D&D Next: Miss-conceptions

Great Weapon Fighting
When you miss a target with a melee weapon that you are wielding in two hands, the target still takes damage from the weapon. The damage equals your Strength modifier. The weapon must have the two-handed benefit or versatile property to gain this benefit.
–Classes, pg 25

Now that is a very clunky read, but given that part of D&D Next‘s design philosophy is restructuring the format so that you have to sift through walls of text to get the necessary details I am not really surprised.

A much easier, yet just as clear way to write it could be:

When you miss a target while wielding a two-handed or versatile melee weapon in two hands, the weapon deals damage to the target equal to your Strength modifier.

(EDITED: There ya go Svafa and Justin.)

Same results at half the text. You are welcome. The only other thing I might change is so that the fighter has to at least roll a 10+, or take a page from 13th Age and make it work on an even/odd die result. 4th Edition had reaping strike, which also did damage on a miss, and that never bothered me or upset the game in the slightest…so of course some people are really upset about it. At least when it pertains to non-magical miss damage because, you know, non-magical.

Personally I do not get it. Dungeons & Dragons has always had, to put it lightly, very abstract rules. Take hit points for example: they represent a combination of your physical fortitude, combat aptitude, luck, mental resolve, “plot armor”, etc. Where some games give you a physical and mental pool to individually track, Dungeons & Dragons kind of lumps it all up together. Certainly it is easier to manage, but then you run into the problem of how cure light wounds restores damage if you are not even wounded.

So why take umbrage with damage on a miss?

Some think that a miss should just be a miss. While this might make sense it discards the fact that a miss has really never meant that the attack failed to connect at all, unless for some reason you believe that wearing plate armor and packing a tower shield makes you somehow better at dodging. Especially for characters without a Dexterity bonus or, worse yet, a penalty, misses more often than not mean that you did get hit, but it just failed to inflict any appreciable damage.

You can see another example of this in Next by taking a look at the barbarian class: one class feature lets you add your Constitution modifier to your Armor Class so long as you are not wearing any armor at all. So what does that mean? Is the barbarian somehow better at dodging because she is incredibly tough? No, it means that she is so tough that she is able to ignore minor wounds, ie “misses”.

Another claim is simulation. As in they do not like the idea of a character that can never miss. This kind of plays upon the previous point, but there the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is not only horrible when it comes to simulation, and hit points do not, and never have universally represented physical trauma. A fighter that takes that feature is not always hitting things. Rather her blows hammer shields so hard that it rattles her foe, or her swings force them to exert themselves trying to keep out of the way, or maybe she is just be scary as fuck swinging a giant axe.

The thing is that what hit points mean has always been dependent on context. If you are attacking an orc then to a point they represent varying degrees of exertion, combat prowess, and physical damage. If you are attacking a goblin then they are likely more representative of prowess, luck, and resolve than anything else. It is when you get into to stuff like mindless undead, elementals, or big, tough monsters that making them represent “meat” points is probably going to be more appropriate.

Here is another exercise in context: if a giant throws a rock at you and hits, do you interpret it that the rock actually struck your character? No, you would be crushed. Even if it was just a glancing blow you would at least have broken bones, something more than some damage that not only affects you in no way, but that you can walk off in a day or so. Same thing for a dragon: do you honestly think any living person would survived getting blasted by fire, or taking the brunt of a multiattack routine?

Now a huge factor is magic. For the longest time Dungeons & Dragons often two different task resolution systems for swords and sorcery (some of the time, anyway), and for some the only way for magic to seem magical is if it continues to use different rules or even ignore them entirely. Why? I have no idea: Mage: The Ascension, FATE, Numenera, 13th Age, Dungeon World, Shadowrun, and 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons all resolve tasks the same way, and I do not hear anyone making the argument that magic in those games does not seem…magical enough.

Another major trend for spells? Half damage on a miss. Not all spells do this, mind you, but enough to where people seem to get hung up and think that it should be the purview of magic for no discernible reason other than “this is how it worked before”. Some argue that it “makes sense” for area-effect spells like fireball, because you have to dodge so much–ignoring the fact that you can still somehow take half damage even in a small pit–but then is it really that much of a stretch to allow a fighter with a specific ability to force one enemy to have to “dodge so much” with a big weapon?

Finally the last argument that I found was that–despite Dungeons & Dragons have a lot of exception-based design–allowing fighters to (not really) “hit” on a “miss” will somehow onfuse players. The d20 system is built around the simple idea that you roll a d20, add some modifiers, and try to beat a number to determine success; if anything were to violate that universal truth? Well…probably nothing, because again there are already many rules exceptions built into the game:

• Elves cannot be put to sleep.
• Uncanny Dodge causing you to take no damage on a successful Dexterity save.
• Magic missile deals automatic damage (except in 4th Edition, for awhile anyway).
• Melf’s acid arrow deals half damage on a miss despite being single target spell.
• Alert prevents you from being surprised, ever.
• Mobile prevents you from taking opportunity attacks against the target you attack.
• Polearm Master allows you to make opportunity attacks against creatures that enter your reach.
• Stealthy allows you to hide when only lightly obscured.
• Goblins can hide at the end of their turn without spending an action.

There are more I am sure, but you get the idea.

So maybe people are opposed to this because they for some reason think that 4th Edition is the worst thing to happen to the game, ever. Maybe they dislike it because it was not in previous editions. Maybe despite all the other rules exceptions, abstract nature of hit points, and other reasonable explanations they do not understand it, or do not want to understand it. Ultimately it is just one ability that–fighter players have to consciously choose, mind you–is guaranteed to inflict a trivial amount of damage on a miss. It is not going to ruin encounters, or break the game.

Wandering Monsters: Demonic Doldrums

You know I cannot think of a single column of Wanderings Monsters that I have liked, or at least not one that I have regarded in a mostly favorable light. I read them, wonder why they would try pitching something so bland, confusing, uninspired, and/or that panders to previous editions for no discernible reason, and just hope that the final draft is much, much better.

