The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 8

The characters arrived at South Ledopolos and met with the Stoneblood clan to inform them about the fate of Baranus. They buried his bones and held a wake, telling stories and drinking drinks the likes of which could even get a dwarf drunk. Branor asked about any legends concerning the purported city to the west, and got some stock-legend tropes about it once being a great dwarf city that was destroyed during a great war. If nothing else, it reinforced the fact that something was out there. Maximus met with a former war buddy of his, who–after hearing about him being tried with treason, the murdered family, and having to flee Balic–offered him a job cleaning gith out of a cave that he strongly suspected contained silver.

Seeing as they were preparing a trip to the Giant’s Rib Mountains, he figured that extra coin couldn’t hurt.

The next day after their hangovers were cured they set out for the nearby hills, but quickly got caught in a sandstorm. While waiting it out they saw would could only be described as a massive chunk of ground drift overhead, and though the storm soon ended they were quickly spotted by foraging jhakars. They killed the jhakars and scavenged them for survival days before pressing on. After another hour of climbing–or teleporting in the case of the shardmind–they found a cave entrance sealed by a boulder, with a strange symbol painted on it. Being seasoned grave robbers adventurers, they moved the boulder and soon realized from the smell that it was a tomb containing a trio of gith mummies. 

Though their touch prevented Maximus from healing Branor–who was toe-to-toe with all three of them–they were able to rapidly destroy them, and once they got it down to one Sardis just marked it with her aegis and kept away, making it very difficult to land any additional hits. Later I realized that I had intended them for a party of three, and with five people I really should have added a fourth. Oh well, easy 750 XP for them. My main regret is that no one contracted mummy rot.

Living Spell Six-Pack

For those of you with a DDI subscription that also want more monsters–specifically living spells–I have uploaded six heroic-tier threats here:

• Living magic missile
• Living magic missile mote
• Living magic missile salvo 
• Living storm pillar
• Living acid mire
• Living fireball

A Matter of Perception

Cook’s Legend & Lore debut involves him essentially recreating the Passive Perception wheel, ie the system we have now, except that instead of using Passive Perception as-is with numerical DCs he proposes a rank system (novice, journeyman, expert, etc). That is it, and it just feels like he is arguing semantics. The fact that the rules for Passive Perception have existed for years, including in part in 3rd Edition’s take 10 rule, has lead some to believe that perhaps Cook was trying to make a (bad) joke.

Currently if a character’s Passive Perception meets or beats the DC to find something, then they notice it. Easy. Otherwise they can declare that they are searching a room and make an actual roll, giving them the chance to find something that a cursory examination missed. You can adjust DCs up and down to account for player actions and methods, or even for having other trained skills (for example, you might consider giving a character a bonus on Perception checks to find hidden doors if they are also trained in Dungeoneering).

Cook’s system gives things a rank, which is used to determine if characters automatically succeed, have to make a roll, or just cannot succeed. The difference between the trained and untrained characters is that a rank that you cannot succeed at can be rolled against, and one that requires rolling is an auto-pass. Additionally players can describe their actions and methods, potentially reducing the rank, which can give a character that otherwise could not roll a roll, or a character rolling an auto-pass.

It sounds very similar, but there are some issues that crop up on further examination.

One issue is a lack of granularity. Currently Cook cites only five labels, while DCs can be any number you like. This allows you much better control over fine-tuning a DC, as well as the modifiers that items and circumstances provide, as opposed to simply saying that you pass, can roll, or are fucked. It also vastly increases the opportunities characters have at succeeding at tasks, even if the odds are stacked against them, without having to resort to “Zorking” or pixel-bitching.

I do not want my players to have to result to zorking just because they lack a sufficient rank to make a roll to try and succeed at something. Cook uses a statue as an example of this method, describing a situation where  a player can ask if the teeth can be moved in order to “make the impossible possible”, and honestly the only difference I see between allowing a roll by default and requiring them to ask me 20 questions in order to get a roll is wasted time.

