Epiro: Episode 111

CAST

• Atticus (elf druid 5)
• Ben’s gnome (gnome artful dodger rogue 5)
• Iola (wood elf centered breath monk 5)
• Josh’s new wizard (human evocation mage 5)
• Perseus (human Chaladin 5)

Now that they had a chance to breathe, they could see that the first room was a wide marble hall, with a ceiling supported by fluted pillars, and the center featured a very much vibrant tree with golden leaves and apples. There were two exits to the north and east flanked by statues, with another pair of statues along the west wall (some of which Perseus recognized as distant relatives).

The pair of statues without an entrance seemed suspect, so Josh’s wizard examined the wall for lingering earth-magics. He did not find any, but when Atticus gave it a mundane once over he noticed some faint imperfections that indicated this wall might have been magically sealed up a long time ago, more recently via mundane means, or maybe with magic that just did not register to Josh. In any case they could not find a secret door, so resulted to a good old bashing.

Unfortunately as he and Perseus tried to force their way through, it split into a pair of earth elementals.

If the Elemental Eye had a book of tricks, this would be one of the older ones.

They figured that there would be a trap: Perseus acted first, delivering a literally earth-shattering blow that split the elemental open, causing rocks and a person to come tumbling out. They could not tell the race or gender because it was wearing dark robes with a hood, and since it was not moving they decided to ignore it for now. The elemental did not seem deterred, and gripped Perseus with a crushing, stony tendril. Atticus tried clawing the other one apart, but was barely able to make a scratch.

Iola leapt into action next, also literally. She launched herself across the room and came down with both feet on what she assumed was the head of one of the elementals, stomping it into the ground like Mario on a goomba. She then leapt off of it and knocked the other one away from Perseus with a spinning kick, freeing him from its grasp. Josh’s wizard followed up by lobbing an explosive sphere of force that further scattered both them and pieces of them across the room.

The figure shakily stood up, glancing about in confusion. Despite my frequent mentions no one paid it any heed and kept hacking, blasting, and punching at the elementals until they were reduced to rubble (and uncut gems).

Precious, precious elemental guts.

It was only after the fight was over that they remembered that there was someone else there. Unfortunately at that point she had pulled back her hood to reveal a scaly face, with a head covered in writhing, hissing snakes.

Why did it have to be snakes?

Despite being slowly turning to stone, Iola managed to bridge the distance and give her a one-two combo. Perseus brandished his shield, which he had polished to a mirror-shine just for this occasion (however improbable). His tactic worked, causing her to avert her gaze, giving the rest of the party time to attack without being subjected to it. Ironically the greatest danger was when Josh’s wizard conjured up a whirlwind that sucked Atticus away while he was crushing her in a bear hug (he refused to let go, even with her save-penalizing poison).

Iola ended up getting turned to stone, while Perseus called on some divine aid to cure himself before rushing back into the fray. Since Josh’s wizard was still sustaining the whirlwind, Atticus simply let her go, causing her to fly across the room and crash into a wall. Finally free (for the second time if you count the elemental), the medusa tried to make a break for the temple’s entrance, only to catch a dagger in the head from Ben’s gnome (who might not have had a name since he made it just before, and kind of while we were playing).

He strode in, yanked his dagger free, and in one smooth motion wiped it off before sheathing it. He had been watching them for most of the battle, safely waiting outside to see how things went.

Why? It is not like we are playing 3rd Edition.

He introduced himself, and after some pre-party Mandatory Awkward Conversation decided to team up with them to hunt cultists.

(NOTE: Defeating a monster is worth some serious brownie points, especially when it has the added effect of restoring a petrified party member. It is also one of the few instances where kill-stealing is both acceptable and encouraged.)

With that out of the way, Perseus and Atticus decided to scout ahead while the rest of the party continued to check out the hall and scoop up gems. Initially there was nothing particularly interesting about the passage, but the further they went the colder it got: frost began to coat the walls, and they could see their breath in the air.

Eventually they found the source of the cold. Kind of. Something had…torn a hole in the wall, and freezing wind was pouring out of it. They went back to fetch Josh’s wizard, hoping that he could discern the nature of the phenomenon. When he could not detect any magical auras, he just poked his head through. His light spell had very limited range, and all he could see was that there was a black wall about ten feet beyond the hole that likely extended well beyond the range of his magic.

Unwilling to try climbing out to interact with it (the pit seemed to be bottomless and there was nothing to hold on to), they just kept going, and that is where we called it.

Behind the Scenes
So after some back and forth, we decided to switch Epiro from D&D Next to 4th Edition. On one hand the public playtest is petering out in September anyway, and on the other hand there is virtually nothing about Next that interests us: the only reason we dealt with it this long was to pitch in our two cents to try and shape the game. Without that factor at this point all we can do is wait and hope that things change or get added that will appeal to us.

Or not. We still enjoy 4th Edition, and have about three, maybe four other games—not counting board games—that we can still play.

Given how I tend to run 4th Edition—flexible powers, approximate distances instead of a map, making up and changing monster stats on the fly (including adjusting hit points and powers), Dungeon Master intrusion, probably over-powered magic items, etc—we had considered 13th Age (and even Numenera despite the major shift in style and tone), but with the lack of a druid class and the monk still in beta, I felt that things would go smoothest if we just stuck with 4th Edition.

How did it go?

