Archive for the ‘4e D&D’ Category

dragons in 5e

Monday, June 11th, 2012

2 consecutive tweets from my twitter feed:

 

Rodney Thompson (@wotc_rodney) 10h
RIP, Sooty Rediron, my dwarf rogue who was just melted by an acid breath weapon. The first true casualty of @rjschwalb’s #dndnext playtest.
Bruce Cordell (@BruceCordell) 10h
My dwarf fighter Kormak hovers at -13 hp. It’s possible our 2nd level party shouldn’t’ve fought this green dragon. #DnDNext

The green dragon is breathing acid instead of poison! 5e speculation: Every dragon has swapped breath weapons with another. The Red Dragon’s breath weapon is now a line of blinding light (once belonging to the crystal dragon), and the black dragon has taken over the yellow dragon’s breath weapon: salt water.

(Oh man, there are so many B-list breath weapons: hot sand. inebriation gas. shrink ray. apathy gas.)

The speculation is a joke, but the tweets are real. Also for real, I have actually fought dragons in 5e.

I rode Rory’s coattails into the Friends and Family 5e playtest program that preceded the open playtest. There were more monsters in that F+F bestiary, including white and blue dragons. (Don’t be too jealous: the D&D version I played in that early ruleset was much worse than the one we’ve seen in the open playtest. Which means that playtesting is working.)

Like Rodney Thompson and Bruce Cordell, our group was destroyed by the dragon we fought. In that old snapshot of 5e, at least, dragons were TOUGH.

When the white dragon was spotted in the sky, my fifth-level witch wizard, Nelf, crouched on top of a tower, far from the rest of the party. I’d be able to get a fireball off, and, I reasoned, the dragon would rather swoop down and blast the other four party members at once than waste a turn killing one paltry wizard. I was wrong.

My fireball did a lot of damage and got the dragon’s attention. White dragons don’t like fireballs. It changed course and landed next to me on the tower. I’d buffed myself with Resist Energy (Cold), but it didn’t matter, because the dragon launched into a claw/claw/bite routine. I went from full hit points to dead in less than six seconds, and I didn’t even get the dignity of death by breath weapon.

Chewing meditatively on my head, the dragon swooped down on the rest of the party. It unleashed its cone of icy breath. The party died.

The fact that my wizard’s quick death wasn’t a comic freak – that even the party fighters could be flash-frozen in a single round – was, I have to admit, oddly comforting.

But it was a cold comfort.

i really WANT to look at the medusa

Friday, June 8th, 2012

The medusa is the figurehead monster for the Good Ship Argument About Save-or-Die Effects. Some people don’t want their character killed by a single failed saving throw, and others argue that if a medusa doesn’t turn onlookers into stone, it’s not a medusa.

The 5e playtest includes a medusa in its bestiary. In this version, gazing upon a medusa is a save-or-die effect, but an optional one; you can always choose to avert your eyes as you fight.

I found this quote in Greg Keyes’ The Charnel Prince: it’s about the gaze of another monster, a basilisk, but it’s worded in such a way that it’s practically game rules.

“They have two blind men with them,” he said. “They serve as its handlers. The rest walk behind. The cage is like an aenan lamp, closed on all sides but one. It makes a light, this thing, and once you have seen it, you can resist only through the greatest contest of will.”

A contest of will? Like a will save? That’s actually a kind of unique mechanic for a turn-you-to-stone monster, which usually attacks fortitude. Say on, Dungeon Master Greg Keyes: how does a basilisk’s gaze force a Will save?

And he saw a light suffusing the landing. It was beautiful, golden, the most perfect light he had ever seen. A promise of absolute peace filled him, and he knew that he could not live without seeing the source of that light.

This is a fun variation on the basilisk/medusa: you see something out of the corner of your eye that’s you know you shouldn’t look at, but you want to. It’s a good excuse to give people two saving throws: a will(/wisdom) save to let them tear away their gaze, followed by a fortitude(/petrification/constitution) save to resist petrification. Personally, I don’t like save-or-die effects, but I don’t actually mind save-or-save-or-die effects.

