, a disembodied male voice is singing in an unknown language. What could be causing this effect?

It could be that the chamber is the crypt of a holy paladin. The voice is that of an angel, sent by a god to mourn at the paladin’s tomb for 1000 years.

Or it could be the ringing of a magical bell that tolls with a human tongue. If the PCs investigate, they will find that the song of the bell can be imbued in their weapons and implements. The weapons will sing in harmony until the song fades in 5 minutes. During this time, all attacks do extra sonic damage.

The fact that it’s a male voice is, I think, important towards keeping the PCs investigating with an open mind. There are so many female “gotcha” monsters in D&D that any woman, or woman’s voice, encountered in the dungeon will make PCs certain that they’re about to be charmed, or petrified, or bodyswapped, or vargouilled, or bansheed, or consumed by spiders, or something.

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name day: The Monorthodox

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Recently I woke up from a dream with the phrase “The Monorthodox” ringing in my head.

What do you think The Monorthodox is?

Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

Dost I EYE a Beholder?

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

In one of the most hilarious and delightful sets to date, Wizards is releasing A Beholder Collector’s Set! When? NO ONE KNOWS.

For me the question isn’t “Do I want 4 new beholder minis?”. It’s “DO I DESERVE 4 new beholder minis?” Shouldn’t 1 be enough? Maybe, maybe not. My current one is huge, which makes it virtually unplayable. Ah well! I also have like 3 or so mini beholders (also known as gauth) but ZERO large beholders! Large beholders are the ones you actually use!

But do I really deserve FOUR? How often do you fight FOUR beholders? ANSWER: A LOT MORE THAN YOU WOULD IF YOU DIDN’T OWN 4 BEHOLDERS!

Will I buy this collector’s set? Tough to say! I didn’t buy the Colossal red dragon, but I did put it on my Christmas list. I did buy the gargantuan black dragon and it’s awesome. I also bought the gargantuan Orcus and am unlikely to use him! Likely, this will end up on the Christmas list, right next to my pleading cry for people to give me Kiva gift certificates so I can keep ahead of my friend Laura in the stats!

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separate combat and noncombat abilities

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

I was one of those who obsessively read previews and developer blogs in the leadup to 4e. There was one post – I wish I could find it now – about how, in 3e and previous editions, utility spells and combat spells were mixed together, which meant that utility spells got the shaft. For instance, if you have a choice between memorizing Detect Secret Doors and Magic Missile, you’re probably going to choose Magic Missile – the one useful in combat. In 4e, they made a distinction between attack powers and utility powers. I think this was a great idea – as far as it went.

A suggestion for Fifth Edition, guys! A distinction between combat and utility/noncombat is direly needed in feats. The Linguist feat is notoriously untakeable, because there’s always something you could take instead that would improve your combat build. Sure, you can always choose to make a substandard combat build in pursuit of your character concept, but I don’t think you should have to make that choice.

D&D is focused on combat. Combat is where the rules complexity is. (Skill challenges are the first attempt ever at adding rules complexity and structure to noncombat scenes, and it’s still nowhere near the complexity and structure of combat.) Combat is where the real potential for failure and death is. (Failure in a skill challenge, we are told repeatedly, does not stop the adventure: it adds complication, often in the form of extra combat.) Combat is where we get competition and high stakes – the “us vs the DM” part of the game – in other words, the game part of the game.

Combat is both where players have the most actual power over the outcome, and where the stakes are highest. A party can win or lose a combat. A single combat ability or feat can make the difference between an enemy dead or alive, resources spent or kept, and victory and TPK.

Outside of combat, PC abilities – even noncombat abilities – are less important. In railroad-style adventures (a perfectly legitimate and a very common adventure structure), the PCs can do something if the DM wants them to do it, and can’t if the DM doesn’t. There may be some skill checks as window dressing, but it’s mostly for show. In sandbox or player-directed campaigns, the dice are often put aside for long stretches and the DM makes a lot of judgment calls based on the logic of the situation. Rarely do player abilities – their overland travel speed, say, or their History checks – visibly tip the balance between failure and success in the adventure. (But a good DM tries to give the impression that they do.)

Therefore, asking players to choose a noncombat feat over a combat feat is unfair. You’re asking them to give up a concrete benefit in the heavily structured part of the game in exchange for a benefit of uncertain value in the freeform part of the game, which often comes down to little more than character flavor. It’s a choice between roll-play and role-play, which is (or should be) a false dichotomy.

A lot of 4e feats try to offer a balance: they give you a noncombat ability, and because they know that noncombat isn’t enticing enough, they sweeten the deal with a small combat bonus.