It was great. In my past reports I kept stating that yeah, we had fun, but not because of anything to do with the system. Actually, if anything it made it more difficult to have fun: characters within a class are too similar (and melee classes feel largely the same with their “roll to attack, roll damage if you hit” routine), monsters died too fast and/or did not do enough, per-day spells and magical healing wreaked havoc with pacing (especially since characters have virtually no capability to heal otherwise), the recent removal of skills, etc.

4th Edition’s system adds to the fun. I can focus on running the game and making things up without worrying that I am going to accidentally kill the party. The math makes it very easy to peg a monster so that it is challenging as I want it to be, and the monsters last long enough and do enough damage so that they can actually cause tension and excitement. Characters have a variety of things to do, and they are not reliant on magical healing in order to keep going.

I am pretty sure this is the first time I have ever used a medusa, and you know what? I’m was happy with the reveal, especially since anyone who started their turn within ten feet automatically got hit with its gaze attack. What I also liked about it is that instead of making a single save to see who just immediately died, that they had a chance to react to it, be affected by it, and try to deal with it: Melissa tried making an Endurance check to give herself a bonus on her next save, while Perseus used one of his prayers to get a save bonus.

Of course after the fight was over I just ruled that she turned back to normal: forcing the party to walk all the way back to town just to fix her would be one of those pace-wreaking issues I mentioned above.

Wandering Monsters: Fiend Folio

This week’s Wandering Monsters article is brought to you by the letter “F”, though the word “uninspiring” would have likely delivered the same.

The firenewt is basically a slightly more physically inept lizardfolk that is resistant to fire and has the most pathetic breath weapon I have ever seen: 5-foot range, one target, 1d6 damage (half on a miss!). What else, what else…oh! They are also Neutral Evil, plundering other races for supplies. Did I mention that they eat humanoids? Still not working for you? Well try this on for size: they ride giant birds.

Unsurprisingly, none of these traits are compelling enough to make me want to use them. Firenewts just sound like somebody took lizardfolk, attached a couple of fire-traits, and then plopped them on some ostriches that also come equipped with fire-traits. Why even give them fire resistance–or such a sad, sad breath weapon–at all? Is it because they live in deserts and such? A lot of things live in dry, warm places without developing fire resistance or the ability to shoot fireballs out of their eyes.

Scotland is another matter entirely.

I would flavor them as a tribe, or maybe subspecies, of lizardfolk. They would not be universally evil, but might still regard other races like animals and hunt them for food. Their religion would center around a sun/fire deity–which might be an aspect of Pelor, or even a sun/volcano spirit–which they would offer up ritual sacrifices to in exchange for favorable weather or fortune. Some firenewts would gain blessings, which would account for situational fire resistance and thematic powers, and benevolent firenewts might impart temporary boons to parties acting against Elemental cults (this could have the added effect of making firenewt PCs more viable).

Some evil tribes (or at least misinformed ones) might team up with Elemental cults. If firenewts are not all for some reason evil, then you can even integrate tribes with conflicting ideals (like, you know, people). Not that you need Elemental cults to feature an evil tribe; after all, not every evil human serves the same evil organization. “Evil” firenewt tribes could just as easily revere a destructive fire spirit or interpretation of a sun god, or even a fiend of some sort. Of course some might just be territorial and/or desperate.

To me these things make them a lot more interesting and three-dimensional than “they are evil and eat people”.

As for giant striders, the name makes me think of insects, and giant fire beetle-riding lizardfolk is not something I have seen before (plus insects work great in hot, dry environments). They might domesticate them, possibly living in tunnels with them. They could also hunt them. Why not play another angle, with firenewts being skill metalworkers (or some of them, anyway): in this scenario firenewts exploit the striders’ hard work, checking tunnels for metal. If they come in conflict with them, then firenewts might slather themselves in scent glands to conceals themselves while they work.

If you had to go with birds, I would go with Dark Sun’s crodlus and axe the fireballs. Maybe make a variant that has a bound fire-spirit.

Dungeons & Dragons has an extensive history of silly, stupid monsters, which is apparently sufficient criteria to keep bringing them back. Enter the flumph.

The flumph is a kind-of jellyfish-like creature that flies pretty much by farting, sprays a “foul-smelling liquid” that forces a creature to make a poison save or flee in disgust (with the added effect of causing the creature to be shunned by her companions for 1d4 hours), and can fall on creatures to impale them with acidic spikes. If you flip it over it is helpless, which has consequences that vary from DM to DM.

Some people think that the game “needs” stupid monsters. I disagree. To me the flumph is a waste of page space. I just do not get whatever the appeal might be. I mean yeah, not every denizen in the game world needs to be a viable threat, but things in an actual Monster Manual should at least be interesting and/or useful in some way. The original flumph is none of these things, not even as a flying poop/pee joke.

I could see flumphs as more animalistic creatures, floating around the skies like blooms of flying jellyfish. In this case they could be the lesser fauna from some other reality (because even other planes likely have “animal” rank critters). If you want to make them intelligent and Lawful Good (whatever that means), why not have them liberated by another deity, like Bahamut? Maybe they served a rare (or only) Lawful Good elder god. Maybe they were an order of monks that got exposed to the Far Realm?

Or maybe, just maybe, they could just have a diverse range of alignments like denizens from, oh, most every other plane out there.

Wandering Monsters: Three of a Kind

Though I am generally a fan of fiendish things, there is a lot about this article that bugs me.

