ritual candle, leveled

August 31st, 2011

Specialized Ritual Candle
This candle is designed for a specific ritual. When used with the right ritual, the caster may choose to gain either a +5 item bonus to one skill check associated with the ritual or to cast the ritual with no component cost. The candle acts like a normal ritual candle when used with any other ritual.

My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but haven’t given us lots of examples.

While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

A cursed ritual candle may be designed with particular parameters in mind, in which case the ritualist must succeed on a saving throw or be unable to change this detail of the ritual. For instance, a candle for a scrying ritual might be set to spy on a certain area of interest to the candle’s original user.

Ritual Candle that Burns Mens’ Souls
Instead of ritual components, the candle uses the lives of helpless or willing subjects within a burst 5. The total levels of creatures sacrificed must equal the level of the ritual.

This candle is a huge money saver for evil spellcasters with access to minions, peasants and/or captured PCs.

Shared Ritual Candle
This candle is part of a set, scattered across the world. Each candle can only be lit once per day, and burns down in an hour. The next morning, it is restored to its unburned state. A candle may be either used as a ritual candle as part of a ritual, or lit as a normal candle. If lit as a normal candle, it gives a +1 bonus to any of the set which is currently being used in a ritual. It’s unknown how many candles there are in the set, but at any time, PCs can get a +1d6 bonus from helping candles lit by NPCs somewhere in the world.

This is sort of the Seti@home of magic items. A lot of the candles are probably used for light by frugal families who just don’t want to buy new candles every day.

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How We Spent Our Ad Revenue: Alea Tools

August 30th, 2011

Paul and I split the ad  revenue that we have made for Blog of Holding so far when we went to Gen Con. We each made an even $10! Instead of investing the money into an extra month of website hosting, I spent my money on Alea Tools Miniature Conversion Circles.

Alea Tools, if you aren’t already familiar with them, make 1 inch colored bases for use with miniatures. The bases are magnetic and come in many different colors. Thus, you can stack them on top of each other and place them under the miniature to show different conditions. These are especially useful for 4th edition, where each there might be several different conditions affecting one or more miniatures at any given time. I use the orange bases to show which monsters are marked, the red bases to designate the bloodied condition, and light + dark gray bases to signify various negative effects, such as stunned or dazed. Pretty handy stuff!

Of course, I already have a bunch of colored bases, so I didn’t buy any of those this year. Instead I spent my money on a bunch of adhesive metal circles you can stick on your most used miniatures so that the colored bases will stick right on via the power of magnetism! Thus, I can pick up my mini and his colored bloodied + dazed markers will stay with him instead of foolishly toppling back onto the grid map due to forces of gravity beyond my control and disastrously sticking onto other colored markers that are attached to another miniature. In essence, these magnetic bases allow me to DEFY GRAVITY with my miniatures.

Check out Alea Tools here: http://www.aleatools.com/

Buy miniature conversion circles HERE.

Note: For 1 inch D&D miniatures, buy the SMALL circles, since they will neatly fit inside the base of the mini. For D&D miniatures that are small creatures, buy the 5/8th of an inch circles (as part of the accessory pack), since those will also neatly fit inside the base of the mini.

Note: These magnetic circles are absolutely worthless without the colored Alea bases. Just keep that in mind!

Posted in 4e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

#1 thieves guild detective agency

August 29th, 2011

One of the bizarre tenets of many D&D campaign worlds is that the Thieves Guild is a legitimate government-sanctioned institution. Furthermore, performing non-Guild-sanctioned robbery is likely to get you in trouble.

This puts the Thieves Guild in an interesting position regarding your stolen property: either they stole it (in which case they know where it is) or they didn’t (in which case they’re interested in hunting down the freelance thief.) Either way, they’ll probably be able to return you your stuff, for the right price.

The Thieves Guild might easily develop into a legitimate stolen-property detective force open to the public.

Being part of the Thieves Guild Detective Agency might be a decent job for PCs – even good-aligned ones. You get to rob from robbers and rough up ruffians. You can mix bad-guy heists with good-guy heist investigations.

If, on the other hand, there’s a murder investigation? That’s a case for the Assassins Guild.

Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 8 Comments »

Buy “Cheers Gary” now!

August 26th, 2011

While supplies last, we’re now selling my “Cheers Gary” online. If you couldn’t get to Gen Con, now’s your chance to get it. I think there are still several dozen left from the “Gen Con edition”.


Cheers Gary



Gary Gygax answers questions asked by enworld.org posters.

Want to learn where Gary got the idea for mind flayers? Why his parents decided Chicago was too hot for him? (It involves jousting.) What gaming memory Ernie Gygax still won’t talk about? (It involves vorpal swords.)