Cook claims that this method will avoid the purported issue of players assuming that a low roll–or the DM rolling in general–means that they must have overlooked something and trying to rationalize another roll or continuing to muck about anyway, but I do not think it will change anything; if the DM simply tells them that they do not find anything, it could be that it was an auto-pass or auto-fail, and if they have to roll they could still jump to the same conclusions.

I do not need to have labels. If I want–or need–the players to succeed, then I can just make the DC really low, or better yet, not require a roll at all. Sometimes I even allow characters to automatically succeed on some skill checks if they are trained in the skill (something I saw in an adventure that I cannot remember). If I for some reason want to peg it at an area where only some characters can auto-succeed, I can make it so that the DC can be passed on a low number, even a 1. I think that really the only thing I can not do (or at least not easily/reliably do) is generate a DC that untrained characters just cannot pass, while trained characters can still roll; there almost always seems to be a slim chance that even untrained characters can succeed.

Cook’s proposed “changes” to the skill system seems to hinder more than it helps, and again I think it is important to note that you can easily do what Cook is “suggesting” using the current system without giving it an overhaul: just give out bonuses to the character if they suggest something clever, which is something that DMs honestly should have already been doing.

The Heirs of Ruin: Broken Bonds Adventure

The compiled and organized notes for the first adventure from my home campaign, The Heirs of Ruin, can be found here.

The belgoi commands it.

Temple of the Weeping Goddess Review

Temple of the Weeping Goddess is a short, 0-level adventure intended to give you both an example and opportunity to use the 0-level character optional rules from this month’s Unearthed Arcana article. The characters play orphaned teenagers that are sent into the Elemental Chaos to free a trapped aspect of Avandra.

Yes, that is right, kids are being send into the Elemental Chaos. At first I was both surprised and excited to see that most of this adventure takes place in the traditional extraplanar paragon-to-epic tier stomping ground, not only in the heroic tier, but without a level (or class) to your name, but both feelings quickly faded as I continued to read the adventure.

SPOILERS

Basically, the adventure opens up with the characters stealing some loot from actual adventurers off camera, utilizing a skill challenge to ideally escape without getting the hit points beat out of you (keeping the treasure even if you do). Once that gets wrapped up everyone heads back to the orphanage, where your caretaker does a big reveal in which he explains the true purpose of founding the orphanage in the first place; round up a bunch of kids to toss into the Elemental Chaos to do a job for him because he is “too physically weak”. In the very likely instance that the players ask why the hell wouldn’t he hire people with encounter and/or daily powers, he dismisses this with the idea that kids might have a better chance of talking to Avandra’s aspect.

Okay…so the hook is pretty damned weak but hey, Elemental Chaos bitches, let’s do this!


Weeell…the temple is a partially collapsed structure on a perfectly serviceable chunk of earth. So…the caretaker cannot travel here on his own because he is too old, despite the fact that it is all level terrain? If he can get up stairs, then he can walk around whatever puddles or collapsed statues that amount to difficult terrain, here. The lack of an Elemental Chaos feel could be covered up by the use of native fauna, but the only monsters to be found here are goblin pirates that got sucked into a vortex and survived, a handful of elementals, and some undead that are for some reason hanging out with Avandra’s aspect. Basically a 1st-level, stock-standard bestiary that can be found in most adventures (and a mid-level cleric could potentially solo given a few days).

Really, this entire thing could take place in the natural world and you would not have to change much except for how the characters get there. Hell, drop it on an earthmote in Forgotten Realms and see if anyone notices. The actual dungeon has a lot of little things for the characters to find that can help them out later, such as an alternative exit when they have to flee, and inscriptions that give them bonuses when dealing with the aspect. I also liked that the NPCs had their own sections for their goals, motivations, fears, weaknesses, and more. These will go a long way to giving DMs a solid foundation for how to work with the NPC.