For starters, each of the monsters is basically a slight variation at best of the same concept: cambions are the offspring of a mortal and some kind of fiendish creature, draegloths are essentially a specific type of cambion, and tieflings are the ancestors of people that mingled with fiends (so, less powerful cambions).

Seeing a pattern?

These do not need to be three distinct monsters. Even though you could make a case for the tiefling, the mechanical implementation of its fiendish heritage would be similar to the cambion (which I will get into below).

I do not even remember cambions from 3rd Edition, except that maybe there were mentioned in the half-fiend template. A bit of research revealed that they only made an appearance in Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, a book that I owned, skimmed, but never used. 4th Edition put them in the first Monster Manual, where they just came across like winged tieflings, fiery-emphasis and all (which is not a sufficient tagline to get me to use something).

The plan for Next is to present them in two flavors: those with a demonic heritage will have a variety of appearances, while those that trafficked with devils will for some reason all look like Tim Curry from Legend, despite devils also having a variety of appearances.

I guess one out of four is not bad?

The more powerful the fiendish parent, the more powerful the cambion. The parent will also determine qualities like resistances and immunites. Makes sense, and is something that I wish they had done with tieflings for awhile, now. What I would love to see–besides devil-cambions having a more diverse appearance–is a table with a list of devils and demons with some suggested physical features, traits, and powers that you can attach to an existing creature.

Yes, I am making yet another toolbox suggestion.

An eeevil toolbox.

The draegloths is, as I said, basically a cambion. Why does it get a special shout out? Why do they have some kind of special association with drow? I have no idea, except that I guess it was in a Drizz’t novel (one of the few that I have actually read)? The article makes mention that its uniqueness suggests that “other distinct varieties of half-fiend might exist”, so I would put the draegloth in the cambion entry along with some other examples (I would also not for some reason restrict it to drow).

And last but not least (well, maybe last in terms of overall power), the tiefling. Tieflings are probably my favorite race, or at least somewhere in the top three, having dug their hooks into me since my Planescape days back when I still played 2nd Edition.

Their hellish hooks.

I remember that they used to have a variety of potential physical features, including the random ability and side-effect tables from Planewalker’s Handbook, which I still own. The change to their flavor and appearance in 4th Edition kind of bothered me, but probably not for the reasons you have heard (ie, it is not how it was before).

What bothered me was that here we were in yet another edition, and like 3rd Edition they all did the same thing. I get that they had an association with Asmodeus, so their look and powers made sense, but what about other devils: what about a tiefling with a succubus ancestor that gets a bonus to Diplomacy and a charm ability, or an ice devil, so she gets cold resistance and can, I dunno, add cold damage to an attack?

To me this is better than simply having a player roll from a table to see if they have goat hooves and some other random, probably unrelated power: like cambions it would make more sense to tie their physical appearance, traits, and magical abilities (if any) were tied to their heritage, which is how I did it with a tiefling homebrew I posted almost a year ago.

This would also work just as well with tieflings that result from pacts with devils (like the 4th Edition ones), allowing people to easily mix and match tieflings created by blood or bond.

Legends & Lore: The Final Countdown

It looks like that September will be the last publicly released playtest packet, marking the end of the initial phase of trying to nail “the feel” of Dungeons & Dragons. The game is not done mind you, and other groups will carry the torch in order to (hopefully) balance math and (also hopefully) remove abusive combinations.

I would say that the playtest has hit a feel that Dungeons & Dragons has evoked before (3rd Edition), it is just not one that I am interested in (also 3rd Edition). Mearls describes Dungeons & Dragons as a tool of creativity. I agree to a point, though I do not think it is a particularly well-designed tool because of its 3rd Edition-isms:

(NOTE: This is based off of what we have seen so far. I am not going to judge the game on merits and/or promises that we have not seen.)

• Classes are severely restricted not only in what they can do, but what you can even choose from. Mechanically this closes off many character concepts, and even the few that are supported end up being very similar to the rest.
• There is a very strong reliance on magical healing, making a cleric or druid essentially mandatory. Yeah, characters have a measure of self-healing, but it takes an hour for it to kick in and at low-levels is severely limited. 
• Many abilities have daily limitations (including the aforementioned healing magic), which can make adventure pacing much more difficult to maintain (and is pretty much the reason for the five-minute workday).
• Save-or-dies, which from my perspective just result in random, anticlimactic deaths. On one hand they seem to give you at least two shots to shake them off, but aside from magic (like bless) I cannot find a way to hedge the odds in your favor.

These factors inhibit creativity on both sides of the screen, and none of them are an issue in 4th Edition. Yes it initially had some problems, most notably early rules and examples for skill challenges and monster math, but most of it was ironed out near the end. Despite even the stuff that was not, like rituals and math-feats, I never felt that it wandered from what I wanted, but showed me what I had been wanting for awhile, like competent characters, classes that could do what they were supposed to, any race with any class, per-encounter resources, three strike save-or-dies, and more.

Now in their defense there are some 4th Edition-like mechanics present, like marking, Hit Dice, and at-will spells, it is just a shame they are not utilizing more of it to make the game run smoother, easier, and give players more control over their characters. I want to point out (and also bold for emphasis) that if we at least see modules that address these issues and it is a relatively simple process to make them work, I will be happy. Speaking of simplicity…

Simplicity can be nice, but not at the sacrifice of flexibility or choice. Dungeon World, 13th Age, and Numenera offer simplicity but still let you make choices. Character creation is quick, but the choices you make can result in at least two clearly different characters. I also feel like I can easily wing each of those games, including 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons thanks to a very tight monster and skill DC formula and how monster stat blocks are formatted.

