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The Lone Badger posted:The Wizard has some strange desire to fit in, despite not really understanding things. From deciding to be a Wizard in order to fit herself into the milieu, to insisting that she has a perfectly ordinary number of limbs. The Wizard is explicitly a He throughout the module, and I don't think it's misunderstanding. It's that this is crypsis. The Wizard fits into the milieu and has an ordinary number of limbs because that makes it much harder for victims to figure out how to fight him. He's perfectly good at understanding humans, to the point that he intentionally throws things like 'the message' at the players - it's a series of cruel tricks, not an incompetent attempt to be a wizard. The Wizard is a wizard because he wears a pointy hat and that pointy hat covereth a multitude of sins.
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Jul 13, 2020 07:17
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Everyone posted:There was mention of A Wizard in CoC and the interesting thing is that the A Wizard module kind of is CoC. The Wizard is at least within spitting distance of cosmic horror. The Abyss is kind of Dreamlands, a surreal space filled with weird, not-necessarily hostile gods, demons, etc. One thing I find fascinating about A Wizard's use of economy of writing is the device whereby the Wizard directly addresses the reader at brief points, like that at which he spitefully chooses to interpret his own complete destruction as still a sort of victory if just one more person he hurt doesn't get closure or resolution. A Wizard doesn't explain this device. The Wizard's words are only set apart by boldface. The first few times it happens, the reader could reasonably interpret it as the voice of the writer simply turning ominous for a moment. Mia is a fool. It's going to happen again. There's no need to worry about them anymore. As the adventure progresses, the boldface text grows more personal and nakedly partisan, and the reader realizes that these are the words of the Wizard. But hang on. Those aren't the first boldface passages in the adventure. Setting aside bold-italicized credits and titling, the first boldface passage is this: quote:RULES: The Wizard is personally interjecting rules into the structure of this adventure, using some of the same words his mid-text asides will echo later. It's one more way the adventure evokes both this cosmic aspect and personal pettiness with great economy without ever having to tell you that the Wizard is like this or that. The Wizard feels otherworldly not only because he is a being of alien aspect assimilating the trappings of a world he is invading, but because he's doing so on multiple levels. The entire adventure is itself A Wizard invading the world of the game, trying to poison it with his spite.
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Jul 13, 2020 07:56
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Epicurius posted:In Planescape, Belierin was the prison of an evil being...an immortal legendary hydra, who was the ancestor of all the other hydra. The guardinals couldn't defeat it, so they teleported it to Belerin, and pretty much closed off all of the ways in or out, except by the ocean, which the Hyrdra can't touch because of the holy water, until they figured out a more permanent solution. They haven't yet, so they basically just warn people to stay out of Belerin. That's way more interesting than anything the Manual suggests.  The book just tosses out the generic demon prince, evil elemental lord, etc and encourage the DM to come up with their own answer.Being from Florida myself, I appreciate that they tried to have a marshland in the Upper Planes even if they couldn't resist making it partially evil. Swamplands are beautiful and completely full of life.
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Jul 13, 2020 13:23
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The forum must pray for a few hours each day to receive The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 5: The Deck of Priest Kits 24: Calm Before the Storm The PCs are on the road and run into Jaffe, a “sparsely-clothed” human male not carrying a whole lot (in short, a monk). He offers that they sit down and share a wineskin, and if they take him up on it and chat, turns back around and starts travelling with them, because what he experiences is more important than where he’s going. Jaffe is gregarious and tells “exotic myths and legends.” He’s difficult to anger but violent with his fists if attacked, cheerfully saying that bloodlust is his worst trait. He leaves when the PCs reach their destination. I guess I’m still on board for random guest NPCs. It does commit me to providing a couple more encounters before the PCs reach their destination, though. Keep. KIT CORNER: Fighting-monk (PHBR 3: The Complete Priest’s Handbook, mislabeled here (and every other time in the deck) as “PHB3 (Wizard)”) The OTHER Monk. The Kung Fu Monk. They’re “most appropriate for an oriental-flavored campaign,” but I’m sure you can convince your DM to let you play one. I have faith in you. A Fighting-Monk can’t own more than they can carry on their back, can’t wear armor, and if they had “Medium Combat Abilities” (the decent THAC0 progression, like the Cleric), then they’re limited to three Major accesses to spheres (one of which must be All, which is terrible), and two Minor. If you were supposed to have more, you give them up. Ouch. Also, you need a 12 Dex. What cosmic power do you get in exchange? Tumbling as a free NWP; in-class access to ALL non-weapon proficiency groups (I have no idea why, but that’s cool); the ability to specialize in Unarmed Combat styles as per the Complete Fighter’s Handbook; two free Weapon Proficiency Slots with which to do so; and the ability to bank your unused 1st-level Weapon Proficiency Slots and use them later, which apparently other characters are not allowed to do. Huh. So what does the Fighter’s Handbook have to say about Unarmed Combat styles? Well, you can specialize in Punching or Wrestling, which interact with the PHB unarmed fighting rules and therefore make me want to bang my head against a wall; or Martial Arts, which is like Punching+. Basically, you’re going to be doing fairly low damage (though a good strength helps a lot) but occasionally KOing or completely incapacitating your opponents. These chances rise considerably as you dump more proficiency slots into increasing your specialization. The mileage you get out of this depends on how willing your DM is to let you put a hydra in a chokehold or knock out a golem with a punch to the vitals. This being AD&D, if you want to stop being a Fighting-Monk and start being a Fighting-Cleric with a decent AC, it’s an enormous frigging rigamarole: The Complete Priest’s Handbook posted:If a fighting-monk wants to abandon this kit, he must go through a difficult process in order to do so. He must not use any of his unarmed combat techniques for three whole experience levels' worth of time. Once he's reached that third experience level, he has forgotten his unarmed combat techniques and may resume the wearing of armor; and, if he renounced some of his spheres of influence when he became a fighting-monk, may now resume those lost spheres. AD&D, why you gotta be like this? 25: Status Quo The PCs are hired to escort a priest to a needy mountain village, probably in a direction they're heading anyway. The priest is a total snobbish rear end in a top hat and refuses to do any manual labor on the trip, and he’s well aware that the PCs only get paid if he arrives safely. When they eventually reach the town, it turns out the town was not consulted about this placement, and like all sane people they immediately hate the guy and refuse to keep him. The PCs have to escort him all the way back to earn their fee. Making this encounter fun-annoying instead of annoying-annoying might be a little tricky, but hand-waving away large amounts of travel time would probably help. This guy could also have potential as a recurring NPC. Keep. KIT CORNER: Nobleman Priest (PHBR 3: The Complete Priest’s Handbook) This priest is rich, pampered, and probably going to get accosted by Robin Hood as they’re passing through Sherwood Forest. No requirements, but they get Etiquette, Heraldry, and Riding as bonus NWPs. They start with extra gold, but must use it to buy armor, a weapon larger than a dagger, and a fully-equipped horse (oh nooooo, what a drawback). They gain a significant reaction bonus from nobles, and can demand shelter from anyone in his own land. As a restriction, they must buy the highest-quality goods, which means everything they buy for themselves costs double (to add engraving, imported materials, etc). 26: Frostbite The PCs run across the site of a recent battlefield in a snowy region. Both sides appear human, but apparently divided by gender, since all the women are dressed similarly and the other side is all male. While they’re Nice to have an amazon who’s not being a jerk to the PCs for gender reasons. And snow amazons are cooler (ha) than tropical amazons. So sure, keep. KIT CORNER: Amazon Priestess (PHBR 3: The Complete Priest’s Handbook) AD&D 2nd Edition was still experimenting with kits at this time, and hadn’t developed the technology that would allow them to apply to more than one class. So priests get a separate kit from the Amazon (Warrior). However, the mechanics are the same: bonus Riding and Animal Training, +3 to hit and damage for their first attack against people underestimating them, and a Reaction malus from most people in patriarchal societies. It feels a little bit less appropriate for a priest than for a warrior. 27: Public Enemy The PCs have been hired by the governor to locate a dangerous assassin who’s supposed to be hiding in a small village. They’re warned that the dude is very persuasive. Actually, the guy is a dissident priest who spoke out against the totalitarianism of the government. The villagers are hiding him and will not reveal where he is unless the PCs “ask the right questions” and convince them that they’re not there to hurt the dude. (Or unless a hapless 0th-level villager fails their save against charm person, presumably.) The concept is sound, but the details are… absent. And more to the point, it’s a quest, not a random encounter. KIT CORNER: Peasant Priest (PHBR 3: The Complete Priest’s Handbook) This priest is a champion of the common man! There are no requirements to take the kit, though the DM can insist that your starting weapon proficiencies be peasant-y. You get Agriculture or Fishing, and also Weather Sense or Animal Lore as bonus NWPs. You have to stay poor (presumably because you’re always donating to the less fortunate). Specifically, other than weapons, peasant priests can’t own stuff worth more than 10 to 15 gp, or have equipment worth more than 75 gp total. Wait, does that apply to armor? Am I going to be in hide armor the whole campaign? Wait, does that apply to magic items? Uh... In return, you get a +2 reaction adjustment with all peasants, and those in your own community definitely have your back. That’s nice, but can I wear chain mail, please? Dallbun fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 15:40
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Chainmail is bourgeois! Well, to be more accurate it's a mark of the warrior-aristocracy, who are still NO GOOD.