Frankly I think that the flavor I cook up as a reaction to these articles is better, and I am not a professional in this industry by any stretch. Not only have these guys been in the business for years, but they have a whole team working on it, so why are the results almost always so…bleh?

Part of the problem with summoning magic is the same problem that has plagued magic in general: it is too safe and predictable (and makes no sense).

Trying to summon something from the Nine Hells or Elemental Chaos could be a big deal–it depends on what you are going for–but really never is: just wait until you get to a certain level, take a certain spell, and voila; you will always be able to reliably summon the same creature in a couple seconds, it will always listen to you barring some specific corner-case ability or effect, and once the duration elapses it will disappear whence it came (again, barring some corner-case ability or effect).

I think that how summoning magic works should vary from class to class, and if I were in charge of design wizards would unfortunately get shafted because I see them needing to spend more time than most drawing a circle, preparing ritual components, tearing open the planar fabric so that they can either attract or draw a demon through, then either bargaining with or imposing their will upon it.

How long it takes and how hard it is to get the demon to do what you want would vary by the strength of the demon. It should be easy even for a relatively green wizard to conjure up and boss around a dretch, while a babau is going to take some convincing. I would also give a bonus for taking extra time, using exceptional materials, being skilled in certain schools of magic (like abjuration), or having people helping you out.

Conversely you could eschew these things or cut corners, but then you would take a penalty to conjuring and/or containment. If classes and subclasses were flexible and not small preset bundles then you could introduce features that made you better at it, granting bonuses so that you could take shortcuts while still retaining some measure of reliability. Of course if you could still go through the motions anyway, making it do more or getting something even better.

On the topic of sacrifices, I really do not like the notion that you have to give a demon something. For low-level lackeys it might be necessary, but what about a powerful conjurer who knows truenames and has plenty of experience bending reality? Is forcing a demon to obey her through sheer force of will any different than unleashing bolts of force, reducing a giant to a toad, controlling someone’s mind, or crossing vast distances in the blink of an eye?

In my system sacrifices would not be mandatory, but could still be used to sweeten the deal (as could places of power and certain events). This is where you get groups of cultists all working together to get a powerful demon to do their bidding, often in a corrupted temple, possibly during an eclipse or at dusk, but a particularly skilled and powerful conjurer could still do it by herself sans offerings.

Finally I do not think that demon summoners and the act of summoning demons should be an intrinsically evil act. Most people probably do it for less than altruistic reasons, but you could still have exceptions, and I think that leaving those options open makes it easier on storytelling. Kind of like how some people think that all necromancy no matter what should be evil, but then you get “official” good-aligned totally-not-undead undead in Eberron. Just do us a favor and let us decide what, if anything, has to be absolutely evil.

Well that went on quite a bit longer than expected, so let us move on to gnolls.

The backstory for gnolls is that Yeenoghu gets summoned into the world, kills the people that summoned him for absolutely no reason, destroys a bunch of stuff, kills a bunch of people, and maybe gets beaten up by a halfling god. Some of the demonic hyenas get left behind and for some reason ignored, growing up to become gnolls. Also they somehow spread to other “known worlds” in the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse, because I guess Spelljammer was right all along.

Awhile back I mentioned that it is not always necessary to explain a monster’s origins, and if this is the alternative I would rather have not known.

Gnolls could be a race of hyena-like humanoids that dwell in ruined cities or gather around ancient, bloody shrines dedicated to some sinister hyena god. If anyone gets too close they just kill and eat them, so no one has learned much about them, and after while I would hazard a guess that no one wants to. They would not necessarily be evil, just territorial, but still work as antagonists for basic dungeon- or hexcrawling. Simple and straightforward.

Now if you want them to all be evil you can do that too, in a much more interesting, visible way. What if gnolls ventured forth from their ruined cities to pillage, destroy, and capture prisoners. They eat some, but not all, forcing them to fight each other for survival in bloody arenas surrounded by grinning obelisks, watched over by demonic gnoll rulers. Unfortunately the “winners” of these bloody, brutal contests, those willing to do whatever it takes to survive, are transformed into gnolls. Think the Firefly episode Bushwhacked, just a much more overt physical change.

Not working for you? How about hyena-like demons that possess humans and transform them into gnolls? The gnolls gather the necessary sacrifices, open a gate to the abyss, and allow them to possess mortals. This way you get evil gnolls that you can kill without having to think about it too much, and even better you could mix up cults of Yeenoghu with hyena-like demons, gnolls, and un-transformed humans. Think about an isolated village where humans secretly eat travelers, wield flails or claw bracers, and are lead by gnolls.

Of course nothing says gnolls have to be evil. They might be strange looking, territorial, and worship one or more strange hyena gods (some good, some evil), but otherwise have a culture, history, and varying personalities and goals. This is what I would do in a campaign setting where I wanted to allow gnolls as characters.

I do not even know what to say about Orcus‘s story. It takes place in Forgotten Realms, which has become the Naruto of campaign settings because it will never end. Actually given that it just keeps getting changed over and over with each edition despite no one doing anything remotely interesting with it, a more appropriate comparison might be Nintendo, who refuses to invent new heroes within their existing properties and just continues to keep recycling everything, sometimes adding a new gimmick.

I would like to see an Orcus backstory divorced from a specific setting, or that at least takes place in an interesting one.

Epiro: Season Finale

Cast

• Atticus (wood elf predator druid 6)
• Iola (wood elf centered breath monk 6)
• Perseus (demigod Chaladin 6)
• Nero (critically cursed evoker 6)

Outmaneuvering the hydra’s many jaws was easy enough, it was trying to punch through the stony plates that was giving Iola trouble. Still she at least proved to be a sufficient enough distraction that Atticus was able to drive a piece of ice into an opening.

There was a loud hissing as the ice melted, but the molten stone darkened as it cooled which he took to be a good sign. Seeing this Nero gathered up numerous fragments of ice in a magically conjured whirlwind, and proceeded to relentlessly shred the creature with high-velocity frozen shrapnel.