I do not feel the same about Next: like 3rd Edition the reliance on healing magic, per-day spells, limited hit points, and save-or-dies is going to make it much, much harder for me to plan and run a game, and characters to built a party.

The third bullet point is similar to the first one, and yes I want rules that are easy to work with. Unfortunately (again), per-day resources, magical healing, save-or-dies, and utility magic like knock make things a lot harder to plan and deal with. Maybe this time around we will not have to resort to lead-lined walls, antimagic rooms, and rings of undetectable alignment as “workarounds”.

It would be great for classes to have the potential to contribute in most situations, again something that I have only seen in 4th Edition thanks to how the skills and Difficulty Checks worked. I fine with some classes being better at certain things than others, like rogues and sneaking, I just want other classes to be able to approach a competent level, like fighters that want to be able to open locks. Where I get wary is the line about balance on a campaign-based scale, which I hope is not inferring that we will go back to the days of Linear Fighters/Quadratic Wizards.

At least we will continue to see weekly updates, as it will give me a way to voice my opinion of the current state of the game as we see it.

Wandering Monsters: Through the Vast Gate

Before I talk about the foulspawn and gibbering mouther, I want to point out how odd it is that they do not want to tie the origin of aberrations to the Far Realm because it “might not be a part of every DM’s cosmology and campaign”, but are totally fine making assumptions about what other planes exist (Ravenloft), how they are arranged (the Great Wheel), and what goes on there (like the Blood War).

Why the favoritism? What about people who think that the Great Wheel is not particularly interesting or creative, or even simply feel that it is not appropriate for their campaign setting? What about official campaign settings that do not include those things? There is no need to make so
many “traditional” assumptions, which among many other bizarre decisions
is something that continues to confuse and frustrate me.

Anyway, on to something less mind-boggling.

Foulspawn
I never used these guys, but there were a few instances where I wanted to (which is a start). My biggest issues are that they just look like ugly, skinless humanoids (gross, but not too interesting), and that despite being warped by the “incomprehensible” energies of the Far Realm can be easily categorized into four distinct types: just cut out the middle man and give us a table of mutations and powers.

Otherwise I like the mix of abilities: teleporting, psychic screams, cascading rage, and reality distorting blasts (which should be able to teleport creatures hit by it, too). I think what would make both them and other aberrants/aberrations even better is to further establish the Far Realm, giving it its own cosmology and/or demiplanes, possibly even a pantheon, just so that you can give them more thematic powers.

Gibbering Mouther
I like the origin of being created from a mass of humanoids. Gives me an Akira vibe, though you could take a page from Fullmetal Alchemist and have cultists sacrifice groups of people to willfully create them. Of course I see no reason tying them more closely to the Far Realm and have them be heralds of some eldritch god, which could also have the added benefit of giving them something to work with in encounters.

Numenera: A Glimpse of the Ninth World

“I am a satisfied backer who enjoys running Numenera.”

HELLO NINTH WORLD

Its got monoliths.

Given how critical I was about Monte Cook’s rules proposals for Dungeons & Dragons Next I am not sure exactly why I backed Numenera. Maybe it was the pitch of a world that exists impossibly far in the future, or maybe it was because he worked on Planescape, one of my favorite Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings of all time. Maybe I just had a good feeling? At this point, over a year later, I could not tell you.  At any rate I even went so far as to pick a backer level that gave me access to playtest rules, and though I never got a chance to run a game I was surprised at how mostly simple the game was.

From what I can tell aside from extensive portions of flavor material and art, the game has not changed much from playtest to publication (which kind of made things worse because I kept thinking that I was mis-remembering a rule from the playtest packet): characters are built like you are filling out a mad-libs: [name] is a [descriptor] [type] that [focus], there are only three “classes”, three stats, six “levels”, weapons and armor come in three types, task resolution involves a d20 roll with maybe a small bonus, players always roll the dice, and even spending points from stat pools to modify the difficulty of a task is pretty straightforward once you do it a few times.

EXPLORING THE NINTH WORLD…

…is awesome.

Numenera takes place on Earth a billion years in the future that somehow still exists. In that time eight previous “worlds” have come and gone, leaving behind remnants of their existence. While previous worlds were said to have flourished, this one is built upon the ruins of the past, and that is kind of the style of Numenera: discovering the history and wonders of the previous worlds.

While a lot of fantasy settings feature some previous golden age, Numenera is different in that there are at least eight, and that the world is both a product of technology and saturated in it: not only has the ground been process, reshaped, and re-processed, but the very air is filled with countless nanites (which is how nanos use their “magic”).

Thankfully there are several chapters that give you an overview of the Ninth World and its people, about one-hundred pages of a closer look at one region of the world, adventure writing, advice on running the game, ways to shake up the overall feel of the Ninth World to better suit your preferences and style (including my personal favorite, weird horror), and dealing with technological types (nanotech, machines, genetics, etc).

If you still need some help or inspiration, page 402 has a list of nonfiction, fiction, and movies–including Adventure Time, The Fifth Element, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind–to get you going.

