the paladin’s steed returns

November 16th, 2010

I’d guessed that the Essentials Cavalier paladin would come with a summonable mount (based both on the general retro-ness of Essentials and on the etymology of the word Cavalier). When Heroes of the Forgotten Lands came out, though, it looked like I was wrong.

Just when all seemed lost, D&D Insider came galloping to the rescue, with The Cavalier’s Steed, which provides a poké-horse as an alternative to the Cavalier’s class feature Pace of the Virtuous Charger. (Pace of the Virtuous Charger is the one that lets a cavalier get a speed boost on charges. Somehow it makes me picture the paladin galloping into battle, possibly while riding one of those horse heads on a stick. I think I prefer the real horse.)

The article also provides mounted feats, including upgrades to the Paladin’s summoned mount. My favorite:

Improved Steed (Celestial Battle Tiger)
You have learned how to summon a large, powerful battle tiger from the celestial realms to serve as your steed.

Finally, my He-Man-themed D&D campaign can get off the ground!

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mazes and monsters: pointless

November 15th, 2010

I said I’d wrap up Mazes and Monsters today, but there’s just TOO MUCH GOOD MATERIAL in this movie. Every word falls from these kids’ mouths like gold coins from the mouth of the girl in that one fairy tale. The fairly tale with the frogs, maybe? I believe Tom Hanks is the frog in this analogy. The point of the analogy, in case you’ve forgotten it, is that it will take me two weeks to finish extracting game material from Mazes and Monsters.

I should have learned by now that when it comes to blogging Mazes and Monsters, I should always double my initial estimates. I originally thought this would be a 6-post series. It looks now like it will be at least 16 posts, and maybe something like 20,000 words. And I’m only scratching the surface of what could be done! Mazes and Monsters is a game so different from other RPGs of its time that a company could devote a whole product line to it. It really merits expansions, modules, a line of paper minis, and a Saturday morning cartoon with Vin Diesel as the voice of Tom Hanks. And vice versa!

I’ll do one more week of recap, and then maybe a week or two where we can grapple with some unresolved rules questions, like “What exactly is the combat system?” My hope is to make available a PDF of the complete game system by Christmas!

Now on to the recap:

Last time, we followed Tom Hanks on his murderous rampage through Manhattan. This time, his friends have figured out that Hanks’ map bearing the legend “The Two Towers” isn’t a Tolkien reference: it refers to WTC. That means we get a cringe-inducing chase through the Twin Towers, that goes on forever. Seriously, I think Hanks and his friends visit every floor. It’s like that interminable part of Final Fantasy VII inside the Shinra building, except more boring and uncomfortable.

Tom Hanks’ friends finally corner him on the roof just as he is about to jump off.

JJ: Pardieux, what are you doing?
Hanks: I’m going to join the Great Hall!
Blondie: (with infinite guile) You can’t! It’s a trap!
Hanks: I have spells! I’m going to fly!
JJ: You don’t have enough points! I am the maze controller, and i have absolute authority in this game.

POINTS! Confirmation that Mazes and Monsters uses a spell point system. Could Gary Gygax’s DMG reference to alternate game systems, with their cumbersome spell-point mechanics, have been targeted at Mazes and Monsters?

Sadly, since we’ve mostly seen Iglacia the fighter’s character sheet, we don’t have any idea what the scale is for spell points. We saw Tom Hank’s character sheet, but it was a childish chickenscratch scrawl. So we’ll have to guess.

Based solely on the fact that Iglacia had 181 Hit Points at level 9, let’s say that Spell Points are in the ballpark of 20 points per level. So at level 9, Pardieux the Holy Man can’t cast Fly. Of course, he may have already used up some of his Points: on that failed spell against the thugs, for instance. (What was that spell? It seemed to involve flower petals. Maybe it was a Wizard of Oz-inspired sleep spell.)

Why do Holy Men get 20 points per level, and not, say, 10? Maybe spells cost around 10 points per level, and the design intent is that spellcasters can cast 2 spells of the highest level during an adventure, or multiple lesser spells. Maybe less-powerful casters get less points.

Spell Points
Characters find magical Spells, Tricks, and Powers during maze exploration. These spells can be used over and over again – they are not used up. The characters, however, have a limited capacity to cast these spells represented by Spell Points.

Holy Men gain 20 Spell Points per level. Frenetics gain 10 per level. Fighters don’t gain Spell Points and thus cannot use Spells, Tricks, or Powers.

When characters cast a spell, the spell’s cost is deducted from their Spell Point total. Spell Points regenerate to their maximum value only after characters leave the maze forever. (There may be other items and features, like magical springs or bitter roots, that restore spell points as well. This is up to the discretion of the Maze Controller.

With this info, we can start slotting in spells. We’ve seen Fly; we’ve theorized Sleep; and earlier, Tom Hanks failed at casting a Raise Dead spell.

Spells

Sleep: Level 9. Cost: 90 SP. A single subject must make a RONA check or fall unconscious. (The points are spent whether or not the subject is affected.) This is a favored spell of Holy Men and others who prefer to resolve combats without bloodshed.

