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I really like The Nightmares Underneath, but its treatment of alignment bums me out a bit. I remember either the 1e book or a summary describing Evil as the provenance of people who set out to kill or destroy, even if they limit it to "worthy" targets or harness it towards good ends, but I feel like it becomes a bit too generically bad throughout the book.
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Aug 23, 2020 02:55
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Thoughts of Darkness looks terrible, but thinking about how Bluetspur is only inhabited by illithid makes me want there to be a Ravenloft domain centered around some really alien creatures, where the crime, punishment, and angst of the Darklord are all so culturally foreign to the PCs that the whole situation is nigh-incomprehensible.
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Aug 23, 2020 06:22
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Thought of Darkness, Part Two Alright so last we left off your party has been abducted by the mists of Ravenloft and dumped right into Bluetspur. As soon as this happened you had to fight shadowy nightmares of former foes that materialized out of your slumbering dreams. If you were asleep when the attack happened then the fight had no consequences save lost spells or item charges, if you were awake then prepare for hp loss. Now that the dream fight is dealt with the PCs find themselves in an unfamiliar land that looks like an otherworldly rocky wasteland. The edges of the horizon are red, like a permanent dusk, and the sky is dark blue but devoid of features such as clouds or stars. The land around you is crater-marked and appears to be some sort of blasted moonscape except for an icy river that flows in front of you. All you can hear in this wasteland is a constant metallic drone that has no source. If the PCs go over to the river the water is slow moving enough to be reflective and there's a chance that a PC can spot the shadows of hidden monsters in the reflection. These monsters will show up later on, but do nothing for now. The droning sound is some kind of psychic car alarm that you tripped when you stumbled in here and is being emitted by the elder brain to alert its minions to your presence. So, right now it's impossible for anyone to sneak around because they've been tagged by the domain lord. gently caress you rogues. Oh, and it cannot be silenced by any means, including magic. Oh, and if this is your first time entering Ravenloft any PCs who are religiously affiliated get a warning from their gods inside their heads that they are turbo-hosed. Make a horror check. Despite an opportunity to make this all just a hallucination from the elder brain or Bluetspur's reality warping nature it is in fact entirely genuine. We're about one encounter into this poo poo show and the gods are already telling us that we're on our own. Encounter One Ok, moving on to Encounter One. The second thing you hear are shrieks of pain coming from just down the river. The adventure assumes you investigate this. Not sure why they would assume that, but no worries, if you ignore this we'll rail-road you in with a different method. For now we'll go along with the adventure and go check it out. An elite slaver hunting party of twenty one enemies is interrogating an octopus-looking mutant with mouth tentacles about the location of a "rod". That's the Rod of Houtras and this octo-monster is the rogue Annitella. The fact that she looks almost exactly like a mind flayer is a result of her imprisonment. After stealing the rod from the dumbest vampire in existence, Lyssa von Zarovich, she hid it, but then got captured. (Un)Fortunately for Annitella she's a wild talent psionicist and the mind flayers can't read her mind so they just tortured her for information, but she wouldn't break. After the torture wasn't produced results, the mind flayers got bored and turned her into a mutant that looks very similar to an illithid as a joke. She's escaped to the surface and is in the process of getting re-captured when you show up. If the PCs intervene they almost always get noticed by the enemies before any sneak attack can occur because the slaver leader, Bonespur (a recurring minor villain), has a magic knife that alerts him to the PCs. Bonespur has a retinue of eight duergar (HD 12 fighters with magical gear), ten drow fighters (HD 15, better magical gear, MR 80%), two drow mages (HD 16, magical gear, MR 85%, and are a fully prepared sixteenth level wizards), and their mounts, twenty Steeders. I have no idea what a Steeder is and I don't care. Just for a reference of what to expect in this fight the duergar have an AC -2, the mages have AC -5 (yes, the wizards have an AC of negative five), and the fighters have AC -6 on top of their magical resistances. Bonespur himself is a 17th level rogue in the bounty hunter class kit and fights atop a Nightmare that he rides around on while phased into the near-ethereal plane. Bonespur will sneak attack any PCs that he can pick off because he can phase in and out of the near-ethereal plane more or less at will, but prefers to let his minions do the dangerous parts of the fighting. By himself he's not that big a threat and if Bonespur ever drops to 0 hp then his necklace has a contingency spell loaded with teleport without error and limited wish to remove him from battle and restore him to full hp. There's more to this guy, but who cares, it doesn't matter. He's not a mind-slave of the illithids and is actually a willing ally of theirs. This means he will actually retreat if things look bad while the duergar and drow fight to the death. In any sane adventure this fight by itself would be an epic showdown between a high level party loaded with magic items and the advantage of surprise against an equally high level, but much larger force. Due to the AC and MR of the enemies this is a long fight. On top of all this poo poo sundae, there are still the normal rules for Bluetspur which means PCs take several penalties such as lower ThAC0 and casting spells has a chance to summon a mind flayer hunter squad of 2d6 illithids. Okay, so, let's not have this fight. If you do nothing then Bonespur has his flunkies tie the screaming octo-mutant Annitella to one of their mounts and they head off. If the PCs trail them then Bonespur will almost certainly notice you because of his magical psi-blade and he leads the PCs into an ambush near a cave that leads to the mind-flayer underground. By the way this is the second time, out of two times, that an adventure has started with a rogue-ish NPC torturing a woman for information. These adventures really need a better way to introduce themselves. If you get caught in this ambush additional reinforcements show up, about thirteen more enemies, one mage and twelve drow plus duergar fights. Assuming you survive Annitella basically spills the whole plot to you and begs you to help her take revenge on the illithids and to find the rod. On the other hand, if you ignore Annitella's screams or you don't follow Bonespur then you instead get to meet Slinker, a different mutant who begs for your help and is basically identical to Annitella so you can use him instead of her if you have to replace the party's lovely plot-NPC. Slinker is Annitella's friend and escaped with her, but got caught by Bonespur and his hunters. Right now Slinker has been chopped into a half-dozen pieces and he's bleeding out, but not dead. This is because Slinker is a worm-mutant so being chopped to pieces is an unpleasant but not quite fatal experience for him. In the event you help him Slinker tells you about Annitella, the rod, Drassak the paladin, and a couple other details. Slinker also tells you that you need to get to shelter soon because night is about to fall and night here is almost immediately fatal due to the pummeling lightning bolts that hit every round. If your party puts Slinker out of his misery he attacks with a +4 modifier and tries to bite a PC. This does very little damage, but infects you with a rot that either takes off a bitten limb or straight up liquifies your guts and kills you if he hit the torso (obviously, a head or neck wound is also fatal). Killing Slinker is not a good idea because he knows the plot locations you need to go to and can also tell you where to hide from the nighttime lightning. End of Encounter One. Encounters after Encounter One So, you saved Annitella, let's assume you did because the adventure is really not prepared for if you don't. At first she's near comatose from torture and mutters about Drassak, but once she recovers due to her innate regeneration - a gift from her tormentors then she'll be more useful. However, due to all the torture she's now crazy and neutral evil. At first she assumes the PCs are minions of the mind flayers or Lyssa von Zarovich and she taunts them, telling them to kill her because she'll never talk. When the PCs convince her they are not minions of either she changes tone and she'll lie her squid rear end off about anything to rope the PCs into her drama. Annitella has no problem telling the PCs about the von Zarovich vampire that she's beefing with, but fails to mention that it's not Strahd himself (this will become relevant later for incredibly stupid reasons). Annitella knows a lot about Bluetspur and not only can she warn the PCs about careless spell use summoning mind flayer hit squads, but can lead the PCs to the mind-flayer complex below ground. You would think she would want to escape Bluetspur above all else, but she's obsessed with recovering the rod (ever since she stole it she's been cursed with nightmares. Not sure if this is the rod or just Bluetspur) and she also wants to rescue Drassak, her paladin boyfriend, before a vampire mind flayer can explode out of his head. To sweeten the pot Annitella says that if the PCs get the rod she can show them a way out of Ravenloft or that the psychic monks the rod belongs to can cast wish and will grant the PCs wishes. I honestly don't know how the module expects players to be this gullible, but who cares because we're going to get that rod. Oh, I almost forgot, while you're hanging out there's a chance that PCs hear sounds off in the distance that sound like hidden figures watching you. In the event you fail to notice these sounds the DM is advised to tell the players "nevermind" if they ask why we're rolling dice for no apparent reason. It actually is nothing of consequence. The elder brain is just using control sound to create illusions to gently caress with you. In any event, whether you save Annitella, follow Bonespur, or get help from Slinker you end up going to the same place. A cave to shelter in while a lightning storm rages above you. As you approach the cave the storm is rolling in quickly and you have to get inside as fast as you can before it hits. No matter how you do it the DM rolls for the number of rounds to reach the cave. For every round you after the first three "freebie" rounds that you are outside you have to save vs. wands. Failure means 8d6 lightning damage, success means only half. Yeah. What the gently caress. Annitella or Slinker are a serious hindrance (clumsy tentacle feet) and add to the number of rounds it takes to reach safety. This is easily bypassed by just picking the NPC up or telekinetically tossing them around, but it's still just a lazy antagonistic DMing idea to have an NPC that hinders the PCs just because she sucks. Now that you're in the cave you have a chance to rest. Big mistake. As I said before resting invites nightmare encounters and this is one of the scripted ones that occurs in the event that the PCs rest here. if you don't rest you fast forward past it, but I guess since we're seriously hosed up from the last fight we'll take a rest. The DM is advised to ask the players about their characters' save vs. spells and to make false rolls behind the DM screen. Next, you hand out "fake" slips of papers to each player in turn that tells that player their PC is convinced there is a traitor (or traitors) in the party. Each player is supposed to think their slip of paper is designed for them, but actually all of them are the same. I don't have words for how dumb this whole thing is. Six "fake messages" are actually included in the back of the book so the DM can cut them out and hand them to the players. Each PC should be convinced that the other PCs are being controlled by Annitella (the NPC we need to trust and who coincidentally looks exactly like a mind flayer) and the DM secretly tells that player that the other characters are acting strangely via notes or whathaveyou. In the event a fight starts, anyone struck (including Annitella) evaporates like mist. Last PC standing is declared 'the winner' and then the fight starts over with everyone at full hp and no spells expended - except for the winner. Eventually the PCs wake up and anyone who was sleeping only suffered phantom injuries but those who were awake have lost hit points. The part is very confusingly written and unbelievably badly executed given that there are multiple rounds of dream fighting to keep track of and spells expended can come back - or not. If the PCs refuse to fall for this bullshit the module suggests handing out extra xp for a display of party unity. Or just not being dumb as a sack of doorknobs. (I know I didn't explain that encounter well, but it's because as written it's difficult to explain) With this bewildering nonsense behind us we prepare ourselves for a more down-to-earth -excuse me, below-the-earth, fight against space alien vampires. A small pack of vampire illithids have followed the PCs and are going to ambush you once the nightmare fight ends. This more metaphorical nightmare of a fight begins with the PCs facing off against three vampire illithids, a new type of creature that looks like a normal illithid, but much taller and more muscular. The module describes how their naked purple-skinned veiny bodies pulse and throb with the blood that flows through them. While one of these creatures has Annitella in its tentacled grasp the other two leer menacingly and bear their fangs. So, just to be clear, we are being pulled from a nightmare of being betrayed by our closest friends only to awaken into a reality where hentai is real and happening to us right now. I guess Ravenloft really can do horror sometimes. Let's talk about the fight against the dick-monsters. Vampire illithids are like regular vampire combined with illithids. They start the fight with a psionic blast to paralyze you and then engage with their tentacles. Each enemy gets four attacks per round - one for each tentacle - that deal minor damage, but drain two levels on a hit. That's twelve attacks each round that drain two levels on each hit in a realm where if you sleep you get ambushed by nightmares and players explicitly cannot regain spells above third level. Good loving luck. Turning the vampires doesn't work - that would be too easy and instead inflicts minor damage. Because they're vampires the monsters regain hit points each round and on a successful hit with their level drain attack so this fight might go quickly or take forever while the party doom spirals down the drain as the vampires heal off of their level drain. Also, the vampires' psionic blast is stronger than normal illithids and the saving throw is at a -4 penalty. Failure paralyzes the victim for 1d6 rounds and causes an automatic madness check. Unlike the other inhabitants of Bluetspur these enemies will try to kill PCs and eat their brains. No mercy, no prisoners because vampire illithids are deranged monsters that are rejected by the illithid society of the domain for being too dangerous. Annitella will tremble in terror, but eventually assist the party. After the fight is over (assuming you survive) Annitella explains that these are the spawn of von Zarovich she was warning you about. That's about it. If you kill the vampire illithids they turn to mist and flee down a crack in the caves, but their lair isn't very far off and you can kill them while they're recovering in a comatose state. There is no treasure. That's it for now. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Aug 23, 2020 |
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Aug 23, 2020 06:35
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Ithle01 posted:Thought of Darkness, Part Two Are we sure this wasn't written as a way to break up with your group?