Slowed and disoriented thanks to the wind, debris, and curtains of steam it was easy for Perseus to blast one of the heads in the face with a lightning bolt. It whipped back as chunks of stone were flung away, exposing a layer of glowing, magma-like flesh which hopefully meant they were wearing it down. The fight continued for about a minute, with Iola and Atticus trying to smash and claw through stone, Nero blasting it with arcane ordinance, and Perseus using every ranged-lightning ability he had in his woefully short book.

One of the heads went down. As it crashed into the ground it exploded in a cloud of searing rock and ashes, blinding and burning everyone nearby (which happened to be most of the party). There were still three left, and unfortunately even without the deathsplosion Iola, Perseus, and Atticus were being worn down through a combination of intense heat, choking smoke, and just generally being knocked around; they had already had a full day of fighting elemental cultists and narrowly avoiding being crushed by a meteor.

By the time they had destroyed a second head Atticus went down, but with a helping, healing hand from Perseus he was back on his feet…until the next hit almost dropped him. As he limped to safety he chanced a glance skyward and saw a shape blotting out the opening far above. It was a crow. Not just any crow, but a really, really big crow. It dove, landing on one of the hydra’s heads and smashing it into the ground. It savagely pecked at it, but was forced to take back to the air in order to avoid getting a bite taken out by the other head.

His prayers to Gaia had been answered. Technically. I mean it was no stampede of animals or onslaught of floral overgrowth, but quality over quantity, right?

Quality in this case meaning size category.

Iola and Perseus hung back, using blasts of wind and the lightning-staff to attack from relative safety, while the crow darted in opportunistically to tear at the hydra with its beak and claws. Things seemed to be turning around when another head went down…until Nero saw the blood.

A small pool of golden-red blood was sliding towards the hydra. He did not know why or what would happen, just that whatever it was could not possibly be good. He tried animating small rocks to ward it away, which seemed to slow it down but not by much. Once it had almost closed the distance he turned the full brunt of his arcane whirlwind upon it. This proved much more effective, splattering it some thirty feet away, but once he saw it gathering itself up again for another go he decided that he should call for help.

Iola reacted the quickest. She was not sure what it might do if it touched her, but given that the hydra was proving too hot to handle decided to give it a shot. Or, more accurately, a kick.

She slipped.

The blood simply flowed around her and poured into the pit. Nero chased after it, but by the time he made it to the edge the blood had formed into the four-armed faceless demon that he saw when the summit was still a summit. It was extending all four of its arms through the ground, trying to pull something out. He slid into the pit, burying his axe in the creature’s back in hopes that the demon within the axe would, I dunno, drink it or something.

The axe bit in easy enough, but the demon’s face–and just the face–twisted around to stare at him, which would be unnerving enough if it had a normal face instead of a graven symbol of Tharizdun. The axe began to mentally scream in agony, and for the first time in weeks Nero was able to let go of the axe, and so he did. Then he crawled out of the pit, presumably because he expected the blood-demon to turn into some kind of super-blood-devouring demon, which by themselves are something he wanted no part of, anyway.

With the final head destroyed everyone headed into the pit, where they saw the demon slowly extracting a glowing crystal from the ground, and they knew what they had to do.

They attacked the crystal.

Iola got a few good cracks in, but it was Perseus’s lightning-staff that really did the trick, marking one of the few explosions that Nero was not only not the cause of, but was not even caught in. Fortunately even though Iola was at ground zero she still survived, albeit barely. Once they were certain that no one else was going to show up and make their day even worse, they had the crow carry them out of the pit and down the mountain to Copper Cairns, where they could rest up before dealing with the issue of the artificial winter, other elemental cults, and power vacuum left by a pantheon of dead gods.

All in a days work, right?

Behind the Scenes
This marks the only campaign that I can remember ending what I would call a satisfactory note; pretty much everything before this was a one-shot, module, or just ran until either I wrote myself into a corner, it petered out on its own, or life intervened.

Randy wanted to get in some words about our upcoming Numenera campaign, so the session was unfortunately a short one. I wanted to have the rock guy come back for a one-on-one with Perseus and maybe have Nero duke it out with the demon, but we did not have a lot of time and despite giving the characters back a daily power and some healing surges they were pretty badly beat up.

Oh well, it is still nice to wrap up a campaign on some sort of conclusive note. Maybe some day we will revisit it, or maybe I will flesh it out, polish it up, and throw it on Drivethrurpg. Maybe both? At any rate I have to say that I really do not think things would have gone smoothly as they did if I had kept going with 5th Edition, and that once we converted to 4th Edition I had an easier time planning and running the game, and the players had more fun (and more evocative characters).

Legends & Lore: Class Roles…I Mean Groups

3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons introduced the sorcerer as a kind of wizard that, like pretty much every wizard in fiction that was not based specifically on Dungeons & Dragons, was not forced to memorize/prepare her spells in advance prior to using them.

The bit of flavor on them suggested that they carried the blood of dragons, but pretty much nothing about the class backed that claim up: they were basically wizards that just managed their spells in a slightly different way, material spell components and all.

Eventually articles in various Dragon magazines and I think Unearthed Arcana allowed you to burn one or more feats in order to gain minor benefits and access to additional spells, both on a per-day basis and to your list in general. On one hand it was something, but on the other 3rd Edition characters were incredibly feat-starved: picking up the entire tree would eat up about half your feats and levels.

Thematic bloodline features were something that should have been part of the class from the get-go…which is what they did when the sorcerer made its debut in 4th Edition: each spell source gave you an assortment of class features, they had a list of spells separate from the wizard, and your spell source could affect what various spells did (meaning that you were not forced to choose certain spells, but there were benefits to sticking with a theme).

Next‘s short-lived sorcerer was actually surprising in a very good way in that, unlike many other parts of the game, it did not bear a bunch of 3rd Edition mechanics seemingly just for the sake of it. In fact I think it was way cooler than 4th Edition’s take, in particular how you would transform as you used magic. It got pulled a packet or two later, and after awhile of hoping that they were simply going to refine it discovered that it was getting rolled in with the warlock (which suffered a similar fate) as a mage subclass.