This adventure reminds me of Keep on the Shadowfell in that while you could run it as written, it both lacks the feel that I was expecting and there is just enough there to make it work if you are willing to put in the time and effort to re-work almost all of it.

For example, why not have the characters figure out that Denek is seeking the goddess themselves? Instead of running from a bunch of adventurers that they somehow conned out of a lot of money (yet do not retrieve it if they get caught), have them discover a secret room or underground archive and stumble upon the ritual necessary to open the portal to the Elemental Chaos themselves. There could have been some extensive social roleplaying going on here, and the players could have taken their own initiative to help out someone who for years had been like a father to them. Hell, have him go into the portal and have the rest of the characters follow him to see what he is up to.

I understand that there could be a time crunch on this whole thing, but he could still have divulged his desires to a character trained in Arcana or Religion under the assumption that such a skill character (or characters) could help him out from time to time. If none of that panned out, then I guess you could still stick with the original hook of an orphan caretaker looking for “exceptional people” to send into the Elemental-fucking-Chaos for a stroll. Even if you have to stick with the original hook, that still does not excuse…

Goblins.

Why did it have to be goblins? If I sent my players to the Elemental Chaos or Astral Sea and threw goblins, orcs, gnolls, hobgoblins, or really anything short of elementals, angels, or demons they would paddle my ass with all of my Monster Manuals while forcing me to walk on four-siders. It would be like the nerdiest pledge initiation in history. The author could have de-leveled some elementals or demons and thrown those at the zeroes, but since these are supposed to be teenagers it is not like you would have to have them fight and kill a threat in one encounter; it could be a recurring thing like Nemesis from Resident Evil or handled with an ongoing skill challenge. Of course sticking to critters that you would expect to find in the Elemental Chaos is a good start, but having everything take place on level terrain seems like half-assing it. This is why…

The “dungeon” should not be a two-story temple on a level island that has weathered the Elemental Chaos for decades. 

When I think of a ruined template drifting through the Elemental Chaos, I think of a weathered chunk of rock with a shattered ruin that barely perches on it. Chunks of the building and debris orbit around the whole thing, and perhaps a geyser of flame constantly shoots a spiral of slowly flowing lava out into the plane (could be a terrain feature during a fight, could be just for looks). Rocks could collide with the temple during an encounter or during a skill challenge, or be part of the terrain during a fight (like mobile, floating platforms). It is the Elemental Chaos; fuck physics and go wild with the scenery. At this level it should be the dungeon equivalent of being able to witnessing a supernova, except that you get to explore it.

And when the players finally got to Avandra? Instead of undead, why not have a bunch of angels guarding her, weakened from years of being disconnected from the Astral Sea (explaining their level 1-ness)? There could also be a demon in the mix somewhere, perhaps trying to destroy Avandra’s aspect or trapped, and something the characters do frees it or allows it to get to her (and they get a chance to help defeat it).

The adventure I was hoping for is nowhere close to the one I got, and the one I got both feels like that the Elemental Chaos was tacked on for an entirely unnecessary reason (ie, because), and does almost nothing to showcase it. I really cannot recommend this adventure except as a training exercise to give the 0-level character rules a routine try.

Adventure Tools Lets You Build Monsters Now

It looks and builds like Character Builder, but for monsters. To give you a thorough look, I’ll go mostly step by step through the process of updating a monster.

You start out by picking the role and whether the monster is a standard, elite, solo, or minion. A radio button at the bottom lets you toggle the leader sub-role.

Then you can name your monster and determine its level, origin, type, and race and keywords (if any). In this case, our raggamoffyn is a Small natural animate with the blind and construct keywords.

The default values for hit points and defenses are already filled in, but you can fine-tune them as before. When entering new movement types, you can select the drop down menu to adjust the speed and add details like “(hover)” to fly or a range on different senses.

When choosing powers attacks automatically got set as Standard actions, while utilities seem to get set to Minor. I have already created slam as a basic melee, but let us take a closer look at the menus.

