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99 rites of fairy creatures

Monday, December 12th, 2011

All fey creatures have a secret weakness rite – roll d100 on this table – and a secret strength rite – roll d100 on this table. If you accidentally perform a fairy’s secret weakness rite, you gain power over it – it is “beholden to you”, as they say. If it tricks you into performing its secret strength rite, you are beholden to it. Any fey creature’s rites can be learned with very hard arcana checks.

Fey creatures will expect one service or truth from creatures under their power. Fey in such a relationship will never attack each other.

Mortal beings tend not to understand these relationships, and may not honor the rules of service. Even mortals, though, feel the power of fey rites. A mortal beholden to a fairy creature, or a fairy creature beholden to a mortal, has a -4 to all skill checks and attack rolls against the master.

Even eladrin and elves have a weakness rite and strength rite, although most do not know it. Any mortal who drinks the emerald wine of the archfey gains a weakness and strength rite.

99 RITES OF FAIRY CREATURES
1 threaten to pick its one secret flower in all the world
2 surround it with water
3 weave a circle round it thrice
4 taunt it until it swells up to three times its size
5 carry it across a river in a bag over your shoulder
6 catch it bathing
7 wash its clothes in midnight’s blood
8 jump over it on deerback
9 act bored by everything exciting it says or does
10 find a bribe for its beetle butler
11 find its true feet
12 open the smallest door in its house
13 bring either a message or meal from its wife or husband
14 strike it with mistletoe
15 find the nest containing its babies
16 prick it with a thorn
17 make it taste honey
18 give it a clump of earth
19 draw its portrait
20 catch its reflection in a mirror
21 weave it a cloak
22 drink its tears
23 capture its mother
24 catch it in a lie
25 force it to admit it doesn’t know
26 heal its injury
27 boil it in a cauldron
28 step on a clover
29 listen to the birds’ advice about it
30 start every sentence with last word it said
31 call it by the wrong name
32 find a bat with its name
33 answer its riddle
34 beat it in a wrestling match
35 carry its heavy bundle of firewood
36 plant a seed ahead of and behind it
37 get its signature
38 drink dew from its footprint
39 sing a song it thinks no one can repeat
40 say a sentence it cannot rhyme (not orange, the fey made up the word “forange” to foil that tactic)
41 figure out its other form
42 owe it a debt of silver
43 pay its debt to someone else
44 tell it three different accurate names for yourself
45 control a fire it lit
46 dance to its tune
47 kiss it
48 sleep with it
49 walk behind it for a league of its choosing
50 walk widdershins around it
51 refuse a request thrice
52 get it to refuse 3 small favors
53 accept water from it
54 eat food it offers
55 steal its belt
56 throw a daisy chain over it
57 touch it with cold iron
58 behead it, then let it behead you
59 give it your hat
60 give it a silver coin
61 sip water from its cupped hands
62 draw a drop of its blood
63 pluck a rose from its house or hair
64 kneel before it while it stands
65 share an apple with it
66 walk on 9 of its footsteps in a row
67 dance with it in a circle
68 meet its eyes in a reflection
69 catch its breath in a box
70 swim after it
71 keep up in a race, neither winning nor losing
72 fall asleep while it wakes
73 wear a silver necklace
74 stand as godfather to its children
75 be blessed by a god
76 follow it dawn to dusk
77 repeat 3 phrases in a row
78 follow it home
79 find something it wants
80 call it king/queen
81 have it at weapon’s point
82 find its missing button
83 dance on its heart
84 convince it that it is ugly
85 give it a haircut
86 show it another creature that looks like it
87 sleep inside its mouth
88 herd its sheep for a day
89 name a real name it has never heard
90 step on its hand or catch its foot
91 let it dance around a hill under which is buried your name
92 point to its location on a map
93 lure it into your mouth with sugar cubes
94 touch it with an eggshell
95 ruin its hat
96 wash it clean
97 get it to believe you are a rooster
98 carry its head in a cedar box
99 beat it at a game 99 times in a row
00 roll again

Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

Striker bonuses for every class!

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

A D&D party hard at work deciding where to try out their new striker bonuses to damage.

I recently wrote about how monsters take more hits to kill at higher levels and offered some solutions. Instead of (or in addition to) lowering monster hit points, you could use the following system to boost the damage output of every class. This essentially gives every class a bonus striker role, while increasing the damage output of strikers even more.