Yay…

Thankfully it sounds like that, despite some benefits, this direction was not well received.

YAY!

For some reason one of 4th Edition’s controversial additions was explicitly stating a class’s general role and, perhaps, actually enabling a class to do what it was supposed to do.

That and giving fighter’s nice things.

Some people took this to mean that they were pidgeon-holing a class, but all it really did was let you know at a glance that the class would have a marking mechanic, encounter-heal, some sort of bonus damage, or probably access to more area-effect and/or condition-afflicting powers than the rest. Many classes not only had an implied secondary role, but there were enough options—especially through subclasses, variant class features, multiclassing, hybrids, and skills powers—to really shake things up if you wanted to.

It is because of this that I like that they are going to start grouping classes in categories in concept, but their method leaves a lot to be desired:

• Warriors are masters of arms and are tougher than other characters.
• Tricksters are experts in a variety of fields.
• Mages specialize in arcane magic.
• Priests specialize in divine magic.

So in this model are paladins warriors or priests? Are rangers warriors or tricksters? Are bards tricksters or mages? Illusionists sound like they would take to the trickster label pretty well. Since for some reason the primal category is gone, where do druids fit in? Same goes for psionics.

This sounds a lot clunkier than 4th Edition’s role/power source combo, even before dual-source/role classes became a thing, so much that the only reason that I can think as to why they would ignore it is because it was a 4th Edition thing. Think about it: if each class and class feature had a set of associated keywords, aspects, or tags they could easily design magic items, feats, and other options to be applicable to precisely what they want. When new stuff comes out, just attach the appropriate keywords, or add more as necessary.

In this system paladins would be martial and divine, rangers would be martial and maybe primal if you wanted to add in some nature magic, and bards would be martial and arcane. Bard spells might have a “song” keyword, but you could also make divine songs that evoke the feel of a chant or hymn, or even primal shouts for barbarians (or just make shout its own thing). Then you could make a magical lute that works with either arcane songs, or just songs in general.

Ultimately this development has got me…tentatively intrigued by Next, because even if it is clunky and shortsighted it looks like they are taking steps to making a good game, instead of one largely shackled to legacy mechanics, just with better art.

Epiro: Episode 114

Pictured: Spoilers. Kind of. It is not as big.

Cast

• Perseus (level 6 demigod Chaladin)
• Iola (level 6 wood elf Centered Breath monk)
• Atticus (level 6 wood elf predator druid)
• Nero (level 6 human evoker)

One-hundred foot diameter rock hurtling towards your face? That would be time to leg it.

Atticus and Iola were the quickest, easily making it to the relative safety of the passage; being either an elf in cat-form or an elf capable of high-velocity wind-jumps has considerable benefits when the name of the game is speed.

Nero and the heavily-armored Perseus? Not so much.

Or rather, not at all.

The impact obliterated the temple, shattering the summit and sending pillars cartwheeling down the mountainside. Iola and Atticus were tossed about as the passage buckled and collapsed, but aside from some bruises and scrapes they were miraculously unharmed. The ground began to shudder again as a violent, deafening wind erupted from the broken summit. Then the sky darkened as the air quickly became freezing and it began to snow.

Brace yourself, magical volcanic winter is coming.

After about ten minutes the wind mostly subsided and the ground was carpeted in several feet of snow. Atticus was not affected much thanks to all the fur. Iola was used to living high up in the mountains, but not that used to it and ended up having to wrap herself in a blanket to ward off some of the cold. When they were mostly sure that nothing more disastrous would occur, they crept out and made their way back to where the summit used to be, hoping against all odds to find someone. Or at least part of them.

As they started up the stairs a scabrous, clawed arm shot out of the snow. Atticus reflexively darted over and worried it, causing the bloated demonic body it was attached to to bolt upright, bellowing in pain. It was certainly dressed like Nero but–for starters–the head had a crest of twisted horns, the skin was covered in thick, dark protrusions, and while the mouth had too many rows of teeth it was still less disconcerting than the one gaping from its distended gut.

Atticus let go, and both he and Iola just stared at the corpulent obsenity in a mixture of confusion and disgust.

Then the gut-mouth vomited up Perseus.

Then the creature slowly diminished in size until all that was left was a Medium-sized, human-looking Nero. He was feeling uncomfortable for a variety of reasons: physical trauma from all the explosions, transforming into a demon and back, spitting up the son of a god he recently killed, and standing knee deep in snow wearing tattered clothing in a region of the world where snow is not a naturally occurring thing. Could this last half-hour get any worse?

Of course it could.

Perseus stood up, covered in a sheen of demi-demon saliva, standing in the freezing cold, and struck Nero. Several times, until he teetered on the verge of consciousness. Once Nero was sufficiently battered and bloodied, he drew his sword and prepared to drive it through his skull. Nero just laid there in resignation, but after several seconds Perseus’s face turned from rage to horror. He slowly lowered the sword, the lightning flashing in his eyes faded. He then backed away before stumbling off to dry heave in the snow for a bit.

Nero picked himself up. His wounds were rapidly healing, and the axe shot him a mental “you’re welcome”. After some awkward silence the group made their way up the stairs so that they could assess the damage. The meteor was lodged within a cylinder of what looked like black ice. It was around ninety feet across and extended thousands of feet into the depths of the mountain. Cold wind was weakly billowing from it, all that remained after whatever energies it contained had been expelled into the sky.

They began climbing down. Well, not Iola and Atticus. They again had the advantage of flight and simply glided to the bottom. The walls did not afford many handholds, so despite his understandable hatred of Nero Perseus was forced to accept his assistance or risk falling. Nero tied a rope around both of them and animated a grappling hook to slowly lower them down in yet more awkward silence. Even if they had something to talk about it was pretty easy to notice as they descended that the meteor was somehow still pushing its way down, grinding away at the shaft of ice.

Perseus tried his luck some more with the lightning staff. It blew off small chunks, but they continued to hang in a slow orbit, keeping pace with the meteor’s inexorable progress. It was simply too big to destroy, so they would have to think of something else. They reached the bottom a few minutes later. As soon as Perseus’s feet touched the ground he could feel a malevolence emanating from beneath him, and Atticus’s keen senses began to detect a very faint pulse, as if the ground were alive.