This effect not only makes the old-school save-or-die medusa less deadly, it could be used to make the 5e medusa more deadly. While you’re fighting that medusa with your eyes averted, you can’t help seeing little glimpses of something – a beautiful light, perhaps, or an angelic face. For some characters, maybe medusa cleavage is all it takes. Every round that you fight with your eyes averted, you need to make an easy will/wisdom save. If you fail, you gaze upon the medusa.

Greg Keyes’ quote also contains another cool idea: an army of blind men who carry a basilisk’s eye (or medusa’s head, or ark of the covenant) before them as a totem. A mercenary company of blind warriors with such a weapon would be quite powerful, although they wouldn’t work very well with allied troops.

Have I seen this idea somewhere else – maybe an Elric book or something? No matter, it’s worth stealing anyway.

jurgen’s rituals

Friday, June 1st, 2012

After writing 99 rituals to gain power over fey creatures, I probably don’t need any more, but I can’t resist collecting them.

James Branch Cabell’s novel Jurgen is a weird combination of picaresque and high fantasy that takes the usual conceit of the picaresque, “every level of society is absurd and corrupt”, and it extends it to fairyland, heaven, hell, and other planes of existence. I think the book might have a Message, but I was too busy taking notes on the rituals needed to overcome supernatural creatures.

And the notary’s wife followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his tongue: but the notary’s wife struck thrice with her wand, and the silent beast left them.

Characters might learn that being struck thrice with a wand of, say, ash, causes hellhounds to flee. Three strikes requires three melee hits, so there will be an interesting tension between this and the fact that three sword hits might just kill the creature. Of course, the math is different if three strikes with the wand causes the hellhound to SERVE the striker.

The voice of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously changed voice. “There is a cross about your neck. You must throw that away.” Jurgen was wearing such a cross, through motives of sentiment, because it had once belonged to his dead mother. But now, to pleasure his wife, he removed the trinket, and hung it on a barberry bush; and with the reflection that this was likely to prove a deplorable business, he followed Dame Lisa into the cave.

In this circumstance, Jurgen is forced to give up what’s obviously a potent protection in order to enter a magical realm. This is the type of decision that monsters may well try to force on PCs. What if you can’t enter the vampire’s castle unless you leave your holy symbol at the door?

“If this Thragnar has any intelligence at all and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will presently be at hand.”

“Even so, he can do no harm unless we accept a present from him. The difficulty is that he will come in disguise.”

“Why, then, we will accept gifts from nobody.”

“There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar. For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a detection and a hindrance.”

Two great fairy rituals here. Accepting gifts from someone is an obvious way to put yourself into their power, so you’re probably best off if you never accept gifts or food while in fairyland.

I also like the fact that the creature will always concede to your denials. It’s a quirk that could give personality to a conversation. Even if the PCs don’t know about the weakness beforehand, it’s the kind that they might be able to figure out.

the trapmonkey cleric: basing perception checks on wisdom

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

5e says that it is going to make attributes more important than skills: if you want to open a door, you roll your Strength. If you want to notice something, you roll your Wisdom.

This really highlights the fact that Perception has been a problem since early D&D, when it was briefly its own attribute. That’s not a great solution, but the 3e+ solution, making it a skill based on Wisdom, is not great either. It’s strange when the cleric is the best member of the party for finding secret doors and noticing ambushes.

This issue was less central in 3e and 4e, where skill points and training bonuses could be used to shore up the Wisdom shortcomings of alert rogues and rangers. But in a system where perception checks are made by a more-or-less unmodified use of your Wisdom stat, we’ll find ourselves in a world where clerics and paladins are scouting ahead of the party to look for traps.

To decide how to deal with perception, I think we should think about what classes we expect to make difficult Perception checks. I think that the best watchmen in the party should be rogues, with their trap sense; rangers, with their keen eyes; and barbarians, with their feral alertness. Clerics should be solidly middle-of-the-pack.