SURVIVING THE NINTH WORLD
Let us talk task resolution. As I said above in this game players always roll the dice, and it is always a d20: whenever you want to try something the GM assigns a Task Difficulty (TD) from 0 (automatic success) to 10 (impossible in almost every instance), which you multiply by three to get your Target Number (TN), and try to meet or beat that on a roll. So if you try to bash open a wooden door (TD 2), then you have to roll a 6+ in order to succeed. There are a variety of ways to gain a bonus/reduce the TD, such as by spending points from your stat pools (I will get to this in a bit), skill training/specialization, and/or devices.

This is how everything in the game works, whether you are trying to talk down the price of some supplies, sneak past someone, discern what a numenera can do, climb the fallen crystals in the Cloudcrystal Skyfields, dive out of the way of a callerail’s crushing fist, outrun a raging jirasker, skewer a broken hound with your spear, and so on. I like it because it is simple, straightforward, consistent, and I think players will like getting to manage their stat pools as they try to figure out how much they want to hedge their bets.

While initally I was put off by the whole “pick a number, times it by three, and roll against that number” model, when you interact with people, creatures, and devices their level sets the base TD, hit points, and damage, so in the long run it is probably simpler than using a 1-30 range for level and trying to work out hit points and damage backwards from that.

One last thing are special rolls, which are kind of like critical fumbles and hits from Dungeons & Dragons mixed with Dungeon World’s miss and 10+ move results: when you roll a natural 1 the GM can intrude in some way, while a natural 17+ lets you trigger minor or major benefits. One of the most common benefits is a scaling damage bonus, but some focuses can let you do other things, like make an extra attack on a nat 20, and there are also plenty of examples for intrusions and minor/major effects scattered throughout the book in relevant sections (most notably monster entries).

THE RULES OF THREE
There are three stats: Might, Speed, and Intellect. By themselves they do not determine how hard something is, but instead you spend points from them to make a task easier. So if you are trying to hit a monster, force open a door, jump across a pit, or climb a cliff you can spend points from Might to reduce the Task Difficulty: one point gives you a +1, two points gives you a +2, and three points just reduces the TD by 1. You can reduce the TD by an amount equal to your Effort.

Each stat also has a corresponding Edge value, and when you spend points from that pool the cost is reduced by your Edge. Yes, this can reduce it to zero, meaning that glaives can constantly use their +1 damage maneuver, and nanos can blast people with lightning at will.

You recover spent points by resting for a variable period of time. The first one just takes an action (think second wind from 4th Edition), but each subsequent recovery takes longer: 10 minutes, one hour, then finally ten hours. How many points you regain depends on your tier–1d6 + 1 per tier–so the higher your tier the more you get back. There is also a damage track that is based on how many stat pools are at 0: if one is depleted then it is harder to apply Effort, if two are depleted then you can barely crawl, and once all three run out you are dead.

“_________________ is a __________ _________ who __________________________.”

Creating a character is essentially a matter of filling in three blanks, and once you do it a few times will probably take about 5-15 minutes depending on what you pick.

The three types are glaive, nano, and jack, which are analogous to fighter, wizard, and rogue respectively. Each type determines your base stats and Edge rating, gives you a handful of abilities, choices of gear, and a choice of two things from a list of five or so abilities. Most of the starting abilities cost 1 point, if they cost anything at all, which is offset by your Edge. This means that glaives can choose to daze an enemy, deal +1 damage, or add a +1 to their attack roll without draining Might, but they can also choose to add all of it together at the cost of only 2 Might points.

Your descriptor gives you a set of benefits like a bonus to one of your stats, one or more skills, a contact, the ability detect “magic”, a bonus to Armor, etc. Interestingly some can also penalize you with an inability, increasing the TD in certain situations, like when you are trying to focus or talk to people. Each of them also comes with four sample links to get you in the starting adventure.

Finally, focuses give you additional abilities on top of what your type does. These range in complexity from a nice weapon and small damage bonus, to transforming you into a horrifying monster during a full moon. Each comes with some minor and major effect suggestions, as well as a sample connection to tie you with another character.

FLEXIBLE, SIMPLE SKILLS
Skills remind me 13th Age (and how they unfortunately used to work in Next) in that they are not tied to any one stat, and the player makes a case as to whether it applies to the current situation. If it does you reduce the Task Difficulty by one (which in turn reduces the Target Number by three). If you are specialized, you instead reduce the TD by two. You cannot get any better than specialized, but you can still spend stat points and/or use other assets to make something even easier.

GEARING UP

Weapons and armor have static damage and armor values based on whether it is light, medium, or heavy (think the 4th Edition-esque Gamma World). This is nice because you have more descriptive control of what you are wielding and wearing, instead of having to worry about specifics or optimization.

Light weapons make it easier to hit something, but otherwise the only difference is damage. Armor reduces the damage from most attacks, and while anyone can wear any armor it drains your Might pool and reduces your Speed maximum (thankfully glaives and jacks have built in features that reduce these).

You also start with a number of random devices called cyphers and oddities. Cyphers are typically one-use devices, while oddities are just random trinkets that have no mechanical impact. Each type has its own table, and while I guess you could pick what you want I find it more interesting to give players items not necessarily suited for their characters and see what they can come up with.