Some examples:

  • Light Step, which increases your overland travel speed and the difficulty for opponents to follow you – cool stuff you could probably use in a skill challenge – and you get 2 points added to skills. Prerequisite: elf. Compare it to Skill Focus, which gives you +3 to skills.
  • Wild Senses, which gives you a large bonus for tracking creatures, and +3 to initiative. Prerequisite: shifter. Compare to Improved Initiative, which is +4 to initiative.
  • Animal Empathy: Bonus to Insight checks against natural beasts, and +2 to Nature skill. Prerequisite: Trained in Nature. Compare to Skill Focus: Nature, which is +3 Nature.

    You aren’t giving up much combat ability by taking these feats, but you are giving up some. In my opinion, you shouldn’t have to give up any. By creating the Light Step feat, you are saying that a bonus to tracking and overland movement is worth +1 Initiative. You shouldn’t ever have to compare these – they are in different spheres.

    I have two possible fixes:

    Solution 1: Feats That Do Two Things

    Make good combat feats – not watered-down feats, but feats just as good as combat-only feats – that also provide a noncombat ability. For instance, make the Wild Senses Initiative bonus just as good as Improved Initiative.

    You could actually have several feats, each of which provided +4 feat bonus to Initiative, and gave different noncombat bonuses. Players could choose whichever one fit best with their conception of their character.

    Or, if you don’t want to totally eliminate Improved Initiative, you could do what all the feats I mentioned above did: have a prerequisite. All of the cool noncombat-ability versions of Improved Initiative could require a certain race, attribute, or skill training. If you don’t qualify for any, you can always take Improved Initiative.

    It’s not always easy to see how to combine combat and noncombat abilities. What combat advantage would you tie with Linguist?

    Solution 2: Combat and Utility Feats

    Divide feats into combat and utility feats. At some levels, you get one, and at some, the other. As with powers, combat feats would predominate.

    It might be hard to police this. Someone would always find some wacky ability that lets your Intuition check be used as an attack roll, or something, and then a bunch of supposedly-noncombat feats would become combat-useful. Still, I think it would be a reasonable approach.

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    Mazes and Monsters is a far out game

    Monday, November 1st, 2010
    This entry is part 12 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

    After Tom Hanks’ disappearance, his three friends are interviewed separately by a scary detective, who seems intent on trapping them in an admission that they play Mazes and Monsters. They’re perfectly willing to sell Hanks up the Mazes and Monsters river, though. They claim that he played with a Mazes and Monsters group whose identities are shrouded in mystery.

    Detective: Who’d he play with?
    Kate: I – I don’t know. He never talked about that part of it. … I don’t think he really realized how dangerous the game was.
    Detective: (significant pause) Was Robbie a doper?

    Finally the Detective explains his theory about Hanks’ disappearance.

    Detective: One of the players that Robbie played with… got carried away and killed him.
    Blondie: That’s kind of far out.
    Detective: Mazes and Monsters is a far out game. Swords… poison… spells… battles… maiming, killing…
    Blondie: Hey, it’s all in the imagination!
    Detective: Is it…?

    We’re so lucky that the Detective knows so much about Mazes and Monsters game rules!

    Introduction
    Mazes and Monsters is a far out game.

    Equipment
    Poison: Applied to a weapon or to food or drink, Poison instantly kills the subject with no possibility of survival. Similar to Traps, the Maze Controller is obligated to give the following disclaimer to the players about any poisoned – or potentially poisoned – item: “Be wary: it may be harmless… but it may be poisoned.”

    Maiming
    Whenever a character is hit, the Maze Controller should roll a d12. On a roll of 1, the character is Maimed. The Maze Controller should roll again on the Maim Subtable.

    Maim Subtable
    1: The character is instantly killed.
    2: Loses a hand or arm.
    3: Loses a foot or leg.
    4: Loses an eye.
    5-6: Facial disfigurement. Character takes -2 on all Charm spells.
    7-8: Concussion. Character is Mazed.
    9-11: Permanent scar; character looks awesome. No other effect.
    12: Flesh wound: Character got lucky… this time. No effect.

    reporter

    The chiastic structure is a literary device used in The Odyssey, Beowulf and Mazes and Monsters.

    In the next scene, we’ve finally caught up with the beginning of the movie, which, as you remember, started with a bunch of cops and reporters gathered around the entrance of Pequod Caverns. They’re looking for a missing Mazes and Monsters player who’s lost in the caves. This is the moment that’s been foreshadowed for the whole movie: cave jaunt after cave jaunt has promised us tragedy, only to deliver anticlimactic safety. And… that’s what happens again. After the search for Hanks in the cave turns up empty, we see Hanks stumbling through Times Square, looking lost, confused, dazzled – just like every other Times Square tourist, in other words. Tom Hanks isn’t in Pequod Caverns at all!

