Dungeons, Dragons, and Aspects

Disclaimer: I have never actually played Dresden Files, or even a Fate game. I have read through parts of the book, a wiki article, and listened to an “actual play” podcast. In other words, I might have interpreted aspects grossly incorrectly.

Building a D&D character goes beyond choosing a race, class, feats, skills, and gear. Regardless of what detractors might think there are about six and a half pages–starting on page 18–devoted to role-playing, with a few pages telling you to go through the motions of choosing some personality traits, mannerisms, describing your character, and if possible answering a few questions about your background and motivations. In past editions DMs I played with would award–or penalize–you with “role-playing” experience depending on how well you played your character and adhered to your alignment. Nowadays this practice has fallen out of use in my gaming circle, which is fine because some players do not want to engage in extensive social role-play (or are just really bad at it and/or derive fun from other sources).

While I encourage my players to think up flavor material for their character–especially anything I can use as an adventure hook–I most often find them missing from characters, particularly those of the casual members. On the other hand some players take a few sessions to figure out their character’s identity, while others are just happy to give me a rough motivation and leave it at that. I had entertained the idea of starting to award players with bonus XP, but depending on the level it might not make any difference at all, and even then probably for only a session. It was much more effective in older editions when classes advanced at different rates and had various means of gaining it; thieves from getting cold, wizards from casting spells, etc. It was even kind of useful in 3rd Edition, because as a wizard I could set it aside as my item creation fund.

With that in mind one possibility I had considered would be to give the entire group bonus XP for socially role-playing their characters well, but then you could have a few talented players pulling the weight of everyone else, in a similar vein to the theoretical party with a player’s theoretical farmboy-who-picked-up-a-sword-to-fight-orcs.

A better idea is one that I found in another game entirely: Dresden Files RPG. This game uses the Fate system, which puts a much, much larger emphasis on a character’s personality, background, and motivations to the effect that you are supposed to sit down and basically have a “collaboration session” with the other players.

In D&D your personality does not have any mechanical bearing on what your character does, instead providing a benchmark for stuff your character is likely–or unlikely–to do. If a character acts within these parameters, then great. If not, then it falls to the DM to correct the course of action (or get into a debate until everyone comes to an acceptable conclusion).

In Fate you have character elements called aspects. These constitute a diverse array of character elements–personality, physical traits, motivations, even items–that make up the character as a whole. Examples could be silver-tongued, greedy, reckless, or an item like a family sword. Aspects are not limited to the characters; non-player characters, objects, or even areas can have aspects; for example a cutpurse could be desperate, while a cliff could be slippery from rain, or a crate could be highly flammable.

Aspects have a double-edged purpose. First, you can “tag” them in a situation or challenge in order to gain a bonus. A greedy dwarf, for example, might be driven to succeed where there is money involved. On the other hand, the Gamemaster can also “compel” an aspect, essentially forcing you to do something. The same greedy dwarf might be compelled to betray one or more friends in exchange for a sizable bribe. Now, players can refuse a compel by giving up a Fate point, but if they go along then they gain a Fate point. In this way Fate points could be seen as a kind of story-directing currency.

With all this in mind I wanted to create a mechanic by which a player could receive an immediate benefit by doing stuff that their character should be doing anyway. An incentive to get into the social aspect of the game, as it were. I thought about a rule where characters could tag their aspects for a small benefit, or require them to spend action points to get the benefit, potentially making it a variable bonus like how action points worked in 3rd Edition, or just giving a re-roll. The more I thought about it, the more it started to sound like the potential changes to skills that Mearls was talking about last week (which I would be interested to see an Unearthed Arcana article for).

Anyway, if you want to use aspects and fate points in your games, then I would first have each player create a list of at least three aspects, but probably no more than five. Aspects that can be both beneficial and detrimental are best. There is a pretty sizable list here. These can be derived from your character’s personality traits, racial tropes, mannerisms, motivations, goals, connections, etc, or be generated in place of all those things.