EXPERIENCE AS CURRENCY
Where some RPGs like to heap on the XP, Numenera is one of “those” games that keeps things to a minimum as well astreating them like Fate Points. Gaining XP can happen in a variety of ways, such as discoveries and other events, but one of the more common suppliers is GM intrusion. This is when the GM tries to mess with the character in some way. You can do this whenever, but you have to give the player 2 XP for her troubles (one of which she must give to another player).

So what can you do with it? Well for starters you can burn a point to refuse an intrusion. You can also spend a point to reroll a check for anyone, even another character. Two points gets you a limited training in a skill, like being able to pick locks in one area of a city, or mountain-climbing in a specific mountain range. The upside is that you can gain these skills at any time at half the cost it would take to gain full training in a skill. There are a variety of options for the three-point package, from a +1 to a skill, a useful contact, cash, or even an artifact.

Finally the most expensive use for XP is the best: character advancement. Each time you spend four XP you get to improve your stats, increase one of your Edges or your Effort by 1, or become trained in a skill (or specialized in a skill that you are trained in). You can buy only one of these per tier, and once you have them all you advance to the next tier (so basically each level costs 16 XP). There are also some special options that you can nab once, like reducing the cost for wearing armor, or buying a new ability based on your class.

OPTIONAL RULES
For those that like homebrewing content or hacking games, there is an entire chapter on optional rules, like reducing your damage for an effect (such as tripping or disarming), adding in last/permanent damage, giving weapons damage types, using minis (normally the game uses variable band ranges), guidelines for customizing types and focuses, other races (that unfortunately are still humanoid), and mutations that range from beneficial to merely cosmetic.

CONCLUSION
Before I get into the bad part–because there is a bad part, but it thankfully has nothing to do with the setting or rules–I really enjoyed what I have read and what little bit we got to play. The art is mostly good, and the pdf has links in the sidebar for when one section references another (making it easier to navigate, and one of the few pdf products that I do not mind viewing on a computer). The game is very simple to learn and runs fast, but gives enough meaningful choices that even a party of glaives could have plenty of diversity. Not only that, but between all the advice and optional rules it should be able to easily cater to a variety of group tastes.

Again, to be absolutely clear, I really like this game. The rules and presentation are great, and the only time where the game seemed to drag was…

…ADVENTURE TIME
I did not get far into The Beale of Boregal before I wanted to scrap the whole thing and just make it up as I went along. My players encouraged me to try and at least use part of the adventure and tweak it so that it could work, and try I did. Try being the key word here, and ultimately the experience was a combination of frustrating, confusion, and boredom, and since misery loves company let me recount the events as best as I can recall them for you, the reader:

The adventure starts out with the characters walking along a road called the Wandering Walk. The length of it is unknown, but due to terrain and bandits it is too dangerous and unreliable to be useful as a trade road. Even so people still walk it for religious or spiritual reasons, or just a lapse of judgement. They call themselves Peregrines and scar their hands and arms to show off how long they have been walking (because self-mutilation is both reasonable and reliable). It mentions that the “rewards are few”, but does not actually specify any, and so for the life of me I cannot figure out why anyone would spend so much time wandering on a dangerous, never-ending road.

I guess sometimes you just gotta Walk Hard.

That bit of flavor is bad, but a lot of adventures suffer from this sort of thing so I could forgive it if the rest of the adventure was entertaining, but things got worse as soon as I hit the read aloud text. As a courtesy I am not going to reprint it in its entirely, but will merely subject you to a choice tidbit that really made me cringe:

“…My mother saw it with her own eyes, says another, younger man, who points at a woman sleeping along the edge of the hollow and then makes the circle of augmentation with his fingers. She has mech eyes, and trust me, she sees everything. There is nervous laughter from the group. Most everyone has a mother, after all, and remembers her impossible eyesight, augmented or not.”

That is taken directly from the book. My first complaint is that there are no quotation marks to call out dialogue, it is just italicized. My second, greater complaint is the quality of writing, particularly the last line, “Most everyone has a mother, after all, and remembers her impossible eyesight, augmented or not”. I have literally never head anyone refer to their mother’s eyesight as “impossible”, and honestly when I was a kid my friends and I were able to get away with all sorts of things.

Anyway, a boy and girl ride up on a giant centipede. The boy explains that his family is being attacked by pallones (flying light disks), and that he is riding to find help. Oh, and his sister needs protection, though he will not say from what…except that a paragraph down it says that he will divulge it to one character, and one only. The reason is that he is very protective of her secrets, so of course is willing to spill it to a complete stranger with no guarantee that he will not just tell everyone else.

To recap the plot summary so far is that the players are asked by a complete stranger to escort his sister somewhere else for reasons that may not be clearly divulged (except to one person), so he can go back and help his family despite the reason for leaving them was to find help in the first place. But wait, it gets better: the forest where his family lives is about thirty miles away, and that is if you venture off the road and head straight there.

We did not get much further into the adventure before it was time to pack it in. I had them fight off a group of pallones that I decided had followed her just so we could see the actual mechanics in play (which again are a lot of fun). As of this post I am working on my own intro adventure. Given years of playing Dungeons & Dragons and similar games it will an interesting exercise for me to see how I handle the material.

Legends & Lore: You Call That Done?

The fact that the races, classes, and other “core elements” of the game are considered almost done fills me with a combination of confusion, worry, and disappointment. This just seems less like a large company with a sizable staff working on a well-known, established brand, and more like someone tried to halfheartedly cobble something with Dungeons & Dragons in the title and gave up.