Based on this class-down design, it actually makes sense for perception skills to be folded under the Dexterity attribute. In most editions, rogues and rangers usually have high dexterity. Barbarians can sometimes get away without high dexterity, but they shouldn’t: warriors who wear only loincloths had better be quick.

It’s a bit of a conceptual stretch to jam sharp ears and keen eyes under Dexterity. It might help to rename “perception” to something like “alertness” or “quick wits” that does a better job of implying speed and subtlety.

Moving perception-based skills to Dexterity doesn’t really solve the base problem, which is that perception doesn’t really go with any of the six attributes. It does, however, better model people’s expectations about what characters are good at what.

The other solution? Go OD&D. Get rid of Perception checks altogether. If people are searching a room, ask them where they are searching. If they listen at doors, or try to ambush enemies, give everyone a static 33% chance of success (maybe more if they’re an elf). At least this approach dethrones the hyper-vigilant cleric.

Portable hole, leveled

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
This entry is part 11 of 13 in the series wondrous items, leveled

Portable hidey hole: This is just like a Portable Hole, but a creature may enter the portable hole and seal it up behind them. Every day, the creature must make a Stealth check with a +10 bonus which is used against all Perception checks. A creature in the hole may make Perception checks at a -10 penalty to hear what’s going on outside.

My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but we don’t yet have lots of examples.

While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

Inside the hole it is cramped and dark, with enough air for one Small or Medium creature with no fire. It is possible to eat and perform other quiet activities inside the hole. Loud activities will grant perception checks to nearby creatures.

Portable hobbit halfling hole: This portable hole is not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it is a halfling hole, and that means comfort.

Notch’s Portable Mine Shaft: At the bottom of this Portable Hole is an unusually soft stone surface that, with proper mining tools, can be tunneled through quickly but loudly, in any direction, at a rate of 1 foot/hour. Tunnels and shafts can be excavated up to a maximum distance of 15 feet from the portable hole. If a tunnel breaks through into an area of open air in the real world, the digger can step through into that space. When the portable hole is removed from the surface, all tunnels are removed and the original surface is unharmed.

Kickstarter reward progress!

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

I’ve been working hard in the random dungeon mines, mining random dungeons! I’ve got a few bits and pieces to show you.

First, here’s a small version of the Random Dungeon poster file I sent to the printers:

All the backers will eventually get a big PDF of this, and most of you will get one, two, or more paper copies as well. The printer schedule is later than I’d like: I’m still hoping for late April delivery. We’ll see. I’d planned for the poster to be available for WOTC’s reprintings of the First Edition books. It looks like WOTC has pushed the reprints to June, so even if I’m late, I’ll still beat them.

I’m working hard on all the other backer rewards too! I’ve got a lot of draft versions of things: I’ll show you some samples of what’s coming.

Dungeon Robber: I spent all this weekend playtesting Dungeon Robber, the solo board game played on the poster. (As a reminder, everyone who donated $5+ will get a PDF of Dungeon Robber.) Here’s a sample table from the Treasure section:

USELESS ITEMS TABLE (roll 1d6)
1: Bad Art. Heavy. You are convinced it is worth 500 GP and will carry it in preference to any Heavy treasure of lesser value. You will only drop it if you are fleeing from a monster; while carrying it, you will not flee if you are at full health. If you get it out of the dungeon, you’ll be unable to sell it. Still, you’re convinced it’s a masterpiece. You’ll keep it in your house, and no one will ever appreciate it like you do. High Wisdom: You recognize this item as worthless and leave it where it is.
2: Moldy clothes. They’re worth 1gp, but when you pick them up, you must save or take 1d4 damage.
3: Flawed weapon. It does 1d6 damage, and breaks the first time you hit with it. Worth 1gp.
4: Spoiled food. You can only throw away spoiled food if you’re being pursued by a nonintelligent monster, and you’ll throw away good food first. If you leave the dungeon with it, you get sick for 1d6 days, during which time you will not heal hit point damage. Worth 0gp. High wisdom: You recognize this food as spoiled and leave it where it is.
5: 1d20 cp.
6: 1d20 sp.