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Jul 13, 2020 16:04
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Soulbound Beauty and the Beast Monstrous Beasts are our next section, for our slavering monsters that want to eat us but don't really have, like, a wider agenda. Squigs, jabberslythes, gruntas - they're dangerous animals and tend to operate on instinct, but for those rare few that have a deep cunning and ability to plan ahead. (Even then, a lot of them just want to survive.) Some mortal societies worship the greatest of these creatures, performing ritual sacrifices or developing symbiotic relationships, while others are tamed by those brave and foolhardy enough to risk death in the effort. Arachnarok Spiders are Enormous Beast Champions, gigantic spiders covered in highly protective chitin whose mandibles drip with extremely potent necrotizing venom. They are a plague in the forests of the Mortal Realms, and the young ones tend to be aggressive and territorial, attacking anything that encroaches on their land. With age, they calm and become patient predators who are able to perform complex ambushes and even make pacts with the Spiderclan Grots, who sometimes build crude platforms atop the arachnaroks to mount catapults on. Arachnaroks are exceptionally tough and fast, and if they attack unaware foes, they ignore Armor. They can walk on any surface as if it were level ground, and their fangs are very powerful, able to tear armor. Plus, any damage they deal also forces a Fortitude test to avoid becoming Poisoned. They're the first of many monsters that get the Nigh Unkillable trait, which means they get twice the Toughness their attributes would normally provide. Gruntas are Large Beast Warriors, the favored mounts of orruks. They're huge boars with massive jaws and bad attitudes. They attack at the drop of a hat, and seem to enjoy trampling and devouring anything they can fit into their mouths. Because they so often end up eating weapons and armor alongside the mortals using them, their stomachs have adapted to processing metals, and their poop is known for being full of "pig-metal" that the Orruks use to make things. A grunta on its own is a vicious and very powerful fighter, though of only average toughness. They're even nastier on a Charge, getting extra attack bonuses and knocking anyone they hit Prone. When ridden by orruks they are typically armored in chain and bits of metal, making them harder to kill (on top of having an orruk to worry about). Magmadroths are Enormous Beast Champions. They are the favorite mount of high-rank Fyreslayers, immense lava dinosaurs raised in volcanic calderas in Aqshy. They are born in flame and rage, and they radiate a terrible heat. They love to fight, and their claws, jaws and tail are all deadly weapons, as is the flaming bile they can spew, which is hot enough to melt armor. Their scales are incredibly thick, and when actually wounded, their blood sprays in superheated gouts. Magmadroths are insanely dangerous - they can take a huge beating, they're Nigh Unkillable, they have a ton of natural armor, their jaws can penetrate armor, their claws can damage it, and their tail knocks anyone it hits Prone. All do pretty nasty damage. Magmadroths are immune to fire-based or heat-based damage and hazards, and they can spend an action to shoot flaming bile at a nearby Zone, forcing a Reflexes test to avoid nasty damage and armor reduction. Any time they take melee damage, their attacker also takes damage due to their volcanic blood. Oh, and if they have a Fyreslayer master? On top of another enemy being around, the Magmadroth can have up to four ur-gold runes hammered into it. Magmadroths are terrifyingly deadly.  Also they look like this. Maw-Krushas are Enormous Beast Champions. These are wyverns, huge ones that tend to be fat and highly muscular, in mockery of the true dragons they are vaguely related to. Their roars are so loud they can rupture organs, and they also love to smash stuff physically with their hand-wings. Maw-Krushas are generally fairly stupid and very difficult to break and tame, so only the strongest and most stubborn orruks can manage the task, and they have to work hard to keep the Maw-Krusha respectful. Maw-Krushas can fly, they're extremely tough and armored, and they're Nigh Unkillable, but they don't hit quite as hard as a Magmadroth. Got the same Prone-causing tail sweep, though, and they like to punch things. They don't bite because their necks are too stumpy to let them easily reach stuff. On the other hand, they can let out a huge bellow that forces a Fortitude test on everyone nearby to avoid nasty armor-ignoring damage. Next: Disciples of the Dark Gods, the servants of the Gods of Chaos. This is kind of an over-section, since it covers Daemons, Skaven, mortals and more. Anyone could, in theory, become a slave to the Dark Gods, corrupted by the lures of power and the feelings that drive Chaos. Rage, despair, obsessive pride and ruthless hunger for knowledge can all lead to Chaos. The Chaos Gods are exceptionally good at mutating and warping their servants, changing their bodies to match the whim of the god in question. These mutative marks are simply beyond the capacity of any mortal to remove. Despite these gifts, however, most of those corrupted by Chaos are doomed to failure. They may gain short-term power, but they are rarely more than pawns to their gods, and secret cults tend to be wiped out when they overreach, while warlords are taken down by jealous rivals. Chaos is not a good life plan for its mortal worshippers. Chaos Sorcerer Lords are Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Chosen. They are some of the most terrifying servants of Chaos, able to warp reality itself. Only a rare few Chaos sorcerers ever reach this level of power, and it is not a safe position, for being beloved of the Chaos Gods means being in their attention - and when their love turns to disdain or hate, they are more than happy to make it known with magical backlash, twisting their failed servants into Chaos Spawn. The statblock is intended as a template to customize. What you get is someone that's relatively fragile, though well-armored and a skilled spellcaster. Their Defence increases as the Doom goes up, however, and they receive oracular visions from their god, allowing them to buff their allies as an action. They can unbind spells and can cast at least Aetheric Armor, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield and their unique spell, Daemonic Power, which increases the damage their allies deal. Their actual attacks with staff and Chaos runeblade are anemic at best, but a Sorcerer Lord is going to be terrifying with support from Daemons or other henchmen. Blades of Khorne are the warrior servants of the Blood God, the Daemons that serve his will. Khornate Daemons are relatively common, able to enter the Realms wherever slaughter is commonplace, and they are especially frequent in Aqshy, Khorne's greatest stronghold in the Age of Chaos. Bloodreavers are Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Warriors, the average mortal worshipper of the Blood God. They are what happens when Khorne corrupts a human tribe to his worship and forces them to embrace his cannibalistic fury or die. As mortal warriors go, they're fairly average, on par with a Freeguild soldier. They have either an axe or a meatripper axe (which is just an axe, but bigger and two-handed). However, their unique trait is that they are driven to a killing frenzy at the sight of blood, getting a bonus to Melee when in the same Zone as anyone that's taken a Wound. Blood Warriors are Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Champions, the leaders of the Bloodreaver tribes. They are brutal, maddened butchers who are blessed by Khorne for their rage in battle. The viscera of those they have slain solidifies around them as an armored, bleeding shell, and their minds are locked in a murderous fury. They become Khorne's shock troopers, never sleeping and eternally seeking battle. Blood Warriors are heavily armored and pretty tough, usually armed with a goreaxe or a two-handed goreglaive that does decent damage, plus their spiked gorefists to punch with. They share the same buff as Bloodreavers, but also, once per turn, can automatically attack with their gorefist when damaged, and always get a free attack just before dying. Flesh Hounds are Medium Daemon (Blades of Khorne) Warriors, the hunting dogs of the Blood God. Left to themselves, they form vicious packs that kill for no reason but to shed blood. They can be bound and tamed by brass collars forged in the name of Khorne, and when kept bound like this are able to wield Khorne's power to unmake magic near them. They are said to be able to track a single drop of blood for ten miles and can always hunt down any mortal whose flesh they have tasted. They're weaker and less armored than a Blood Warrior, but their claws are nasty and they get a bonus to tracking anyone suffering at least one Wound. On top of this, they can unbind spells using Body instead of Mind if they have a Collar of Khorne on. Bloodletters are Medium Daemon (Blades of Khorne) Minions, the foot soldiers of Khorne's daemonic forces. They are heavily muscled, with scaly red skin, but they aren't mindless in their savagery. They are intensely disciplined creatures that march in organized units when they go to war, wielding immense Hellblades with great precision. Their leaders are the Bloodreapers, who wear huge brass ornaments on their horns. Bloodreapers are Bloodletters recognized for even greater viciousness than their brethren, seeking out the skulls of mighty warriors to offer to Khorne. Bloodletters are fragile, but they hit like trains...and the reason they're fragile is that they can become a Swarm if there's at least three of them in a single Zone. Also, any time a Bloodletter would cause a Mortal Wound, their target dies instantly and automatically due to decapitation. Bloodreapers become Warriors, hit harder than Bloodletters do, are pretty tough if poorly armored, and in place of Swarm rules, they do extra damage as the Doom rises. Khorgoraths are Large Beast (Chaos-Corrupted) Champions. These are huge monsters corrupted by Khorne's hunger for skulls, formed from predators that wandered too close to his domain. These beasts are imprisoned in the Brass Citadel for Khorne to mutate and reshape, turning them into muscular, broken creatures that are driven only by pain, which fades as they slaughter and devour. They are brutal killers, wielding their massive claws and scything tentacles to chop heads from bodies. Once their stomachs are full of skulls, they return home, satiated and free of pain. There, they vomit forth their bounty to their master and the pain returns, driving them out to eat more heads. Khorgoraths are extremely tough, Nigh Unkillable, and hit very hard. Further, anyone damaged by their bone tentacles becomes Restrained until they beat the Khorgorath at a Might or Reflexes test to escape - not an easy proposition. They're immune to becoming Frightened, and any time they kill something, everyone else in the Zone becomes Frightened of them. If they find someone Mortally Wounded, they will always take an action to stop and eat that person's skull, instantly killing them but at least keping the monster busy. Next time: Tzeentch, Slaanesh
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Jul 13, 2020 18:12
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Good old Bloodletters. I think I've seen more of those die than any other daemon type. Are they still complete glass cannons?
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Jul 13, 2020 18:18
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Night10194 posted:Good old Bloodletters. I think I've seen more of those die than any other daemon type. Are they still complete glass cannons? They have one HP. They are very deliberately glass cannons. E: like, their whole goal is Swarm rules. Bloodletters are there to hit really hard but die in droves. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 18:18
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Mors Rattus posted:They have one HP. They are very deliberately glass cannons. That's pretty cool.
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Jul 13, 2020 18:56
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 Chapter 2: The First, Second and Third Interstellar Wars Before we begin: this book presents a deterministic history of the period but encourages you to do your own thing the moment your campaign gets underway. This book is less metaplot and more blueprint.  Intro story! A Terran diplomat in Cairo decides to take a Vilani envoy on a day trip to see the pyramids. Having been informed they’re some of the oldest structures still standing on earth, the envoy asks how many tens of thousands of years old they are and decides the whole thing is a bit twee when he learns they’re only 5000. By the time they get back, he’s gotten even more condescending than usual. So, the thing about human origins: no one in Traveller knows where humans came from for sure. We fit precisely into the fossil record back on earth, no signs of alien interference here. But you can find human subspecies scattered throughout known space, all of them interfertile and, as far as they are aware, native (though the fossil record usually doesn’t bear this out). You also have a few species scattered around that closely map to earth species like cats and wolves (though they come to prominence later than this.). So right now, the working theories on humanity’s spread are:
 . That question influences the Vilani because their home world, Vland, is hilariously hostile to human life. As in, they have an entire caste of food preparators dedicated just to making their home planet’s chemicals edible. They almost definitely came from somewhere else, and while most minor human races have some adaptations at least to their environment, the Vilani lacked them entirely. Their need to preserve technical knowledge drove them to develop writing 20,000 years ago, industry 8500 years ago, and the jump drive 6500 years ago. At first, the early spacefaring Vilani cast themselves as traders and explorers; while they were already culturally cautious and methodical, they had no problem with innovation or expansion as long as they handled it carefully. But by around 900 BC they’d realized that not only had their neighbors mastered jump technology and started challenging them in various areas, but that jump technology drifted out so far one civilization had received at third hand (the state legally required royalties be paid for jump drive use no matter where you got it, by the way, which later pissed of the Terrans it technically still applied to. So they started the Consolidation Wars, a period of mixed conquest and settlement in the areas they conquered, ranging out until they conquered every known jump-capable civilization around 500 AD. With that done, the shangarim (which had developed into regional governments in their own right) set up a new joint government on Vland they called the Ziru Sirka (Grand Empire of Stars) and started instituting the social system that defined later Vilani life in earnest.  I think this is the Ziru Sirka’s sigil. The Vilani holdings closest to Earth were also the farthest away from Vland, taken mostly to suppress that one third-hand jump-capable civilization (the Vegans, who are their own weird thing we’ll cover later). The central government dubbed these “Rim Worlds” (because they were closest to the Galactic rim) irrelevant and ignored them. Mostly. The only real time the Imperium sent troops in en masse was to suppress the kimashargur, a political movement that wanted to allow limited further exploration and settlement in part to – hilariously enough – make the Imperium more able to resist future outside threats. The government and movement tussled for a couple hundred years, culminating in the movement setting up a pocket state just outside the borders of the Imperium before they moved in and annexed them in around 1000 – and their furthest holdings were just a few parsecs away from Earth. We’ve already covered the bulk of Earth’s history just before first contact. But even in the worst days of the 21st century, Earth’s various nations continued to mount space colonization efforts starting with lunar settlements - one of which produced limited granitic manipulation techniques in 2052. The resulting reactionless drives made widespread space travel possible. Another settlement pulled out the first jump-1 drive in 2092 to widespread apathy, since Earth had no accessible planets in range; Europe, especially, focused on building generation ships instead. And then in 2097 an American expedition to Barnard’s Star, the first extrasolar expedition to use a jump drive, made contact with the Vilani.  