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Aug 23, 2020 06:59
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Are you sure Thoughts of Darkness wasn't designed for a squad of level 20+ demigods? Jesus Christ. What is encounter balancing.
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Aug 23, 2020 15:24
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Age of Sigmar Lore Chat: Gloomspite Gitz I Hear the Voice of Rage and Ruin Generally speaking, the Gloomspite Gitz are unconcerned with the politics of divinity or the wars that rage around them. Everyone looks down on them and mocks them, after all, so they see no real need to differentiate. However, in the leadup to the Necroquake, signs and portents shifted towards madness and pain, and that's the Bad Moon's playground. The Gloomspite rose among the grots, and their rampage has shown little sign of slowing down since, driven by deffcap mushroom-fueled visions and the Bad Moon's growing influence. They joined in the vast hordes of orruks and ogors that made for Nagashizzar, driven by the visions of battle. Indeed, had the forces of Destruction not turned on each other multiple times in their long battles, they might have wiped out Nagash entirely. The Gitz were the least numerous of the forces of Destruction, as theirs was never the urge to move to where the fighting was thickest. Instead, they used the battles around Nagashizzar to settle grudges, backstabbing any enemy that seemed vulnerable regardless of who they were. They pursued signs of the Bad Moon and followed its gaze through the battles. Some of their attacks were even planned beforehand, such as when Loonboss Zigskrat led his warriors up through the mines under the city of Celestrius, attacking it while its defending Stormhost was busy attacking Nagashizzar. They overran the Freeguild left in defense, ransacking the merchant quarter and even burning down Sigmar's temple. An army of a hundred Troggoths accompanied the grots, and they tore down the city Stormkeep, devouring its enchanted stones. The battle ended when Zigskrat blew up the city armory as the Bad Moon grew full overhead, and the grots killed or enslaved every living soul in the city, leaving only mushrooms behind. Other attacks included an ambush on Cogfort Imperius, the abduction of the High Mage Thendrisil and the siege of the magmahold of Molkhir Lodge. Some of these weren't even planned, but just sudden urges driven by the Bad Moon. The fury of the grots led many commanders of other forces to try and understand the nature of the Bad Moon or predict its path. The Stormcast, the Eldritch Council of the Collegium, the Gaunt Summoners and even the slann sought to understand its patterns, but they failed. A small coven of Clan Skryre's Warlock Bombardiers even attempted to construct an immense warp-rocket to shoot down the Bad Moon, claiming they had found historical precedent for such an act. They failed, too - the sheer madness of the Bad Moon's movements was impossible to predict, and many of the mages that attempted to understand it more were maddened by its light. In Blight City, the rocket labs exploded and burned half of Clan Ektrik's holdings without any grots even getting involved. And through it all, the grots fought on. Not that they exclusively fought the forces of Order - or Chaos, for that matter. The Spiderfang grots of Shyish were not at all slow in going after Nagash. Deep within the underworlds of Shyish, the Spiderfang afterlife waits, after all. There, the spirits of dead spiders crawl about in endless webs of silk and trees. The land is dotted by ruins and stone pillars, full of wonderful nooks and crannies and tunnels to lurk in and prepare spidery ambushes. Spider ghosts swarm across the many miles of its landscape. This is the Evercrawl, the Land of Endless Webs, and it is the final paradise of the Spiderfang grots. They claim that the Spider God lives in its deepest parts, surrounded by the webbed and cocooned bodies of the demigods it has trapped and feeds on. They claim that this afterlife is guarded by the brood of the Spider God, whose wrath is terrible. This brood is, specifically, the Skitterstrand Arachnaroks, magical spiders who spin webs made from the mortal souls they feed on. They crawl through life and death, sensing the use of soul magic by the vibration of their webbing. They can even build temporary Realmgates from funnels of soulweb, thanks to their magical spinnerets. The Skitterstrand are prone to bursting out of sudden holes in reality to attack prey and drag them back to the Evercrawl to be webbed up and fed on at leisure. They exist, and they are not mindless beasts. The children of the Spider God are fully intelligent, and they understand the threat Nagash poses to their way of life. He would conquer every underworld, even the Evercrawl. The spiders don't care about the wider politicso f Shyish, but the Evercrawl must be protected, at any cost. Thus, the Skitterstrand Arachnaroks hunt necromancers and others who wield magic that affects the soul. They trap lost and stolen souls in the webs and slowly drawn their essence, caring not for if they're hunting Stormcast, ghosts or aelves. What is left at the end is merely a broken, barren husk of a spirit. In this way, the Skitterstrand fight Nagash and anyone else unlucky enough to come to their attention.  The grots make their homes through the realms, largely in areas that other species dismiss as wasteland. They prefer lands too dark and soggy for crops, too unstable for fortresses and too full of parasitic insects and miasma for settlement by others. This means that unless they've pissed someone off enough to get raided in retaliation for some mischief, the Gloomspite alliance is largely left alone most of the time. Grots love that their enemies tend to overlook and underestimate them, even as they resent them for it. Several kingdoms have fallen under the Bad Moon's light, as the grots emerge from hiding to attack soldiers who had dismissed them as mere nuisances. It has led over the centuries to many cautionary tales of monsters - the red-eyed gyblers, the clammy-clawed lurks, the groti-the-blackcaps, all of them memories of local grots erupting forth unexpectedly to kill. Too many leaders dismiss these as mere legends until the Bad Moon is upon them. Moonclan settlements, called lurklairs, are generally underground, in the deepest, darkest and dankest places they can find. They rarely have any contact with natural light, using bioluminescent mushrooms like the Glowey Morkeyez and glo-squigs to provide what little and pallid light they do need. A lurklair is usually a series of interconnected and very wet caves full of stalactites, stalagmites, slime and fungi. Smaller caves called slinkholes are used as guard posts, watching for intruders, while the larger caves are filled with homes made from hollowed out mushrooms, squig paddocks put together from whatever is lying around and other buildings made from stolen materials and random crap to serve as the ramshackle palace of the local shaman, Loonboss or so on. Nearby caverns often serve as mushroom nurseries, storehouses and slave prisons. The biggest lurklairs sprawl over miles of cavern, often absorbing old and ruined Fyreslayer magmaholds, duardin karaks or skaven burrows. Millions of grots can fit in these places, which are inevitably messy, full of bigs and exceptionally loud due to all the cackling and yelling. The Spiderfang refer to their homes as nests, and typically a nest is less in control of the grots themselves than the Arachnaroks they live alongside and the other giant spiders that hang about. These are most commonly found in the depths of wild forests or in ancient ruins, and they are always a maze of sticky webs and trapped paths. Often, the spider webs are so thick in the air that they form near-impregnable walls against assault, entangling intruders and turning them into snacks for the spiders and grots. The inhabitants, of course, move easily through the web tunnels, knowing exactly where to step. The grots spend much of their time tending to the spider eggs, brewing poisons or performing rites of worship to the Spider God. Troggoths live in even worse places, and the grots call their lairs trog holes. These are large pools at the heart of swamps, dark and deep chasms full of bonemeal and trash, or deep pits of sulfur and primordial ooze. The troggoths spawn in these foul places, growing from the rot and bubbling slime and remaining there until some ancient urge within them drives them out to fight. The Rockgut Troggs prefer to live either in deep caves under mountains or on their peaks, where they can find delicious boulders to eat. Fellwater Troggs prefer stagnant and brackish water, and are especially common in the deep pits of the sewers under the largest cities. Skrappa Spill is the largest Gloomspite kingdom, a united empire of various Moonclan and Spiderfang warlords. The grot leaders that make up Skragrott's empire love to take on massive and overblown titles - Great Grand Skuttlechief, Under-Emperor of the Gloomylands, that kind of thing. Skragrott and other Gloomspite rulers like him can call on many grot clans to serve their malicious will, but most of them tend to end up overambitious, their reach exceeding their grasp, and their empires collapse into infighting and split apart. Skrappa Spill under Skragrott has managed to avoid this fate. The region was, until Skragrott took over, mostly the home of a bunch of orruk tribes that liked to to fight each other. They fought across the Moaning Sands and the Yhorn Mountains, attacking each other and the local forces of Order, who were trying to take control of the Ayadah region of Chamon. While the Fyreslayers of Greyfyrd Lodge and the Freeguild forces from past the Harkraken Cloudbanks warred with the orruks, all ignored the grots working under their feet. When the Necroquake tore through the region, the dead of the orruk wars erupted from the graves and funeral pyres, attacking the orruks and the Order alliance forces. The dead did not take the land, but their attacks weakened the local warriors. Only once they had driven off the wraiths did they face their true threat - a darkening sky that brought with it a terrible dew that put out fires and spoiled provisions. Spiders and guni swarmed at impossible rates for miles around. The Bad Moon rose on the horizon, and Skragrott led the Gloomspite out in an attack from the Yhorn Mountain foothills, smashing through the canyons of Lump's Loonrock and the mines of Galhalla. The attack took everyone by surprise, as massive Suquigalanches and huge Skittermobs of spider riders pushed from every front, and troggoths tore their way out of the trophy mounds of the orruks. Finally, the magic of the Moonclan shamans harnessed new living spells - dozens of Malevolent Moons were unleashed in a coordinated sequence. Skragrott had spent so long organizing and preparing that everything went to plan. He assassinated a dozen enemy warlords in a single night, so impressing the Bad Moon that it launched a huge loonrock shower that darkened the sky over Ayadah, giving the grots freedom from the hated sun until their control over the region was complete.  Other groups of grots have developed over the ages. The Gitmob saw Gork in the blazing light of the Hysh and headed there to live, seeing the Moonclan as totally deluded in their love of the dark, for example. One Spiderfang subtribe headed up into the sky, becoming the Grotbag Scuttlers and traveling above the clouds on the backs of airfaring spiders. All of them still tell stories about the godbeast Boingob, father of all squigs, who smashed many kingdoms in the Age of Myth before becoming annoyed at Hysh's light and trying to eat it, leaping into the sky and then exploding into flames as he got too close, falling back to Ghyran as a huge, burning skull, whose impact site remains holy to the Moonclan. It is known that in the Age of Myth, the Bad Moon was sighted only rarely, and the gorts say that it was at that point more interested in trying to bite or smash through other celestial bodies, including once attempting to eat Dracothion's head and creating a swarm of spore-comets that destroyed several prophesies by smashing stars. Next time: When grots get warlike
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Aug 23, 2020 16:40
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HOW TO HOST A DUNGEON - PART 9: Wrapup The final How to Host a Dungeon post. We went through the solo game with three different civilizations, then made one of those into a playable dungeon map. How does the game stack up? I never had any interest in solo games. I felt that if I wanted to write or draw or create stories by myself, I could do that without a book of rules. So I was surprised at how much fun How to Host a Dungeon is. The book offers the right mix of structure, evocative prompts and creative freedom to generate interesting results through the interaction of relatively simple rules. However, the system is not a bottomless well of inspiration. You will eventually get bored of How to Host a Dungeon. The procedural generation system can collapse into pathological states where the rules produce the same outcome over and over. The book has editing errors that usually don't matter, but occasionally disrupt the rules explanations.  Cards  More Cards THE GOOD
THE BAD
THE BOTTOM LINE Buy How to Host a Dungeon if you’re interested in a solo game that you can play in an afternoon, which will generate a cute map and a cool narrative. If you liked what you saw in this thread, there are two civilizations and more than half a deck of cards that I didn’t spoil. Do not buy How to Host a Dungeon if you want something to help you make dungeons for a tabletop RPG. That is not the intended purpose of the product, and it does not do that. It gives you a narrative framework, but you have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. The most it can do is inspire you to put in all the hard work necessary to create something playable.  The Dwarven Civ  The Alien Civ  The Demon Civ Thanks for sticking with me for this review. Up next: I'll finish off the Mothership Player's Survival Guide. After that, who knows?