For fate points, I would work them as follows:

• Action points pull double-duty as fate points. They still give normally give you an extra action.
• A player can tag one of her own aspects and spend an action point to gain either a 1d6 bonus to the check, attack, or defense. Alternatively you could re-roll the check entirely/force a re-roll (for example, if you are attacked or a creature is making an opposed check).
• A player can spend an action point to gain a measure of control over the direction of the story based on the aspect of a creature, object, or environment. The DM can grant the invoking player an action point to waive the compel.
• The DM can compel a character to do something based on one of her aspects, or cause something to happen based on the aspect of a creature, object, or environment. If the player allows this to happen, she gains an action point. She can instead pay an action point to waive the compel.

There is probably a lot that I am missing, but if you are interested in collaborative storytelling and world-building I would recommend checking out the Fate system in addition to reading up on the chapter in Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. I am going to try this route for my next campaign, making sure that each player gives me something good to work with, and allowing for their input on the campaign’s foundation and direction.

Making Race Count

The first in hopefully many articles brings power support for dwarves, half-elves, halflings, and humans. In 4th Edition race became a much more meaningful choice due to the feat support and race-specific paragon paths, and adding powers to the mix (especially in light of the vryloka and shade) is a natural progression. Each race gets a utility from levels 2-16, and there is no “cost” to take them except that if you have a spellbook and take a racial utility, you do not get an extra wizard one.

Dwarf

• Avalanche Rush (level 2 encounter): When you bull rush a target, you can push them farther based on your Con modifier.
• Dwarven Pride (level 6 encounter): When you are subjected to most forms of forced movement, you gain a damage bonus for a turn based on the number of squares you were moved.
• Stone Stubborn (level 10 encounter): When you are dominated or stunned, you are instead dazed until the effect ends.
• Mountainborn Tenacity (level 16 daily): When you are dropped, you can spend a healing surge and gain damage resistance for a turn based on your Con modifier.

Half-Elf

• Help Is Here (level 2 encounter): You automatically use aid another on an adjacent ally.
• Sudden Switch (level 6 encounter): You swap spaces with a creature and gain combat advantage for a turn against all adjacent enemies.
• Lockstep (level 10 encounter): You and an adjacent ally shift 6 squares, and must end the movement next to each other.
• Persuasive Words (level 16 daily): You gain a bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, and Intimidate for the rest of the encounter.

Halfling

• Happy Feed (level 2 encounter): When a creature starts its turn, you can shift.
• Minor Threat (level 6 encounter): A stance that you can trigger while bloodied, granting you a bonus to defenses and Stealth.
• Pay Your Debts (level 10 at-will): If a flanked enemy moves, an ally flanking it still has combat advantage for a turn.
• Underfoot Hustle (level 16 encounter): You shift your speed with a bonus, can move through enemy squares, and they grant combat advantage to you for a turn.

Human

• Extra Effort (level 2 encounter): You can reroll a save with a bonus, but the next save takes a penalty.
• Rapid Move (level 6 daily): As a minor action you can take a move action.
• Flush With Success (level 10 encounter): If you hit with an attack, you gain scaling temp hps and can shift a short distance.
• Courageous Determination (level 16 daily): If a en enemy bloodies you, or hits you while you are bloodied, you can burn a healing surge, shift your speed, and gain a defense bonus for a turn.

Holy crap a lot of these are really awesome. Sure, avalanche rush is best suited for characters built around forced movement and charging, but I could see a lot of halflings taking minor threat (which is also very thematic for them). The human spread is really nice all around. I am really impressed by how much I like this article despite playing almost none of the featured races. Now to wait and see when/if tieflings get any power love.

Gearing up for Lair Assault

In less than a week DMs will be able to start running Lair Assault at their local stores, starting with Forge of the Dawn Titan. On the off chance you are not familiar with it, a Lair Assault event is like a sessionf of D&D Encounters cranked up to 11; a mega-encounter that does not allow for short rests, takes about 2 hours to wrap up assuming you do not die…and the mortality rate is pegged at about 80% on your first try. To make matters worse, even if you go in for another shot the DM has options to change things up, making it more dynamic and difficult to plan for. This is not for the casual crowd, but for all the power gamers/optimizers/players that love the tactical elements of combat.

Though we do not know what is in the scenario (yet), there is a lot of speculation and planning going on a few forums, mostly to expect creatures with lots of fire-based attacks and lava since, well, one of the achievements glory awards requires that you die in lava.