And here are 9 ways I died while playtesting:

  • After killing two skeletons and finding a 500 GP piece of jewelry, I was killed by a third skeleton. Stupid skeletons!
  • I used a Charm spell to gain a troglodyte henchman, but then we were both killed by an arrow trap.
  • Unarmed, I was pursued by a kobold. I was trapped and slaughtered in a dead end.
  • On level 3, I was crushed by a falling-door trap.
  • My level-one dungeon robber found himself lost on level 8, through an unfortunate succession of chutes and elevator rooms. I managed to find the stairs to level 7, where I was paralyzed and eaten by a carrion crawler.
  • After a successful dungeon run where I romped down to level 3 and came home with 500 GP, I went back in the dungeon and was killed on level 1 by a kobold.
  • Delved to level 3, where I ran from a bandit. He cornered me in a dead end, and in desperation I attacked him with my flawed short sword. I killed him with a critical hit, but my sword broke. I quickly headed for the exit, but I was killed on level 1 by a skeleton.
  • Fell in a pit with closing walls. Because I was wearing plate mail and I refused to drop my heavy stone coffer full of nigh-worthless copper coins, I was unable to climb out before the walls crushed me.
  • Took my 5th-level thief down to level 8, snuck up on and killed a su monster and manticores, and fought, sneaked, and fled my way back upstairs with 10450 cp, 3300 sp, 5000 gp, 700 pp (6,834 GP total), and only 2 hp left. A few rooms away from the stairs, I fell in a spiked pit and died.

    Conclusion: The most dangerous place in the dungeon is level 1 when you’re returning with treasure!

    Interactive version of the poster: Haven’t started on this yet. Eventually, $5+ backers will get it.

    All-Star Dungeon Master book: $17+ backers will get this PDF containing adventures and rules from heavyweight DMs Mike Shea, Mike Mornard, Tracy Hurley, Tavis Allison, Jared von Hindman and James Maliszewski. James Mal has shared with me a rough draft of level 1 of Dwimmermount: as a preview, I’ll send that separately to you $17+ backers. Players from my campaign, DON’T LOOK! Actually, go ahead: it will do you little good, now that we’re on LEVEL TWO of Dwimmermount!

    D&D Stickers! $22+ backers are all getting a sheet of 20 stickers by various awesome artists. The guy at Stickeryou.com was so excited about how the stickers looked that he sent me a blurry photo from his cameraphone of them on the assembly line. It doesn’t do them justice, so I’ll wait to show you a scan of the actual stickers. But, on a related note…

    Virtual Table tokens! If you’re getting stickers, you can also get WOTC Virtual Table versions of all the stickers as hero and monster icons. Most of the icons are cropped portraits of the original stickers. Here are a few!

    Paul’s DM Notebook: This is an ever-growing reward for $22+ backers: I keep on thinking of things to add. Here are two pages from my current draft (click for PDFs):

    That’s where I am right now. I’m going to keep working on every reward until it’s time to put posters in tubes!

  • new category of magic item: magical map

    Monday, April 16th, 2012

    At the foot of the little rise there was a map of the world, carte du monde, mappamondo, karte der welt, with the countries marked on it in brilliant colors. I knew that if I wanted to go anywhere, from Angola to Paphlagonia, all I had to do was put my foot on the spot.

    This quote from Sign of the Labrys got me thinking about how few magical maps there are in D&D. (Between proofing my Random Dungeon poster and working on my stretch-goal board game rules, I’m in a mappy place right now anyway.)

    Maps are very important to the play of OD&D. Graph-paper maps are the primary archaeological product of an old-school D&D game, along with empty Mountain Dew bottles. Furthermore, in-game maps (treasure maps) are a big part of OD&D treasure. Nevertheless, there are virtually no magical maps. There might be one or two in splatbooks, but I don’t think any core Dungeon Master’s Guide has ever featured a magical map. (The 1e DMG, on the other hand, has four different magical periapts.)