Fly: Level 10. Cost: 100 SP. The caster, or another character of his choice, is able to fly for the next hour.

A flying character who takes off from a sufficiently high point (at least 1300 feet off the ground) who flies straight up for the entire hour can reach Heaven.

Raise Dead: Restores a dead person to life. It only works for a short period after the person’s death; after that, you need to fly to Heaven to find them.

Next week, Tom Hank’s magnificent monologue, in which he delivers a performance on par with Skeletor’s monologue from “Masters of the Universe!”

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every book’s a sourcebook: Thieves’ World

November 12th, 2010

Thieves World ed. by Robert Asprin

Thieves' World ed. by Robert Asprin

Reading Thieves’ World for the first time makes me want to run a picaresque city campaign (which I always want to do anyway). Andrew Offutt’s story “Shadowspawn” hits both the heist and the double-dealing aspects you’d want to highlight in such a campaign. It also gets the economy right.

The ultimate prize of the heist is enough coins to fill two saddlebags – silver coins, not gold, which would be too noticeable. The amount of money isn’t given, but the bags are heavy enough to slightly slow the main character, who is specifically described as having bulging calf muscles and biceps. It’s also mentioned that it’s more money than an elite king’s guard will ever earn. I’m guessing it’s at most 100 pounds of silver coins – in 3e+ D&D terms, that’s worth 500 GP. This is enough money to murder or risk your own life for, even if you’re one of the highest-level characters in the city. (Of course, for picaresque characters, copper is enough to murder for.)

A picaresque campaign has to be on the silver standard, at the highest. Anyone throwing gold around is either a mark, or a con man pretending to be a mark. And that might not be real gold anyway. Remember that in literature, whenever anyone gets a gold coin, they bite it. There must be a reason for that. At least a quarter of gold is probably counterfeit.

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A Cavalier Analysis of the Cavalier

November 11th, 2010

I have a soft spot for Paladins, so one of the first things I checked out when I got Heroes of the Fallen Lands was the new Cavalier build. Some thoughts below (mostly good!):

  • Stats: This Paladin uses Strength and Charisma, which is great. The other Strength based Paladin technically relies on 3 stats, Strength, Wisdom, and Charisma, which is ROUGH. Also, the powers the Cavalier uses will go a long way towards filling out the other Strength based build as well (which had it very rough in the PHB1 and has been slowly crawling forward ever since).
  • Defender Aura: Identical to the fighter one, so pretty standard. But an aura 1 is probably more effective than just marking one guy who you’re usually going to be adjacent to anyway!
  • Righteous Radiance: Similar to the effect from Divine Challenge, but the auto damage does go off if the enemy shifts, so it gives the Paladin some nice stickiness.
  • Holy Smite: The Paladin equivalent of Power Strike, it’s noticeably better, probably along the lines of back stab. Does decent auto damage and dazes on a hit, so a nice little power to stack up on.
  • Righteous Shield: There were already a few ways for Paladin’s to get cool powers to take damage for allies, but adding one that all Cavaliers get is very nice. It feels very Paladiny to take the brunt of your allies attacks!
  • At-Wills: I was a little surprised to see all Cavaliers get Valiant Strike, which is in the phb 1, but it is a solid power, so that’s fine. The other powers, which you get based on which virtue you take, both become more powerful when allies are bloodied. That works pretty nice thematically and makes for interesting metagaming theoretically. I like the idea of stuff that encourages people to stay bloodied, since generally most people want to be at close to full HP. It’s nice to imagine enough things, racial bonuses, feats, powers, etc. that swing in someone’s favor for them to want to be bloodied a lot of the time, always on the razor edge between noble effectiveness and unconsciousness!
  • Restore Vitality: A crappy version of lay on hands (because it can only be used once per day, as opposed to several times per day for a Paladin with decent Wisdom), but then again it takes away the need to pump points into wisdom, which no Paladin ever got super happy about, since both types had to pump points into Charisma too (so doubling up and getting only 1 defense boosted).
  • Pace of the Virtuous Chargers: Paladin’s get a bonus to speed when riding mounts in non combat. They also grant the bonus to their party. A bit lackluster, but it is nice to have a nod towards Paladins actually riding mounts!
  • Spirit of the Virtuous Charger: I understand why they didn’t want you to actually summon a virtuous charger into battle (what if you’re already riding a horse or are in a cramped dungeon), but thematically this felt a little silly. Nonetheless, bonuses to speed and damage with charge attacks are fun, and flying at level 18 is super boss, even if it’s just 1 encounter a day!
  • Paragon Path: Valiant Cavalier: I haven’t been super blown away by any of the essentials paragon paths and this one is no exception. It gives a string of okay bonuses and the like (such as +2 to STs, immunity to most diseases, and a bonus to your healing surge value), but compared to the arguably overpowered stuff in the phb1 and other books, this one falls short!

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the Cavalier. It seems like in general it will be able to do its defender job a little better than other versions of the Paladin. It loses some backup lay on hands healing (being able to lay down 3+ heals in one tough encounter is a pretty big boon), but that frees up having to dunk points into wisdom, which is pretty nice.