PC Damage: PCs now get damage bonuses based on their role.:

  • Grit (Defenders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a defender hits  a creature that is marked by them or in their defender’s aura with an attack power, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
  • Precision (Controllers): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a controller targets a creature with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage against the targeted creature. The damage is applied whether they hit or miss. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d6. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d6.
  • Empathy (Leaders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a leader heals or grants temporary hit points to themselves or an ally on their turn, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to a creature they hit with an attack power. Alternatively, once per turn when a leader hits with an attack power, they may grant an ally they can see a +1d8 bonus to their next damage roll until the end of that ally’s next turn. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
  • Expertise (Strikers): Starting at level 6, once per turn strikers may add +1 die to the extra damage dice they do as part of their class abilities, such as the rogue’s sneak attack (so at level 6 a rogue would do +3d6 sneak attack damage instead of +2d6). If the striker has no extra damage dice as part of their class abilities, once per turn when they hit with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2 dice of damage. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3 dice of damage.

This change increases everyone’s damage to keep up with disproportionately rising monster hit points. It also rounds out striker damage a bit so that proportionately they are doing a bit less damage versus other PCs. With this change, a striker might go from doing twice the damage of a PC to merely 50% more damage or so.

With this increase in damage, it might make sense to give certain class abilities a damage bonus to keep up with the increase in damage overall, such as the automatic damage a paladin does when a marked enemy attacks someone else.

Note: The striker damage bonus will often be lower than the damage bonus of other classes. Partly I did this because I think strikers are already the most powerful role (certainly they tend to be the most played in my games) so they don’t need as much of a boost. Partly, it made sense to attach their damage mechanic to existing striker mechanics used by their classes, which will both make things easier for the player and make it easier for them to do the extra damage (i.e. the rogue already wants to get combat advantage for their sneak attack, so this just rewards them further).

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Faster and More Deadly Combat – New House Rules for D&D 4e

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Orcs

These orcs should be easier to kill and do more damage!

Premise: Monsters and PCs should take about 3-4 hits to reduce to 0 Hit Points with most attacks across all levels. Thus, critical hits, lucky damage rolls, or high damage powers have a decent chance of bloodying or even sometimes outright killing some opponents with one hit, and this should remain true from level 1 all the way up to level 30.

The way the system currently works is that monsters and PCs start out taking about 3-4 hits to bring down to 0 Hit Points at level 1. For example, a fighter at level 1 might do 1d8+5 damage, which will kill a level 1 soldier (with 32 hit points) in about 3-4 hits. However, by level 11, the same fighter with level appropriate gear and feats needs about 5 hits with a normal attack to kill a level 11 soldier.

To see the current math behind monster hit points and damage used for D&D monsters, check out the Monster Manual 3 on a business card!

As PCs level, monsters take more hits to kill, which means combats drag on and become more monotonous. Combats can go from taking 1-2 hours at lower levels to 3+  hours at higher levels!

These changes are designed so that most PCs and monsters (Skirmishers, Leaders, and Soldiers) take about 3-4 hits to kill with most attacks (typically at-wills) throughout all levels of play. Brutes and defenders take about 4-5 hits to take down. Lurkers, Artillery, and weaker PCs take about 2-3 hits.

Generally, this makes combat faster and more dangerous across all levels, while still maintaining the tactical choices that make 4th edition so interesting.

Monster Hit Points: Monsters’ hit points now use the following formulas:

  • Brutes: 30 + 5/level
  • Leaders, Skirmishers, Soldiers: 25 + 4/level
  • Artillery, Lurkers: 20 + 3/level (more…)

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the give and take of D&D and fiction

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Here’s an example of cross-pollination between D&D and pulp fantasy:

Roger Zelazny began his series of “Dilvish the Damned” fantasy short stories in 1964. Zelazny was influential on D&D: Gygax says that Zelazny’s Shadow Jack inspired the thief class, and Dilvish’s Elf Boots inspired the Boots of Elvenkind.

In Zelazny’s 1981 Dilvish the Damned story “Tower of Ice”, the influence seems to be going the other way:

Black completed the spell. They remained motionless for a brief while after that. Then: “That’s it?” Dilvish asked.
“It is. You are now protected through the second level.”
“I don’t feel any different.”
“That’s how you should feel.”
“Is there anything special that I should do to invoke its defense, should the need arise?”
“No, it is entirely automatic. But do not let that dissuade you from exercising normal caution about things magical. Any system has its weak points. But that was the best I could do in the time that we had.”

Maybe Zelazny re-invented the concept of second-level spells, but there’s no reason to think he did. And there’s no reason to think he should. An environment where authors are free to borrow from each other is one where they can build on each others’ work. A lot of D&D-influenced fantasy and fantasy-influenced D&D from the 80’s is kind of like the Chthulu Mythos in this way: written by multiple authors, but sharing so many genre assumptions and pieces of lore that they’re practically set in the same universe.