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Aug 23, 2020 18:06
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Every single NPC is secretly a polymorphed dragon in The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 46: The Deck of NPCs 226: Pity Me Not A beggar named Clarissa has been hired to get info on the PCs. She staggers down the street, feigning exhaustion and hunger, and collapses at their feet. “Clarissa has this act down perfectly. An observation skill check at a -5 penalty reveals that she is much healthier than she appears.” Is Observation the new Tracking? A NWP that actually gets checked on the regular? Anyway, she explains that she was robbed by thugs after a hard day’s work, but won’t accept charity unless it’s in the form of a loan. “This means she can ask about the PCs, names, addresses, etc. This can be a setup for a future encounter in the city.” Who exactly is asking about the PCs but doesn’t know their names? Whatever. The encounter is OK at first glance, but it doesn’t go anywhere. The information that could be gleaned about the PCs is too superficial. It’s probably fixable somehow. Jury? KIT CORNER: Beggar (PHBR 2: The Complete Thief’s Handbook) It turns out that in addition to people genuinely forced into begging by circumstance, there’s an entire society of Beggars who are actually con-men and thieves, merely pretending to be disadvantaged in order to swindle you out of your hard-earned gold, or to gather information for the thieves’ guild! I’m just… gonna leave that there. To be a beggar, you need to take Begging, Disguise, Information Gathering, and Observation NWPs. Yeesh! Those aren’t Bonus, mind you, they’re Required, which means you have to pay for them. Except that later, under “Benefits,” it says “The most valuable benefits of the Beggar kit are the large number of bonus nonweapon proficiencies. These should be granted to a character even if the campaign at large does not make use of nonweapon proficiency rules.” So… maybe they’re Bonus after all? Other penalties - you get -2 to Reaction rolls with non-thieves because of overt or hidden bigotry, and the DM is encouraged to penalize your Begging, Disguise, and Information Gathering proficiencies if you’re not dressing the beggar part. Also you start with less money. And you can only start with proficiency in the simplest weapons: club, dagger, dart, knife, sling, or staff. Under the optional rules, you’re also picking up +10% Pick Pockets and +5% Hide in Shadows, at the cost of -5% Open Locks, Find/Remove Traps, and Read Languages. Not exactly rocking my world here, Beggar kit. 227: Balanced Ecology The PCs are in a forest, and run across a series of six deer which have been skinned but not eaten. (Not eaten by the person who skinned them, at least; the carrion birds are going to town.) They can track the skinner, who’s “bringing down his sixth deer” (seventh, surely?) with poisoned crossbow bolts. Meet Brillin Samdo, hunter supreme, specifically designed to piss off PC rangers or druids! And there’s no law against killing deer here, so the PCs can gently caress off if they have a problem with it. It’s an open-ended situation, at least. And if this guy survives, I’m happy to have him show up again in some future context. He’s probably going to die horribly at some point, but that’s fine. Keep. 228: Sister Alison The PCs are passing through an area currently ravaged by plague, and encounter local hero Sister Alison (P5). She requests that any PC healers help out with the effort. “If refused, as she walks away she can be heard to say, ‘My god grants me the power to cure only one sick person a day, yet every day four more are struck down. How do I decide who lives and who dies?’ Any good priests in the party should be feeling twinges now.” Hahaha, nice guilt-tripping. The locals can use whatever help the PCs give, but there’s no monetary reward or anything. And also you might catch the plague, which could be dangerous if there are members with low STR or CON, and if the party wasn’t going to give them first dibs on the magical healing. The card does award a little XP for saving peoples’ lives. Also a good way to make a few regional friends and contacts. Keep. 229: Get Out of My Forest The PCs are in a deep forest, and are spied on over the course of several days by Blossom, a “rather overeager” druid (level 8) who decides “from their gear” that they’re bad for the forest (unless they’re all elves, druids, and rangers, of course). She starts harassing them with summon insect, trip, siccing raccoons on their food supplies, and so on. After the first day, the PCs may notice her with a surprise roll at -4, if they’re specifically watching for her. She’ll agree to stop if the PCs will leave the forest posthaste. Not particularly gripping... I’m inclined to pass. I just wouldn’t be into running it. 230: Little Knowledge Not to be confused with card #28, “A Little Knowledge.” There’s a town with a small shrine to the Goddess of Knowledge. The priestess there is a renowned scholar in the fields of magic and nature, but young Brother Butline “has had none of his writings accepted into the library yet.” I guess that’s like being published in an academic journal? He decides to study adventurers, and pesters the PCs to talk to them about everything they’ve done and how they felt doing it. He’ll also start providing adventure leads in exchange for them telling him about it afterwards. “Adventures the brother provides should be long on danger and short on treasure.” Eh. Somehow this strikes me in a very neutral spot. Kind of annoying? But maybe also entertaining? Keep but drop the adversarial ‘haha, you went on this adventure and the rewards were lovely’ angle. 231: Tomb Robbers The PCs are ambushed on their way out of a tomb by 20 “barbarians” who “consider the tomb to be holy ground.” I mean, it’s literally a tomb. I assume they have a point. They’re led by a priest who can put his followers into berserk rages, which gives them berserker kit benefits. (See card 122.) I like the idea of the PCs facing consequences for crashing around the world like rhinos, but the consequences here are an inescapable mass-combat with melee fighters who will not flee or surrender under any circumstances. (And, admittedly, a 9th-level priest who throws out holds and flame strikes, which spices things up a tad). And their different cultural views are pretty much irrelevant except inasmuch as it makes you all murder each other. Pass.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:19
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I remember reading about Bluetspur when the boxed set came out, and wondering why the gently caress you would ever want to go there, or what possible kinds of adventures you could have in a shithole run by mind flayers. I mean, the realm run by a drow banshee was gently caress-awful enough. Then Thoughts of Darkness came out and I still wondered, because after the couple of earlier Ravenloft adventures I'd picked up, I wasn't going to go near another one of those rear end in a top hat things again. Now I kind of wish I'd kept wondering, because Jesus Christ. Dallbun posted:230: Little Knowledge Give more treasure, but make sure that Brother Butline's information is incomplete. For bonus points, have him unwittingly lead the PCs into a discovery that could lead to a string of adventures and a monograph for him.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:54
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Bieeanshee posted:I remember reading about Bluetspur when the boxed set came out, and wondering why the gently caress you would ever want to go there, or what possible kinds of adventures you could have in a shithole run by mind flayers. I mean, the realm run by a drow banshee was gently caress-awful enough. Reminds me of Valley of Dust and Fire over in Dark Sun. Almost impossible to get there, nothing you really can do once you get there, and most of the description of the big bad is 'And here's how he cheats to counter anything the PCs might try.'
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Aug 23, 2020 19:30
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Dallbun posted:Every single NPC is secretly a polymorphed dragon in I like this one more if she actually is a polymorphed dragon. There's a lot more potential there if she is.
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Aug 23, 2020 19:31
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Cythereal posted:Reminds me of Valley of Dust and Fire over in Dark Sun. Almost impossible to get there, nothing you really can do once you get there, and most of the description of the big bad is 'And here's how he cheats to counter anything the PCs might try.' The Dragon was much cooler when he didn't have an invincible fortress, super-army, and backstory, but was just a wandering mysterious rear end in a top hat. I mean basically Dark Sun was best out of the box before any metaplot at all. I will accept the Free City of Tyr if the Prism Pentad PCs are downplayed.
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Aug 23, 2020 19:40
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Bieeanshee posted:I remember reading about Bluetspur when the boxed set came out, and wondering why the gently caress you would ever want to go there, or what possible kinds of adventures you could have in a shithole run by mind flayers. I mean, the realm run by a drow banshee was gently caress-awful enough. Can't link or name it off the top of my head, but I recall on the Fraternity of Shadows (Ravenloft's largest fan forum) someone talked about how the best Ravenloft domains were the ones with a diversity of plot hooks and adventure material. Places like Bluetspur, Keening (the drow banshee one), and other one-shot "nothing but monsters that want to kill you" domains were often regarded as the worst by the community. Domains like Barovia, Richemulot, etc have proper settlements but also a variety of politicking factions, dungeon delves, and monsters lurking about that one can plausibly have a short campaign or adventure serial taking place in them. It's only when domains end up gimmicky that their appeal dwindles; Lamordia is a technologically-advanced pseudo-Switzerland showcasing THE HORRORS OF SCIENCE, but every day spent there has a chance of permanently robbing you of spellcasting ability which when the PCs find out are going to want to get the hell out of dodge fast.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:28
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Dallbun posted:The Dragon was much cooler when he didn't have an invincible fortress, super-army, and backstory, but was just a wandering mysterious rear end in a top hat. Every single change in the "revised" Dark Sun setting sucked poo poo. Having a single Free City as a point of light was cool, but killing off so many Sorcerer Kings, especially when plenty of them had interesting hooks, sucked. Like, if you want to liberate some city states and change the status quo, modules like Marauders of Nibenay are much better. Like, MoN is awesome because it actually has party have a chance to potentially convert a Sorcerer King to a more peaceful way of thinking, and make his particular city state(the titular Nibenay) into a more liberal place.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:32
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PurpleXVI posted:Every single change in the "revised" Dark Sun setting sucked poo poo. Having a single Free City as a point of light was cool, but killing off so many Sorcerer Kings, especially when plenty of them had interesting hooks, sucked. Like, if you want to liberate some city states and change the status quo, modules like Marauders of Nibenay are much better. Like, MoN is awesome because it actually has party have a chance to potentially convert a Sorcerer King to a more peaceful way of thinking, and make his particular city state(the titular Nibenay) into a more liberal place.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:48
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 Chapter 6: Witches (Baba Yaga, Blood Witch, Chimera, Crone) When the Grand Coven crossed the Darkwall Peaks, it contained 13 Witches; when the Djinn died and the Crone vanished, six of them stayed behind and now rule in Morden. Those five are not covered in this book, though they probably left some Banes or even Accursed behind; it encourages the GM to design their own monsters around themes of their choice. Instead, players will have to deal with the forces of eight Witches, each with their personality, goals, selection of Banes, and interests. The Witches don’t actually like each other very much and often scheme to undermine each other, but they remain united in their desire to control Morden and work together to put down revolts. None of the Witches get stats; you can’t taste something that powerful down yourself. However, we do get information on the nature of their magic, their Banes, and their weaknesses.  Baba Yaga was the only Witch to cross the mountains with a different identity than the one she carries today. No one even knows her original name or title. Assigned to oversee the conquest of Steppegrad, she picked up stories of the Old Grandmother from her troops and increasingly identified with her, gradually shaping herself into an even darker version of an already dangerously capricious character. Today, Baba Yaga the Witch so closely resembles Baba Yaga the legend that I won’t bother describing her beyond what you’d find in the Wikipedia page, only adding that unlike her mythical counterpart she appears constantly and does her damnedest to keep her subjects terrified. Except, she hasn’t realized the cost of attaching herself to Gradniki folklore so thoroughly: she is actually becoming Baba Yaga. She sinks more thoroughly into her role, loses access to some of her powers, and becomes less and less active with every passing day. The book is upfront about this: Baba Yaga’s rule is on a timetable. She will realize what’s happening to her, but too late to do anything about it, and she will not function as a member of the Grand Coven once the process is complete. Baba Yaga’s magic deals with entropy: rot, decay, and the breaking down of bonds that hold everything together. However, as she becomes more thoroughly connected to the land, her creatures increasingly seem to resemble savage animals instead of walking avatars of destruction: if I’m reading between the lines right, her magic is shifting into nature magic. All of her creations share a weakness to silver, a metal that represents purity and wholesomeness; they include Hunger Trolls, hulking, shambling apelike creatures that eat everything they find all the way down to the bedrock; Gorge Wolves, similarly constantly hungry former wolves that berserk at the sight of blood and use pack tactics; and Rusalka, amphibious beings that specifically target fisheries.  