    So the whole uproar at the caverns was for nothing. It’s almost as if the message of the movie is that clueless adults are creating a media frenzy based on misinformation and speculation, and that you can’t trust reporters and writers to get their facts straight before they propagate panicked jeremiads. But of course, that’s not the case. Mazes and Monsters IS dangerous. Just look what happened to Tom Hanks.

    Hanks’ friends decide that since the cops haven’t found anything, they’ll have to find Hanks themselves, using their GAME SKILLS.

    Kate decides that “The Great Hall” isn’t a place – it’s a person! Hanks’ little brother ran away to New York City on a Halloween past, and he was named Hall.

    By the way, here’s how popular “Hall” is as a first name. Not very popular. Its best year was 1881 where .007% of boys were named Hall.

    Also Kate didn’t really use her GAME SKILLS to remember that fact, unless “game skills” and “knowledge of Tom Hanks” are synonymous, which, in a way, maybe they are. After all, you can’t write a real history of RPGs without frequently mentioning Tom Hanks. My RPG group did enjoy many sessions of FASA’s ‘burbrun, and who can forget the hit White Wolf scored with Joe: The Volcano?

    While Kate recreates Tom Hank’s family tree, the boys apply game logic to determine his next move:

    JJ: Where would a Holy Man go?
    Blondie: (thinking with visible effort, then having a Thought) On a quest!
    JJ: Exactly!

    Holy Men go on quests.

    More precisely, Holy Men go on quests to New York.

    Next week, we’ll catch up with Tom Hanks in the Big Apple. Will his spells be enough to defeat these goofy New York hoodlums?

    Hoodlum One looks like Indiana Jones just told him not to look directly at the Hanks.

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    Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 5 Comments »

    how do you even mummify a robot

    Sunday, October 31st, 2010

    Happy Halloween!

    Enjoy this wrestling match between Minoru Suzuki and a robot mummy.

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | No Comments »

    jewels in The Jewel of Seven Stars

    Saturday, October 30th, 2010

    The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker


    The stone, of one piece of which it was wrought, was such as I had never seen before. At the base it was of a full green, the colour of emerald without, of course, its gleam. It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance, and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow almost of the colour of “mandarin” china. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew.

    Here’s a peculiar treasure: a beautiful stone of rare appearance. It has absolutely no magical qualities. What do the PCs do with it? Well, if they give it to a sculptor, they will be able to commission one small statue of surpassing quality and loveliness – that sculptor’s master work.

    What will they do with the stone? Will a PC commission something personally meaningful? Will they give it to a patron NPC to curry favor? Will they commission something stupid? or will they let it sit unclaimed on someone’s character sheet?

    I have a feeling that a lot of groups will take such a stone as a challenge to come up with something cool, and that will increase their investment in the game world.

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    The Jewel of Seven Stars

    Friday, October 29th, 2010

    The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker

    Bram Stoker wrote a book about mummies? YES! (He also wrote books about dragons, witches, and radium-powered airplanes.)

    The Jewel of Seven Stars is a locked-room mystery, which is a mystery genre which requires a little extra work in D&D. It’s not enough that all the doors and windows be locked from the inside. At the very least, the room must be warded against teleportation, entry via other planes, and insubstantial creatures passing through walls. Alarm should also be used, to ward against invisible assassins. Without any of these countermeasures, the question becomes not “how could this happen?” but “which well-known trick was used?”

    Given these minimum requirements, the only interesting locked-room murder victim is a paranoid high-level spellcaster (or someone – possibly royalty – who can hire one).

    The Jewel of Seven Stars is much less well known than Dracula, but it is still a magical fantasy, so the same rules apply. The victim is basically a paranoid high-level spellcaster (steeped in the arcane mysteries of Egyptian mummies). He’s set up his own defensive magic, but he’s been stabbed anyway – in a way that cannot be self-inflicted.

    Off the top of my head, here are some fantasy locked-room mystery solutions:

    • The victim is the recipient of a voodoo-doll-style curse where they can be hurt remotely.
    • One of the trinkets in the room is a hostile Figurine of Wondrous Power.
    • Stabbed or bludgeoned by an animate piece of furniture.
    • The murderer was admitted by the unsuspecting victim. After the crime, the murderer re-locked the door and re-set the wards, shrunk to the size of a flea, and is STILL IN THE ROOM oh my god Sarah is in there now
    • The murderer is a snowman, who melted. (ALWAYS be suspicious of an unexplained puddle of water. ICE IS ALWAYS INVOLVED)

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    1e mummies

    Thursday, October 28th, 2010

    Monster Manual mummy

    I’m looking at the AD&D Monster Manual entry for mummies, and there’s a lot of weirdness here.