Nero opened up his arcane sight to give the area a scan. He saw that the pillar was tightly wrapped in strands of abjuration, conjuration, and evocation magic, and crackled just ever so slightly with necromantic energy. He could also see waves of evocation energy being channeled into the meteor from somewhere atop the mountain’s shattered crown, which he noticed were being disrupted periodically by the gusts of wind. The air was disrupting the earth magic, which was being used to grind away a pillar of ice…uh oh.

All of a sudden Nero realized what was going on. They were standing atop a primordial that had been imprisoned directly beneath the very thrones of Olympus. The pillar that impaled it kept it inert, and was made of ice because stone probably would have not done anything and been easy for a practitioner of earth-based magic to remove once they had found it. That was where the wind came in: currents both inside and outside would have made it virtually impossible for anyone to find it. Even if they did, the wind would oppose their magic and weaken them.

But they did find it, and the last step was to apparently destroy the pillar, which would allow the primordial to recover and awaken.

So, time to plan.

Perseus considered the idea of reconstructing the pillar, but quickly dismissed it as he lacked either the power or time to found a religion and accumulate enough power to perform whatever miracle was needed in order to create it in the first place. Destroying the pillar was likewise out of the question, as they had tried that plenty of times and it would take far too long before it achieved its goal. Nero lacked the time, resources, and knowledge to cobble together a ritual to halt its progress or reassemble the pillar.

But he might be able to knock it off.

Though he did not know much in the way of abjuration, he was pretty handy with forces. With enough time he could gather enough magical energy together and release it in one focused blast to hopefully dislodge it. The downside is that he did not have enough time; the meteor would grind its way through the pillar in a matter of minutes. He would need something to supercharge the ritual, giving him a lot of energy in a short amount of time. Something that had, on several occasions, demonstrably unleashed raw, destructive power.

Were you thinking of Zeus’s lightning bolt-staff thing? Because I was.

The party? Oh no, no no no: they went with Perseus’s blood.

I guess in their defense they were not trying to travel through time.

While Nero went to work Iola kept channeling torrents of wind upwards, which as predicted slowed the meteors descent. Once everything was ready Nero released the ritual. There was a loud thoom followed by an echoing crack as a neat, circular hole was punched through the ice. The meteor shifted, there was some more cracking, and then it finally slid off to the side. It did some damage to the pillar on the way down, but it was nowhere near complete destruction.

Using his sight to check the damage, Nero noticed that the magic holding the pillar together was fraying. Nowhere near as fast as it would have with the meteor on top, but it still likely only had a week or so before it would start to melt away on its own. After much discussion the party concluded that the best course of action was to have Nero remain here and try to halt the decay, while everyone else tried to find some means of rebuilding it before it was too late. Not a likely plan, but they did not have, well, any options.

Something dropped from the opening above. It crashed into the pillar, utterly destroying it while throwing Nero back because why not. Once everyone was finished dodging massive fragments of ice they saw the rock guy, black sword and all, crawling out of the hole that the pillar had previously filled. He stood up, and the glow of the lava that had begun to fill the pit cast a sinister silhouette as his gaze fell upon Nero.

NEEEEERO!

As he began to stalk towards Nero, everyone one else intercepted, punching, slashing, and clawing to little avail. Without so much as a flinch, everyone was flung away by a wave of force. Well, everyone but Nero.

Again, NEEEEERO!

Figuring he had nothing to lose, Nero swung his axe, burying it solidly and surprisingly in rock-man’s chest. He seemed to notice only insofar as he gripped Nero’s arm to keep him from fleeing, and raised his sword for a killing blow. Perseus rushed him from behind, cleanly impaling him with his blade in a burst of lightning and divine light. To Nero’s surprise and relief he did not explode, but simply crumbled apart. His relief was short-lived when the dust cleared and he realized that the lava had grown into a four-headed lava hydra.

Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire, I suppose.

Behind the Scenes
As with A Sundered World I had been making shit up as we went along, spending my time fleshing out the plot threads that they actually followed instead of investing a large amount of time on the setting and places that they would probably never see (which I would if I made this into an actual setting). In this case they ended up in a kind of race with one of the cults of Tharizdun that were seeking out Ogremoch.

I wanted to keep the game going, but my group is chomping at the bits for Numenera and this is another advantage of plan-as-you-go (for me, anyway): it is very, very easy to write in a satisfying stopping point. Sure, we might revisit this campaign down the road, but this way I can wrap things up in a much more satisfactory way so that even if we do not we can look back and feel like the story was “finished”.

At some point I settled on the idea that each of the “gods” were basically high-level genasi crafted by the primordials, empowered by mortal prayer. Due to their connection they could not kill the primordials (it would just kill them), so they decided imprisoned them instead. This way mortal races would be preserved and make them even more powerful.

Honestly I was not sure what the heck they would find up on the mountain. I originally was going to have it that all the gods had died a long time ago, which was part of the reason that the world was falling into decline. “Mount Olympus” was going to be a smaller temple guarded by air and lightning spirits that Perseus would have to defeat in order to start manifesting lightning powers, as that is what Beth had wanted.

5th Edition made this hard to do, or at least do interestingly. I guess I would have probably made an at-will lightning attack and then some daily stuff. Once we shifted over to 4th Edition, though, it was pretty easy for her to just reskin her radiant attacks as lightning and call it good. If we had been playing 4th Edition from the start I could have also written up a Storm Scion theme, too.

Anyway we probably have just one more session before Epiro is wrapped up good and proper. If this is a kind of setting you would want to see fleshed out, lemme know in the comments. I am going to start posting up some Numenera stuff as I start creating my own slice of the Ninth World, so that will be something new for the site.

D&D Q&A: Skills & Proficiencies

Earlier this week it was revealed that skills would be part of the default game (yay!), and we even got to see the current roster (yay…). This week’s Questions & Answers follwup sheds a bit more light on the skill list, how proficiencies work, and if/how you can pick more up.