Now here’s something that Zelazny’s “Tower of Ice” can give back to D&D:

He had escaped from Hell itself, after two centuries’ torment. Most of the humans he had known were long dead and the world somewhat changed. Yet the one who had banished him, damning him as he did, remained–the ancient sorcerer Jelerak. In the months since his return, he had sought that one, once the call of an ancient duty had been discharged before the walls of Portaroy. Now, he told himself, he lived but for vengeance. And this, this tower of ice, one of the seven strongholds of Jelerak, was the closest he had yet come to his enemy. From Hell he had brought a collection of Awful Sayings–spells of such deadly potency as to place the speaker in as great a jeopardy as the victim should their rendering be even slightly less than flawless. He had only used one since his return and had been successful in leveling an entire small city with it. His shudder was for the memory of that day on that hilltop, rather than for the icy blasts that now assailed him.

Use Awful Sayings as a form of treasure for wizards. More powerful than spells, they can have campaign-level impications. Once memorized, an Awful Saying stays memorized until you use it – then it is gone forever.

Casting an Awful Saying requires a saving throw. Failure results in some terrible, random, Deck of Many Things-style misfortune happening to the caster and his friends.

Because these spells can only be used once, and they might backfire, they might provide a tantalizing form of temptation/resource management for the wizard.

Example Awful Sayings:
Raze City A city, or an area the size of a city, is completely blasted and destroyed.
Damn A single being is killed and sent to be tortured at the bottom of the Abyss for all eternity.

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escape the city within an hour

Friday, November 18th, 2011

“You might call it a game,” said the youth. “When the bell completes its song, several strokes hence, the maze will be laid. You will then have an hour until it strikes again. If you have not found your way out of town and away from here by that time, you will be crushed by the buildings’ rearranging themselves once more.” “And why the game?” Dilvish asked, waiting out another tolling before he heard the reply. “That you will never know, Elfboot, whether you win or lose, for you are only an element of the game. I am also charged to warn you, however, that you may find yourself under attack at various points along whatever route you may choose.”
–Dilvish the Damned, Roger Zelazny

Wow, this sounds more like the setup of a D&D set-piece adventure than it does a piece of fiction! You don’t have to go very far to turn it into quite a usable episode.

This would work quite well in older versions of D&D, with their emphases on mapping and time management, but this adventure would also be a good excuse to bring such elements into a 4e game, as a sort of minigame.

The maze in the story features two guys who keep on popping up, and Dilvish isn’t sure which to trust. This is sort of a disguised liar-and-truthteller problem, with the addition of a time limit, which makes things less cut-and-dried.

There are also fun events like this one:

Immediately the flagstones about him were raised like trapdoors and figures rose up from out of the ground beneath them. There were perhaps two-score men there. Each bore a pikestaff.

Nothing like bad guys popping simultaneously out of 40 trapdoors to tell the PCs “Don’t go this way”.

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how to sail

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

The 4e removal of the 3e “Craft” and “Profession” skills didn’t really make much of a difference to me, for the most part. As the 4e people say, “If you want to be a baker, just write ‘baker’ on your character sheet.” Baking doesn’t come up much in my campaign, more’s the pity. Sailing, might, and I kind of miss having a skill for it.

How do you handle sailing checks? Do you use balance checks for running the rigging? Nature checks for spotting storms? I couldn’t even decide what attribute is the key one for sailing a ship. You could make an argument for several: Dexterity for climbing the rigging, Intelligence for doing navigational calculations, etc.

Thinking about that, it seems logical to make sailing be a whole-party skill challenge. However, since there aren’t really enough appropriate skills, maybe they should just be ability checks.

Here’s how you might handle a storm at sea:

“A sail breaks loose. Someone strong needs to haul on the rope before a mast breaks.” The fighter makes a Strength check to haul on the rope.

“A wave hits the ship’s quarter, sending the wheel spinning and breaking the helmsman’s arm. Someone with a high Constitution needs to grab the wheel and hold it straight, no matter how much abuse they take from the wind, rain, and bucking of the wheel. Not the fighter, he is still hauling on the rope.” The sorcerer, who has a decent constitution, grabs the wheel.

“Someone with a good Wisdom should climb up in the crow’s nest and watch the wind direction.” Cleric climbs into the crow’s nest. Etc.

If the party succeeds on half or more of their checks, they succeed at the challenge.