Was this really a cavalier analysis of the cavalier? Probably not. More like a clinical and dry analysis of the cavalier. But really, that’s not at all catchy. I suppose I was a bit cavalier in my use of the word cavalier!

Hilarious.

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bird mask

November 9th, 2010

You know what’s scary? Those beaked plague doctor masks.

They seriously could not be more terrifying. I fear plagues – so much so that I will not play the board game Pandemic – but I still might rather die of the plague than deal with a doctor dressed like this.

The PCs HAVE to end up wearing these at some point.

In 4e, I’d stat these as:

level 1 head slot (common)
The wearer of this mask has a +5 item bonus to defenses versus disease.

I’d have some noble give a stack of these to the PCs and then send them on some mission into a plague-wracked city. It would be horrific, especially when they find that the dying plague victims are stumbling towards the market, where their bodies are joining a colossal monster made of plague corpses.

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mazes and monsters: holy man in manhattan

November 8th, 2010

Raise your hand if you’d like to see Tom Hanks harassed by street toughs! Because it’s HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

While Tom Hanks’ friends are searching for him fruitlessly, he’s totally been subsumed by his Mazes and Monsters persona. As Pardieux, he’s haplessly stumbling around 80’s New York, which as we know is grittier, uglier, more lawless, and generally more old-school than modern New York.

Naturally, it’s not long before he has an encounter with 1d3 human bandits.

Notice that Tom Hanks, in his Pardieux persona, is making no effort to avoid being surrounded by the thugs. Apparently MAZES AND MONSTERS DOES NOT HAVE FLANKING RULES.

The thugs notice Tom Hanks’ little leather dice bag.

THUG: Hey, what is that? Give it to me!
HANKS: It’s my spells! I guard them with my life.

Confirmed: spells are physical objects which can be held in a dice bag.

Spells are small physical objects which you can find in a maze, each of which can trigger a unique magic power. If you have a sufficiently high Level, and are of a spell-casting class, you can cast these spells. Spells are reusable.

Tom runs from the two muggers, but is cornered in an alley. He takes out what appears to be a flower petal from his dice bag and flourishes it at the thugs, but it has no effect.

I guess he doesn’t have enough mana or something. Or maybe they made their saving throw.

One of the muggers lumbers forward, and, through Tom Hank’s Mazed eyes, we see it as a horrible monster!

I think that’s a Gorville, right? Based on the frequency with which Tom encounters them, Gorvilles must be like the orcs of the Mazes and Monsters setting. Where do they get their crazy name? Illinois, I’m guessing.

A Holy Man is supposed to prefer spells and reason to violence. Tom Hanks has tried spells on the thugs. He doesn’t really make any effort to try reason; he instead scuffles with the thugs, and he ends up stabbing one of them with a switchblade. Bad Holy Man! No Experience for you! The Great Hall must be rolling over in his foggy tube.

After a brief interlude of sanity, during which he summons his allies via payphone, Tom loses it again and finds an open door that leads to the tunnels beneath the subway. “A maze!” he breathes.

How do people find these entrances to off-limits subterranean complexes beneath cities? It looks so easy for the guys in Mazes and Monsters, Beauty and the Beast, and Neverwhere. I’ve been commuting in New York for years and I’ve never passed an unguarded door marked “Steam Tunnels: Absolutely No Admittance Unless You Are On a Hero’s Journey.” But maybe the doors are there and my workaday eyes just can’t see them.

The steam tunnels are fairly light on monsters, but Tom Hanks does cower and cover his ears when he hears a train going past. He decides that the noise must be the passing of the “Giant Dragon.”

Bestiary
Dragon: The Dragon breathes fire on his foes.
Giant Dragon: The Giant Dragon’s roar is a Sonic attack that deafens all who hear it.

Next, Tom Hanks meets a crazy moleman (a friendly NPC) and pumps him for information.

Not everyone you meet in a Maze will be hostile. You may encounter other adventurers, wise guides, or peasants scraping out a living among the maze’s many perils. Make sure to ask for aid and information, for foreknowledge of the dangers ahead may spell the difference between victory and death!

“Can you tell me of the Giant Dragon?” Tom asks the puzzled moleman. “Does he stand guard over the treasure?”

Clever, Tom Hanks! Do your legwork before you fight the dragon. It’s investigative chops like that that will land you your role in Dragnet.

The Giant Dragon is a Boss monster, worthy to stand guard over the maze’s treasure.

Note to the Maze Controller: Not every Boss monster guards the maze’s treasure. A Maze may contain a second Boss monster, whose purpose is to decoy rash players into unnecessary danger. Players should make sure that powerful creatures guard a treasure before they run such a risk as to offer battle.

Similarly, a treasure may be hidden with no Boss monster to mark its location. In such a case, you may be sure it will be cleverly hidden and guarded by many cunning Traps!

Next Monday, the LAST RECAP OF MAZES AND MONSTERS, complete with lots of creepy footage of the Twin Towers, and a magificent closing monologue from Tom Hanks that will cement his place in history as America’s Foremost Actor. Don’t miss it!

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Brother Cadfael: The Sanctuary Sparrow

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

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?

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Dost I EYE a Beholder?

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

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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