This book has a startlingly high number of Civil War general quotes. The earliest campaigns the book supports take place during the mid-21st century among blue helmets deployed by the newly-reformed UN. Nothing too interesting here, other than the fact that the book raises the possibility that the Americans knew where the Vilani were beforehand and suggests you run some kind of conspiracy-based campaign around that. The world underwent a sudden and massive crisis of rising expectations. They’d hoped to make first contact with exotic and fascinating alien races at some point in their glorious future, but finding the only accessible route for further expansion blocked by a far more powerful empire consisting of more humans burst a lot of bubbles and sent Earth’s fragile confidence back down the drain. Dreams of expansion foundered and dreams of trade blossomed as traders started swapping Earth biotech and medicine for Vilani engineering and bringing home massive profits. But at the end of the day, the Vilani authorities could not have given less of a poo poo about what earthlings wanted. So when a Vilani ship blundered into an American base and got blown up, they responded with force. The First Interstellar War consisted of two-and-a-bit major battles. The first battle was a complete disaster for the fleet the UN cobble together out of various national space navies, half of which refused to work with the others until too late and all of which were obliterated by missile barrages from far beyond their weapons’ ranges. The second, several years later, saw a bunch of UN missile boats sacrificing themselves to hold off the Vilani long enough for the main fleet to engage, wrecking both sides. The Vilani leader in charge of the sector decided the whole thing was a waste of time, acknowledged Earth’s claim to Barnard’s Star in exchange for a promise not to try to advance into Vilani territory, and brought the war to a close in 2122.  As tiny a war as the First Interstellar War was, it set the pattern for its 8+ successors. Every few years fleets would engage in a major battle and pound each other into scrap, the winners defined more by keeping more of their ships sort of intact than by decisively crushing an enemy (usually). Both sides would then disengage for several years to build themselves back up and try again until one side couldn’t keep the fight up anymore. While strategy and tactics played a role, wars were decided as much by logistics as anything else. And that “a bit”? Terrans in Vilani space going from traders to raiders for the length of the war, harrying supply lines and interrupting commerce to keep the full brunt of Vilani manager skills from coming to bear. In other words, if you want to change the mood of your free trader campaign, have war break out and make them switch tracks. Earth dug its heels in. The UN reformed in 2122 after accepting its first offworld members and again in 2124 into the Terran Confederation proper. That year saw the development of the first jump-2 drive (which made the major invasions of Vilani territory possible) and the rise of a nascent free trade movement that focused on removing trade barriers with the Imperium – the Free Traders Foundation, a major feature of Terran life through the rest of the period. Earth started mounting commerce raids into Vilani territory and slipping past border controls to make contact with common Vilani– and since the Kimashargur had morphed into a massive Dissident underclass throughout the region, they found a very willing ear among people historically inclined towards interacting with the outside world and disinclined to help the central government in any way. A second Vilani fleet showed up in the area to mount a surprise attack in 2125, only to find the Terrans much better organized and prepared; between stiff cunning resistance and a civil war breaking out deeper in the Imperium after a major ruler was assassinated, the Second Interstellar War sputtered along until wrapping up in a treaty dubbing the Terran Confederation a client state and awarding them a couple extra territories in 2134. And then the local governor, who’d been more interested in furthering her position then punishing some pissants beyond the border, got promoted back to a more prestigious position deeper in the Imperium (where she wrote memoirs depicting Terrans as ignorant savages that shaped Vilani public opinion for decades afterwards). She was replaced by a man named Kadur Erasharshi. Erasharshi was uncharacteristically militaristic and ambitious for a Vilani; after his appointment he relocated his center of command to Dingir (the subsector capital and former heart of the kimashargur pocket empire) where he wouldn’t have to worry about nobles harassing him as much, expanded local military outposts to an unprecedented extent, and doubled the local fleet size, much to the mixed dismay and glee of local aristocrats eager to claw control of the region away from him. While the Confederation followed up the last war by expanding its fleet and economy, it just didn’t have the resources to match even one impoverished border province.  In 2145 Erasharshi’s fleet smashed through every Terran border outpost and fortification, breaking the Terran fleet through sheer numbers before moving up to the home world. Erasharshi understood the scale of the threat the Terran Confederation would eventually pose and wanted to conquer it entirely, but by the time his fleet finally reached Earth with him at its head, its logistical structure was strained to the breaking point and his rivals at the regional capital were quickly tearing his position apart. So he decided to drop some nukes on a few major cities, declare the battle a victory, and go home. As for the Terrans, the death of millions of civilians boiled away any remaining political resentment against the Confederation; the resulting massive military push forced aside the remaining Vilani and defeated less capable Vilani garrisons everywhere they found them. Eventually the Terran fleet reached the major kimashargur world of Nusku, where decades of working with local Dissidents bore fruit; as the Terran military mounted an invasion from above, Dissident guerillas sabotaged Vilani installations and fought alongside Terran troops as irregulars below. A planet with over a billion inhabitants took only a month or so for the Confederation to fully occupy. Desperate to not get assassinated by local nobility, Erasharshi rapidly signed a deal granting the Confederation everything it took and fled back to the regional capital, where he’d later be deposed and die in disgrace. Now, this is where I’d end the post normally, but since you wanted some insight into the consequences of the Interstellar Wars, I’ll cover this now just for you, Comstar  . The Third Interstellar War was the first time Vilani society at large had any exposure to Terrans, and between the Confederation’s new notoriety, their presence on Nusku, and the new flood of Terran merchants into the region, they quickly made an impact on Vilani society (though at first the localized one), especially on three levels:
 But that’s just one part of the long, shaky truce that came to be called the Empty Peace, especially since half the book is dedicated to the state of the galaxy at that point. But since this update is already longer than any post I’ve made in like the last month, I’ll stop here and pick up next post with what it looked like on the other side.
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Jul 13, 2020 21:13
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Mors Rattus posted:They have one HP. They are very deliberately glass cannons. So this is something interesting I can say. I unintentionally influenced the Swarm design of the game. I used some Bloodletters as enemies in a fight for my group. During the fight I ruled that that the 1 point of armor the Bloodletters had applied for each one Because of this one of my players decided to ask the producer Emmet on the discord, how damage worked on armored swarms like Bloodletters and Plaguebearers, Emmets ruling was that as Swarms are considered a single creature armor would only apply once. However Emmet found that himself thinking it could be confusing and decided to remove armor from swarm minions in the next batch of errata. However because only Bloodletters and Plaguebearers were mentioned the C7 team appeared to have missed that Daemonette's had armor. Personally I think they should have kept their armor as long as it was clarified that armor is only applied once for a swarm. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 22:23
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I Am Just a Box posted:It's one more way the adventure evokes both this cosmic aspect and personal pettiness with great economy without ever having to tell you that the Wizard is like this or that. The Wizard feels otherworldly not only because he is a being of alien aspect assimilating the trappings of a world he is invading, but because he's doing so on multiple levels. The entire adventure is itself A Wizard invading the world of the game, trying to poison it with his spite.
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Jul 13, 2020 22:33
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Manual of the Planes: 3.5E The Beastlands (Chaotic Good) Planar Traits: Normal Gravity, Normal Time, Infinite Size, Mildly Good-Aligned, Divinely Morphic, Normal Magic Beastland petitioners are immune to electricity and poison, resistant to fire and cold, and have fast healing. The Beastlands are the idealized vision of nature, wild and good and forever pure. The Beastlands are a plane where animals, not humanoids, are in charge. The Beastlands are perhaps the most poorly understood of the Outer Planes by humanoids, its alignment ethos is well known - good but free, wild and pure - but so much else is conjecture. The Beastlands consist of three layers, but the geography on all of them is similar: an endless expanse of primeval wilderness in every climate, biome, and terrain imaginable, and humanoid civilization is rare. Celestial animals dominate this plane, not humanoids, and many are themselves petitioners, both members of sentient animals races such as unicorns and rare examples of otherwise mundane animal species given sentience. All celestial animals in the Beastlands, be they petitioners or natives to the plane, are not merely intelligent, but sentient, and most can speak the Celestial tongue (whether they desire to is another question). Portals to other planes and between layers are common but subtle and erratic: an archway formed by a fallen tree, or a cave, or a hollow tree. Most of these portals are one-way, and few last for long. Getting to the Beastlands is no more difficult than any other Upper Plane. Escaping is another question. Humanoid petitioners in the Beastlands always show some sign of being altered by the primal power of this plane: narrow, feline eyes; patterns on the skin that look like scales or feathers; hands that have begun to curve and harden like claws; and more. Over time, Beastlands petitioners become celestial animals themselves, or at the DM's discretion may become lycanthropes instead. Humanoid souls come to the Beastlands because they lived in the spirit of the animals that dominate this plane, good but wild, pure of heart but unpredictable or prone to bristling at being told what to do. Transformed formerly humanoid petitioners in the Beastlands lose none of their intelligence, language skills, or any other memories or skills they might have retained from their life.  Humanoid society in the Beastlands consists of small villages that dot the landscape, mainly on the first layer. The hunter-gatherer model is the rule here, agriculture just doesn't seem to work on this plane, and it is extremely rare for a village to grow beyond fifty or sixty souls. Theirs is a simple life in harmony with the plane, and most petitioners regard the eventual transformation into celestial animals as a transcendent experience to be cherished as a soul takes on a form more true to the self within. Of the animals that rule the plane, little is known by outsiders. Most do form at least some kind of family networks owing to the sentience they all share, even if the animals in question are normally solitary on the Material Plane, but details are hard to come by for outsiders. Those packs or herds or flocks or what-have-you that include formerly humanoid petitioners among their ranks often appoint those individuals to be the group's diplomat with humanoid petitioners and especially visitors. Krigala is the first layer of the Beastlands, and the best known to outsiders as far as that goes. The daylight never ends on Krigala, time passes normally but there is no cycle of day and night here (or indeed anywhere in the plane). On this layer, the time is forever in the early afternoon. Two significant deities from Greyhawk make their home here, one being Skerrit, the boistrous god of centaurs. Centaurs appear to fall into a metaphysical grey area where the Beastlands' rules regarding humanoids and animals are concerned, and while they enjoy all the benefits of other petitioners they are not subject to the bestial transformation common to humanoids. Skerrit and his petitioners love to feast and drink and generally party their immortal hearts out, and if a group of adventurers accidentally find themselves trapped in the Beastlands, Skerrit and his herds are happy to help anyone willing to make a good show of trying to keep up with their drinking and feasting. Ehlonna, goddess of unicorns and forests, also makes her home here, the fabled Grove of Unicorns. Ehlonna's realm is quiet and peaceful, and as the name suggests is filled with unicorns, many of them celestial - and of whom a goodly number were once Ehlonna's humanoid worshipers. Visitors of pure hearts can often find guidance and wisdom here simply by speaking to the trees of the grove, as even if the goddess is not in evidence she can hear anything spoken within her realm. Brux, the second layer, is a layer frozen forever at sunset. While the Oceanus flows throughout the Beastlands, its largest tributaries on the plane can be found in Brux and travelers looking to leave the plane can reliably find exits by looking for and following the largest river they can find. Even by the standards of the Beastlands, the layer of Karasuthra is almost a complete mystery to outsiders. This layer is forever at midnight, home to nocturnal creatures that tend to be more aggressive than normal. Karasuthra is as good-aligned as the rest of the plane, but the layer is dangerous in the extreme for even well-prepared visitors. Some fiends from the Lower Planes are known to visit Karasuthra, hoping to slay some celestial predator and bring home a trophy as proof of their strength and skill. Very few return alive, much less successful. At the DM's discretion, given the darkness and gloom of the layer, there may be natural portals between Karasuthra and the Plane of Shadow. Next time, Arborea!
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Jul 14, 2020 00:14
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Cythereal posted:
It's strange they used the Latin names for all the other heavens but didn't go with Saturnias or something for the peak. Guessing no suggestion remains that the Judeo-Christian God is mayyybe hanging out there?