Countess Sanguinara Nasady, the Blood Witch, might be the most human Witch of the bunch; she’s a social creature that enjoys beauty, love, and companionship. But she’s also manipulative, cruel, and deeply controlling. Despite her nominal control of Valkenholm, one of the two great powers in modern Morden, she spends most of her time elevating and disposing of favorites in her court, only stepping in when necessary or when she smells the chance to expand her holdings. At the bottom of her personality lies a profound world-weariness that drives her to seek out any entertainment that will lift her out of the boredom, no matter how cruel it might be. Sanguinara’s magic draws on both blood and passion. While Baba Yaga’s magic destroys everything it touches, the Blood Witch’s amplifies things within people; it not only exaggerates and suppresses emotion, but it literally controls their blood, to the point of it boiling them alive or bursting from their body. The book doesn’t fully establish the connection between the two and it comes across as as half-assed as everything else about her, except her Banes. We don’t even get a reason why wood hurts her creations. Her Banes include Flayed Ones, people whose blood has become sentient and seized control of their bodies, shedding their skin in the process; Leech-Men, which are leeches that walk like men and live in tribes in the swamps; and vampires, which work on Dracula rules without the hypnotism or transformation.  The Chimera lacks the broader focus of most Witches. She does not rule territory or organize armies or spy on her enemies. All she cares about is figuring out the mysteries of organic life, and the only way she pursues that goal is through nightmarish surgery. The Chimera lives in a fortress called Turris Atra that teleports to a different place every dawn; no one’s identified a pattern in its movements. She starts the day by releasing her creations, then abducts people and animals from the area to surgically replace their body parts according to her whims; many follow pre-existing patterns, but most are unique. All of them are violent and dangerous. During the Bane War, she supplied the Grand Coven with shock troops and specialized monsters of all kinds, but today she operates independently. Her studies, after all, require no colleagues. While the Chimera’s magic involves change and growth, it centers around control: control of her creations, control of biology, even control of reality, as some scholars think she wants to become a creator goddess of some kind. She even controls her own body by altering it beyond recognition. Some experts even believe it’s possible to hijack her methods of control and partially reverse them, spying on her movements and monitoring her activities. Though Banes very wildly in shape and ability, the book provides three common templates she uses: Maggot Hounds, dogs with large maggot heads that hunt in packs  The Crone was probably the first Witch and definitely the most powerful; while the Grand Coven was in theory an alliance of equals, in practice she led and directed it. While many other Witches have comprehensible motives, not even they understood what drove the Crone and why she did what she did. All we know is that she seemed intent on conquest and enjoyed experimenting with her powers. Shortly after the Djinn met her fate, the Crone also disappeared without warning. She informed no one beforehand, left no instructions, and took nothing with her. Her creations now aimlessly wander Hebron, which she likely would have ruled had she remained. When she was still around, the Crone specialized in weather magic; she caused hurricanes, droughts, and natural disasters of all kinds across Morden. But she seemed most interested in exploring her control over electricity. When building her Banes, she made extensive use of electric fluid and may in fact have invented it; she used it to charge her creations before sending them out. Her Banes were universally artificial creatures; we get Colossi, scaled-up Golems 10 stories high that served as walking siege engines but are too stupid to decide on courses of action after she disappeared, and Manikins, creepy dolls that kill. We also get stats for Jack O’Harvest, her primary lieutenant, an unkillable Golem and basically an evil scarecrow, as well as a sidebar on how she took pleasure in making constructs out of rare and unlikely materials ranging from jade to sand. The sidebar’s title? A Material Girl  Next time we cover the other four Witches 
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Aug 23, 2020 21:27
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Doublepost for archives's sake;Dallbun posted:You're making me want to review the Dark Sun flipbook modules. I remember quite liking some and really loathing at least one other. 
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Aug 23, 2020 21:28
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Ithle01 posted:I like this one more if she actually is a polymorphed dragon. There's a lot more potential there if she is. Yes.
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Aug 23, 2020 21:30
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I just found a board game called "Chicago-in-a-Box". I don't know what's inside it. I've never seen it before. I have no idea how it got into my house. Given my success with the last board game I covered, does the thread think I should review it once I've finished Accursed?
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Aug 23, 2020 22:11
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Yes, it's not like 2020 can get any worse - it might be Jumanji but with Mafia.
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Aug 23, 2020 22:14
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It's Chicago monopoly. Probably not worth a writeup.
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Aug 23, 2020 22:50
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ZeusJupitar posted:It's Chicago monopoly. Probably not worth a writeup. You know what? gently caress that, I’ll review it. Consider it an exploration of the fluff behind the setting 
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Aug 23, 2020 23:31
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Are you sure it's not just an old pizza box
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Aug 23, 2020 23:39
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ZeusJupitar posted:It's Chicago monopoly. Probably not worth a writeup. For some reason, that jogged my memory of Poleconomy
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Aug 24, 2020 00:07
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Maybe it’s a care package: http://chicagoinabox.com
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Aug 24, 2020 00:09
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mellonbread posted:Are you sure it's not just an old pizza box It does have a rather grody piece of deep dish pizza on the front
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Aug 24, 2020 00:17
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Falconier111 posted:a rather grody piece of deep dish pizza But you repeat yourself.
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Aug 24, 2020 00:18
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Thoughts of Darkness part three: We're on a quest for rod Last we left off the PCs have had their life essence taken from them by the slurping tentacles of a pack of hentai penis monsters looking to get deep into two lobes of fat. After this your "friend" Annitella tells you that she'll lead you to where she hid the magical rod that can fix all your problems and save the world from more of these monsters, but only if you swear loyalty to an order of psychic monks in Barovia. Sure, why not. We agree because this adventure only goes in one direction - to a lake whose waters conceal a secret entrance to the mind flayer underground complex. The next encounter is entitled Ambush! I find this to be a bit misleading because it is technically the third or possibly fourth time we're been ambushed so perhaps a different name is appropriate to help distinguish it from the other ambushes. Here's the setup: We get to the lake following Annitella's instructions and as soon as we do Bonespur is waiting for us with a force of eight stone giants, ten mind flayers, and ten 16th level drow wizards (slaves of the mind flayers). Bonespur tosses out a line about Annitella leading us into this ambush just to mess with us (not true, we've been tagged by the elder brain since we arrived) and then orders his soldiers to take us prisoner. At this point it becomes apparent something is strange here because two of the giants try to wade into the water to cut off any escape in that direction, but are themselves immediately pulled under the water. If any PCs try to wade into the water they get the same treatment; powerful hands (Str 18/00) grab you and pull you into the water. The module heavily recommends that the DM use whatever means possible to pin the PCs down and then force them into the lake. In the event you fight well enough to defeat the initial foes more reinforcements show up. You literally cannot win here and you aren't supposed to. Mercifully, there is a quick way out of this bullshit encounter. At the start of it Annitella says "gently caress this noise" and jumps into the water, suggesting the PCs do the same - by which I mean, she declares that rather she'd drown herself than surrender and suggests you also should consider suicide as a course of action. If you jump into the water ghostly severed heads float toward you and try to make out with you while you're drowning. Whether you accept the kiss and it's unspoken offer of water breathing or decline it's the same result, eventually you black out. You can try to fight the ghostly heads - called Remnants, but there are thirty of them, you're underwater, and they're actually trying to help you. Everything in this bullshit module tries to encourage the Fantasy loving Vietnam mentality which could be fun if it weren't so badly implemented. Annitella actually knows about the Remnants and that they are friendly but declines to share this information until after this encounter despite the fact that it would make your life much easier. As your unconscious bodies are pulled downward into the water by the Remnants your dying neurons fire erratically and you are afflicted with hallucinations. These hallucinations are actually an attempt by the Remnants to communicate with you and they show you the last living moments of the ghosts who dwell within the waters of Bluetspur. In these hallucinations you are strapped to a table and in the grips of a mind flayer's tentacles. The mindflayer bores through your skull, but rather than feast of the gray matter it instead deposits a slippery glistening ovum into the hole. As the egg hatches your life ends with your brain being eaten by a mind flayer tadpole. I actually like that the waters of Bluetspur are filled with friendly ghosts of those killed by the mind flayers because it adds something interesting to this poo poo hole of a domain. Celebrity cameo After the hallucination ends you awaken in a laboratory of some sort. You are now disembodied spirits trapped in a giant glass bell jar and your bodies are laid out on lab benches. There are five human-looking people in the laboratory working the arcane technology along with two mindflayers. Suddenly the PCs find their spirits drawn back into their bodies, but with a twist, you're all in a different body. Also, you have to fight the seven enemies in this room. This is an encounter with two mind flayers, two drow fighters, and three vampires. The first vampire is just some generic dude in a lab coat, the second is a sexy lady vampire dressed in the usual sexy lady vampire combination of velvet and black leather plus thigh-high hooker boots, and the third is Strahd von Zarovich. This is a dream fight. I don't much to say about it and it's not very interesting. Because all of the PCs were unconscious when the fight started there are no real consequences. The fight itself has a special rule because you're all in different bodies so you're all confused and thus you fight with a massive penalty. Casters are effectively half level, fighters lose proficiencies and take a -4 penalty to attacks, rogue have halved skills. Whatever. Who cares? There's no consequences and this only exists just to troll the PCs and mess with them in the dumbest and most antagonistic way possible. I think there's something about players wondering about Strahd's involvement because Annitella never mentions that it's Lyssa von Zarovich she's beefing with rather than a von Zarovich, but the whole thing is just half-assed and pointlessly antagonistic. The one good part You wake up, for real this time, in a damp cave with Annitella keeping watch. This cave is part of a water-filled tunnel network and has a limited oxygen supply so you can't stay here and rest. Annitella tells you the sad story of the Remnants, they're the victims of the mind flayers, and requests a favor from the party's priest. The Remnants are trapped in Bluetspur and can't move on until their remains are laid to rest properly. The mind flayers have just been dumping their refuse in a cesspit and that cesspit is now so filled with corpses that a savage animus has formed so this is no trivial request. Annitella asks the party's priest if the party will fight this creature and then consecrate the remains as a favor for both her and the Remnants. You don't actually have to do it and Annitella tells you that even if you refuse then the Remnants will help ferry you on your way anyway. If you choose to aid the Remnants they guide you to the graveyard and you fight a blood elemental that's formed from the gooey bits of the dead. The mind flayers of Bluetspur are aware of this creature and have enchanted it so that it doesn't dissolve in the water, this provides an alternative way to destroy it other then fighting until hp 0. If you smash the red power crystals keeping it alive the elemental dissipates immediately. In a fight the blood elemental isn't too tough for high level characters, but by now you're so depleted this can be a real brawl. The blood elemental hits hard and heals based on damage it deals so this is another fight that can be over quickly or take much longer and be far more deadly. Because healing is based on damage dealt, the better it rolls the stronger it becomes and the harder the fight so this is a high variance encounter unless you intuit that you need to smash four red crystals. When the elemental is low on hp it grabs a PC and begins to smother them. While it has engulfed a PC any damage dealt to the elemental is also dealt to its victim. This is probably the easiest encounter in the module. After the blood elemental is beaten the Remnants can be laid to rest and the PCs get...500xp each for their trouble with an extra 2000xp for the party priest. This is a joke amount of xp for this level, just about every monster in this adventure is worth far more than this even after it's been divided amongst the party. There is no other treasure. Inside the Lair of the mind flayers Sneaking in the trash chute is a time honored way of getting where you're not supposed to be and this is how we're going to get into the mind flayers' home base. Once you swim through the stew of water-logged corpses we end up inside the complex. If for some reason the party is being led by Slinker rather than Annitella you meet Annitella here because this adventure leans way too hard on its NPCs to drive the action and the PCs are given almost no agency throughout. Annitella explains that she has escaped from the mind flayers for a second time and is looking for a party of adventurers to help her out. The writing here is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Alright we're inside the lair of the mind flayers now and that means any PC reduced to 0 hp gets tele-snatched away by the elder brain or the mind flayers for brain-washing and servitude. Try not to die. Arcane resonance still functions and therefore any spell use will have a chance of drawing mind flayer kill teams down on you. The home-intruder siren that the elder brain uses to tag the