For starters the classes look woefully anemic and lazily designed (especially after 4th Edition gave us so, so many options from the start), most of the monsters are incredibly boring (and some have spells that require you to reference another source), skills are gone, equipment still 

relies largely on gold, armor is terribly designed, and magic makes no 

sense (and is also uninspiring and boring).

Having playtested it up until now I can say that it is not a game that interests me. We play it and manage to have fun, but none of it has anything to do with the system. The mission statement early on was that you should be able to cobble together an edition, or at least experience, from the various rules modules. If that ends up being an actual thing and the issues I mention above can be addressed, then that might enough to draw me in; it just depends on how much work I have to do on my end.

Otherwise? Count me out. I already played 3rd Edition for around eight years, and I have no interest in playing it again, even if you strip out the skills (which I think actually makes it worse). Yeah 4th Edition had problems, but some of the more major ones (like skill challenges) got better over time, and most of the rest can be addressed with a few houserules (except for the power suite). If I or my group wants to deal with less, 13th Age seems like a fine, fresh middle ground that is not afraid to let players think about what they want.

At this point both sound like better, simpler, more elegant alternatives to Next.

The Barbarian Horde (Throughout Editions)

One of my criticisms about Next is the lack of being able to make meaningful decisions both when building a character and during level up, as most levels of most classes have predetermined class features.

Sure at 2nd- or 3rd-level you get to pick a kind of theme (which you may not agree with), but this one choice predetermines everything else you get for the rest of the game. This is not only boring, but limits a class to one interpretation of a concept and makes it needlessly more difficult–if not impossible–for a player to build the character that they want.

To better illustrate my point I decided to compare the barbarian class in 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, 5th Edition, and 13th Age.

3RD EDITION
You get fast movement (+10 ft. speed when not in heavy armor) and can rage once per day (bonus to attack, damage, and Will saves). For some reason you cannot read or write unless you spend two skill points. The only thing you can customize here is how you distribute your skill points and where to spend a feat.

An example of several half-orc barbarians.

4TH EDITION

All barbarians gain a scaling bonus to AC and Reflex when not in heavy armor, rage strike (which lets you keep using daily attacks without losing the benefits of a previously activated one if you do not want to), and Rampage (if you score a critical hit, you get to make a free attack).

From there you choose from one of four Feral Might options: Rageblood is your more straightforward beat ’em up type, Thaneborn is if you want to be a leader, Thunderborn have strong ties to thunder-based primal spirits, and Whirling is for dual-wielders. Each class feature gives you a unique ability, and can potentially grant bonuses to certain thematically appropriate evocations.

You also get to choose four evocations at the start: two can be used at any time, one can be used once per battle, and one–the “rage” powers–can be used each day. Rages tend to deal a lot of damage and grant continuous effects for the remainder of the battle.

Like 3rd Edition you still get to choose skills and a feat. Unlike 3rd Edition feats can give you both skills and limited access to features from another class (further expanding customization).

5TH EDITION

Speaking of 3rd Edition, the 5th Edition version is much the same in that you do not get to choose anything, at least at the start: at 3rd-level you get to choose from one of two features that lock a group of five options for the rest of the game (you cannot pick from both trees). Feats are optional, but can add some much needed customization if you use them, and skills are throttled into two “fields of lore”.

More half-orc barbarians.

13TH AGE
You start with rage, because all barbarians must rage, but get to pick three barbarian talents from a list of six. The amount of talents you know increases as you level, with levels 5 and 8 adding two more to the list. Instead of skills you spend 8 background points on aspects of your character that make the most sense to you (up to a +5 bonus). They are not linked to ability scores. You get to spend a feat, and while there are general ones race and class talents can also be boosted with them, too.

FINAL VERDICT

3rd and 5th Edition come in miles behind 4th Edition and 13th Age, which are both about the same in my book: I love the amount of options and flexibility that 4th Edition gives you, but the sheer number that you start with and the amount you will end up with can make it cumbersome for some players to keep track of. 13th Age slims down character options, while still giving you almost complete control of the reins, making it ideal for players that want control without all the content.

If you wanted to make things even simpler you could take a page from Dungeon World, having most classes start with the same stuff, but you get to pick what you gain as you level up. We just played our first session of Numenera last night, and building characters was a snap despite being able to actually pick some things. I do not think it is as difficult or cumbersome as it sounds. Why not at least give it a shot?

DDN Q&A: Skills

If you were wondering why skills were largely jettisoned in the most recent playtest packet, I guess it is to…streamline the game? If you were also wondering why lores were kept (and the bonus drastically inflated), it is because a lot of the players apparently missed being able to be an expert in a field of knowledge…?

Right.

I am serious: they kept asking what their characters would know, so the solution was to give them a non-scaling bonus to a couple of checks, which at
a whopping +10 is less of a bonus, and more of a guarantee, so I guess it
accomplishes their mission of streamlining the game since players will not even
need to ask.

You know what I miss? Being able to make meaningful decisions when building my character. 4th Edition gave us more control, especially since you could pick up training in any skill by using Skill Training or most multiclass feats. So if you wanted to, you could easily have a fighter that knew some stuff about magic, or was at least competent in social situations. Want your illusionist to be good at lying and sneaking? An easy two feats, at least one of which might give you something else like Sneak Attack.