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Jul 14, 2020 02:02
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Guessing no suggestion remains that the Judeo-Christian God is mayyybe hanging out there? According to the Manual, most on Mount Celestia believe that Chronias is itself some kind of place, being, or doorway to the same beyond the scope of the known planar cosmos. It could be some sort of ultimate god of good and order - perhaps it's a doorway to the realm of Ao in the Forgotten Realms - but no one knows and the DM is strongly discouraged from answering the question of what Chronias is or what happens to those who go there, and keeping the Manual's assumption that there is no god, no magic, nothing in all the planes that can answer those questions. Because, frankly, trying to answer what's there is missing the point.
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Jul 14, 2020 02:30
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Falconier111 posted:lunar settlements - one of which produced limited granitic manipulation techniques Now that's what I call ancient astronauts! 
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Jul 14, 2020 02:58
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KNAVE Part Three of the Dungeon Crawl Trawl  This review of KNAVE is part of a series where I give first impressions of various systems in the context of a dungeon crawl, run a session, and end the review with an actual play and final recommendation. KNAVE by Ben Milton of Questing Beast Games is a "rules toolkit for running old school fantasy RPGs without classes," as it describes itself. While Into The Odd's status in the OSR movement is debatable, the same isn't true for KNAVE. The system is explicitly intended to be used with other OSR rule books and modules with minimum conversion, and the system is intended to be used for introducing new players to OSR games. It also includes extensive designer commentary explaining why a rule exists "to aid in hacking the game" and a broad Creative Commons license. KNAVE is meant to be a game you take and build upon to create something new. But how does it work as a standalone system? Like Into The Odd, KNAVE is a class-less system that uses ability scores as the central resolution mechanic. While it makes sense and it works, I find it strange that the two most popular modern systems in the OSR movement are class-less. If you had asked me what was the defining feature of D&D, I could have likely pointed at classes and levels, not ability scores, but what do I know. KNAVE uses "the six standard abilities" (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) although it makes a point of re-balancing them to try and prevent dump stats. In particular, Ranged Attacks are moved from Dexterity to Wisdom, and resisting magical effects are moved from Wisdom to Intelligence. Actions that require concentration and precision, like picking pockets or tinkering with machinery, are moved from Dexterity to Intelligence. Personally I find it pretty odd to move all the dexterous actions out of the Dexterity ability, but this is the D&D definition of Dexterity (meaning agility) and not the English language definition. Overall, each of the six abilities seem important in their own way, and none of them feel particularly overpowered. The book seems to think that Constitution is the universal "Good Stat," which is an interesting twist. Abilities are determined in a way that's a bit awkward, but I personally find great from a game design perspective. First, ability scores are determined by rolling the classic 3d6 in order, producing your standard bell curve probability with a range of 3 to 18 and an average result of 10.5. However, your bonus isn't directly determined by by your ability score. Instead, it is determined by the lowest result of the three dice. I've included a few AnyDice programs below. Average result of 3d6 keep lowest Average highest ability bonus As a result, you're very likely to have a +1 as most of your ability bonuses, with probably a +3 or +4 as your highest. While your ability bonus is much more important than your ability score, the score is also used for determining your improvement cap when leveling up, so it's not an entirely vestigial mechanic. Ability Scores/bonuses cap at out 20/+10, so you can go all the way to 20/+10 when you start at 11/+1 or below. But you're capped out at 20/+8 if you started at 18/+6 - your maximum potential is lower, but you reach it much faster. Is this level of complexity worth it just to maintain the "roll 3d6 in order" character creation and placing semi-random level caps on ability scores for high level characters, instead of just using "roll 3d6 keep lowest" and ditching Ability Scores completely? No, probably not, but I appreciate the solution that KNAVE came up with to achieve those somewhat conflicting goals. When doing anything that is risky and consequential, players roll a d20 + the appropriate bonus against a target number of 15. With a +1 bonus a character has a 25% chance to succeed, while a +6 bonus has a 50% chance, so a starting character has poor odds even in the best case scenario. KNAVE also has opposed rolls, where one side rolls d20 + appropriate bonus against the other's appropriate bonus + 10. The example the book gives is a wizard casting a fireball at a goblin whose trying to avoid it - the wizard uses Intelligence, while the goblin uses Dexterity. As the book helpfully points out, it doesn't matter who rolls and who takes 10, the probability remains the same. This way, you could set up KNAVE so that the players make all the rolls, or the 'attacker' always rolls, or whatever feels right for your group and the situation. KNAVE also utilizes the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, where you can roll two d20s and take the higher or lower result, to reflect situations where things have clearly gone against one side. Advantage is one of those game design elements that are simple in practice but complicated in theory, so I'm going to pay attention to it and how it feels during the actual session. As the book puts it, "ther referee is of course free to impose positive or negative modifiers rather than use the advantage system, but most players seem to enjoy it and it simplifies the math." I take a bit of an exception at the last part (the effect that advantage has on the probability of a roll is annoyingly complex), but I get what they're going for. The second element to character creation in KNAVE is equipment. Since KNAVE is a classless system, a character's role in the party is mostly determined by the equipment they wield. For example, if you roll chain armor with a helmet and shield, you'll have excellent defense and should probably be at the front with a sword in your other hand. No armor but a good spell? You should play the wizardly role instead. Encumbrance is handled through item slots, with each character getting a number of slots equal to 10 + Constitution bonus. Most items take up one slot and like items can be bundled together, but armor and weapons can take up two or more slots, creating a tension between "more gear" and "more combat equipment". Do you upgrade your weapon from a Dagger (d6 damage) to a Sword (d8 damage), or do you use that extra slot to bring along a ladder? By default no one starts with any spells, but I'll be using the book's suggestion to allow players to forgo armor in exchange for a random spell. KNAVE offers an extensive list of "level-less" spells that have interesting effects, and suggestions on how to tailor magic to fit into your setting, so I'd like to make use of them. Combat in KNAVE is much closer to classic D&D than Into The Odd, with attack rolls against a static armor defense to determine if you deal damage, and that damage subtracting from a character's HP until they die. Anything outside of a regular attack is described as a Stunt, which are undefined beyond requiring an opposed save of some sort, and not directly dealing damage (although stunts like pushing an enemy off a ledge might cause indirect damage). Encoding this into the rules helps set down those mechanical levers that I felt were missing from Into The Odd, even if they're mostly the same in practice. Advantage also has an interesting application in combat, where you can use it the standard way (rolling 2d20 and taking the better result) or to take an extra action in one turn (making an attack AND a stunt on a single turn, rolled normally). So in situations where Advantage is less useful (you're either very likely or unlikely to hit) you could instead use it to make a stunt and still get a 'free' attack. The final two quirks is that initiative is "I-Go-You-Go", where all the players and all the monsters act on one turn, but initiative is re-rolled each round. As a result, half the time the side that just acted will get to immediately act again. KNAVE also has explicit reaction and morale rules, so that encounters are potentially friendly at the beginning, and monsters will likely try to retreat or parley if their leader or half the group is defeated. The rest of the rules are concerned with other elements that I'll discuss quickly. Critical hits and quality are a special rule where natural 1s and 20s will slowly cause equipment to degrade, putting another clock on player resources. Every player character has a 1d8 hit die (which isn't modified by their CON bonus) and recover 1d8 hit points after a long rest (which IS modifed by their CON bonus). KNAVE assures us that all monsters from OSR or classic D&D bestiaries should "work as-is with no major conversions needed," which feels like a pretty big claim. I'm not familiar enough with OD&D, B/X, or AD&D to definitely say whether or not it's true. Finally, the default XP and advancement rules are based on the risk inherent in accomplishments (50/100/200 for low/mid/high risk accomplishments), with a flat consistent 1000 XP buying a new level. There are suggestions for milestone advancement, session advancement, and XP-for-Gold advancement as well... but little beyond "you could try this instead" as far as guidance goes. Overall, I think KNAVE is hitting that sweet spot between Into The Odd's minimalist simplicity and Pathfinder's ornate complexity (spoilers for a later review). KNAVE is still extremely rules-light, with the mechanics taking up two pages instead of one. But including attack rolls adds an element of risk to combat that I felt Into The Odd was lacking, even if the final results were statistically the same. And while the reaction and morale rules aren't strictly necessary, they do help convey the sort of game that KNAVE is about and the sort of combat it's trying to achieve. I've said in the past that KNAVE is probably my go-to recommendation when somebody asks me for a retro-clone, so I'll admit I'm a bit biased, and I'm very excited to try it out during the next one-shot. I’ll be running a session of KNAVE next week, and I would appreciate your help. If my review has sparked your interest, come try it out with me and fill out a short survey afterwards. Everyone had fun last time, so you should come try it out! After all, you might just found your next favorite system.
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Jul 14, 2020 03:59
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I've long since considered that the influence of the Terrans on the Ziru Sirka is dramatically underestimated in two areas, one cultural and one technological. Cultural. Given the difficulties involved in making native Vilani foodstuffs even edible, and the social structures that arose and persisted around resolving them, Terran cuisine would have gone through Vilani space faster than conquering fleets. Show up at a subsector capitol, put on a banquet, and show the local authorities where to sign. Your average Free Trader needs a chef more than it needs a Ship's Lawyer. The fate of worlds turned on pizza. Technological. Given Vilani society, their primary software development methodology isn't Waterfall, it's Glacier. Terran code will outperform Vilani code on the same hardware by orders of magnitude. And hardware ? The Vilani would never have allowed Moore's Law to take effect, the Terrans relied on it. A flavor of Unix would be ported to all Vilani standard hardware just for the exercise. Then the black hats go to work on Vilani infrastructure...
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Jul 14, 2020 04:16
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I suspect the Vilani code runs really efficiently and has very few security holes. It took several generations of programmers to develop this app, but drat is it robust and well-tested. Now if you want some programming done by next month and don't care if it crashes so long as it can be fixed, then you need to hire a Terran.