I have never ran D&D as a competitive game–I normally fudge stuff either way if I think it will add to the overall excitement, or to just keep things moving–so it will be interesting to see how I DM Lair Assault. My plan is to just roll all the dice in the open to “let them fall as they may”, as it were. I am curious to see what parties (and Fortune Cards, if any) people are going to bring to the table, especially for groups going for the “one race” glory award. This is definitely something I am going to cover in depth, so expect to see at least a few play reports sometime in September.

Excerpt: Item Curses

In past editions I never used cursed items unless a pre-published adventure specifically mentioned them because in most cases they were a minor nuisance; any party with a cleric could basically get rid of it after taking a nap, assuming that no one had a remove curse spell prepared/scroll on hand (if the item even required it). Of course if your campaigns ever cranked it up to 11, then analyze dweomer became an option and cursed items stopped being a liability (which was just keeping in theme with older-edition magic’s ability to just side-step problems entirely).

4th Edition’s model for curses is making them category specific item properties that can never be detected, and remain dormant until the curses’s trigger is met. For example a periapt of foul rotting acts normal until you take a specific amount of damage, at which point it infects you with a disease. So, pretty similar to how 3rd Edtion operated, but easier to apply to items. The key difference is that once you figure out that an item is bad, you can try to strip away the curse and “fix” them with the same Arcana check, making them much easier to deal with than in past editions.

I have only just started including cursed items in my Heirs of Ruin campaign, partially because I feel that it fits with Dark Sun’s concept of magic as a flawed art, but also because I wanted to try and make my players make some hard choices; yeah, those iron armbands give you a damage bonus, but when you are bloodied they give you a damage penalty. I had intended to give players opportunities to restore them to normal, but with a bit more effor than a simple, low-risk skill check.

Really this is only issue I have with item curses as I currently understand them, and and will rule in most cases that must have access to Enchant Item and/or need to go on quests in order to change some cursed items back to normal. At the least, they are going to have to choose between living with the curse or burning ritual components.

The Gauntlgrym Gambit Review

Adventures that I actually like in Dungeon are few and far between, and I honestly was not expecting anything good this month. Thankfully Daniel Marthalar stepped up to the plate with The Gauntylgrym Gambit, a low-level adventure in which the heroes discover that the Ashmadai–a cult that worships Asmodeus–have potentially found a way into Gauntlgrym, which I am told is a legendary dwarf city that has been lost for thousands of years. It follows hot on the heels of the release of Neverwinter Campaign Setting, which along with Lost Crown of Neverwinter should not only keep your group occupied for about half of their heroic career, but should provide a solid foundation for wrapping the rest of it up as well.

The basic backstory is that duergar, drow, and aberrants were fighting for control of Gauntlgrym, one thing lead to another, and the duergar found themselves with a nasty case of “oozes and slimes”. Rather than go through the presumably lengthy and laborious process of safe removal, they decided to cut their losses by literally blowing up the tunnels where the oozes had spread to. This in turn had the unintended effect of giving the oozes easy access to the surface, making it Neverwinter’s problem, who dispatched scouts to figure out where the problem was coming from; a big-ass hole in the ground that with the proper political spin became both a “potential road to Gauntlgrym” and Ashmadai camp ground.

The STD’s of dungeons.

Despite the odd hiccup of only the Ashmadai setting up kip near a monster-spewing pit, this adventure has a good deal of variety in terms of monsters and terrain; cultists, devils, spiders, duergar, and slimes are confronted in rickety lifts over a great pit, on top of a toppled dwarf statue, a hall of web-strewn statues, and more. I like that despite the focus on the Ashmadai and oozes that the author managed to squeeze in alternative entries without it seeming like they were shoehorned in just to spice things up. Finally as with Evard’s Shadow, I was also very pleased with how skill challenges were plotted and handled; the skill explanations make them easier to work into the narrative, and group checks prevent only specific characters from attempting specific skills, but reduce the chance of an almost immediate failure by unskilled party members.

This shit wouldn’t happen if the rogue could just spam Stealth rolls.