As refreshing as this was, 5th Edition made it even better…for while anyway: you got to pick any four skills you wanted. No feats, no variant class features, anything goes. With this Josh was able to easily make a thug-type wizard that could intimidate people and sneak around pretty well. Given the lack of choices elsewhere in the bigger picture it was not much, but it was something. Now? Aside from spell selection he is virtually identical to every other evoker out there.

Personally I think that most groups want skills in some capacity. It is not like most of them are terribly complicated. Well, maybe when you are trying to jump; I can never remember the formula for that. Anyway, basic rules for skills should be the default. If you do not want them, then a sidebar or module can give you guidelines on how to adjust DCs. Same thing if you want more elaborate skills, or other ways to use them.

Wandering Monsters: Bound Constructs

This is going to be another one of those posts where I wonder why the designers are keen on giving us a variety of specific, similar monsters, instead of just adopting a toolkit approach with some examples. I think it is even more fitting given that we are talking about constructs.

A helmed horror is a Medium-sized suit of armor that for some reason glows purple, can see invisible things, cast a couple spells as defined by…someone, is immune to exactly three spells, and built for a purpose. I kind of zone out after the first comma, as none of the rest approaches anything resembling rhyme or reason.

Why the purple glow? Is it because of the magic? Is purple the magic color for an animated suit of armor? Why air walk and feather fall? Why immunity to exactly three spells? Why is this described as an entry-level construct for spellcasters wanting to get into the craft? It is expensive and has a variety of bells and whistles that probably contribute to the cost without serving any necessary function. I guess always envisioned a wizard’s first starter-construct to be, I dunno, at least crude-looking.

Sure, it cannot see invisible things, but it can still rip a strider apart.

What, can constructs only be made through a rigorous process of stringing a bunch of random capabilities together? Maybe early wizards were just fashionably conscious, such that vanilla suits of animated armor just would not cut it. “Yeah, it glows purple alright, but can it fly?”

This actually might explain the shield guardian, another construct that is pegged as a beginner model: it is Large, specifically built to protect the creator (or whoever is holding an amulet, because there is no way that can be abused), and can hold any one spell no matter what level it is (because no one seems to even be sure what a spell slot means). The the only drawback (aside from that whole amulet business) is that it looks like someone assembled it out of random bits of garbage.

Effective, but totally clashes with those robes.

So…what if a wizard wants to make a Medium shield guardian, or a Huge one? Why can they not add air walk to it? Normally in fiction wizards tend to be the kind of folk that do lots of weird experiments, so how come in Dungeons & Dragons they do absolutely none of these things? In The Dying Earth one of the characters tries to learn how to create artificial life. In D&D you would not try, but instead just wait until you can cast a spell that lets you create a clone or simulacrum and do that.

There is no try, just safe, predictable “magic”.

I bring this up because it does not sound like wizards learn to make constructs, but just find an existing construct recipe, spend however much gold it says to spend, and get their construct after a requisite amount of time has passed. No trial and error, no experimentation.

First, spellcasters should in general should be able to build constructs/golems, not just clerics and wizards. I can easily imagine druids, shamans, psychic classes, and so on building some interesting and thematic constructs out of wood, stone, psychically-charged crystals, and so on. They could power them with bound elementals, nature spirits, and distilled intelligences (like 3rd Edition’s psicrystals).

Materials and size should serve as a foundation to determine the construct’s defenses, hit points, Strength, and damage output. Some materials might have other effects, too, such as reducing speed, resistances against some kinds of damage (as well as vulnerabilities), etc. From there the creator can add in additional functions, whether that means an expanded Intelligence score (to program more complex commands), extra limbs (extra attacks, bonuses to grapple, etc), combat maneuvers (like a fighter), spells, ability to track the creator or take damage for her, etc.

This sounds a lot more interesting and flexible, and is something that both players and DMs can mess around with. I mean, come on: Adventurer, Conquerer, King has a system for wizards that want to make bizarre things, including splicing things together. Get with the times.

After all this made it into the game; can players actually do worse? … Do not answer that.

Animated objects are, as the name says, objects temporarily animated by…clerics? Really? Not just any old cleric mind you, but mid-level ones? I had to actually look this up because it seemed too silly to be real, and to my surprise found that no, not just clerics, but bards of all classes can also stir one up if you want, which just makes it even more ridiculous. I also love how you can animate one Small object per level, but until 10th-level you have absolutely no capacity to do this at all. I hope that the designers are not seriously considering limiting animating an object to either of these classes.

I think that animated objects, especially temporary ones, would be great for transmuter wizards, but could even see a case for druids and wood/stone. Think Fullmetal Alchemist, where they sometimes transmute objects and cause them to move. I see no reason why a spell like this cannot just be a cantrip: the wizard touches an object, or channels energy into an object, and it just whacks someone. Per-day versions could even be used to help bend gates, open doors, etc (giving a bonus/advantage to the check).

Finally, the homunculus suffers from the same problem as the first two monsters: for some reason, no matter what, they are always Tiny, and always have leathery wings…until Eberron came along and added seven more, from walking dressers to stay-at-home crafters. 3rd Edition’s Magic of Eberron kind of does what I want, by allowing you to upgrade a homunculus. The only problem is that it costs feats and the end result still sucked. Just let wizards build them out of whatever they want, possibly making them more powerful if the wizard invests more into it (like reducing hit points, temporary ability score damage, etc).