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Jul 14, 2020 04:45
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mllaneza posted:I've long since considered that the influence of the Terrans on the Ziru Sirka is dramatically underestimated in two areas, one cultural and one technological. “Actually, I theorize that the incredible achievement of the Vilani First Imperium was the fact that it built a huge empire across such a wide range of space without actually improving the flavor of Vilani cuisine. The same bland cardboard paste flavor that Vilani food had, which gave Vilani explorer the drive to move out from Vland, was still the same flavor Vilani food had when the Terrans contacted them. I suggest the Vilani Imperium did not fall from an inability to respond to external and internal pressures, but simply from boredom. Historians may point to diseases and resistance from unabsorbed cultures as the stress points. I simply imagine the reaction on the faces of the Terrans when informed that they owed fees for their unlicensed jump drive, because the Vilani held the patents on the original technology. Personally, I would have given them a license in exchange for annual deliveries of strawberries, but since the Vilani bureaucracy had never encountered a culture it could not stamp, fold or mutilate, they simply followed the rulebook, with predictable results.” - The Integrated Travelled Timeline, 2006 edit: But yeah, I can easily envision running campaigns around coders or hackers cutting through Vilani infrastructure or a shipfull of chefs whipping up wild new dishes with undiscovered ingredients for nobles. And that speaks to the vibrancy of the setting, really. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 05:49
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Silent Legions: Spells (Part 1) When I started writing this update, I figured I could write blurbs about a few of the spells and move on, but a lot of them are interesting enough to be worth discussing on their own – which is why this update ended up split in two, as once I started writing up the spells, I just couldn’t stop. Sorry if it drags a little bit! There’s 40-odd spells in Silent Legions, divided across five spell levels. Every spell is unique (no fireballs here) and a lot of them seem geared to spark interesting moments or allow for novel approaches to problems. None of the spells are in direct competition with mundane skills (with a few exceptions) and in any case, the difficulty of learning and casting one of these rituals balances out any boost to your narrative power. Keep in mind that learning a spell requires you to find it in a grimoire, then try and roll well enough to learn it, then suffer Madness (one for the attempt, and extra Madness equal to the spell level). Then, when you want to actually cast a spell, you have to expend Expertise or take more Madness to get it done. Oh, and odds are you won’t have enough points in Occult to cast any of the really good spells – even at level 10, you won’t have Occult 5 and will therefore have to roll on any attempts to cast a max-level spell. There’s a handy chart listing each spell by level, but their actual descriptions are sorted alphabetically. I’d rather they were alphabetical within each level bracket, but given the relative brevity of the list, it isn’t too hard to find what you’re looking for. All that said, let's get started with a classic Time Stop! Band of Unhindered Escape (Lv.5): You get to make a magic bullet-time circlet. When you break the circlet, you and your allies get to act outside the flow of time for 1d4+1 rounds. Pretty good, except for the fact that you can’t mess with anything living, affecting inanimate objects costs you Madness, and you all eat 1d4 Madness when the spell ends. I mean, if you want to do that thing from JoJo’s, here you are. But for my money, it’s too high-level and too taxing Madness-wise to be really useful. Note that this is one of the rare spells you can actually use in combat (the ritual to make the circlet has to be done outside of a fight, of course). Verdict: Cool, but crazy expensive. Bending the Heart of the King (Lv. 1): It’s pretty much Charm Person. You need an arcane connection (drop of blood, strand of hair, etc.) and then get to induce friendliness in your target, provided they don’t already hate you. They’ll be willing to do anything they’d do for a good friend, and the effect seems to last indefinitely, or at least until you offend them. Verdict: Seems incredibly good. Binding the Crimson Sword (Lv. 3): An incantation that “ensorcels a weapon to mystically bind it to its owner.” The weapon, once bound, becomes unbreakable, and its owner will always have a mystical sense of where the weapon is (if taken away or lost). It also makes the weapon count as magical, which allows you to use the Slaughter die against unnatural creatures, at the cost taking 1d4 HP damage yourself every attack. This one’s hard to judge, given I don’t have an intuitive sense of how much HP you’d reasonably expect to have by level 6 (when the spell would be freely castable) and how important getting your crit chance is versus a standard reference shoggoth. Verdict: Probably pretty good? Binding Shut the Way (Lv. 3): Lets you mystically board up an entrance between our world and a Kelipah (the game’s term for pocket dimensions and other mystical zones). Theoretically useful to trap a cult on one side of a Way, but in practice there’s more exciting spells to spend your constrained Madness on, and wouldn’t you rather fight the cult than just trap them on Hell Mars or wherever? You know they’ll find some other way back to Earth. Verdict: Ehhh. The Black Lamp (Lv. 3): You make a spooky lamp with your friends. The lamp’s illumination reveals sorcery or enchantments on your HUD. It’s nice that the effect works for everyone who participated in the ritual, but it only lasts until the lamp runs out of fuel or is extinguished, so you’ve gotta make a bunch of lamps to make your investment worth it. (Or just set it up so that you can easily refill the fuel, I guess). Verdict: Situationally useful but hardly thrilling. The Circle of Inward Eyes (Lv. 1): Remember how the lamp shows you if there’s magic nearby? This lets you check for magic anywhere (or on a given object) and even lets you get more information based on how well you roll on a WIS/Occult check. It’s obviously not a spell you can use while actively investigating a location (unlike the lamp) but it is way easier to learn and gives you better intel. Verdict: Seems good to me! Cleansing Light of the Dawn (Lv. 3): Ruin a cult’s favourite casting ground with the Cleansing Light! After performing the ritual, all malevolent magical effects are dispelled in the area (“a single house, monument, cromlech, hilltop, or other specific geographic location”) and it’s useless for cult rituals for a solid month. Downsides? If you dispel a curse or other magical effect, whoever cast the curse gets a glimpse of the person who cleansed it, and it’s no good against magic generated by a specific artifact or entity that’s hanging out nearby. Verdict: Fun as an AoE middle finger to a cult.  Converse With the Ancestors (Lv. 2): Talk to a skull and maybe make a new friend. You get to ask questions of the skull and receive very short answers (1-3 words) as if from the skull’s original owner (occupant?) Unfortunately, it’s less useful the older the skull is. The GM gets to roll a secret 1d10 after every question, and if they roll equal to or under the number of years the skull’s owner has been dead, “sinister entities” will take over the skull and twist the answers in the most deceptive way possible. Given the answers are limited to three words or less, I’m not sure how much twisting is possible without just outright lying. Verdict: Very useful. Distant Seal of Alarm (Lv. 1): Isn’t there an Alarm spell in D&D? This is that, but better. After inscribing a spiritual eye in blood and dust, you receive a vision of any creature larger than a cat that crosses the eye’s field of view. The vision lasts at least one round (if it happens while you’re in combat), but you can extend it for an extra minute per level of Occult if you want. Sure, you can pretty much replicate this spell’s effects with a webcam and a smartphone, but I’d say it’s still pretty useful? Verdict: Good. Dust of Scouring False Seeming (Lv. 2): You get to cook up some Dust of Appearance. When the dust is thrown at a target, they have to save vs. Magic or else show their true form to you. The catch is that the target gets +1 to their roll for every person around them who’s convinced by their illusory form, so you pretty much have to get them alone before dropping the Dust. I really like this – having to figure out a way to isolate your target is an adventure hook in itself, and being able to purge illusions is something that you might not need often, but will be very glad to have when it does come up. Verdict: A+. Eyes of the Distant Mind (Lv. 4): Scrying! You need a lump of earth or piece of a building to use this spell, but once you’re locked on, you can scry from the origin point of your dirt/brick/whatever, seeing and hearing everything in your line of sight. You can’t use this too much, though, as every half hour spent scrying after your first 30 minutes (per week) forces you to make a Magic save or suffer 1d4 Madness. Even with that small limitation, this is still an incredibly useful ability, limited only by the fact that it’s pretty high level. Verdict: Incredibly useful. Friendship of the Ones Behind (Lv. 2): When cast from a perfectly dark room, this spell allows you to call up “certain powers” who’ll bring you any small object, provided you know its location and that it isn’t guarded by “lock, ward, eye, or hand.” It gives some examples of items you could get – a tome that was thrown out by mistake, a coffer at the bottom of a lake, or an artifact that fell down a pit. As you can see, it’s basically only useful as a Find My Phone for stuff that got lost. Since most things that you would conceivably want are going to be guarded in one way or another, this spell basically exists to a) force the GM to come up with a bunch of reasons for cultists to have been super careless with their magic items and b) encourage players to spend a long time haggling over exactly what “guarded” means. Verdict: (balloon deflating noise). Incantation of the Thrice-Shared Eye (Lv. 4): This one lets you bind together your adventuring party with a psychic bond, allowing telepathic communication between the group and granting everyone mystical knowledge of everyone else’s location, health, and current emotional state. You can’t be taken by surprise (unless you ALL get surprised at once) and get to share the best initiative roll out of the group. The spell even lasts indefinitely (counting as one of your standing enchantments, but given that this is the first one we’ve seen, I can’t imagine you’ll be super pressed on your enchantment limit). It’s really good, probably too good – telepathy is already one of those abilities (like flight, say) that short-circuits some types of challenges, and having it be effectively permanent AND you get to know everyone else’s location and health data AND you can’t be surprised AND you get to share good initiative rolls… it’s way too much rolled into one spell. Verdict: Dare I say overpowered? Kill the Weakness of the Soul (Lv. 4): Grants a willing target total immunity to gaining Madness from bloodshed, plus they no longer feel fear or mercy. While under this spell, the target will obey any orders given by the caster (short of suicide), and their affect becomes so creepy they automatically fail any social skill checks. Lasts until the next dawn, at which point the target totally forgets everything that happened while they were ensorcelled. Basically, you get to turn your friend into a kill-zombie who is really unnerving to be around. Them forgetting what happened is a fun story hook, and I can see a situation where you use this spell on someone who needs to be willing to commit some kind of atrocity for the greater good. Verdict: Very cool, but a little limited. The Little House Without Windows (Lv. 5): You create a token that can be used later to open a portal to the Little House. The LH is a Kelipah, a place that exists on another dimension or folded between spaces we can’t perceive. Inside, the House is an endless maze of featureless grey chambers, varying only in dimensions and shape. Those inside the House do not feel hunger, thirst, or exhaustion (and, in fact, it’ll cure you of any starvation-type issues the moment you step inside), although time does pass normally. Any wounds heal at their usual rate, but they regenerate in uncanny ways – torn flesh flowing together like a viscous fluid. The portal to the House stays open until the sorcerer enters, at which point it becomes sealed and imperceptible to the outside world. Others can freely leave (and maybe enter again? It’s warded against “intrusion,” so it’s possible only enemies are kept at bay), but as soon as the sorcerer leaves again, the portal vanishes permanently. Oh yeah, and it’s so creepy that staying in there for longer than a day costs you Madness. This spell is very flavourful, maybe not quite as powerful as you’d want from a Level 5 ritual, but the concept of summoning the basement from House of Leaves as a flophouse is really too awesome to resist. Verdict: Too cool for me to care if it’s useful or whatever. Thoughts so far: I'm almost surprised at how few spells seem out-and-out too good, given D&D's long and storied history with wizards. Crawford clearly had a few areas he wanted sorcery to focus on, mostly relating to information gathering (revealing enchantments and scrying) with the odd bit of psychic or defensive magic thrown in for good measure. We'll see how this changes with the remaining rituals, but so far I quite like the cost/reward/narrative impact balance on most of the spells. Next time: The last spells, for real this time!
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Jul 14, 2020 06:41
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Falconier111 posted:[*] Medically. I don’t have to tell you our world is a horrifying cauldron of disease, especially right now. Before the Third Interstellar War, Vilani authorities had been used to dealing with diseases, but only to a limited extent; with travel common and borders open now, our beautiful festering shithole started leaking its diseases into a massive society completely unprepared to deal with them. The resulting plagues killed at least a few percent of the Imperium’s population as they swept through it at the speed of supply ships, far outpacing direct Terran influence. Fortunately, Terrans avoided the blame for spreading them, especially since the plagues were usually followed by Terran medical professionals of all stripes desperately trying to save as many people as possible – without them, the death toll would probably have been several times higher. Those doctors were the first Terrans the vast majority of Vilani encountered and they left a strong positive impression on the Dissidents and Low Vilani they helped save – and pissed off High Vilani who saw them as a threat to their power. Would you believe this was explored specifically to set up campaigns for self-sacrificing healthcare-themed characters to face a problem and make a huge impact? You should. It seems like they underestimate the impact a plague(s) would have on a stratified and unchanging bureaucracy. Also, a few percent dead means a complete economic crash I would think. The part I empathised makes a lot more sense than it would have 6 months ago. Scarily prophetic.
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Jul 14, 2020 06:49
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Falconier111 posted:edit: But yeah, I can easily envision running campaigns around coders or hackers cutting through Vilani infrastructure or a shipfull of chefs whipping up wild new dishes with undiscovered ingredients for nobles. And that speaks to the vibrancy of the setting, really. Roadies for a pop act is the canonical best Traveller campaign idea.
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Jul 14, 2020 07:24
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mllaneza posted:Roadies for a pop act is the canonical best Traveller campaign idea. The Vilani get invited to participate in Eurovision.