What should be the DC of these checks? Straight ability checks have much less variation than skill checks; and the few abilities and items that boost ability checks are often suboptimal choices and might as well be rewarded anyway. You can expect that if all the players are heroic level, using their best or second-best ability, they will have +3, +4, or +5 bonuses, plus half level. If the DC is 15 plus half level, allowing players to succeed on a d20 roll of 11 or better, a party of 3 or 5 characters would have about a 50% chance of success, and a party of 4 characters a 70% chance of success. If the DC is 10, an odd number of PCs have a 90% chance of success, and an even number has 95%. We’ll say, therefore, that DC 10+1/2 level is easy and DC 15+1/2 level is hard.

At epic levels, player abilities are higher: top ability bonuses average +7 instead of +4. Therefore, you can safely pitch more DC 15+1/2 level challenges at players, or, on the other hand, just let the PCs succeed more. One of the benefits of being high level is that you are good at everything, and that might translate into more sailing successes.

How is the re-usability of this skill challenge? If the PCs have a ship, they may face sailing challenges often. When a sailing check is needed, each PC can have an accustomed role. Everyone makes their check and the successes are tallied. There’s one or two roles per ability:

STR oarsman (or rope hauler, if needed)
CON helmsman (or pumper, if the skip is sinking)
DEX topman (rigging) (or weaponmaster, in ship-to-ship combat)
INT navigator (or sailmaster, to get maximum speed)
WIS lookout (or pilot, in dangerous waters)
CHA captain or mate (or leader of the boarding party, in shipboard combat)

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When to use Sunder in 4e

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Cal-den struck him then backward against the dais, catching his blade in a black claw, shattering it, and he raised his other arm to smite him. Dilvish did then stab upward with what remained of the sword, nine inches of jagged length.
…
Dilvish came scrambling backward, until his hand came upon a thing in the rubble that drew the blood from it. A blade. He snatched at the hilt and brought it up off the floor with a side-armed cut that struck Cal-den…
Roger Zelazny, Dilvish the Damned

Illustration from Paizo's Mother of Flies.

D&D 4e doesn’t have abilities like Sunder that break weapons, because a) they asymetrically punish melee weapon users and b) they destroy potential treasure. Also, players generally get a magic weapon by around level 2, and in 4e, breaking a player’s magic weapon is pretty much against the rules.

But rules, like swords, are made to be broken.

Here’s one dramatic occasion for the villain to sunder your paladin’s +4 sword: when there happens to be a +5 Holy Avenger lying on the floor. It’d be pretty dramatic to have the paladin cast away his broken weapon and seize some ancient two-handed sword from among the treasure strewn on the floor, only to have it flare in his hands with radiant power. Probably more exciting than giving him the Holy Avenger after the battle and letting him peddle his old blade for 1/5 of its sale price.

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4e: spell scrolls for non-wizards

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Monday I talked about re-introducing copyable spell scrolls into 4e D&D, so that PC wizards can drool over the possibility of raiding a rival wizard’s library and finally learning Acid Arrow. This is fine, but it’s sad for non-arcane classes, who don’t learn their attacks from scrolls. It would be cool if the other power sources had ways to learn improved versions of their attacks, in ways that supported their flavor. Here are my ideas.

Expanded spellbook and rare spells for divine classes

Wizards and their friends aren’t the only seekers after lost knowledge. Divine classes, like clerics and paladins, should be able to earn alternate prayers, but it doesn’t make as much sense for them to find them in the library.

I see divine classes gaining powerful versions of at-will prayers by completing holy pilgrimages: visiting the cathedrals of the campaign world and praying at the relics of saints. Each large city might contain a cathedral to each of the major gods, each of which contains its own relic. Each relic might grant a boosted form of a specific at-will spell: for instance, in Greyhawk’s Cathedral of Kord, the hammer of St. Nimbus might grant a +1-per-tier damage bonus to the Storm Hammer power.

While the pilgrimages required to boost at-wills are well known, those required for encounter and daily powers are secreted in hidden shrines in dungeons and in the wilderness. These shrines can be discovered randomly, as a form of treasure analagous to the scrolls of the arcane classes.

Martial classes

Fighters, rogues, rangers, warlords, and other martial classes usually learn new and improved powers from trainers. A great duelist might teach an improved version of Sly Flourish : it does +1 damage if the attacker has high ground.

Some ancient martial moves can be learned from manuals. Each manual teaches one move, and is no longer than 80 pages, because martial types can’t usually finish a book that’s longer than that.

Finally, if your fighter doesn’t want to constantly consult gurus and books, improved powers can be taught by opponents. Elite monsters who use the same power as a fighter might be using an improved version. By seeing it in action, the fighter might learn the improved technique. (This makes martial classes into a sort of Final Fantasy blue-magic specialist.)