    Contrast this with computer games. A magical map is one of the ubiquitous items in computer RPGS: so common that it’s part of the user interface. Nearly every game comes with an auto-map. I’m splitting hairs here a little: I know that, within the fiction of the game, most auto-maps represent the cartographic efforts of the main character. Still, if you’ve played old games like The Bard’s Tale where you did your own mapping on graph paper, auto-maps feel pretty darn magical.

    Here are some magical maps for D&D. They join a proud tradition of D&D’s brilliant “you now have permission to ignore the rules” magic items. They don’t really give the players new powers: they enable a free-and-easy play style that some prefer. Don’t like encumbrance? Have a Bag of Holding! Don’t like tracking light sources? Everburning torch!

    Along with each magic map are notes about what play style it might support.

    AUTOMAP PAPER

    Automap paper looks like ordinary paper until a drop of ink is applied to it. The ink will crawl of its own accord, drawing a small overhead map view of the PC’s current location. If the PCs are inside a structure, the picture will be scaled so that the entire floor of the building could be drawn on one sheet of paper. If the PCs are outside, it will be scaled so that the entire island or continent can be drawn. Detail level will be appropriate to the scale.

    Once the map has been started, it will automatically update itself whenever it’s in a new location. It can’t map while it’s inside a container: it needs to be held in a hand or otherwise out in the open.

    Players can draw annotations on the map if they like.

    Using automap paper in a game: Start a campaign for a new-school D&D group (3e or 4e) and make them map the dungeons. If they haven’t done so before, every group should map a few dungeons. However, not every campaign is dungeon-crawl focused, and so, once the players have run the gauntlet a few times, let them find a sheaf of, say, 50 sheets of automap paper. From then on, let the players peek at your DM map if they ever get lost. This strategy goes with the general progression of level-based games: start with lots of restrictions, and slowly lift them.

    This item also works well in games where the DM draws out the important locations on a battlemat.

    Because every magical item should have a leveled version, here are some improved versions of Automap Paper:

    Architect’s Map: This superior version of automap paper is blue, and requires white chalk to activate it instead of ink. It draws a whole dungeon level at once, without requiring you to visit each part, and automatically shows hidden and concealed doors, as well as any trap that was built as part of a building’s original construction.

    Using the Architect’s Map in a game: Give the PCs a copy of the DM map. It’s up to them to track their journey and to notice your notations for traps and secret doors. While automap paper can be given freely to PCs, an Architect’s Map might be a limited resource: players might find 1d4 sheets at a time. An architect’s map is especially good when you don’t mind letting the players making informed decisions about where to go.

    Living Map: This is the Harry Potter version of the automap. It uses moving dots of ink to represent all living things on the map. A cluster of 10 hobgoblins might look like one large dot, and be indistinguishable from five hobgoblins, or from a dragon.

    Using the Living Map in a game: Like the Architect’s Map, this should be an expendable resource. It’s handy in an ordinary dungeon: it’s nice to be able to check the map to see if there’s an ambush behind the door. It’s even more useful for heist, stealth, or chase adventures. It’s a nice magic item for groups that like to outthink obstacles instead of killing everyone in their way: in other words, give it to your Shadowrun group when they’re playing D&D for a change. Keep in mind that a single piece of map paper only graphs one floor. If a creature goes upstairs, it’s off the map.

    Travel Map: If a character touches a point on this automap, he or she will instantly travel to that location. Keep in mind that the automap only charts visited places, so a character cannot use it to travel somewhere new. Also, a travel map can only teleport a single player: since the map travels with the player, it can’t be used for party travel.

    This map’s special properties are only available if its owner is in the mapped area: in other words, a player can’t use a travel map of a dungeon to teleport into the dungeon. He or she may only teleport from one point in the dungeon to another.

    This map is especially useful as an outdoor map: travel between cities is usually more time-consuming and difficult than travel between different rooms in a dungeon.

    Using a travel map in a game: A single piece of travel map paper, used as a continental map, can expedite the kind of fast-travel used in most computer RPGs. The first time you go somewhere, you have to go there the hard way. Once you’ve been there, you can hand-wave any future travel to or from that location. A single travel map allows a single character to take intra-continental jaunts, allowing for lots of communication and resupply options; more useful fast travel requires enough maps for the whole party. A pack of travel-map paper is a pretty good find for a high-level party which is outgrowing wilderness adventures.