PCs is also still in effect. There's a 5% chance your first encounter is against two mindflayers and their slaves who catch you snooping around their garbage dump. The mind flayers try to run and sic their slaves on you. By themselves the mind flayers are a joke and their slaves are non-combatant humans so they should go down fast. This encounter introduces you to breaking mind flayer brain washing. You need either mind blank, an 8th level wizard spell, or the psionic psychic surgery power. Even for a high level party this is a lot to ask and so you probably can't break the mind control of the slaves if you subdue them. Getting your pods on the rod Annitella leads you through the maze-like cave complex of the mind flayers to the specific cave where she hid the rod of houtras. Along the way the elder brain uses control shadows to mess with PCs and make them think that Annitella is really a monstrous creature by manipulating her shadow so PCs might think she's a shapeshifter or psionically disguising herself. There's no real reason for this and it involves more secret rolls from the DM accompanied by replies of "nevermind" if the PCs don't notice anything (only 50% chance for each PC to notice), but the players ask why dice are rolling. Once again, lovely antagonistic DMing designed to stoke paranoia against the absolutely vital plot NPC that rail roads you through this adventure. I really don't think you need any more reasons to hate Annitella as it is, this adventure's bullshit design is more than sufficient. The rod is hidden in a cave ceiling and Annitella can't scale walls now that she's an octopus mutant so she asks you to lift her up so she can get it. Annitella lies to PCs about the rod's power and says it will burn anyone else so you shouldn't bother getting it on your own. Good. More insufferable NPC behavior to gently caress with the players. As soon as Annitella wraps her tentacle-pods around the rod you get ambushed by Bonespur. Again. This time he's leading fifty slaves, but they're the human variety with no combat stats instead of the far more effective duergar or drow. Bonespur is accompanied by his masters, Lyssa von Zarovich and the High Master, plus five mind flayer mages (8th level wizards). In terms of an ambush this not a very effective one because the fire power the enemies bring to bear is nothing close to previous fights. Bonespur only appears so that he can teleport in, grab Annitella and then vanish in a puff of smoke taking the rod with them. You technically have one round to stop this but not really because Lyssa and the High Master are the real enemies in this fight and they will stop you from interfering. The module is very unclear on how committed the named NPCs are to fighting the PCs versus popping in, dropping some effects, and then teleporting out to enjoy the spoils of their victory. The High Master has an ultrablast, detailed in the Complete Psionics Handbook but you can substitute a weird spell (9th level wizard spell) if you need to. The only thing you need to know about ultrablast is that its a stun blast akin to a normal mind flayer stun blast, but it paralyzes you for one round even on a successful saving throw. You get hit with this on the first round so you probably can't save Annitella from being kidnapped again. Choo-choo! After stunning you the High Master teleports away? Maybe? You're not really supposed to fight it until later. Lyssa von Zarovich materializes out of mist form, tries to charm any magic-users with her gaze attack, and might be committed to the fight but I think she's more inclined to leave once she's thrown a sucker punch into the nearest caster. Observant players might recognize Lyssa von Zarovich as the sexy vampire lady from the hallucination where the PCs dream fight Strahd. This is relevant because it foreshadows the Apparatus and its body swapping powers later on. This is also not a fight you're supposed to engage with despite the relatively weak opposition and instead the PCs should be encouraged to run away (through any means necessary). Lyssa will actually use her charm gaze to make PCs run into the labyrinth of caves below you which is where you'll be rescued by a tribe of psychic mutants who live below the mind flayers. We'll talk more about them next time. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 00:59
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  Chapter 4: Carousing in the Kingdom of Dreams Dungeon-delving is but the midway point of the adventure, for its beginning and end often take place in a community or other place of normalcy. To better give the PCs something to fight for beyond a settlement to sell their incursion-gotten gain, The Nightmares Underneath has a detailed set of various rules in providing benefits and hindrances for interacting with and investing in communities. Between Adventures & Buying and Selling Downtime between dungeon delves mandates the spending of cyphers for living expenses. If the PCs are planning on going right back into an incursion or ruin this is unneeded, but applies when one or more weeks of time pass between expeditions. Generally speaking it’s good to be at a higher standard of living: being homeless or on the streets prevents recovery of Wounds, lost attribute points, and start with less Disposition, and living poorly has results likely to cause you to lose all of your money. Living well is the “middle road” which can grant you a bonus contact on a Charisma save, and living like the rich can also give you contacts more easily as well as potentially running into some kind of trouble (scandal increases Resentment, gain an enemy, etc). There’s also rules for living as a servant for a wealthy client, which has the advantage of living well for free but you have to balance your work/adventuring life. Staying or being committed to an asylum has varying standards of living, but first-class institutions let you ignore the negative effects of a nightmare curse* for the next adventure. *a corruptive mental influence gained from misfortune in a nightmare incursion. One thing I forgot to mention is that the character generation rules explain that PCs are by nature some variety of social outsider even if high-class. The war against the nightmare incursions dominates their life, and there must be one in-built reason why they cannot work a normal job and one reason why they continue the fight. As such, there’s not really rules for plying a trade between adventures beyond GM discretion such as offering to use magic for a nobleman to fund an expedition. When it comes to buying and selling goods, it really depends upon community size. Villages and towns have less wares and there’s a “purchasing limit” in comparison to cities. Additionally, an influx of wealth into a community can risk inflation, and some truly excessive sums will be outright refused as the local economy is incapable of handling such wealth. There’s a list for when inflation occurs and for how long it lasts until market forces return things to normal. And even that duration can be longer due to social instability, such as becoming an “adventurer’s hub,” a local war brewing, known nightmare incursions not being dealt with, etc. Generally speaking it’s very easy to cause inflation in rural villages with dozens or hundreds of cyphers, but when it comes to cities PCs won’t make a dent unless they start throwing around thousands or tens of thousands of cyphers. There’s also price lists for PCs who seek to outright purchase (not rent) buildings and lots: they’re close to OSR standards in that you usually need at least a few thousand cyphers for a respectable building, while grand palaces and temples easily reach six-figure sums. In the Kingdom of Dreams, some goods are generally not available for sale on the open market due to laws and/or an extremely low supply. In regards to magical items, most of them are typically found in ruins of forgotten ages or custom-made by mages. The magic item economy is done on an individual level and by sellers seeking out wealthy buyers who have a need for said item. Transaction of items with an obvious pagan origin or that can be identified as being from the Vale of Serpents is illegal, their use can increase Resentment when used in public, and bring the law down on the PCs unless they can convince the community that they can be trusted with its use. The book advises that when creating or importing magic items from other rulesets that they should lean towards the “obviously magical” and to not have simple effects. I do like how these rules encourage the PCs to be smart with their money rather than throwing it around willy-nilly. The inflation of prices is definitely a penalty as it applies to all goods and services which can really hurt when buying more expensive things. I know that most D&D editions and OSR rulesets don’t have “magic item shops,” although given the setting’s high magic nature it does seem a bit odd that we don’t have things like merchants selling clockwork pets to wealthy families or vendors hawking lockets inscribed with treatises of the Law to ward off evil. I can understand concerns about devaluing the wondrous awe from putting a price point on a Holy Avenger or the casting of a Raise Dead spell, but more utility and/or “household magic” wouldn’t be out of place in the Kingdoms of Dreams’ “Fantasy Golden Age of Islam” aesthetic. Creating Institutions Institutions are businesses and organizations that provide gear, assistants, and services to PCs that create and/or support them. Generally speaking institutions have three tiers of power, each requiring a minimum amount of invested cyphers before they can upgrade to said tier: Notable for 100, Significant for 1,000, and Exceptional for 10,000 cyphers. Higher tiers can provide more services, and Exceptional ones become immune to destruction unless the entire community in which they’re based is destroyed or they’re attacked by another Exceptional institution. Institutions also have dominant alignments depending upon the donors; in the case of multiple PCs of differing alignments supporting the same one, the institution is Neutral. There’s a few sample institutions covering broad types, but also general guidelines for PCs and GMs making their own: such features include the buying/selling of rare goods, access to special types of NPC retainers, protecting the reputation of its members and promoting their causes, and/or providing information that isn’t readily available elsewhere. A few are rather generic types: Hotels grant an easier chance of gaining contacts and faster recovery against maladies during rest, Tea Houses put you in contact with those of a certain occupation or social class depending on its alignment, and Universities grant you ‘vantage on research material, a one-time opportunity to increase Intelligence or Charisma, and is treated as its own settlement for Resentment scores. The more notable institutions I caught wind of are a Communist Party (provide international contacts, chance for +1 Charisma/Willpower, and revolutionary retainers willing to undertake violent action against the government), a Necromancer’s Guild (can autopsy corpses via mundane and magical means, ID undead types, and sell healing spells to you), and Thieves’ Guild (add public speaking to your Skills, can hide out in a safehouse between adventures, counts as its own settlement for Resentment, don’t care about chaos/pagan magic, and can sell you stolen items at 50% market value). Edition Changes: 1st Edition had a Druggist, who could provide drugs and poisons which could heal and/or deal damage to various types of attribute scores along with more unique conditions, provide ‘vantages on certain tasks, and so on. Geographical Societies could provide maps, guides, and wilderness expeditions. 2nd Edition removed those options, and replaced them with Communist Party, Thieves’ Guild, and Vice Den as options. I like the rules for institutions. It reminds me of some “domain management” sourcebooks in various D&D products but with the advantage that it allows for small-scale organizing rather than the head of state affairs that such rulebooks usually expect. The Communist Party stands out the most, if only because the book doesn’t detail whether or not a capitalist economic system has arisen in the world of TNU. Most of society seems medieval/early Renaissance at best, and the mention that the teachings of the Law are compatible with a communist society implies that the Divine is not really a god or religion in the traditional sense given said ideology’s anti-religious underpinnings.  Dealing With People Contacts, retainers, persuasion, and keeping up a positive image are the order of the day in this section. In classic OSR fashion we have a 2d6 + Charisma modifier for determining a person’s initial first impression of you, and a 2d6 + Ferocity modifier for determining how people react to you if you use threats and intimidation to get your way with them. Trying the ‘soft approach’ via Persuasion is a bit more complicated: the GM chooses one or more conditions the PC must meet in order to change someone’s way of thinking. Once said condition(s) is met, the PC saves vs Charisma (or half if the request is major) or the GM can use the 2d6 + Charisma modifier alternative table for the final result. The latter choice has a gradual gradation of success/failure as opposed to the saving throw’s binary result. There are also rules for smear campaigns and character assassinations, either done by or to the PCs. Generally speaking, being the target of such an attack has a chance of causing Resentment increase and Charisma damage for more extreme results. Bards are good at this and add +1 to relevant rolls, but conducting such campaigns requires the expenditure of cyphers for distribution of leaflets, spreading rumors, paying off the right people, donating to charitable causes, etc. Charisma lost in this fashion can be recovered as normal, but also requires paying money to the community or a successful Willpower save to truly and fully recover. Contacts and retainers are the rules for when the PCs need to get the aid of specific individuals rather than social institutions. Contacts are broad in focus and rules, and there’s a list of various occupations and what information and services they can provide. When a PC makes use of their contact they roll 2d6 and add appropriate modifiers based on circumstance (same social class, part of an influential organization, being hunted, etc). Low results mean the contact is unable to provide aid or ends up in danger themselves, while middle and higher results can provide aid but at a price or favor of varying expense. A roll may not be needed at the GM’s discretion if the service is easily attainable within the contact’s scope of expertise. Retainers are NPCs hired to accompany the PCs on their adventures, or manage day-to-day affairs like accounting and looking after mounts outside the dungeon. They are not a diverse assortment from all walks of life, but are varying degrees of the socially misfortunate due to the risks involved in braving nightmare incursions or associating with ones that do so. Marginalized and oppressed groups, refugees and the homeless, junkies and the heavily indebted desperate for fast money, and the suicidal are but a few potential backgrounds to be rolled for in determining the story of one’s hired help. When you factor in the case that retainers by default are not immune to the maddening taint of the nightmare incursions like the PCs are, this makes a morbid amount of sense. Retainers are found after a day or so of searching, and a Settlement Die is rolled to determine the likelihood of finding prospective employees along with modifiers based upon the PC’s reputation: the larger the settlement, the higher the die and thus the easier it is to find people. Retainers tend to be generic low Hit Die humans, although high rolls on the Settlement Die may net you one or two NPCs with class features (Assassin, Bard, etc). 