The skill list is mostly fine, though a few like Perception and Search could stand to be combined (just swap out Wisdom and Intelligence depending on the circumstance), and I can easily see something like Drive being useful if a character wants to use a chariot, like in Eberron or Dark Sun.

This is not a big deal since according to the article they will provide advice on adding, removing, and/or changing them, as well as skills based on backgrounds or story elements. They are even considering an alternate rule that allows you to create a skill using a short phrase, which seems very much like FATE‘s aspects and 13th Age‘s backgrounds, so I both approve and prefer that model.

When I originally read this article I felt that the proficiency bonus was a promising idea, because if attacks and skills had the same range of bonuses that it would be really easy to make one set of DC’s for use in and outside of combat. Additionally an established range of bonuses would make it easier to determine what the range of DC’s in general should be (probably not up to 35).

However I have since read the latest packet where the proficiency bonus is implemented, and I am not impressed with it; the bonus is not only based on your overall character level, but it uniform across the board.

This means that two characters with the same proficiency will have the same bonus throughout the campaign, differentiated perhaps only by ability score (which will ultimately account for less than half of the overall bonus, anyway). Even worse is if you pick up a proficiency later, as it is immediately set to your level-bonus, so a fighter can go from having no knowledge about magical things, to having comprehensive knowledge of it in an instant.

I, as well as many others I am sure, would rather have characters make an actual choice between increasing a skill or choosing a new one instead of having one bonus. The range of the bonus is fine, but a player should choose which one(s) to increase over time so that you get to see your character improve through deliberate choice. Also add something like skill powers to the mix.

D&D Next: The (Almost) Final Packet

Whelp, looks like this is it. Well, except for the part where they mention a packet update for the druid and a paladin oath.

Spoilers: I felt that 4th Edition was a major step forward for Dungeons & Dragons. Aside from a few legacy mechanics like per-day resources they were not afraid to change whatever they wanted to make the game better. With Next Wizards of the Coast is well on their way to making a very…adequate game. Nothing about it seems fresh or innovative, much less even interesting. It looks like a 3rd Edition clone—flaws and cluttered language and all—with some 4th Edition mechanics tacked on, just without actively referring to it whenever possible.

A lot of Next looks like they are sticking with past editions just for the sake of sticking to a past edition. Who knows, maybe down the road they will write some rules modules that will make it easy to work around these issues (or better yet just fix the core game). As I said before I am still going to keep tabs on how the game develops, and hope that they do not take the easy way out and just rehash an older edition. The silver lining is that even if they do I still have 4th Edition (and to a point 13th Age), and I fully expect 4th Edition hacks to crop up that might be improvements over it.

With that here is my breakdown of the actual packet. Really the only thing I do not talk about are spells, partially because as I have said a million times the magic system makes no sense and is boring, partially because I already played 2nd and 3rd Edition, and partially because there are a lot of them. It sucks, and there are plenty of games out there with better magic systems to choose from.

(NOTE: After reading through so many packets it is very possible that I will overlook or confuse something with material from a previous packet. Actually, given the similarities to 3rd Edition it is possible that I might even confuse something in here with that.)

Overall
I hate how things are formatted, namely features and powers. The number of times something can be used in an encounter or per day is buried in one or more paragraphs, making it easier to overlook. This was one strength of 4th Edition, where it was incredibly easy to at a glance determine the frequency, action required, and any other relevant keywords in a power, feature, or what have you. Why go with something so clunky and difficult to sort through (which is a similar issue I have with 13th Age)?

Also if you want to go “mind’s eye” with the game, then why not get rid of explicit speed and range? It would be a lot better to use distances with a slight variation to their range, like in Numenera where an Immediate speed means anywhere within 10 feet, and a Short distance is between 10 and 50 feet. You could also use 13th Age‘s rules for being engaged. All of this has the added benefit that players can still use minis as visual aids.

Races
I dislike that races only get +1 to an ability score, as it means that about half the time the bonus will not do anything, and depending on your class you might never see a benefit from it. Go with 4th Edition and 13th Age‘s +2 bonus so that you are guaranteed to get something out of it. Also, increase the ability score cap at certain levels (like, I do not know, 24 at 10th-level).

Rock gnomes can still for some reason only create up to three clockwork devices that always work for an absolute amount of time. I would think that they would just gain proficiency with a craft skill and/or tools, or have some racial knack that lets them fiddle with devices or fix them, but since this is more restrictive and makes zero sense I guess we are going with it.

Not only are humans, half-elves and half-orcs still boring, but tieflings and warforged join their ranks with their pointless and contradictory uniformity. So much for various infernal heritages and construction materials.

Not only am I very disappointed that certain races are unnecessarily categorized as universally unusual (including to my surprise gnomes, half-elves, and half-orcs), but that the designers are very careful to make sure that—likely certain groups of people—are very aware warforged come from Eberron, and dragonborn have a ridiculous background: they come from un-blessed dragon eggs.

Yep, I am serious. As a consolation to 4th Edition they put in a sentence about how in some worlds they interbreed so much that they take on a uniform appearance. As a member of the 4th Edition crowd I want to say that I prefer the unique look of them, and have said so many times. Also it is not that I want 4th Edition mechanics and flavor for its own sake, but that in a lot of cases I think that both were just plain better.

Classes
The major change to classes is the addition of proficiency bonuses for attacks, saving throws, tools, and skills. This idea sounds good in theory, but it is just a uniform bonus across the board. You do not actually get to choose what to increase, it just goes up when it says it does, even if you pick up a new proficiency down the line. A pretty big missed opportunity for giving characters some variety and choice, as well as attaching benefits for having a proficiency at a certain level.

Classes saw many features adjusted or removed but are still, as I expected, boring and rigidly defined: with few exceptions when you gain a level you just write down what the game says you get based on an arbitrary depiction of a handful of concepts, and at 3rd level you lock in the rest of the features you get.