    A fun trick: Don’t let the players know that their map is of the “travel map” variety. Watch the players during the game. When someone touches a spot on the map to make a point, tell everyone that that player’s character has disappeared.

    Sarah Darkmagic joins the party

    Friday, March 30th, 2012

    I’m pleased to announce that Tracy Hurley (sarahdarkmagic.com) is helping me out with a new backer reward. If we hit $20k, she’ll join Mike Shea and Mike Mornard as DMs who are providing exclusive dungeon adventures to $17+ backers.

    Sarah Darkmagic is the writer of the “Joining the Party” column on the official D&D website and also one of D&D’s few Important Bloggers: people whose opinions absolutely should influence the future of D&D. I’m proud and humbled to have another all-star help me out with my little project.

    One of Tracy’s coolest new projects is her upcoming Prismatic Art kickstarter: “In geek culture, there are plenty of Lukes, but not enough Landos or Leias.” She’s looking for female and ethnically diverse artists and art.

    This is an overdue project, and I wish I could contribute art! I don’t qualify, and I must admit, my art often falls short in that department. For instance, when asking artists to help me with my sticker backer reward, I made sure to include more than 50% women artists. Then I went ahead and contributed this sticker:

    dwarves are from the shadowfell

    Thursday, March 29th, 2012

    In 4e cosmology, elves are the natural-world descendants of the eladrin of the Feywild. The Feywild is the bright counterpart of the Shadowfell, the land of death.

    Ever since the rivalry between Legolas and Gimli, dwarves have been foils for elves. So what if dwarves descend from the Shadowfell?

    It kind of makes sense. Dwarves are underground creatures who spend their time fighting the encroaching darkness. THAT’S WHAT THEY DO FOR FUN. That and build tombs and worship ancestors. And they are dour. So dour.

    So let’s say that, long ago, the ancestors of the dwarves migrated from the Mountains of the Shadowfell. They established themselves in the mines and caves of the natural world, fighting goblins and kobolds instead of whatever dark shadowfell creatures they used to battle.

    Does the Shadowfell still contain the Ancestors – the dwarven equivalent of eladrin? Maybe.

  • The Ancestors might now be enslaved to some powerful shadow creature: that long-ago flight to the natural world might have been a slave rebellion.
  • Or they might be taller, more graceful and more sinister than regular dwarves, with strange powers to walk through earth and stone, and with darker greeds.
  • They might be extinct. The story of dwarven civilization seems to be one of decay. Maybe some forgotten dwarf tunnels lead to the old Shadowfell palaces, more cunningly worked than any modern dwarven architecture, now abandoned to ghosts and balrogs and whatever else doomed the Ancestors.
  • Dungeon poster kickstarter at 250%! More swag for everyone!

    Monday, March 12th, 2012

    Wow, we’ve hit two bonus goals in two days! That means

    STICKERS! $22+ backers are getting 1e dungeon-inspired stickers by various artists!

    Some really great artists have agreed to do stickers; with the quality of the art we’ll see, this really should be a D&D stickers kickstarter with a poster thrown in as a bonus reward.

    PAUL’S DM NOTEBOOK: $22+ backers are getting a print copy of Paul’s DM notebook, which will contain settings, adventures, and art. Everyone who donates at least $5 will get a PDF copy as well. (I had announced that I was giving the PDF to $22+ backers only, but I think the $5 and $17 tiers deserve some swag too.)

    The DM notebook will start with sections about the city of Setine and about the ratling race. Every time we get another $1000, I’ll add a new section. Here’s a tentative schedule for new notebook sections, arranged from low-level to high-level:

    $6k: Running a Picaresque Game
    $7k: Wilderness Adventures
    $8k: D&D In Fairyland
    $9k: Notebook Of the Planes
    $10k: How to Run a Barony

    This will give me time to think of a really cool bonus reward for ten thousand dollars!