All things considered this is an excellent adventure for DMs looking to run content out of Neverwinter Campaign Setting, especially if your campaign is centered around the Ashmadai, Abolethic Sovereignty, and/or Gauntlgrym. It gives you enough direction to get the party into the lost city, but leaves it up to you where you want to go, greatly expanding its usability beyond the factions mentioned. If you are not running in Forgotten Realms? Well, it works well enough as a template for an adventure with a focus on duergar, oozes, or dwarf cities.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 5

After looting the necromancer’s lair they returned to Barunus’s ghost, gathered up his bones, and made their way to the surface. Almost immediately there were spotted by a patrol, which could have easily overwhelmed them had a pair of newfound friends not shown up; a dwarf named Braynor Stoneblood that knew Maximus from awhile back on one of his tours, and a bizarre crystalline entity that could manipulate objects whose named escapes me. After defeating the guards and stealing their uniforms, they decided that the best way to safely get out of Balic would be to get in touch with House Wavir due to Jiga’s connections.

Unfortunately, they had to cross the Market Precinct to get there.

I ran the same skill challenge as before, asking the group to tell me how their characters would try to get there, and got some different–but still impressive–results; Maximus wanted to try the backstreets, Jiga and Braynor tried to mingle with the crowd, and Sardis, well…he got spotted pretty damned quickly by guards on the lookout for “anyone with a mysterious halo”. He legged it, I prompted him for an Endurance check, and he managed to get some distance between them. They split up, trying to surround him, and so he made an Athletics to get on the roof. Maximus tripped one of them, but a botched Athletics roll caused both the guard and him to fall. The guard recognized him pretty quickly, but was silenced by a dagger in the throat (though Maximus lost a healing surge during the scuffle). With Sardis on the roof, Braynor and Jiga rallied the mob against the guards by tricking them into thinking that they’d killed their baby while chasing Sardis. As Sardis moved from rooftop to rooftop, Braynor managed to take the handful left out with a well thrown rock while they were scaling a wall after him.

Again, things flowed really well and seemed much more cinematic. The players didn’t just spam whatever skill had the best bonus, and they seemed to enjoy it a lot more than usual.

At the Wavir estate, they made a deal to help retrieve a prisoner from a minor noble in exchange for safe passage out of the city. Supplied with fresh clothes and an actually balanced party, they staked out the estate for a good while–during which Sardis detected a steady pulse of evocation magic underground–before just storming the walls, which was still pretty effective. It was a fairly lengthy melee briefly made worse when someone got knocked onto the ground and a pair of jhakaars showed up, but ultimately no one got hurt that a few healing surges couldn’t fix. We had to wrap things up there, but next session will be actually getting into the house and figuring out what is going on.

Excerpt: New Armor

I just got around to posting about the weapon excerpt today, and we are already at new armor. You will need to actually scope out the pdf preview to get any hard mechanics, which includes full stats for all the suits of armor that were still “missing” (well, except for the chain shirt). Aside from filling in the gabs, new armors are further differentiated from the old by having either the tough, durable, or barbed property.

Tough lets you turn the first crit you suffer in combat to a normal hit, durable reduces damage you take from the first attack in an encounter (and has to be repaired afterwards to regain the property), and barbed causes a creature to take damage based on your level when you escape a grab, or that creature escapes your grab.

So, that is pretty cool. I also really dig the robe of the archmage (level 20 rare); it gives you a bonus to Fort and Will, lets you prep a utility spell of your level or lower for free, and lets you lose half your hit points in order to max out your damage on the next arcane attack you make. 

The Heirs of Ruin: Going to Ground Skill Challenge

I started running The Heirs of Ruin for two different groups, one of which already managed to get out of the sewers, after which they had to try and lay low for awhile. I had intended to use the skill challenge Going to Ground out of Dark Sun Campaign Setting as a guideline, but ended up just saying fuck all and asked the group how they were going to avoid the attention of the guards and citizens that might sell them out for the reward on their heads.

I was pretty happy with the results.

I not only did not tell the players that they were “in” a skill challenge, I likewise did not mention that they would be rolling skills. I got answers that ranged from “I try to hide” to “I just fucking try to outrun them”, after which I prompted for ability or skill checks. The player that was just trying to hoof it as fast as possible was spotted and surrounded, so I asked them how they might try and help him out. One player declared that he was going to knock some barrels onto them, while another wanted to sneak up behind and backstab one. Again, prompted for dice rolls, got a bunch of successes, and ruled that the one who got surrounded managed to get away with a few scratches (ie, lose a healing surge).