This means that, for example, every barbarian gets Thick Hide and proficiency in Tools: Mounts (land) at 1st-level. Why do all barbarians automatically know how to ride animals regardless where they came from or what your background is? No idea. Normally I would blame a previous edition, but I do not think that was even the case in 1st Edition, so…huh.

I want to point out, again, that there are very simple games out there that let you make meaningful decisions about your character. Not even just at 1st-level, but at other levels, too. Just saying it is kind of cool to be able to actually customize things and make choices. As someone who has played a lot of 4th Edition, some Dungeon World, and read plenty of 13th Age these seem like the kind of classes you would throw together over the weekend just to have something to show.

Backgrounds & Skills
While it is nice to see skills make a comeback, unfortunately they rely on the universal proficiency bonus I mentioned above in classes. Again this misses out an a major opportunity to let players actually make choices about what skills they want to increase, as well as link special features to skill ranks, and like classes this comes across as a bit lazy.

Feats
Feats can still grant spontaneous mastery in weapons and armor regardless of your prior skill or experience, which contrasts strangely with how magical feats provide incremental benefits over the course of several feats.

Athlete and Loremaster are the only two feats that grant bonuses to Strength and Intelligence respectively. I wonder why it is just those two; it should pretty easy to whip up a feat for each ability score.

Equipment
Everything is still in gold pieces, which I guess I should not be surprised about since there has been no mention of a silver standard in a long time.

Heavy armor is now only nearly pointless since medium armor caps out at 17 with a Dexterity bonus (heavy armor can get you an 18). Still, it would be nice if heavy armor did something more to make it clearly worth your while.

The most interesting thing I noticed, aside from the lifestyle expense (which was in the previous packet) was that the orb focus lets you use your spellcasting proficiency bonus when using magic. A nice 4th Edition idea—among many—that I have missed in Next.

Magic Items
Not all magic items are bad. The +x stuff is pretty boring and I dislike charged items, but a good number have interesting capabilities; efreeti chain lets you walk in molten rock like it was solid ground. That is a lot more interesting than just a list of combat-oriented bonuses.

I think that the tables for magic item details could and should be applied to some mundane stuff; for example a “normal” sword crafted by genies might weigh half as much, while a spear could also be thrown twice as far. Barring an interesting flavor reason ould stand to see per-day powers go away, though.

Bestiary
With few exceptions most of the monsters seem basically like bags of hit points that try to hit you. The lack of an elite/solo status makes it hard to have the players deal with only one or two monsters; in my home campaign the characters were easily able to swarm and take down a “boss” within a few rounds. No tension, no dynamics, just hit him while he stands there and falls over.

Many have per-day spell-like abilities, which does not make any sense and at this point just seems lazy, as if the designers could not come up with anything new. Even Dungeon World sounds better, and it basically just tells you to use whatever, whenever.

Multiclassing
This seems pretty decent this time around. Your proficiency bonus is based on your overall character level, so you do not have to worry about falling behind as in 3rd Edition. Extra attacks seems kind of clunky, and I am not a fan of gaining all the proficiencies of the new class. There is also the issue that if you multiclass too much it can take along time to actually pick up a feat.

Epiro: Episode 112

Cast

• Atticus (level 5 predator druid)
• Iola (level 5 centered breath monk)
• Nero (level 5 human evoker)
• Perseua (level 5 human Chaladin)
• Thoros (level 5 gnome artful rogue)

After another hour or so of walking the characters found a light at the end of the tunnel. A strong wind was funneled into the passage, slowing their advance. They could see flashes of lightning, and thunder trembled through the ground and walls.

As they neared the exit they could see that it opened up onto a circular platform about one-hundred feet across that overlooked the land below. Near the edge there was a small temple with a statue that they assumed to be Zeus, what with the lightning bolt and all. Across from it a wide stairway was carved into the mountain, leading up toward the summit. Finally, and probably the most important detail, someone was waiting for them.

He had olive-skin and a shaven head that was heavily tattooed with runes. He was clad in a suit of plate armor and wore a dark cloak, because if you could say one thing about the Elemental cult–besides their proclivity for manipulating stone and hanging out with thematically appropriate denizens–is that they are not above color coordination. When they reached the exit he simply held up both hands in a gesture of peace and, shouting over the wind, asked them to leave.

Perseus said that they might leave, but wanted to first know who he was and what his plans were. To his surprise he was given straightforward answers: the man was a scion of Tharizdun that was, along with some other like-minded individuals, in the process of liberating him from Pandora’s box. Nero did not know much about Tharizdun, except that he was the thing that the rest of the evils in the box fled from when it was opened.

What was also surprising was that, after openly revealing that he was not only a servant of the bad guy, but that he was trying to free said bad guy from a god-forged prison, Perseus did turn to leave.

Maybe he thought that Tharizdun would just…scare off all the other bad things?

Confused as to why a self-proclaimed hero that had at least claimed to have fought a medusa was just walking away, Atticus stopped him and asked him why. Perseus explained that if this guy was somehow related to an ancient evil that was so ancient and so evil that the gods themselves could not kill, but merely imprison him, at least on a relative scale he was probably out of their league. Of course after a brief pep talk about courage, responsibilities, and suffering of innocents they decided to roll initiative, anyway.

Though the winds impeded their movement Atticus was still able to close the distance. He grabbed the scion and flung him towards the rest of the group. As the scion picked himself up the ground seemed to, well, flow over him. Sheathed in a thick layer of stone, he took a few swings at Atticus, clipping him. While his back was turned Perseus charged, but his sword was easily deflected. With the scion’s attention turned towards Perseus, it gave Nero enough time to slam a sphere of force square in his chest, shattering much of the stone barrier.

And then it was Iola’s turn. The winds not only did not hinder her, but seemed to empower her as she drew upon the fury of the storm around them. She channeled it into a lance of hurricane force that launched the scion some thirty feet away. It was pretty impressive, though her friends might have appreciated it more if the force of the blast had not also sent them sprawling. At least it momentarily reduced the winds to a nice breeze.