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Jul 14, 2020 10:42
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Conjuration/Summoning specialists are barred from learning spells from The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 6: The Deck of Wizard Kits and Fascism 28: A Little Knowledge The PCs are chilling in a tavern when a scholarly man emerges and approaches them. His name is Mordechai, an academician (he’ll explain what that means). He wants to spend time with an adventuring party, and will pay for their expenses during the time he’s with them. He’s kind of a pain, because he doesn’t like to be wrong and will steadfastly ignore contrary evidence. He’s particularly bad at negotiation. If they don’t drop him earlier, he’ll depart after a month with “a few parting tidbits of wisdom.” Fine as a guest NPC. He’s a level 4 wizard, too, so he’s not useless - though he does have only 6 HP! Ouch, that’s real bad, even for a 2E mage. Keep KIT CORNER: Academician (PHBR 4: The Complete Wizard’s Handbook, mislabelled here (and every other time in the deck) as “PHBR4 (Priest)”) These are those scholar wizards who read musty old books. They need at least a 13 Intelligence, and an 11 Wisdom for some reason. They also must take weapon proficiency in one of Dagger, Dart, Knife, or Sling, which is weird because that is literally 80% of all weapons that wizards have access to. (There are no academicians who only know how to use staves. What are you, crazy?) They also get a -1 to hit for their first attack against any given opponent, and are encouraged to roleplay being an insufferable know-it-all. In return, they get a bonus proficiency in Reading/Writing, a +3 reaction bonus with other aspiring scholars and distant correspondents, and bonuses to all Intelligence and Wisdom checks - either a flat +1, or scaling with their race and age according to an overly detailed chart (capping out at +4 to Intelligence checks and +3 to Wisdom checks for 351+ year-old elves). 29: The Spirit is Willing The PCs find an unconscious old woman lying by a rock in a hilly area. Shallow breathing, healing spells have no effect. She’s actually a mystic who’s deployed her spirit form, and will return in 22 hours. Seems like kind of a dangerous place to do that? And she doesn’t even have a sign like Granny Weatherwax. So yeah, the PCs can react as they would, but if they kill her through a funeral pyre or whatever (who would do that to someone who’s still breathing?), she’ll probably haunt them. It’s okay. She doesn’t even have a name, personality, or reason that she’s astrally-projecting, though, so there’s really no follow-up once she wakes up. Eh. Jury? KIT CORNER: Mystic (PHBR 4: The Complete Wizard’s Handbook) Mystics use arcane magic as a path to self-enlightenment. Good luck with that. They need a 13 wisdom, and can’t specialize in necromancy, conjuration, or invocation. They start with the Astrology and Religion NWPs for free, but their weapon proficiency options are even more restricted than usual: dagger, dart, or sling. The text says you can only ever “buy (and use)” those weapons, as well as knives. A mystic with a staff? Preposterous! As an aside, isn’t it a weird AD&Dism for wizards to use darts and slings? Does that have any fictional precedent? You get to choose one special power, usable once/week: a componentless feign death; the spirit form from the encounter, which can fly at a speed of 24, go as far as you want, and is invulnerable to pretty much anything other than dispel magic, which sends it back to your body (it looks like a mist with your shape, though, it’s not invisible); or a special levitate which doesn’t give you attack roll penalties. Only one of those powers seems like it would give the DM headaches. Take that one. The downside is that you have to meditate for two hours every day. The same two hours every day, like the first two hours after dawn or whatever. Otherwise you memorize spells like you’re one level lower. What a pain. 30: Merchants of Violence A small city is trying to foster good relations with a “civilized” orc settlement nearby. The orcs have asked for the right to trade within the city walls as a show of good faith. Seems fair. But the mayor is fearful that “the orcs will lose control and cause harm to the town and its people,” and hires the PCs to hang around the city for the duration, just in case there’s trouble. Not in any official capacity. So the PCs are being employed as a secret police force for a bigoted mayor to keep an eye on peaceful merchants who he fears will behave like racist stereotypes. Our... heroes? Anyway, the orc merchants sell their wares, then after hours head to a tavern and do become “drunk and destructive.” But c’mon, it’s a D&D tavern! That’s just what you do, right? Anyway if the PCs intervene and stop them, the town guards come by and arrest the party, but that’s just for appearances sake, and they’re released after a night in a cushy jail cell. I mean, I like the random establishing of a local mercantile orc village on the world map, but I don’t know about the encounter itself. Pass probably. 31: Mistaken Identity Not to be confused with Mistaken Identity, Versions 1, 2, or 3 from the DoE Set 1. This is a different Mistaken Identity. The PCs enter a “small town or city” ruled by a “despotic governess” who recently received a prophecy that she’d be violently overthrown by a group of travellers kinda sorta matching the PCs’ description. So the PCs are spied on by some incompetent spies who are good at escaping. “The party should quickly perceive that someone is watching them, but it should be difficult to uncover who.” The spies will spill the beans if caught. Otherwise the party is accosted by “a patrol from the governess’s army” (you know, the army of this small town) “and must talk their way to freedom.” Right. Talking their way to freedom is what will surely happen. Could be more interesting, but I like the high potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy here. Keep.
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Jul 14, 2020 15:22
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Just once I want it to be the bog-standard humans who are presented as rigid, unadaptable, uncreative, and open to being massively influenced by a wave of innovative and dynamic cultural influence from hip n happening aliens. Okay, it's probably happened at least once. I want it to happen more often. EDIT: I'd probably KEEP The Spirit is Willing just because it seems easy to tie into whatever else you've got cooking for the players; a way to bait them into complications or hint at where to go next or whatnot. On its own I do agree it's just nothing at all. Drakyn fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 15:23
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The Spirit Is Willing has a lot of potential, in my opinion. Like, both approaches, the players loving up and giving the lady a dignified burial, and them hanging around to see what's happening, could lead to some sort of adventure hooks. If they accidentally kill her despite meaning well, it could be a quest to get her reincarnated or resurrected, or to help her finish whatever the reason for her astral projection was(maybe she was scouting out a nearby villain or something). If they don't kill her, they get a hook in on whatever her quest is. And even if they leave her alone, they could have a VILLAINY PATROL show up a few hours later and ask them if they've seen anyone matching her description, and they could realize that perhaps she was someone they could make an ally of(whether they pants the patrol or let them go, but get a feeling that they're up to no good).
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Jul 14, 2020 15:50
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Honestly I'm a Pass on that card. Maybe if it gave more elaboration (why is she out alone in the wild? Is there a group of baddies looking for her?) but as written it's just the barest sketch of a concept IMO.
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Jul 14, 2020 17:16
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It's so  that I'm gonna go Pass as well. Also what party would outright kill someone obviously sleeping unless you were playing a group of pyschos to begin with?
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Jul 14, 2020 19:21
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[quote="Dallbun" post="506496649"]29: The Spirit is Willing[quote] I’m voting [b]keep[b] because, while the encounter is bare-bones, it’s the kind ofnbare-bones that opens up interesting possibilities. I’m getting shamanistic vibes from the situation. Maybe the PCs will upset some ritual by interferring, opening a whole mess of possibilites for setting right what they’ve started.
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Jul 14, 2020 19:39
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You might be able to fit The Spirit IsWilling into your campaign. Maybe her enemies show up and the players have to defend her. Maybe she has a mystic vision that gives the players a clue about their next destination or something that might face them there, etc.
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Jul 14, 2020 20:19
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Chapter 2: The Empty Peace and the Protracted Struggle (Fourth through Seventh Interstellar Wars) Let me tell you something as a professional historian: violent repression almost never actually works. It’s psychologically very appealing; show your power by beating up those you disagree with until they can’t fight back. But it’s a lot more likely that the people you repress will just hate you even more and plot your downfall with greater ferocity while pretending to be cowed for your benefit; “teaching them a lesson” usually has that lesson turn into “they will kill you if you don’t fight back”. There’s a reason why attempts to control restless populations mostly through force (the late British Empire, to some extent America right now) leads to even more restive and determined populations, and why successful peace processes (Northern Ireland, parts of former Yugoslavia) can lead to economic revival after a couple decades. And it’s part of why empires often grow more militaristic at the end of their lifespans before collapsing, and why countries can so strongly emphasize their independence days. So when I say the aftermath of the Third Interstellar War forced the Terran Confederation to take time and restock, they never considered giving in. The 15 year period between the Third and Fourth Interstellar Wars came to be known as the Empty Peace, a period of growth and rearmament where Terran society finally had enough time to breathe to reorient itself. I was going to devote part of this post to exploring conditions in the Confederation, but there’s an entire chapter on them later on, so suffice to say the Terran Confederation relaxed, expanded its economy, started assimilating its Vilani citizens, and built the civilian foundation for the state that would eventually overthrow the Imperium. It was also a highly chaotic time of social, economic, political, and military developments, one tailor-made for PCs to mess around in and change the course of history – and one Sharik Yangila moved to interfere with.  Yangila was a rarity, a member of a minor human race able to claw her way up the Vilani social ladder. While her rivals held her origin against her, she proved able to ride Vilani pragmatism further and further up the political food chain until she replaced Erasharshi as regional governor, possibly after facilitating his removal, in 2157. Yangila was no military genius and lacked Erasharshi’s aggression and logistical expertise. But she was just as bold, just as convinced of the Terran threat to the Imperium, and far, far smarter than he ever was. She was the only Vilani leader to mount extensive intelligence operations against the Confederation, and though she only had mixed success in exploiting fracture lines in the Confederation (she managed to spark some nationalist unrest in the 2160s but nothing intense enough to hobble the Confederation), she built the first extensive Vilani profile of Terran society and gathered vital information on Terran economics and supply lines. Instead of just beefing up her fleet like Erasharshi had, she had her designers dig out ship designs dating back to the Consolidation Wars that had long since fallen into disuse, throwing together fleet both substantially smaller than the one that bombed Terra and significantly more combat-capable. She drew up her battle plans using the knowledge she’d gained to identify weak points and exploit them, more than making up for a lack of ability in executing maneuvers by setting things up so complicated strategies were never needed. And in 2170 she set off the Protracted Struggle, the next stage of the Interstellar Wars, which pitted the two empires against each other in a series of clashes separated more by truce than by any intention for peace. In 2170, citing the economic and social chaos Terran traders brought with them and a growing depression throughout the region, Yangila ordered the borders closed entirely to trade. Naturally the local economy tanked even harder after being suddenly deprived of the Terran goods it had come to rely on, but she had more than enough political capital to keep the blockade in place. This blindsided the Confederation (who’d at that point turned inward to deal with various building social issues) and at first it tried to comply and diplomatically solve the issue, but waves of free traders turned smuggler or lobbied the government to break the blockade as soon as possible – especially a major capitalist named Umar bin-Abdallah al-Ghazali, a man equal parts businessman, pirate, and spymaster that free trader campaigns will almost certainly run into at some point. After repeated violations of her terms, Yangila declared war in 2173 and staged a series of massive attacks on holdings across Terran space, capturing vulnerable bases that held Confederation supply lines open and rating colonies with missile ships that vanished before Terran fleets could reach them. In 2175 Imperial troops took Nusku back (to the dismay of its populace) and started a major push into Terran territory that both sides knew they had little reasonable chance of stopping. Umar bin-Abdallah al-Ghazali, remarks to the annual meeting of the Free Traders Association, 2168 posted:Many Terrans tend to think of the profit motive as a Western invention, or perhaps as a Western aberration, to be disdained rather than imitated. This is nonsense. Every society expresses the profit motive in some manner. This is particularly true of my own people. We have never forgotten that the