2d6 + Charisma modifier rolls are made when determining the terms of employment and also for determining loyalty and morale when being ordered to do something dangerous beyond what is regarded as reasonable for their occupation. A PC’s Charisma also determines the maximum number of retainers they can employ at once, and already-hired retainers will stay on for 1-2 weeks or until the party’s next expedition in the event of Charisma damage. Full-time employment wages for NPCs are more or less uniform and determined primarily by their social class: 40 to 90 cyphers a month are ‘commoner’ wages, while 100 cyphers or more represent those who are ‘living well and in comfort.’ I like these rules, particularly the tables and entries that allow for fleshing out retainers. The system has a clear bias for recruitment in larger urban centers and among the poor, but that makes sense in the context of the setting and really drives home the fact that being an explorer of otherworldly nightmares is something nobody really does unless they have to Dealing With Settlements This section covers social affairs, but at a macro-level. We have rules for conducting research, whether via libraries or “word on the street” contacts. It’s a 2d6 + Intelligence modifier role with varying degrees of success and failure (falsified info as worst result and 1-3 pieces of info at higher results), and some results may grant Opportunities which are basically adventure hooks and leads to places or NPCs relevant to the researcher’s quarry. Resentment you may recognize as that thing I was talking about in prior chapters. Each PC (and in some cases NPCs) has a Resentment score that begins at 0 but increases due to bad behavior, having their name smeared, and other forms of running one’s reputation. The GM rolls a Settlement Die every time a PC’s score increases to see if they wore out their welcome (and also whenever they throw a public event or make another major appearance). Rolling equal to or lower the Resentment score causes the character to become hated; inhabitants refuse to help or associate with them, and prices of goods and services double or even triple. The next time their Resentment score increases, the community uses force to drive out the character. But even if a PC manages to avoid this fate, individual circumstances may cause hindrances, such as harassment from law enforcement, local organizations shunning the PC, or earning the enmity of an individual who sets out to make the PC’s life hell. As larger settlements have larger dice, one cannot as easily get away with pissing people off in smaller towns and villages. There’s a short but broad list of crimes and actions which can cause Resentment, but there are some cases which bear special mention: going around using magical items from the Age of Chaos in an obvious manner prevents a character from reducing their Resentment score unless they convince the courts and/or public it can be used responsibly. Resentment increases due to crime happen only when the PC’s guilt becomes widely known, and proving one’s innocence from this and character assassination can reverse the Resentment increase. Additionally, crimes committed against marginalized and oppressed groups do not increase Resentment provided it does not affect the larger community as a whole or their employers/owners are inconvenienced by their abuse. If someone under the PCs’ protection dies or goes insane in a nightmare incursion and are a valued member of society, this also increases Resentment. Resentment can be reduced by donating to charitable causes via cyphers and/or significant action on the PC’s part. They can also assume a new identity, and if they’re able to pull off such a disguise the Resentment goes down to 0 (or gain the Resentment score if impersonating a known individual). Edition Changes: The Resentment rules are more specific in the anti-Chaotic bias of communities in 2nd Edition, and explicit rules and examples are given in this regard.  Justifying the Spoils Edition Changes: This entire section has been added for 2nd Edition. So you got this fancy new magic rod that can exorcise demons, brain-parasites, and other bodyjackers guaranteed! But unfortunately it blasphemes the names of the five prophets with every activation, or maybe it has runic symbols carved into it associated with a genocidal sorcerer-king. Even if people know that it works, there’s always going to be the question of whether or not the cost of spiritual damnation is worth it. The final section of Chapter 4 has got you covered! It’s an entire mini-game for PCs making their case in court, whether it be an official courthouse of the Law or a legal team representing the interests of the state visiting the party’s rinky-dink town. In short, a wannabe Chaos-wielder needs to first gather a group of citizens, a law firm, or a person in a position of authority to lobby on their behalf. They must then state their case for why they should be allowed to make use of said blasphemous item, usually some degree of “we can use it against the nightmares or a greater evil.” An opposition lawyer then presents a series of inquiries asking the defendant magic-wielder how they plan on countering any potential side-effects :unexpected conversion to paganism, a foreign ruler invading to seize it, the item being a ‘weirdness magnet’ for monsters and evildoers, and so on and so forth. Various saving throws are done by both sides during the course of the legal drama; there’s a range of final results, from having your case thrown out to being able to use said item with varying levels of restriction. If the magic-wielder succeeded in presenting a legitimate use of the item, they no longer raise Resentment for using it in public. I like this mini-game, although I can imagine it getting a bit tiresome if performed for every such magical item. Then again, it’s only for a certain variety of artifacts, and then only if the PCs wish to use it in public. It’s a good means of allowing a party the ability to make use of their treasure without making the setting’s authorities hidebound and obstinate against its use, as is in the case of a lot of ‘low magic’ settings. Thoughts So Far: I surmised much of my thoughts in the relevant entries, but overall I like the settlement-based rules provided in the Nightmares Underneath. The work is good enough to be used in other settings and OSR-adjacent systems, and the only real setting-specific material is the ban on “blasphemous items.” But even that can be reconfigured in covering a more generic ‘black magic” style of spellcasting. Join us next time as we open up a spellbook and learn how to Cast Spells and Other Enchantments in Chapter 5!
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Aug 24, 2020 04:09
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Mors Rattus posted:In theory, this is the sourcebook on the Gitz grots (read: goblins) and specifically their split between the Moonclans and the Spiderfangs. In practice this is a book about the Moonclans, and the Spiderfangs are also present. (This is actually a recurring issue with Destruction - the Orruk book is the same, it primarily is about one of the two kinds of Orruk and the other kind is just also present.) And, to be fair, in both cases it's because the group the book focuses on FTFY
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Aug 24, 2020 05:09
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Teleportation and other useful transportation spells do not function while within The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 47: The Deck of Wizards and Wardens 232: Baldrik’s Cube The PCs are in a big city “boasting several powerful mages,” and are hired by one, Hermsin, to steal a “new magic cube” from his rival Baldrik. He’s paying 100 gp each, but can be haggled up to 300 gp each and two potions of climbing. Not sure why he’s hiring a party anyway, this is 100% a job for a single thief. They’re going to need to climb a tower and use a dispel magic scroll or gem (provided) to turn off wards, then move quick to avoid iron golem guards. The cube turns out to be locked in a safe - -30% to the pick locks roll, or you can breach it with “damage equal to 40 points against AC 2.” In theory, fine if you have a Thief who is also a professional thief in the party - but in practice, you don’t want to give them a solo adventure while the rest of the PCs are hanging out twiddling their thumbs, and bringing a cleric or whatever along on this job is just weird. Also, what does this cube do, anyway? Keep this as a solo thief quest. 233: Ill Omens In a forest, the PCs find a clearing with a man in furs chanting and throwing herbs on a fire. He’s a savage wizard (which I have to say, sounds badass) enchanting some talismans for the next day. If he notices them, he says they’ve witnessed a sacred rite and should die, but then hesitates when he realizes they are heavily-armed murderhobos and his chances of soloing them are not great. So instead he presses an amulet into their hands, says that anyone who lies while holding it will die, and asks them to swear not to tell anyone what they saw. The amulet is actually a temporary protection from evil amulet. Uh… okay? Feels kind of like a pointless cutscene, unless the PCs feel like picking a fight with a wizard. Eh. Pass. KIT CORNER: Savage Wizard (PHBR 4: The Complete Wizard’s Handbook) “The Savage Wizard is the spell caster of a remote tribe, culturally and technologically primitive by the standards of the rest of the world. Although these tribes commonly maintain functional civilizations for thousands of years, their traditions, dress, and customs are so simple that most outsiders consider them unsophisticated brutes.” No way could they produce any cultural product as sophisticated as an internet forum thread where people paraphrase and comment on old role-playing supplements that nobody cares about any more.  “All [savages] are sharply attuned to the natural world, sharing a deep respect for animal and plant life and an innate understanding of the mysteries of nature.” Oh good, sounds like these savages are quite… noble. It goes on like this from a few different angles, but leeeeet’s get to the meat of it. You need an 11 Strength and a 13 Constitution, so you can wrestle bespectacled nerd wizards from other cultures, I assume. You get the NWPs of Direction Sense or Weather Sense, and Endurance or Survival. You need to take a weapon proficiency in spear, blowgun, dagger, knife, or sling, and can only start with that weapon. (Spear-carrying wizard is cool.) You also start with very little money. Your main disadvantage is that you get a -2 reaction adjustment from anyone not of your tribe. In exchange, you get to choose one of three powers, all usable once per week: making one of those one-day protection from evil talismans; making essentially a voodoo doll from a piece of someone’s body that lets you deal 1d4 damage to them remotely at any time (max 10 damage); or reading omens that give small bonuses or maluses to the whole party for the day, either random of by DM fiat. It’s... fine. 234: Dead(?) Wizard In the hills, the PCs run across a battlefield strewn with the corpses of bandits struck down by magic. There’s also a wagon that was crushed by a boulder rolled down on it from above. A ghostly image of a woman in robes with two arrows in her side appears before them (the card suggests that the DM can scare the players into thinking it’s an actual ghost, which has a save-or-age power in AD&D). It’s really the spectral projection of the wizard Mirosha, whose “magically frozen” body is down a small crevice. If they awaken her they need to apply healing immediately or she’ll die. Opportunity to gain an ally, but I know absolutely nothing about her other than that she’s sixth level. A sentence of personality and one of motivation would be awesome. Eh. Keep as a vessel to apply a useful plot hook to; I could always throw it back if I didn’t have one handy. 235: Prisoner, Part 1 of 3 Quest time! A local sheriff wants to hire the PCs to escort a prisoner to the big city - not a dangerous route, just sort of distant, a week’s travel away. He’s wanted for “the murder of 12 of the king’s guards.” They’re offered 100 gp each to deliver the prisoner safe and sound. This is a “Medium” danger card, which means the PCs are expected to be about levels 5-9. So most likely, they immediately answer “not worth the trouble” and proceed towards a more exciting, lucrative dungeon. The prisoner, Homer Slade (Thief 8) is friendly and outgoing, and tells the PCs he doesn’t hold their role against them. He claims the guards he murdered burned down his house, causing his wife to take sick and die. He will absolutely try to escape at every opportunity, including murdering the PCs in their sleep if he can. He has a 20% chance each night to slip his manacles. He’s a good swimmer and will try to escape via river if possible. It’s okay, but I’d still be surprised if the PCs took the job. Maybe if they were headed to the big city anyway? But also, to play out all this stuff would take more game time than I really care to spend on it. I’m inclined to pass unless this somehow really fits the premise of the specific campaign. 236: Prisoner, Part 2 of 3 This is not actually a continuation of the previous card, but a new encounter with the same theme. The PCs are hired to escort a prisoner to the city for execution. This time they’re being offered 100 gp total, and it’s still a “medium” danger card for levels 5 to 9, so… yeah, not worth their time. The card does suggest that this could be a job from a temple where a PC cleric is getting training, or where they’ve gone for healing, or whatever. Anyway, this prisoner, Silarth, is an atheist. In D&D-land, this apparently makes him IMMUNE TO THE GODS, because they’re trying to hurt him constantly, and it rolls off him like he’s teflon. The PCs, however, will suffer for being near him. Insect plagues, badly-aimed lightning bolts from the sky, ants in their food supplies, cold wet rain (“the prisoner stays dry”), and quicksand (“Silarth walks across with no problem.”) I guess it’s kind of funny, but I’m not thrilled at the questions this card raises, and even less so about the answers it implies. Pass. 237: Prisoner, Part 3 of 3 The PCs are offered another job to escort a prisoner to the city, this one a sniveling, fearful old man named Wendir (T5) who’s accused of murdering the mayor and his wife in their sleep. He’s constantly going on about how he’s innocent, making increasingly desperate offers to subject himself to magical testing, swear before the gods, be tortured, etc. in order to prove it. He is genuinely innocent. That’s a fine encounter hook (and I like that this guy is, in fact, a professional thief who might very well be guilty of lesser crimes), but it needs to lead into something more. Give me one more sentence: “he was framed by the captain of the guard, who killed the mayor in an attempt to consolidate his power.” Or something more interesting. Just something. Pass unless I’m ready up to winging it when/if the PCs start digging into the crime. Apropos of nothing, the pass that the PCs need to take is guarded by dwarves who levy a hefty toll. Gotta love those tolls. Great gameplay in tolls.