This is what the power editor normally looks like. If you want to add in details like range and targets, you have to choose Power Body on the left-hand side…

Which looks like this. This is kind of annoying that I have to go to another section to add what are often routine details, but whatever.

Skills is fairly spartan and straightforward. I have added Stealth, making it more likely that the raggamoffyn will get the jump on characters.

Finally we wrap things up with ability scores, alignment, languages, and gear.

And voila, we have a new monster ready to challenge (or embarrass) your players.

Unearthed Arcana: A Hero’s First Steps

One complaint false claim levied at 4th Edition “back in the day” was that you could not start out as, say, “a farmer that picked up a sword to fight orcs”. Mind you nothing stopped you from stating that this was in your character’s history, and in 3rd Edition this could only be done if you used a NPC class (though I do recall optional rules for 0-level characters Unearthed Arcana). Anyway for those of you itching to play a stripped down character while at the same time waiting for validation, well…WotC will meet you half way with an Unearthed Arcana article.

Like normal characters you start out with a character background, and aside from choosing a race in step 3 you do not get a whole lot; you get one at-will and skill based on a power source, you choose from two sets of ability scores instead of point buy, the only feats you get have to come from your race, and you get a smattering of gear with the option of picking one extra thing that costs 5 gp or less. Since you do not get a class, each at-will has a role kicker that you can activate by spending an “experience token”, which you get after completing an encounter, making them similar to power points if you could stack them up between encounters.

This is an interesting set of optional rules that some people looking to try out characters that are less powerful than the norm, though “officially” they level up after a single adventure. It could be particularly fun for new players or groups that want to try and play out the pre-game events. If you are not sure, there is also an adventure centered on using these rules.

The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 7

After burying the dead, the caravan continued on its way to South Ledopolos. Rather than “Indiana Jones” the trip, I asked them what their characters would be doing for the day. Beth (aka Maximus) decided to strike up some conversation with the caravan leader, a man named Canth. I played Canth as a similar personality to Maximus; serious and disciplined from living a life of danger running trade goods between cities. She learned some rumors about the Giant’s Rib Mountains, as well as the giants from the Silt Sea.

John (aka Branor) did something a bit different, asking if there were any dwarves on the team. I figured, they are going to South Ledopolos, so hell yes. He then asked if they knew his character, to which I decided to give him a chance to improvise, asking, “Do they?” He figured that seeing as his character is a prince of his clan that they should, and I rolled with it, having them be somewhat nervous and offering him some of the “good stuff” that they were packing with them. While he did not learn anything, he got to play his character’s social side a bit.

Randy’s character is trying to figure out magic as part of her background and goals, so when he asked if she nabbed some of the dray’s notes I had him make an Intelligence check because Randy never said he did and I did not think to ask. With a nat 20, I told him that she grabbed a lot of stuff and that she could study it along the way. I had him make a few Arcana checks, and the results indicated that she had determined that the dray was using ritual magic to bind ghosts in order to question them (which Baranus mentioned back in the sewers). Now, I tried to have a nosy half-elf woman badger Sardis about what she was reading, but she rebuffed her, because, well Sardis is not the most social person (or at all).

Just goes to show you that not every NPC is going to get the screen time you had hoped. Maybe I will try a more aggressive approach next time?

Speaking of aggression, Liz really did not have any ideas about what she would be doing, so a botched Insight roll revealed that a small group of men seemed to be ogling her. This made her understandably uncomfortable, so she stuck around Maximus, “just in case”. 

With that bit of socialization out of the way a sandstorm picked up, locking them in place for several hours. They made some skill checks to help round up the animals and erect some hasty shelters, so after it blew over everyone was safe and everything was accounted for. With another hour of digging everything out they were able to cover some more ground before they had to make camp for the night. With the possible threat of some of the caravan members going after Jiga, they kept close to each other and decided to keep their own watch. Fortunately, nothing assaulted them except for an adult silk wyrm with a bunch of young in tow.