Prophet, peace be upon Him, was Himself a successful merchant. And then Yangila shot herself in the foot. In 2176 the Confederation sent a gaggle of diplomats to her court who literally humiliated themselves at her feet to show their contrition and beg for mercy. Falling victim to the “we showed them a lesson” error, Yangila accepted their terms and sent them back home with relatively lenient terms (respect the blockade and don’t leave Terran space), after which they went home and helped organize a second strike. Two years later, a higher-ranked administrator (think state governor to the head of a county, and the fact that a county’s military could repeatedly crush the Terran fleet says a lot about the Imperium’s size) ordered part of Yangila’s fleet away to deal with a rebellion in another part of the sector, and the Terrans took the opportunity and invaded. Their rebuilt military smashed the remainder of Yangila’s fleet, took back Nusku, and seized several systems beyond the former borders, weakening her position so much that her rivals forced her to step down and a new noble family, the Dumushirs, took the reins. They approached the Confederation and offered terms – the first time Vilani leaders had deigned to reach out to Terrans first – in 2186; the Imperium let them keep everything they’d occupied and dropped the bulk of its trade restrictions. The Dumushirs after the end of the Fifth Interstellar War proved the epitome of Vilani leadership in this era: indolent, largely incompetent, and prone to backstabbing. Sharik Yangila, instead of trying to get her position back, went into retirement in the Imperial core, a startling development for someone who was under 60 at the time. She spent the next several years quietly enjoying her retirements before hopping into her personal yacht and booking it for Terran space until her ship mysteriously exploded halfway there. They never found her body, and given just how conniving she was, the most common theory on her fate is that she defected to the Confederation and spent her life in comfortable retirement there. But speaking of conniving, you may have noticed a pattern in the biographies of major figures so far: all the men are bold, aggressive, and usually warlike, while the women are cunning and underhanded, more likely to engage in subterfuge or politicking then any kind of direct action. This will not go away and in fact it’ll just get even more pronounced. The only exception to that rule is Lorette Strider, the captain of the expedition that made first contact and a Vilaniphile and peace advocate, and she’s so unimportant her name doesn’t even show up outside the biographies section. You don’t get any  here, but between this and the book’s consistent use of the generic he you do get a sort of mood build up after a while. But it’s never overt, so, oh well? Lorette Strider Anyway, by this point the Rim Worlds were falling apart. Local Vilani grew increasingly dependent on Terran goods, military discipline declined and piracy boomed, Dissident rebellions increased in size and frequency, and even High Vilani started turning to Terran merchants to help them scheme against their rivals. While Imperial border officials theoretically still enforced border restrictions, they grew more and more corruptible and less traders through with token “fees”, and free traders started penetrating far deeper into Vilani space than they ever had before. Even the wealthy core worlds underwent serious economic collapses as the results of the Terran plague took effect, though the static nature of the Vilani economy and society kept the whole thing from flying apart. But at this point the bulk of Vilani society was still intact, especially further in. While the book is oriented more towards campaigns a couple decades earlier, the freedom of travel for Terrans that defined the Protracted Struggle combined with the relatively localized nature of the wars and the relative stability of Vilani society (it will not last), if you want to run those specialty chef or coder or intergalactic band campaigns, this is the period you set it in. The next two wars proved even more embarrassing for the Imperium. By 2195, when a Vilani force raided a Terran outpost and the Dumushir in charge blamed the attack on pirates, conditions in the Rim Worlds had gotten so bad he may very well have been honest. The Terrans attacked anyway. While the Vilani rolled out commerce raiders of their own and bolstered their ground armies to the point where they could actually resist Terran troops for a while, the Confederation still took enough highly-populated Vilani planets to increase their population by nearly half again – and by that point the local population was so familiar with and sympathetic to the Terrans that they assimilated nearly as fast as Nusku had. After signing the armistice in 2201, the local governor appealed to the regional governor for help and he sent a cousin of his out with several massive battleships, but they found the local economy was so rocky it couldn’t keep the ships in good repair. That delegate and the local governor launched a raid in 2206 that the Terrans quickly repelled, then capitalized on by advancing even further into the Imperium. The two Vilani leaders fell into feuding until the regional governor recalled his cousin in 2210 before they started fighting each other out right. Soon enough, the local governor was assassinated and replaced by a new Dumushir who immediately sued for peace, ceding several more systems and formally removing the already-ignored border controls, increasing the flood of Terran goods and traders even more. The treaty went into effect in 2214, one century after the first time Vilani and Terran ships engaged.  By this point the Imperium at large had started to crumble. Dissident and non-Vilani populations had begun seeking out Terran adventurers to serve as advisors or leaders, High Vilani throughout the rim openly recruited Terrans into their entourages, and the economic malaise increasingly present in every corner of the Ziru Sirka allowed a new race of alien pirates and raiders to start overrunning the parts of the Imperium closest to the galactic core. But as desperate as things were for the Vilani, they still had some fight left in them. In 2228, the Terran Confederation would face the last and greatest threat the Vilani ever produced. Final note: as is traditional for Traveller games, there’s a subsector generation section in here for you to use in your campaigns, but it’s not the sort of thing you go into in-depth unless you actually intend to make a setting to run your campaign. I wanted to ask the thread if you’d be interested in me running through it when it comes up to illustrate how that subsystem works in action, or whether I should stick to the meat of the book. But that’s in the future: next post will cover the final battles of the Interstellar Wars and both sides’ ultimate fate. E: I’m aware some of those examples early on might be controversial but I need to cite something so  DoubleE: So the dictation software I use renders "Vilani" as "villain" because they sound vaguely similar. I usually find and replace it before publishing. Today I forgot to 
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 20:34
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They're not a great empire, but I don't think they're all villains.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:18
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Falconier111 posted:
It autocorrected "Vilani" to "villain" for most of that post.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:24
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Soulbound The Bad Decision Crew Disciples of Tzeentch are Tzeentch's boys, girls and mysterious bifurcating daemonic hordes. Lots of magical power among these guys, and often they're often either very subtle or very, very not. Chamon is probably their strongest realm. Horrors of Tzeentch come in three types and colors, and they are easily Tzeentch's most loyal servants. The largest are the Pink Horrors, Medium Daemon (Disciple of Tzeentch) Warriors. They're the normal ones you run into because they're the ones typically created. They're weird masses of pink flesh, swinging limbs and laughing mouths. They're relatively fragile, but they can hurl a decent weapon in the form of magical flame generated by their incessant spinning, and in melee they like to grab and choke people. It's only average damage wise...as long as you pass an Athletics check. If you fail, they get some nasty extra damage that ignores armor and you become Restrained, recurring as long as they stay latched on. Oh, and they can cast Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield. When killed, they split into two Blue Horrors, which are similar looking but smaller, blue and more spiteful Small Daemon (Disciple of Tzeentch) Warriors. They're only slightly more fargile than their pink progenitors, but their flames are less accurate and they just claw people, not choke them. (They're not very good at it, though.) When killed, they split into two Brimstone Horrors, Tiny Daemon (Disciples of Tzeentch) Minions. These guys are basically just very angry balls of hate, having died twice before. They're fragile as hell, and their attacks are terrible...but they do get Swarm rules, so in numbers they can be dangerous. Kairic Acolytes are Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Minions, cultists who infiltrate mortal societies and serve Tzeentch in exchange for promised power. They can be from just about any culture or walk of life, and they maintain their cover for possibly entire decades before they receive their signals. Then, they throw off their disguises and transform into muscular warriors bearing cursed weapons, because...well, Tzeentch likes biceps, I guess? They're not subtle, but in groups they can become terrifyingly powerful sorcerers. Individually, they're barely average fighters, very fragile and only capable of casting Arcane Bolt. However, as long as at least nine Acolytes are within Medium range of each other, all of them get gigantic casting pools, making their spells potentially very deadly. Tzaangors are Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Warriors. They are Tzeentch's trusted warrior-mages, transformed from mortals or beastmen who have given loyal service or been subjected to key rituals. They are turned into bird people with shining feathers, sharp beaks and lots of curving horns. They are very strong and very intelligent, gifted with greater understanding of magic than other beast-kin. Their leaders are Shamans, who wield equally powerful blades and magic from on top of their daemonic Discs of Tzeentch. Tzaangors are tough, well-armored and skilled in melee combat with their blades, greatblades and beaks, and they're also good archers. When two or more are in the same Zone, they also do more damage. A Tzaangor Shaman, however, is a Medium Mortal (Chaos-Corrupted) Chosen. They are even tougher, and they ride flying Discs of Tzeentch, which also can attack people for good damage. Shamans are weaker in melee and only have a staff and dagger, but each one carries a dose of magic elixir which they can use as a free action to cast a spell instantly, no wait time, no action. All shamans are good casters, with Aetheric Armor, Arcane Blast, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield and their unique Boon of Mutation. This isn't an easy spell to cast, and it only does relatively minor damage to a single target...but anyone that'd be Mortally Wounded or killed by it is turned into a Tzaangor that obeys the Shaman. If this happens to a PC, it also increases the Doom. Vulcharcs are Small Beast (Chaos-Corrupted) Minions. These are multicolored hunting birds that Tzeentch gives to people that please him. They are corrupted and trained to hunt enemy spellcasters, typically aiming for the eyes and mouths. Their feathers are very valuable as reagents in divinatory rituals, but it is believed that to take a feather without the permission of the Vulcharc brings nine generations of terrible luck. Vulcharcs are very fragile and don't even get Swarm, but they're decent fighters that get a boost to Melee when attacking spellcasters.  Even Tzeentch loves buff guys. Hedonites of Slaanesh serve the youngest and most beautiful Chaos God, seeking out indulgence, perfection and excess. Mortal cultists tend to obsess over perfection of their favored skill or art, whether that's painting, dance or combat. However, while worship continues, the god is not there, and the Daemons of Slaanesh war over what to do - some seek their master's return, some seek to replace him, and others just want to keep up their activities. Daemonettes are Medium (Hedonites of Slaanesh) Minions, the most common of all of Slaaneshi Daemons. They are beautiful and nightmarish, chitinous killers with skin like porcelain and alluring looks on what parts of their bodies are human. They can emit mindbending and confusing musk, and their voices are lilting and musical. Their touch can cause great pleasure or maddening pain, and they feed on emotion - especially emotional turmoil. They're fast and well-armored but highly fragile, and they don't get the Swarm rule, so while they're decent warriors they don't reach the heights of danger that Bloodletters can. On the other hand, their grotesque beauty means that anyone that's in Close Range of them has to make a Determination check or become Charmed for a round. Keepers of Secrets are Enormous Daemon (Hedonites of Slaanesh) Chosen. They are immense creatures that resemble Daemonettes physically, though they can have all kinds of head, from cows to beautiful but terrifying humanoid faces. Their claws warp the land and the minds of those around them, calling forth dark thoughts and wearing down inhibitions even before they begin to fight. They are also terrifyingly dangerous - good armor and a shitload of Toughness, Nigh Unkillable and with amazing combat skills using their greatblades, claws and living whips, which can also restrain those they strike. Keepers all have four arms, which they can use in concert as easily as mortals dual wield. They have the same charm aura as Daemonettes, but stronger and harder to resist - it's out to Medium range and the roll is harder. Their claws instantly kill anyone they Mortally Wound, tearing out the heart and eating it. Oh, and they're spellcasters, with Aetheric Armor, Arcane Blast, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield and their unique Cacophonic Choir. That spell forces all non-Hedonites in their Zone to have to make a Determination test or become Incapacitated for a while due to the sanity-breaking sound. Our next section is Maggotkin of Nurgle, servants of the rotting god. He sees them as his