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Aug 24, 2020 15:40
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Ithle01 posted:Thoughts of Darkness part three: We're on a quest for rod The most hilarious part of this module to me is the hilariously bullshit ways that Lyssa von Zarovich gets powered up as a vampire. Because why doesn't every vampire ever use this method? Basically Lyssa "fights" the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. Said ghost uses aging attacks and effectively makes Lyssa like 300 years older than she actually is which makes her immune to garlic and running water. Vamps over 1000 are also immune to sunlight and holy symbol, though not necessarily being turned - in Ravenloft, anyway. So, it kind of begs the question of why her stupid rear end didn't just play tag with another ghost to get the full power up and then go after Strahd in the daytime. And why, again, every vamp in Ravenloft doesn't immediately do this upon rising. I mean just get up, get some some blood find a ghost become a super-vamp. Personally, I'd do something like apply negatives to her "to hit" and damage and says that she looks like an impossibly ancient crone because if aging works in one way on vamps it should work in every other way. And nothing in Ravenloft should be an unmixed blessing. Editing to add that the above bit is something you'd expect from your dumbass 12 year old nephew running AD&D for the first time: Him: "Yeah, dude, she's like, a vampire who got aged by a ghost and poo poo." Me:"You do remember that since she's undead, she can't actually physically age, so the ghost's attack won't affect her. Also, the ghost attack just physically ages your body. It doesn't give you the actual life experience for getting older - so you don't get the Int/Wis boosts. Which means she doesn't get the "getting older" super-powers either.". It should not have been something that appears in a module theoretically written by adults who know the system and that was published and sold in stores for actual money. Everyone fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 15:50
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Xiahou Dun posted:But you repeat yourself. Deep dish pizza is a blessing and a joy. 
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Aug 24, 2020 17:29
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Chapter 6: Witches (Dark Queen, Djinn, Gorgon, Morrigan)  Hecate, also known as the Dark Queen, may have been the first Witch to enter Morden, even before the Djinn. She certainly struck deals with people in Caer Kainen and Deepshadow, and likely discovered the paths the Grand Coven crossed through. During the Bane War, the Dark Queen stayed at the rear and used her Shades as spies, shying away from the sea; she and her creations are all vulnerable to salt (to the point that Shades can’t cross lines of it) and she had no interest in nearing the coast. But aside from the Crone she was the most enthusiastic participant in building the Grand Coven, and when it collapsed she shifted her ambitions towards rebuilding it; of all the Witches in Morden, Hecate is the only one sending messages back and forth across the Peaks and attempting to force them to work together when they don’t have to. Unlike most Witches, she maintains a friendship with another being: the Morrigan, who shares her power over death and may be her biological sister. On the other hand, she hates the Gorgon with a burning passion; Melusine’s gleeful independence runs directly counter to Hecate’s desire for control and the two fight for dominance wherever their minions meet. Hecate’s magic is liminal in nature, especially when it comes to the boundaries of life and death and illusion and reality. She holds power over crossroads and barriers, making her magic and creations dangerous to contain or hold back. She also favors ghosts and spirits as opposed to corporeal undead like the Morrigan, and her magic tends to linger and inflict fear on those that blunder into its aftermath; some scholars believe the legendary monsters of the Darkwall Peaks are in fact just travelers running into her illusions, which (literally) scare them to death. However, for some unknown reason salt greatly weakens her, possibly even enough to disable her magic. As such she and her Banes spend their time in inland Morden, far from the coasts – and far from the Gorgon’s territory, as she and her reptilian servants only work well in warm regions. Hecate produced few Banes, instead focusing on building her intelligence network, but we get details on Noumenons (diet Slendermans) and Night’s Mastiffs (tracker/messenger dogs with enchanted collars that hold scrolls).  Most of the Djinn’s entry covers the ramifications of her disappearance. Witches were thought to be immortal before that final battle, and she may, in fact, still be alive somewhere. Her magic seems to be going strong and she has a history of longterm planning; she might have fled to another plane of reality or faked her disappearance, letting her servants build up power under the radar until she returns with a vengeance. She may also be either dead or banished from Morden for the foreseeable future, in which case her magic will likely gradually wear off and her creations will eventually collapse back into the sand. Either way, all the Banes and Accursed who served her have been freed from her will, though many have chosen to follow Memmon in his effort to reconquer Hyphrates. The Djinn, when she was around, seemed to specialize in wish magic; she would appear to petitioners, grant them wishes, and gain power by twisting them against the wisher. While some magic users can do similar things on smaller scales, granting wishes inevitably at least exhausts and often kills them. She never seemed to suffer these consequences, though. We get three examples of her Banes: lesser mummies, just zombies in rags; scarabs, which act like swarms of mega-locusts; and the Zalazade, who granted wishes to those who solved her puzzles (and enslaved to those who couldn’t), a former lieutenant who now seems to be on her own.  The Gorgon never really got along with her comrades in the Grand Coven. She collaborated with them, certainly, but she rarely contributed directly to the war effort. Instead she sent her Banes and Accursed out as assassins, saboteurs, or raiders, shunning any kind of standing army. In fact, she even opposed the Coven at times, sabotaging their efforts or killing their commanders, though never enough to slow their advance. The only Witch Melusine seemed to get along with was the Djinn, and she’s long go. So today the Gorgon spends her time tooling around southern Morden (she’s a snake person and doesn’t like the cold), causing chaos wherever she goes. Interestingly, though the other Witches hate or fear their now-freed Accursed, Melusine actually seems to like them; she doesn’t begrudge them their independence, being independent herself, and likes to test or challenge them more than ignore or kill them. If an Ophidian gets too powerful, though, that trips some kind of line in the sand and she goes out of her way to get rid of them. Being basically Medusa, the Gorgon’s magic combines every snake stereotype you can think of with turning things into stone. Her creations are few but all highly dangerous; she always preferred deadly independent agents to things that had to cooperate. Her Banes include basilisks, crocodiles so venomous every part of their body is poisonous; gargoyles, stone-like flying reptiles that swoop down on their prey in surprise attacks; and hydras, monitor lizards that absorb every person they eat: their victims turn into the hydra’s extra heads, faces mounted on serpentine next that constantly babble secrets from their lives.  The Morrigan was in many ways the most important Witch during the war; her cauldron born formed the bulk of the Grand Coven’s armies, after all. Now, though, despite her firm control over Cairn Kainen, she’s retreated into the Blackroot Wode to play fairytale queen. These days she leaves the woods exactly once a year to collect her tribute from a clan personally (often bringing along that clan’s former members it gave made her unhappy) before returning again to keep building a new realm in emulation of some long-dead one. Though she’s outlawed passage through the forest, people still travel through it from time to time to get between Cairn Kainen and Valkenholm – and though most disappear, the Morrigan occasionally lets them through if they can produce a new song or story. She loves new songs and stories; she apparently keeps half the bards of Cairn Kainen frozen in ice and once a year holds a story contest, letting the winner go free. The Morrigan’s magic embodies not just death, but the act of dying; her spells draw power from things as they reach their end, either through age, death, or if your destruction. She also controls ravens (as carrion birds) and demonstrates some control over iron – ironic, considering how pure (“cold”) iron damages her creations. Her Banes are all different kinds of cauldron born and we get information on three: two different kinds of base cauldron born (zombies and skeletons, basically); Grave Knights, death knights from any other setting that may have witchcraft (“their most power is enhance undead”); and the Horned King, the former High King of Caer Kainen, who now operates as the Morrigan’s personal attack dog. Aaaand, chapter over. Man, the editing really started to fall apart here. Is it Cauldronborn, cauldronborn, cauldron-born, or cauldron born? I saw all four in various parts of the book. I could probably say more about the witches, but I’m kind of running out of interest; the book spends a lot of time and space talking about characters you will probably never meet because they’ll immediately kill you. The preceding section, however, discusses my single favorite part of the system: the Fate Track, where we learn how a mummy can fly a pyramid or a golem can become a real boy.
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Aug 24, 2020 18:10
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Why would you ever not play a mummy in this game?