    No. Appearing: 2-8 I guess sometimes you find a mummy king and queen along with a few attendants, but I sort of imagine a typical encounter being against a single scary mummy. I guess that’s just in the movies.

    Mummies are undead humans with existence on both the normal and the
    positive material planes.     I remember the negative material plane as being more undead-y. The 1e PHB says that the Negative Plane is “the place of anti-matter and negative force, the source of power for undead, the energy area from which evil grows.” The positive plane, on the other hand, “is a place of energy and light, the place which is the source of much that is vital and active, the power supply for good.” And it is crawling with mummies for some reason.

    The mere sight of a mummy within 6″ will cause such fear and revulsion in
    any creature, that unless a saving versus magic is successful, the victim
    will be paralyzed with fright for 1-4 melee rounds. Note that numbers will
    give courage, and for each creature above 6 to 1 mummy, the creatures
    add +1 to their saving throw. If humans confront a mummy, each will
    save at +2 on his dice.     Classic 1e subsystem, including a saving throw bonus for outnumbering the mummies. I’m guessing that this is isn’t a general rule about fear, just about mummy-induced fear? And humans get a +2 bonus, because why?

    The other fun thing about the fear save bonus for outnumbering a mummy is that it will never come up. Mummies appear in groups of 2 to 8. The average number of mummies is 5. In order to get a +1 bonus on saving throws, there must be 31 party members. I know that in 1e, you had a lot of henchmen, but still, that seems like a big group. Even if you only run into 2 mummies, you need 13 PCs to get a saving throw bonus.

    Mummies can be harmed only by magical weapons, and even those do only one-half normal damage, dropping all fractions (5 becomes 2, 3 becomes 1, and 1 becomes 0 hit points of damage). What level are PCs fighting mummies? According to the Wandering Monster chart, you start encountering mummies on the fifth dungeon level, but you seem to encounter them most around the 9th or 10th level. I pity the poor sad sack who’s doing 1 damage at that level. I mean, nonmagic weapons don’t even work, so the fighter has at least a +1 sword. And most magic-user spells will do multiple dice of damage at that level, right?

    Oh – the Wandering Monster table also indicates that you encounter 1-2 mummies as wandering monsters. So I guess you can outnumber mummies 6 to 1, just not in their lair.

    A raise dead spell will turn the creature into a normal human (of 7th level fighting ability, naturally) unless the mummy saves versus magic. Naturally? Why naturally? Naturally 7th level, because mummies have 6+3 Hit Dice? or naturally fighting ability, not, say, clerical ability, because mummies are good at punching? Also, I’m curious what the 7th level fighter thinks of being raised from the dead. Is he like “Thank you for releasing me from that vile curse, now help me get these bandages off!” or is he like “You robbed me of eternal life, I shall punch you!”

    And don’t get me started on the ethereal mummy, which always strikes by surprise.

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    Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    the mummy’s curse in fiction

    Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

    Monster Manuals have never dealt with the classic “mummy’s curse”. Monster Manual mummies give you “mummy rot”, a disease which has slightly different effects across the editions, but it’s always just a workplace hazard for mummy killers. When you come out of the temple, you head to the cleric to get your disease removed, and that’s the end of it.

    The mummy’s curse superstition seems to have something to do with a lingering doom that hangs over the heads of those who disturb mummies,and is something like, “100 years after the tomb was opened, NOT ONE of the excavators remained alive!” Inasmuch as it makes any sense at all, it’s about death under mysterious circumstances, some time after the adventure, of seemingly healthy people. DON’T VIOLATE MUMMY TOMBS, or you’ll get approximately the same kind of bad luck you get by breaking a chain letter, or not being on that one flight.

    Could we actually come up with game rules for the mummy’s curse? The 4e Unearthed Arcana “Curses!” article might be a place to start. What I’d like to see, though, is official rules text like

    Any PC who disturbs the sarcophagus is subject to THE MUMMY’S CURSE. THE MUMMY’S CURSE cannot be removed by Remove Curse, Remove Disease or any other means short of Limited Wish or Wish. THE MUMMY’S CURSE has no immediate effects. However, the PC should note it on his or her character sheet.

    The actual effects of the Mummy’s Curse should be SO HORRIBLE that, lest PCs discover countermeasures, they are NEVER PUBLISHED IN ANY BOOK. Heck, maybe the effects of the curse are determined retroactively. Like, when the PCs are finally eaten by gnolls, the DM leans over and taps the character sheet. “MUMMY’S CURSE,” he says.

    Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

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