The young were really just there behind the scenes in order to occupy the rest of the caravan guards and Canth, giving the characters a chance to show how badass they were and level up because I wanted them at 3rd level before they got into South Ledopolos. Plus, I wanted them to actually finish it off given that they got to see one at action in the first session. Once they killed it the surviving young fled, giving the caravan a hefty boost to the food department. Since they killed it so fast none of the guards died (I rolled a save each round), making Canth very pleased (and affecting the bonus he would give them at the end of the trip).

The next day, Liz (aka Jiga) actually asked if the men that were staring at her yesterday were around–probably hoping that they had died–but found out that they had left sometime during the night and were nowhere to be found. Did they get eaten or desert? Eh, time and drama will tell.

The third day they ran into another hitch in the form of a gith raider ambush; they came out of the mountains, raining javelins because the only stat block I had on hand was for the level 4 artillery ones. Had I brought my laptop I would have had access to other stat blocks, or…shit, I should have remembered the pdf on my tablet. Oh well, I will remember next time if I forget to format all the stat blocks. Anyway, the battle was over pretty quickly despite immobilizing javelins. A lot of the guards were wounded, and some were kidnapped by the surviving raiders, so if they act quickly they might be able to save them.

We’ll see what happens next week.

Legend & Lore: DM Rules & Exciting News

While I agree with the bullet list on the first half of the article, the part that really caught my eye was the bit where Mearls not only passes the column off to Monte Cook, but also states that he has been brought onto R&D. While I am familiar with Arcana Unearthed, I had a much greater exposure to Planescape, which I was not even aware he was part of (hey, it has been awhile since I checked the books). Really the part where I both stopped caring and was glad to see him go, was when he openly stated that he deliberately designed “trap” options in 3rd Edition to promote system mastery.

Thankfully someone found a new article where he admits that that way of thinking was not good, and I guess since then he has moved past “ivory tower” design (his words), so hopefully this means that he will not–or will not be able to–drag the game back into the past. At this point I am about where I was back when 4th Edition was announced; I hope that the game will be fun, but am unsure without seeing what Wizards of the Coast’s plan on the whole is for the game, as well as how much clout Monte carries to the table. It could be possible that even if he wants to go back to an edition with save-or-die effects and where spellcasters are pointlessly overpowered, that he will be “vetoed” by the majority rule.

I guess that despite the sinking feeling of uncertainty I am glad that there are still some book releases left to go with an already extensive library: if 4th Edition moves in a direction that I do not like or if 5th Edition comes out and it sucks, then I will still have decades of comfortable gaming ahead of me. Of course, maybe his ideas coupled with more modernized game design will yield positive results? I wish that Mearls would come out and clarify some nagging details and/or be more transparent, but until then this is yet another “wait and see” instance.

Rule-of-Three: Pixies

In addition to Totem Expertise and Two-Handed Weapon Expertise, the other content tidbit from Heroes of the Feywild is that pixies will have a flying cap of 1 square. Reactions and interpretations are varied, with some stating that WotC should have waited for a better solution, and others expecting as such. Others are confused by what a height limitation of 1 square actually means, despite Rules Compendium explicitly stating that it means they can fly one square above the heads of Medium critters. As for myself, I was trying to make a pixie race for Liz because she played on in 3rd Edition, and am actually surprised that one of her balance pitches was exactly this (another was to impose an attack or defense penalty while hovering).

While I am reserving judgement until I actually see and use the final product, I think that being limited to one square off the ground is a pretty good deal; you get to ignore difficult terrain, hazardous terrain, and traps and hazards that trigger on the ground, but basically anything can still go after you in melee. Despite the aerial limitation, they can still fly well above the 1 square-ceiling, they just have to find a safe landing place before their turn ends to avoid falling. While this can make it handy to get to some hard to reach places, I cannot think of many situations where any other character could not do the same thing given another round or two, and a sufficiently high Athletics check. Now there might be more to it then just this, we will just have to wait and see.