Buying this book is a great way to learn D&D lore from Gary himself while supporting the Gygax Memorial Foundation. 100% of proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to the Gygax Memorial Fund.

Selected and edited by paul@blogofholding. Introductions by paul and Gail Gygax.

Price: $25 (+shipping)

Edit: The first edition of Cheers, Gary has sold out! Second edition in the works.

Posted in RPG Hub | 16 Comments »

Rope of climbing, leveled

August 24th, 2011

Rope of climbing of strangulation
The first time you try to use this rope after it levels up, it will leap for your throat and try to strangle you. (It has your HP and defenses, and makes a Grab attack vs. Reflex, using the attack bonus of your best at-will attack. At the beginning of each turn that you are Grabbed, you take damage equal to your surge value. If you avoid or escape the grab, or if the rope is Bloodied, it will coil submissively and, from then on, obey your commands.

My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but haven’t given us lots of examples.

While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

Once you command the rope, you can order it to strangle people (using your AC, HP, attack bonus, and doing damage equal to your surge value). Under your command, it can only attack people against whom it has combat advantage.

You can repair all HP damage to the rope during an extended rest.

This ancient rope dates from the First Age, a time when the makers of magic items were malicious pranksters and every magical trinket had the potential to be an inescapable deathtrap. Thankfully, few ropes of strangulation have survived to the modern age.

Cam the Cat’s rope of climbing
This rope can lengthen or retract at your will. As a minor action, you can cause it to lengthen or retract at up to 6 squares per turn. This can raise or lower someone holding the end of the rope. It may get as short as 1 foot long or as long as 1 mile. It may also be told to extend or retract to a certain length, either instantly or at any time up to one day in the future. (Example: “Rope! Extend 100 feet so we can climb down the tower, then retract after we all climb down. After one hour, extend 100 feet again so we can climb back up.”)

This rope of climbing was used for years by famous burgler Cam the Cat. It was finally used as Cam’s noose: it was told to retract after an hour so he’d have plenty of time to think about his crimes before it strangled him.

Cunning Rope of Climbing
Besides acting as a rope of climbing, this rope can follow complex orders as if it had an Intelligence of 10. It can travel unattended, wriggling like a snake at a movement rate of 5; pick up and hold items, using either of its ends as a hand; and act independently, using basic problem-solving skills. It has blindsense 3, and the HP and defenses of its owner. It can communicate by twisting itself into cursive script.

This is a pretty useful item, guys. If it had a basic attack, like the Rope of Climbing of Strangulation does, I’d be willing to play it as a PC.

Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

How We Spent Our Ad Revenue

August 22nd, 2011

With Google ads paying out $20 for the year, Rory and I had some decisions to make. Should we Grow Our Business? (i.e. use the money to pay for two months of web hosting?) or should we spend it all in one glorious splurge, the likes of which the world has seldom seen?

We chose the latter! At Gen Con this month, we each took $10 to spend on the Exhibition Hall floor.

How I spent my $10:

One lead miniature: $7
The booth next to the Gygax Memorial Fund hosted Badger Games. I admired their beautifully painted line of horror-themed Gone With the Wind minis, and I finally decided to get the Vampire Scarlett O’Hara holding a severed head. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any in stock, so hopefully it’s on its way to my house right now. Since Badger Games doesn’t seem to have a website or an email address, I can’t contact them and ask if they’ve shipped it yet.

Of course, since I have no paints or painting supplies, the best case scenario is that the mini never shows up. If it does, turning it into a painted mini will cost me a lot more than $7.
Rating: Incomplete

Seeing that dude’s sweet Gary Gygax tattoo: $0
Jason from the Gygax Memorial Fund website and I saw some pretty sweet costumes, but this guy’s Gygax-themed tattoo was the most hardcore. The only cost was the psychic toll of being in the presence of so much badassery.
Rating: A+

One ATM Fee: $3
I stood on line for half an hour to get to the ATM, which was my longest ATM line ever, and paid a $3 ATM fee, which is my highest ATM fee ever. With record-breaking numbers like that, I can only give this ATM the highest possible rating! (Actually, since Bank of America later charged me an additional $2 for using an out-of-network ATM, I actually went over my $10 budget. I’m $2 in the hole, but my Google Ads should pay that off by October, at the latest!)
Rating: A+

Overall rating of my ad revenue purchases: A++++ would buy again

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clerics make house calls

August 19th, 2011

Luck in the Shadows

Luck in the Shadows


Distinguished by her plain robe and the bronze serpent lemniscate pendant she wore on a leather thong around her neck, she was already surrounded by a small crowd of people seeking healing. They stood quietly, watching with a mixture of hope and awe as she examined an infant lying on her lap.
-Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewellin

Whenever PC clerics enter a village with no temple, they should be mobbed by people looking for healing (mostly from disease, which is too bad for the villagers, because you get Cure Light Wounds way before you get Cure Disease).