Things went on like this until they got to Balic’s slums, which ended up being some odd 3-4 series of dice rolls. I think I found my skill challenge “method”; I never really declared that a skill challenge was starting, but often called for skill checks. I think I am going to take a more “Dresden Files” approach and just ask them how their characters would try to resovle a situation or do something. I am hoping that players will try making attack rolls or using powers. Also, I think that I am going to ignore the skill challenge success/failure system and just keep things rolling in whatever way makes the most sense.

Excerpt: New Weapons

In addition to magic items it looks like feats are also on the menu at Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium. Though we get a dozen names, only two of the “strike specialization” feats are actually shown, which let you reduce bonus damage from power strike in order to lump on some other benefit like dazing or attacking Fortitude instead of Armor Class. Considering books that I would assume were intended for DMs have had paragon paths in the past, this does not come across as too odd to me, though I am curious as to whether or not people are going to label this book as an “essentials” book by virtue of it having content for Essentials classes.

Another juicy bit previewed is a flame tongue weapon, which is a level 10 rare item with some badass stuff; the crit damage is slightly higher than usual at a d8, it grants fire resistance, once per encounter after you down an enemy, each adjacent enemy takes automatic damage (great for minion cleaning), and it has an encounter attack that deals fire damage plus ongoing fire damage to a close blast. As an added bonus the fire resistance and damaging features scale with the weapon’s enhancement bonus. The only real drawback is that you cannot turn off the fire damage part (though despite the flavor content stating that they glow brightly, it neither provides illumination nor penalizes your Stealth).

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 4

After the party destroyed all the undead, the ghost of a dwarf appeared and asked them to avenge his death (as well as the deaths of all the other victims in the pile of bones). He explained that a dragonborn defiler had killed him, bound his soul, and questioned him about a lost city. After it was clear that he had no worthwhile information, the dragonborn discarded his remains. The party agreed, and shortly after setting out to find the dragonborn’s lair hit a hurdle in the form of an insanely complex tile puzzle.

I am generally not a huge fan of puzzles, especially riddles, because I find that they tend to grind the game to a halt as the players spend too long before finally resigning themselves to a score of Intelligence/History checks, or DM mercy. The tile puzzle was 7 x 7 squares and required that a magical circuit pass through four elemental tiles in a specific order before a door would open. Taking a page from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, I allowed them to make Intelligence checks to “solve” one or more tiles, as well as allowing them to bypass the puzzle entirely by foregoing all XP. This would allow them to work at it for the reward, or just say fuck all and keep the adventure going.

After about half an hour, they solve it they did, to the tune of 300 well-deserved XP.

Inside they found what I described as the poor-pharaoh’s tomb; a sarcophagus surrounded by a treasure trove with more similarities to a yard-sale than treasure; wooden masks, primitive weapons, clay jars and tablets, tattered rugs, etc. Sardis’s nigh-30 Arcana check allowed him to notice an enchanted bone dagger with a scorpion spirit bound to it (+1 poisoned dagger). Once Maximus picked it up however, a skeleton composed of numerous different creatures (bone golem) animated and attacked them, along with a sand golem hidden in the sarcophagus that Jiga easily spotted (and denying me a surprise attack, boo).

After a fairly quick fight, they found a hidden passage behind the sarcophagus. Taking the right passage first, they discovering a cluttered bed chamber with a glass shard that contained a faint glimmer of intelligence, but at least had the capacity to store magic (obsidian spellshard). The final tunnel lead to one-part arcane lab and one-part operating room, complete with the dead body of a dragonborn. Once they approached it, the dragonborn’s ghost appeared and started hurling shadowy bolts. They beat it down easily enough (especially considering that the obsidian spellshard granted necrotic resistance), causing it to take refuge in its corpse which animated as a zombie until they destroyed it, forcing the ghost to reappear for a final showdown.

I gotta say that I am so glad that I read Ghost Story before running this fight, as Jim Butcher provided some great description on ghosts becoming damaged and destroyed. Anyway, once the ghost was destroyed they relived its final memories, in which the dragonborn informed a genasi with festering green markings of the location of something in the Giant’s Rib Mountains, before promptly being murdered. Unfortunately we stopped here, but at least the characters are now privvy to something larger afoot. Hopefully all this talk of a lost city will usher them in the right direction once they get their asses out of Balic.