children, doting on them with plague and inhuman gifts, finding their natics funny and loving their efforts to spread his gifts. Even now, they remain strongest in Ghryan, despite Alarielle's resurgence, and Nurgle is obsessed with reclaiming all of it. Great Unclean Ones are Enormous Daemon (Maggotkin of Nurgle) Chosen. They're huge monsters whose organs burst forth from their bodies and are the most beloved children of Nurgle, embodying his nature and form. They are always surrounded by pestilent insects and their bellies are slick with their own blood and viscera. They spread disease for miles by their very presence. They are some of the toughest monsters around - they have very strong armor, huge amounts of Toughness from Nigh Unkillable, and they heal 5 Toughness per turn. They're also immune to being Poisoned or made sick by any means, they're powerful spellcasters who can unbind spells and cast Aetheric Armor, Arcane Blast, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield or their unique Plague Wind, which damages all enemies in a Zone and forces a Fortitude check to not be Poisoned for a round...and also heals other Nurglite Daemons. They're always surrounded by Nurglings, making the Zone they're in a Major Hazard for non-Maggotkin, and they can choose to take wounds to get a bonus to unbinding spells by offering up their own guts to Nurgle. They also are amazing fighters with their Bileblades and Plague Flails, which do a ton of damage and force a Fortitude test to avoid being poisoned, and can spit Noxious Bile as a ranged attack to do the same, which can hit a spread of foes. These things are very nasty. Plaguebearers are Medium Daemon (Maggotkin of Nurgle) Minions, grown from the souls of those slain by Nurgle's Rot. They appear as huge, shambling monsters with hideous skin infections and the stench of death, working as the guards of the Great Unclean Ones. They're very fragile, but they come in Swarms and are immune to disease and being Poisoned. Further, they get increased Defence against ranged attacks due to the swarms of flies around them. They're only average fighters on their own, but anyone their Plagueswords hurt must make a Fortitude test to avoid becoming Poisoned for a round, and their Swarm nature means they can get very nasty. The final Chaos section covers the Children of the Horned Rat - the Skaven. Skaven are...well, Skaven, you know what they look like. There are five Great Clans now, though - Skryre, Pestilens, Moulder and Eshin are all pretty much the same as ever, but there's also Clan Verminus, whose gimmick is being slavemasters and warriors. Also, Skaven can create Gnawholes, temporary portals formed by tearing holes in the fabric of reality, so they can travel without needing Realmgates. Despite being creatures of innate Chaos, Skaven are considered mortal. Clanrats are Medium Mortal (Skaven) Minions, the second-lowest tier of the Skaventide - outranking only slaves and laborers, who are considered effectively the same thing. Despite this, they remain entirely convinced of their own superiority and inevitable rise to power. They're horribly weak individually, and on their own they're likely to flee while spraying the musk of fear, but they're almost never found alone, and in numbers they become fierce. Clanrats are absolutely awful at everything but sneaking, when on their own, but they get Swarm rules, and even their rusty weapons can become nasty when there's enough of them in one Zone. Gray Seers are Medium Mortal (Skaven) Chosen. They are rare among the Skaven of Blight City, born with grey fur and horns as a mark of the Horned Rat's favor. They are raised apart from other Skaven, to learn the ways of their god and his magic. They rarely go out of their warrens except under heavy guard, and other Skaven both fear and envy these masters of manipulation. They're no warriors, though - they want to avoid melee combat as much as possible. What they are is extremely potent spellcasters that can unbind, plus cast Aetheric Armor, Arcane Blast, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield and their unique Wither. Wither is a hard spell to cast, but it lets them do a lot of armor-ignoring damage if they pull it off by withering someone's body. Further, each Seer carries a fragment of warpstone, which they can eat as a free action. If they do, they get a huge bonus to spellcasting for the rest of the fight...but any failed Channelling roll causes them to immediately die and explode, dealing a lot of armor-ignoring damage to everything nearby. Gutter Runners are Medium Mortal (Skaven) Warriors, trainee assassins for Clan Eshin. They're skirmishers and infiltrators that work individually or in small groups to ambush foes with their poisoned blades then get away via parkour and stealth. They also love to poison water supplies, set buildings on fire and steal things. Gutter Runners aren't very tough, but they're excellent at melee when dual wielding and their punch daggers and knives cause Poisoned on a failed Fortitude check. They also carry throwing stars, which they're only average with. You don't want to be ambushed by them, however - they do double damage and ignore Armor when attacking foes unaware of them. Rat Ogors are Large Mortal (Skaven) Champions. They're...rat ogres, but renamed for copyright reasons. Clan Moulder still makes them. They are extremely stupid, barely able to understand orders and incapable of most weapons use. They can be made more effective by grafting someone's brain onto them as a secondary parasite. They're still dumb if you do this, but they become able to follow orders better and wield weapons. The most terrifying of them are the Stormfiends, cyborg Rat Ogors made in conjunction with Clane Skryre, by which I mean they basically strap extremely deadly warpstone weaponry onto them and hope they don't explode. A Rat Ogor is well-armored and tough thanks to Nigh Unkillable, but they're much more fragile than any other Nigh Unkillable creature due to their very low Mind and Soul. They do get a bonus to Melee if in the same Zone as anyone that has a Wound, though, as the blood drives them into a frenzy. They hit very hard with their bladed fists, teeth and clawsand while they're not very accurate, those equipped with Warpfire Guns can do a lot of damage if they hit, plus force a Fortitude check to avoid being Poisoned for...basically the rest of the fight due to warpstone radiation. Verminlord Deceivers are Enormous Daemon (Skaven) Chosen, the favored Daemonic servants of the Great Horned Rat. Each is a unique creation with unique goals, but all are huge rat-monsters with sharp claws and vicious speed, plus unnatural stealth and cunning. Each is a master warrior, but their minds are their true weapons - a Verminlord is a genius manipulator, able to see briefly into the future as well as being experts at guessing what people will do. They're exceptionally fast and tough, and their armor gets better with the Doom rising. They're Nigh Unkillable, and any non-Skaven near them must make a Determination check to avoid being Frightened. They wield immense triple-bladed throwing stars, called Doomstars, which can attack entire Zones, and they're also spellcasters that can unbind magic or cast Aetheric Armor, Arcane Blast, Arcane Bolt, Mystic Shield or their unique Dreaded Skitterleap. Dreaded Skitterleap teleports the Daemon or one of its allies and lets them make an immediate attack that ignores Armor and gets bonus damage. Besides the Doomstar, Verminlords also can deal nasty damage with their armor-tearing Warpstilettos or their prehensile tails, which can restrain foes. Next time: The Undead
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Jul 14, 2020 22:41
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Midjack posted:It autocorrected "Vilani" to "villain" for most of that post. MotherFUCKER. e: fixed. Remember, kids, copyediting is important! Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jul 14, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 23:00
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Manual of the Planes: 3.5E Arborea (Chaotic Good) Planar Traits: Normal Gravity, Normal Time, Infinite Size, Mildly Good-Aligned, Mildly Chaos-Aligned, Divinely Morphic, Normal Magic Arborean petitioners are immune to electricity and polymorph effects, and resistant to acid. Aborea is the Great Wheel's beating heart of passion and joy. Arborea is a plane of limitless pleasure and abundance, where the wine cup never empties, the lover never tires, and the revel never ends. Arborea is never predictable, never hostile to guests of peaceful intent, and never dull. This is the plane where the individual's pursuit of their own desires that would never harm another is realized and rewarded. True to its chaotic nature, the three layers of Arborea are all strikingly different. What they share is a downright attitude: weather and geography here fluctuate on a whim, and the plane itself seems sensitive to the desires of residents and visitors in tune with the plane, changing to encourage each individual's ideas of beauty and fun. Few beings on Arborea sleep, so even the night hours on this plane tend to be noisy and filled with revelry in the settled parts of the plane. The River Oceanus winds through the first and third layers, and flows more swiftly than in other planes, often with concourses filled with rapids. There are two kinds of petitioners on Arborea. First and foremost are the elves: this is the plane where the elf gods rule, and elven petitioners closely resemble their living selves. Non-elves who worship the elven gods also often appear in Arborea, rewarded with a transformation into an elven petitioner (note: other racial pantheons in the Manual don't seem to do this with other-racial worshipers). These sorts always resemble their previous selves, though depending on how close their old self was to an elf the transformation may be dramatic. The other type of petitioners on Arborea consists of Chaotic Good souls that did not worship the elven gods, and these petitioners always have some animal feature to them, similar to petitioners in the Beastlands. Arborea seems to specifically attract hedonists of all stripes (in the Greek sense, not just those who loved food, drugs, and sex) who lived life to the fullest - other sorts of free spirits tend to go to the Beastlands or Ysgard. Outside of the elf domains, 'society' on Arborea consists mainly of migratory 24/7 parties that roam the wilderness. These parties can be dangerously tempting for visitors: their allure is literally magical, and will trap a visitor for 101 days if they fail a saving throw. Actual hostility from Arborean petitioners is rare, but neither do they tend to think about the potential consequences of inviting new strangers to their parties. When threatened, most Arborean petitioners will flee rather than fight... which has lead more than one evil visitor to be rudely surprised when they don't. Even aside from the odd petitioner who retains their memories and class levels from life (most often bards, the book notes), no Arborean petitioner can stand to witness cruelty or other overt displays of evil, and a raucous party can turn into a rush of maddened berserkers who will tear an intruder limb from limb without warning.  Arvandor, the first layer of Arborea, is synonymous with the elves to most. Corellon Larethian, god-king of the elves, holds court here, and the divine realm of the rest of the Seldarine (if they exist) encompasses much of the layer. The rest of the layer is much as described as above, this is the only part of Arborea that most travelers ever visit, a crazy quilt of lush terrain and weather filled with elves and revelers. Aquallor is the second layer, and consists of an eternal ocean comparable to the Elemental Plane of Water, only with Arborea's planar traits. This is where the River Oceanus ends after beginning in the fourth layer of Elysium, and one-way planar vortices between the two planes and layers are common here, feeding the Oceanus back into itself. Deep Sashelas, god of the sea elves, keeps his realm here, linked by permanent portals to Corellon's court in Arvandor. Unlike the similar layer in Elysium, there are no islands here: the surface of Aquallor is lashed by perpetual torrential storms, and most visitors travel beneath the waves. Mithardir, the third layer, is a mystery. This layer was once as verdant and forested as Arvandor, that much is known for certain, and it was once inhabited by powerful beings - gods, some say, others claim they were titans or something stranger. Whatever they were, they no longer live here. Nothing does, and Mithardir is a limitless expanse of white sand broken only by a few shallow tributaries of the Oceanus. Nothing lives in Mithardir, and electrified sandstorms of nightmarish intensity tear across the landscape with regularity. A few structures, colossal in scope and built of some white stone, still dot the landscape, believed to be relics of the layer's original inhabitants. Rumors abound of great magical artifacts being hidden in these ancient ruins, but to date no one has been known to have explored the ruins and returned. Next time, Ysgard!
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Jul 14, 2020 23:15
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As happy as I am that they removed most traces of real world mythology from Planescape, some part of me loves that you can find Epicureans and Maenads hanging around in
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Jul 15, 2020 00:00
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Falconier111 posted:As happy as I am that they removed most traces of real world mythology from Planescape, some part of me loves that you can find Epicureans and Maenads hanging around in The next plane is Norse mythology with the serial numbers filed off.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:37
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Falconier111 posted:As happy as I am that they removed most traces of real world mythology from Planescape, some part of me loves that you can find Epicureans and Maenads hanging around in Planescape itself put the Greek gods in there, and made Mt. Olympus part of the realm. They share Arborea with the elves (and apparently enjoy partying together). The place used to be the home of the giant gods and the titans, but the elvish pantheon drove off the giants and the Greek pantheon imprisoned the Titans. Also, in Planescape, the third level used to be the home of the Egyptian gods, but they wandered off, except for Nephythys. It also used to be the home of the Beast Lords, but they moved to the Beastlands.
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Jul 15, 2020 00:51
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