Before any other business in a small town, a cleric would probably have to do some doctoring – making Heal checks, at the very least. Sometimes this will lead to exposure to dangers like filth fever, or even the occasional demonic possession.

This doesn’t apply to all Leader-type classes. People don’t go to warlords so much because their healing is, as far as I can tell, entirely psychosomatic. No one takes their sick baby to the gym teacher to obtain his exhortation to “walk it off”.

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scripture as alignment language

August 17th, 2011

Alignment languages didn’t make it into late D&D editions, but they do make a little more sense in a religious context. They don’t even have to be languages: perhaps, although it’s written in Common, only the faithful Cuthbertian can quote you chapter and verse from the Chronicles of St. Cuthbert. The unfaithful cannot bring themselves to say the words. (Under these rules, the Devil cannot quote scripture. If he does, he takes Radiant damage.)

Furthermore, people of opposed alignments cannot understand words quoted from a religion’s holy writings. To a priest of Nerull, the scripture of Pelor, even if spoken by a peasant in simple Common, will sound like “argle bargle zip nip” or whatever.

Unaligned/neutral people — people who haven’t chosen a deity to worship — can understand the holy words of all religions. That’s how they’re proselytized.

Thus, common quotes from scriptures can be used to fulfill the original purpose of alignment languages: finding people of the same moral code, without allowing much else in the way of secret communication (unless, Dogs in the Vineyard style, you allow players to make up apropos verses from holy books). That seems to be in keeping with the original intent of alignment languages:

From Gary Gygax’s enworld QA:

As for alignment languages … it seemed to me that each such groups would have developed their own patoise as a recognition means, more or less like secret societies have signs and signals to ID their fellows.

Never did I envisage characters announcing their moral-ethical (or lack thereof) beliefs and convictions. Rather, the alignment languages were meant to be the means by which one might discover a like-natured individual. Similarly, conveyance of information or general conversation was not contemplated using such “language.”

Posted in 4e D&D, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

handy haversack, leveled

August 15th, 2011

It’s hard to say what unique conceptual space Heward’s Handy Haversack occupies: it’s like a bag of holding but… on your back? Its main schtick seems to be that it’s more convenient. The level-up powers I assigned to the Haversack mostly have to do with convenience, although the bag and pack powers are pretty much interchangeable.

My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but haven’t given us lots of examples.

While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

Jedd the Hunter’s Handy Haversack You can put one medium or small person inside Jedd’s haversack: they must be dead, helpless or willing. If they are Dead, the sack acts like a ritual of restful repose. if living, they will be put in suspended animation until they are removed from the haversack. A suspended creature will occasionally become conscious, and if not otherwise restrained, can make a Hard escape check once per day.

A willing subject may ride around in the backpack with just his head sticking out, giving helpful advice like “Look behind you!”

Handy Haversack Familiar
This sentient haversack is loyal to its master. It may deny others access (opening it against its will requires a DC 22 strength check), or open to reveal a normal, empty bag interior. Once per turn, it may, unaided, either drop one of its items, or pick up an item in its square. It may also move, with a movement speed of 4, although it will generally not do this if observed by anyone but its owner.

Handy Haversack of Useful Items
Once per day, the Handy Haversack can produce an item that was never put into it. It can produce any item from the PHB1 equipment list, that is small enough to be removed and that has a price of less than 50 gp. The produced item will disappear at the end of the next extended rest.

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necromancers: bring your own army

August 12th, 2011


Knowing that Barjin was in catacombs no doubt laced with burial vaults, the wizard did not have to ask where he intended to find his army. Suddenly Barjin’s choice to assault the library did not seem so foolhardy.
–R. A. Salvatore, Cleric Quintet 1: Canticle

I’m not above reading an R. A. Salvatore novel on occasion. What better source for D&D inspiration than a novel that was inspired by D&D? It’s like opening a jpeg in Photoshop and saving it again. Some loss of quality may occur.

A necromancer is unique among leaders in that he doesn’t need to bring his army with him. He can create one anywhere he can find a graveyard. This can be useful for DMs, allowing a lot of mobility for their evil villains.

It could also add some fun twists for a high-level political campaign. If your PC rules a country, loyal necromancers might join spies and assassins as agents they can send into enemy kingdoms.

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