Other power sources

Primal classes probably gain new abilities through rites of passage. The barbarian, for instance, has a laundry list of tasks he needs to accomplish in order to unlock new daily powers: killing a dragon, for instance, or winning a wrestling match against a tree spirit. After the task is accomplished, the character needs to have a druidic rite performed (typically involving tattooing or branding) to unlock the new ability.

I don’t really understand the shadow source very well, but it seems to involve death. Shadow characters might have to find the lingering spirits of ancient emperors and cursed wizards and convince them to give up their secrets. This might involve pilgrimages to ancient ruined palaces, haunted houses, or cities in the shadowfell. Or, hey, just go to Hogwarts! There’s like 50 ghosts in there.

Psionic training probably involves traveling to Dagobah and finding a Jedi master.

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4e spells as treasure

Monday, November 7th, 2011

In old D&D, spells were like Pokémon; if you encountered one you’d never seen, you could put it into your collection. This is a time-tested, addictive form of gameplay that I miss in 4e. Luckily, it’s easy to add back in.

4e wizards still have a spellbook, in which they can transcribe more daily, utility and encounter spells than they can cast. If there’s a spellbook, we can re-introduce spell scrolls.

spell scrolls for arcane classes

To return wizards to their place as library-ransacking completists, just add a few scrolls containing daily spells into the next treasure haul. As in earlier editions, these scrolls can be used to cast a spell a single time, or be transcribed into a wizard’s spellbook, permanently expanding the wizard’s reportoire.

I’d allow other arcane classes to transcribe scrolls into spellbooks too: they’d gain the wizards’ ability to swap daily powers, but only with spells they found as treasure.

Rare spells

Since 4e wizards already choose their two favorite spells for every spell slot, it’s hard to get excited about expending your spell repertoire: at best, you’re getting your third-favorite spell. Let’s say that some spell scrolls (20%?) might contain improved versions of spells. For instance, a wizard might find a scroll called “Flame Jester’s Improved Fireball”, which teaches a version of the Fireball spell that does +1 damage per tier. The benefit of such an improved spell is limited to that spell, and might be equivalent in power to that of a feat. Possibilities include:

  • +1 to hit or damage

  • adds a new damage type
  • conditionally adds a condition (for instance, dazes targets if you have combat advantage)

There’s a lot of daily spells, so this opens up a lot of design space for treasure. It also allows DMs to boost iconic but mechanically weak spells like Fireball without having to resort to house rules. I’d even think that a character could find an improved version of an at-will power. Gaining +1 damage to an often-used at-will power would be almost as good as finding a new magic weapon.

Research

With improved spells, we can bring back another staple of early D&D: spell research. If a PC can’t find a specific spell, they can research it. DMs and players can go crazy with rules for spending money on research, libraries, and labs.

To keep non-arcane classes from egtting jealous, they might need ways to upgrade their powers too. I’ll have to think about that.

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the ships that sail the desert

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

The desert is nearly impassable. Obviously it’s plagued by some giant sandworm-like creatures, as well as its environmental hazards. Surely someone crosses it, though! You have desert caravans in your D&D world, right?

Whoever the caravan masters are – humans? halflings? dragonborn in 4e? – they need some way to fight off the sandworms, blue dragons, and other high-level desert creatures. With food and water so scarce, there’s no way that hundreds of defenseless creatures – walking meals – are going to make it alive across the wastes, even if they do make a practice of hiring PCs as guards.

Since D&D is a post-apocalyptic game, the caravanners may well have cobbled together a Jawa sandcrawler-type vehicle from the magical vehicles of previous ages. It’s all Mad Max scrap metal, giant tank treads and armor, but seamed with golden light and bolted with runes. The desert crawler must be armed with a weapon powerful enough to keep the giant monsters at bay. Solar power is the traditional technology of all-knowing progenitor cultures, so let’s give it a mirror cannon that focuses beams of radiant energy.

No magic engine has survived from the ancient empires, so the desert crawler is powered by slaves in treadmills. The slaves are mostly the orcs and elves who live on the desert’s border. The caravan is always looking to buy strong slaves, so if the PCs are defeated in the desert by any intelligent opponent, they may wake up in a treadmill themselves.

How do the PCs escape from the caravan? Straying from the caravan’s oasis-dotted route invites death from thirst and sandstorm. Falling behind will put the escapees in the midst of the swarm of landsharks who pick off stragglers. Traveling ahead? Possible, but only the caravan leader has a map of the route.

The best option is the classic swashbuckling approach: free the galley slaves, throw the slavers to the sharks, and become a privateer on the desert sea.

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