A wave of stone surged from the ground, crashing into Perseus and engulfing him in a crushing embrace. In its wake stood a female gnome, with long, braided hair and eyes that looked like citrines. She did not move, but stood her ground and surveyed the battlefield, her eyes scanning independently of each other. Thoros, wanting to pick on someone his own Size category, flung a dagger at her, but it barely scratched her skin.

Hoping to free Perseus, Atticus leapt at the elemental, but all he was able to do was pry a few stones loose. It was still better than when he went after the gnome: his claws and fangs could not even make a mark, and she did not even seem to acknowledge being gnawed on. The stone “armor” from the scion peeled up over his legs and body, and down his arms, compacting into a pair of small spheres that he launched at Atticus. Though only one hit it was enough to knock him to the ground, writhing in agony.

Perseus struggled against the elemental’s grip but was unable to wrench himself free. Or breathe. He eventually resigned himself to praying to his father for aid, and just as he was about to black out a bolt of lightning lanced out of the sky. It struck the elemental, blasting him free without harming him in the slightest.

Iola reveled in her new found power. She darted about, easily dodging the elemental to go after the gnome. The gnome still did not move, and it felt like she was striking a stone wall. Nero decided to take a crack at her next, channeling a wave of thunderous energy through his fist as he swung. She shifted every so slightly, deflecting his blow and striking him in the arm.

Having learned their lesson by proxy Atticus and Perseus decided to keep their distance from the gnome, focusing instead on the elemental, while Iola tried her odds with the scion. She conjured up a cyclone of wind that focused the entirety of the surrounding storm into one point. It tore the platform to shreds, flinging stone about and the scion over the cliff.

The battle finally turning in their favor, the platform violently shook as it began to pull away from the mountain. The elemental seemed to “dive” underground, while the gnome continued to stand there. Iola pushed the cyclone into Thoros, launching him to the safety of the stairs, while Nero managed to catapult himself with a downward-aimed thunderwave. Everyone else just used good old-fashioned legwork to leap to safety.

They hunkered down on the steps to rest for a bit before finishing their trek up the summit. It was surrounded by a ring of fluted pillars topped with an elaborately decorated entablature. Similarly decorated stone thrones formed a ring inside the pillars. A dark-robed figure stood at the center, flanked by a pair of elementals. He was holding a black sword that he pointing it at a someone lying on the ground: his skin was cloudy white, and vibrant gold patterns lightly pulsed over his skin.

It was Perseus’s father.

Behind the Scenes
Another fun session with evocative, dynamic combat. I was happy that I was able to leave it on a cliffhanger, especially since Beth had been waiting to see if/how her character’s father would feature into the game. I had planned on ending the game in another handful of sessions, but…who knows, I am starting to think of more stuff. I might be able to keep it going longer than I thought.

One thing I love about 4th Edition is that it is really, really easy to make mechanics that evoke a concept.

The scion was normally a melee beater. He could use a Minor action to give himself temporary hit points (stone armor), but could expend it to make a powerful ranged attack. This gave players a choice: tough it out in melee, or risk getting hit with a nasty ranged attack. They could also try using daze/stun effects to force him to choose between attacking or replenishing his stone shield.

The gnome was also pretty powerful in melee: she had an Immediate Interrupt attack when struck in melee, and when she did not move gained weapon resistance. This made ranged attacks, especially magic ones, useful against her…which was why I also made it so that if a magic ranged attack missed her by a wide enough margin that she could redirect it into someone else.

D&D 4E: Seekers of the Sand

In an effort to try and get paid for my efforts I finally put something up on Drivethrurpg today (technically yesterday, but it was not approved until today): Seekers of the Sand.

It is a collection of “desert”-themed evocations for the seeker–because I know everyone is chomping at the bits for more seeker stuff–that fill up your Heroic tier selections, along with a paragon path if you go past that point, and some magic items to round everything out.

It runs five bucks, because when it was about half as long someone I showed it to said that they would pay that much if I added more stuff, so I did. It did not reflect the cost of me Photoshopping my own cover. That luxury is free.

Lemme know what you think. Hopefully it is worth the cash and I did a good job balancing them against existing powers (there is a 3-page preview, so you can check out almost half of it for free). I have some other thematic stuff in mind for other classes, so if this is something that interests the 4th Edition crowd that would be good to know.

Star Wars As Lovecraftian Horror-Fantasy

I mentioned in my review of Edge of the Empire that I know of Star Wars, but am not really a fan of it. Gamma World came out some three years ago, and I have on occassion thought of running a campaign by taking the Star Wars universe, and cramming everything onto one planet.

In this setting alien species would either be mutants or actual aliens from other worlds or dimensions, while planets would be represented either as geological regions or locations; Tatooine would be a desert, Hoth a frozen wasteland, Dagobah a swamp, Naboo an island chain, Coruscant a bit city, etc.

While playing The Old Republic another thought occurred to me while I watched my jedi smack humanoid-sharks with a sci-fi bokken (that apparently everyone has): why bother with the sci-fi elements at all? Also, what if the world was the battleground for numerous aberrant stars vying for control (making the name Star Wars a literal thing)?

The high concept is a…relatively nightmarish world where mortal races get caught up in the conflict between the denizens of various otherwordly entities, giving rise to many bizarre creatures that you would expect to see from Star Wars, like those aforementioned shark-people or gungans.

Just kidding, even Cthulhu has limits.

If you want to use some 4th Edition flavor, the Feywild could be a major player (though it could have also been destroyed).

In this setting the Jedi would be an order designed to instruct people on the proper usage of psionics (aka, the Force), which in most cases can cause insanity to those “gifted” with it that go untrained, the Sith would be those that have been corrupted by elder gods, lightsabers could be psi-blades, spaceships become airships, and various types of warforged take the place of droids.

Hyperspace would be a method of travel by which travelers exploit distortions in space and time due to the Far Realm encroaching on the world. The Death Star could be a kind of gate intended to allow an elder god to enter the world, or a weapon to destroy the prison of one. Maybe the world is a prison, and it is designed to destroy it? Maybe it will only annihilate all life to pave the way for a new race of an elder god’s design?