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Aug 24, 2020 22:09
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Accursed sounds interesting and I'd love to talk about it, but instead I'll just drop this turd here Thoughts of Darkness part four Last time things were sort of looking like we might be making some headway and then the major villain NPCs teleported to us, stole everything, and now we're on the run in the subterranean labyrinth below the mind flayer head quarters. So far this high level adventure has done its best to make sure the players have no ability to do anything with any sort of agency and the PCs are more or less window-dressing for NPC interactions. Namely, Annitella and everyone else, but by the end of this that will change (to a different NPC, not the PCs). While you're retreating from the mind flayers' minions you're rescued by an ape-like mutant with a head growing out of its stomach. It's literally Kuato from Total Recall. His name is Symbiont, but I'm calling him Kuato because this is a half-assed rip off. Kuato rescues you and takes you to the mutant secret hideout. All the mutants have psychic powers that enable them to resist the mind flayers domination, but they are also deformed and brain-damaged as a result of the mind flayers experiments upon them. Standard mind flayer stuff that you would expect, one of the only parts of the module that isn't bad and is merely derivative. When you arrive at the hideout Kuato offers you a gross potion, but not before he and his lower head both take a sip and backwash into it. Gross. Anyway, if you drink the potion make a save vs. poison. Failure means hours of nausea, but success means the constant psychic noise you're being bombarded with goes away and you can think and rest normally. This is literally the only chance to rest in the adventure without the elder brain's interference. Success on the save also removes the normal Bluetspur penalties to resting and to ThAC0 or horror/madness checks. For once the PCs are able to fight at their full potential - except for any lost levels. However, the arcane resonance has not gone away so cast spells at your own peril because there's a chance a mind flayer slave-catcher squad can teleport to you and the mutants. If you failed the save when you drank the potion I guess you just have to eat poo poo and push on through the adventure without a rest. The mutants are friendly but after you've rested they press upon the PCs to go attack the mind flayer laboratories and to free Annitella and the paladin Drassak who's body is incubating the mind flayer-vampire spawn that the High Master intends to use in his plan for world domination. Or at least just all of Bluetspur. Kuato leads you through the caves upwards to the fungus farms that grow the night-soil encrusted mushrooms the mind flayer slaves subsist on. If the PCs disguise themselves as slaves - this is incredibly simple - literally just toss a burlap sack over yourself - then you can waltz right into the hellish slave holding pens and from there into the heart of the mind flayer complex. If you attack the mind flayers instead you basically have to fight the entire complex and all of its defenders. At this point that mostly means zombie-like malnourished humans, but there are also some elite drow slaves and mind flayers as well. Once you get past the human slave pens, easily done if disguised, you make it to the barracks of the elite slave soldiers which is still squalid, but palatial in comparison to the conditions the human slaves endure. If any PCs have been abducted or lost due to madness you'll find them here, but can't free them from the control of the mind flayers yet*. Past the elite slave pens you get to the 'special' slave pens where the mind flayers keep slaves that are either pregnant, a result of their forced breeding programs to create more slaves**, or being prepared for participation in "experiments". Neither Annitella nor Drassak are here (they would be in the science experiment pens, not the .... other pens) meaning that they're likely in the mind flayer laboratories above you. There's another opportunity to find lost PCs in this room. If you find a PC here they're unconscious, but still possess free will if recovered. Kuato wants to free any mutants you might find here and will probably part ways with the party at this point as they ascend to the mind flayer laboratories via telekinetic elevator. *you need either mind blank or psychic surgery to do so and it's unlikely most parties, even at this level, have access to a specific 8th level wizard spells without preparation. Ironically, the dozens of drow wizards, all of whom are 16th level, actually could cast mind blank. Obviously, they do not have it in their repertoire. **Okay, so clearly there's a lot about this that is problematic. However, because this is a horror adventure with subterranean space aliens I'll let it slide. Now, just to be clear, I would not include this in any game I would run because as a DM I have total control over my fantasy world and my fantasy world doesn't really need a slave rape room in it. Nor do I want to start a conversation about the 'necessity' of this room for verisimilitude because I don't consider that argument to have any merit. The horror angle that gives this room a sliver of relevance is the idea that mind flayers consider humans to be livestock and thus subject humans to the same treatment that humans subject our livestock to. Surely the mind flayer laboratories have something cool in them right? Not really. There are four labs and they have nothing interesting. The first lab has a single mind flayer experimenting on a human. It doesn't notice the PCs for the first three rounds they're in the room, but after that it sees the party and then alerts the rest of the complex to intruders. The adventure assumes the mindflayer is hostile but outmatched so it immediately retreats. The second lab immediately opens to reveal Annitella strapped to a table fighting off mind flayers who are preparing her for incubation (as in implanting an egg in her head). There are five mind flayers so this looks like an easy fight. Except! Bonespur, the roguish minor villain who has been hounding you is literally hiding behind the entrance along with two of his guards and he immediately backstabs you as soon as you barge in. This isn't intentional, he actually has no idea you're here and I guess that's just the sort of person Bonespur is: Always waiting behind doors ready to knife anyone who saunters in. Bonespur is willing to fight to the 0 hp instead of retreat in this encounter, but once reduced to 0 hp his contingency imbued medallion teleports him to safety, resuscitates him, and gives him a full heal. Once you rescue Annitella and finish the fight she tells you its time to rescue her boyfriend Drassak. There is literally no word on reinforcements for this fight from the elite slave pens which are right below the area. The writer really just gave up at this point and nothing makes any drat sense. The third room has your next mini-boss, Lyssa von Zarovich. The whole room is filled with tables that all have cold dead corpses strapped to them. Each body has a vampire illithid spawn nesting in its brain and this is where you find Drassak - or at least his corpse. You're too late! The spawn in Drassak's head has hatched and is being taken to the High Master's chambers as part of its master plan. Lyssa engages in some quick banter with Annitella and then attacks. Bonespur (yes, really) and ten drow fighters join in, ambushing you from behind for like the fifth or sixth loving time in this module. Once you beat this mini-boss encounter Annitella begs you to blast the chamber with a fireball or equivalent to kill the spawn that have yet to hatch. There is almost no attention paid to this encounter - neither the PCs nor the NPCs exist as anything other than pawns in a scripted fight that has no significance to anyone except Annitella. The last laboratory is up a winding dark passageway marked by five sequential spiked pit traps, each longer than the one before it. Because that's what you want to deal with when you're trying to move heavy equipment in and out of your lab, spiked pit traps. I remember my time as an undergrad in a college lab, we had spike pit traps in every hallway and by the end of the semester I was as nimble as an acrobat. There's no mention made of how these trigger or how to avoid them, it's just a thing you deal with. After limping your way up the corkscrew-winding trap-lined tunnel you're at the top of Mount Makab and the night-time lightning storm is powering the almighty artifact, the Apparatus, an artifact for swapping bodies. No good mad scientist, squid-headed or otherwise, would be without a lightning powered machine of diabolical arcane artistry. As soon as you enter you see two glass globes, one containing the High Master and the other containing a vampire-illithid tadpole spawn, but you're too late! As soon as you arrive a lightning strike powers the Apparatus and the High Master's master plan is put into motion. The High Master has switched it's consciousness from its decrepit, but psychically powerful, illithid body into that of the vampire tadpole - ready to be soaked in the brain broth of the elder brain's spawning pool and grow into maturity. Annitella calls on the PCs to attack the machine and if you do so it immediately explodes, spraying the PCs with lightning and broken glass that inflict damage to all present. Never follow Annitella's advice. Of course, you don't actually accomplish anything by smashing the machine and if you don't attack I assume the machine explodes anyway because the adventure literally requires it. With the machine destroyed Annitella looks for the tadpole spawn that contains the High Master but it's not present, it's been teleported to the inner sanctum of the elder brain. Among the ruins of the Apparatus you discover two plot devices. The first is the rod of houtras used to power the Apparatus and the second is the High Master's body - inhabited by Drassak. Drassak, in addition to being a paladin, was a member of the psychically well-endowed Brotherhood of Contemplative Power. With his psychic powers Drassak was able to pull off an Adversary-like feat and when the vampire tadpole hatched and ate his brain he transferred his consciousness into it. When the High Master transferred into the tadpole Drassak transferred into the High Master. Now you have both the rod and Drassak with your party. Drassak immediately takes the helm and hijacks the party and the adventure so he can have his final plot moments. I guess we'll cover those later because I can't stand to read this drek anymore. The next update will be the last and it's, thankfully, not very long. The NPCs do all the work and nothing you do matters.
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Aug 24, 2020 22:42
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Ithle01 posted:Accursed sounds interesting and I'd love to talk about it, but instead I'll just drop this turd here Bonespur's medallion is presumably magical, right? So it should Detect as such. Any chance a quick-reflexed PC can just snatch that loving thing off his neck and get their own teleport/full heal combos for the rest of the module? Also, these are 12th-15th level characters. So a Wizard could have access to 6th level spells. What happens if the wizard just Disintegrates his rear end? Kind of gently caress your Contingency at point in congratulations, the particles of dust that used to be Bonespur got teleported and fully healed. Go for them. Also, any mention of PCs who are psionicist and thus able to give this poo poo right back to the Mind Flayer? And the Drow. Because gently caress your Magic Resistance, bitches, I gots the mind powerz too. Really this module would be good for a party to get a premonition of and then go through the previous mind flayer trilogy so they go into this full of stuff to nerf these a-holes something fierce. Everyone fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 01:23
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Everyone posted:Bonespur's medallion is presumably magical, right? So it should Detect as such. Any chance a quick-reflexed PC can just snatch that loving thing off his neck and get their own teleport/full heal combos for the rest of the module? Also, these are 12th-15th level characters. So a Wizard could have access to 6th level spells. What happens if the wizard just Disintegrates his rear end? Kind of gently caress your Contingency at point in congratulations, the particles of dust that used to be Bonespur got teleported and fully healed. Go for them. The medallion is loaded with contingency-triggered spells such as limited wish and teleport without error keyed for the mind flayer inner sanctum. You can probably just ruin the whole thing with a single dispel magic or disintegrate but the module never addresses this and assumes he survives in every instance. He's also aided by armor that lets you phase into the near ethereal plane for setting up sneak attacks and escaping. The encounter balance is more or less non-existent and the module has no problem throwing 2-4 16th level wizard foes into any encounter and they are far more dangerous than anything else you'll fight but barely get a mention other than their spell lists which include globe of invulnerability (in an adventure that takes away spells over 3rd level), monster summoning V, polymorph other, hold monster, teleport without error, and dispel magic. The mind flayer wizards you fight are much weaker, only 8th level wizard spells and roughly the same MR, but a much weaker AC. Psionics are only mentioned for NPCs not PCs. As you might expect.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:36
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8one6 posted:Why would you ever not play a mummy in this game? Ithle01 posted:Accursed sounds interesting and I'd love to talk about it, but instead I'll just drop this turd here Well, speaking of reasons to play Mummies, guess what update just got finished early! Chapter 5: Witchmarks (the Fate Track) Every Accursed is defined by the balance their human and monstrous sides. The book invites GMs uninterested in that struggle to ignore it. But if they don’t, characters will gradually take one of two perspectives on their condition: they will have to choose to accept their curse as a part of them or reject it entirely. The first half is titled Acceptance; the second, Defiance. A character’s progress down either path is measured on the Fate Track.  Yeah, this thing. The Fate Track has three steps in each direction, and a step towards one side counts as a step away from the other. No splitting the difference here. Movement down the Fate Track represents personal developments in the lives of the character; while players can purchase an Edge that in one direction or another, the GM controls most of the process. These shifts should be paced out according to the campaign length and only granted as part of story beats. The last step, though, and only be traversed by an act of the character’s will (read: they need to take the Edge). Both paths have direct mechanical effects: advancing down Acceptance increases a character’s Witchbreed powers at the expense of their freedom and flexibility; Defiance removes the bonuses their Witchbreed grants them in exchange for not only removing its penalties but granting them a few new abilities too. Acceptance comes from a few different mindsets. The first is the most obvious: those that love doing their monstery thing probably end up this way. If they take pride in their difference from humanity, feel themselves superior to mere humans, or even focus on developing their particular abilities (i.e. taking Racial Edges), they're likely to go down the Acceptance track. Even someone who tries to develop a hybrid identity involving both parts of their nature will likely end up gaining Acceptance, as they embrace their hybrid nature. Acceptance isn’t inherently a bad thing The book tries to imply Acceptance makes characters monsters in mind as well as in body, but that has no mechanical representation; as far as I can tell, they can remain perfectly sane and friendly even at Acceptance 3. However, though they end up quite powerful in the right situations, they also end up with restrictions on their behavior that make that power highly situational. Mechanically, you head down Acceptance if you have a specific build or role in mind. As they increase their Acceptance…
 Defiance also usually comes from one of three mindsets: rejection, connection, and development. Those who hate being Accursed, those that want to be fully human again and disdain using their new abilities, make strong candidates for Defiance. The same goes for those who try to act like they did before they got their Witchmark or try to ignore it entirely. Even those who have no issue with their new form but choose to rely on their own skills and capabilities instead of those granted to them can find themselves heading down Defiance by default; while a much milder position, holding supernatural abilities in reserve still denies yourself their use. But even if you embrace your abilities, if you focus on other people, you will likely find your Defiance climbing. Witchmarks were designed to separate individuals from their societies to turn them into weapons; by drawing up connections to the people you are supposed to be fighting, you defy your mark through action if not in spirit. And finally, even a general willingness to change can get you Defiance. Acceptance implies stasis; actively improving yourself or trying to change your circumstances, whether developing your abilities or befriending old enemies, sends you away from that stasis and moves you somewhere new. No, the book doesn’t talk about how this last point overlaps with improving your monstrous abilities (which leads to Acceptance); I think you’re just supposed to let your GM make the call. While Acceptance varies widely in its effects and final states, the Defiance tracks all end the same way: the character becomes human. Like, no deflections or special conditions, fully human. The thing is, while they end up biologically human, mechanically Defiance 3 characters are actually statistically better than baseline humans. Not only do they always lose all the weaknesses of their template as they drop it, they also gain extra Bennies every session (representing them seizing control of their fate) and a few potent mechanical benefits too. Defiance characters end up less powerful than their Acceptance equivalents but a lot more flexible and capable in general. Side note: Witchbreed Edges imply a character has started exploring the inherent abilities of their Witchbreed and taking them makes a character more likely to earn Acceptance. Does that mean characters angling for Defiance should not take them? No. While taking them can mean a character accepts their condition, it can also mean they’ve bent their abilities towards helping others or moving on, or even that the player wanted some mechanical advantage or to do something cool. Maxing out Defiance and turning into a proper human, according to the book, should always be a positive experience untainted by worrying about losing experience investments. By default, a max Defiance character with Witchbreed-specific Edges keeps them after transforming, even if they no longer fully makes sense. How, say, a former golem could absorb the substance they used to be made out of to gain health, or a former Ophidian and keep their tail, is left to the GM and player. Even if the GM decides not to permit that, the book strongly suggests they let the player take an equivalent number of Edges after losing their old ones. As they increase their Defiance…
 Here’s the thing about Fate Tracks: some Witchbreeds gain a lot more going down one side or another, and the benefits a specific side grants those who take it can be wildly disparate. The system is deeply imbalanced and any attempt to play even a little optimally can rule out stories players might want to tell. As a flavorful subsystem (one I genuinely like), its mechanical failings undermine its message and deeply weaken it. Let’s look at some examples. I said earlier that I’d have to create a Golem for this section, but I realized I didn’t need to go through the whole process; all I need to do is list out the statistics and note how they change when they go down either side of the track. The following couple of lists will look at the full list of modifiers for Golems and Mummies in their base, max Acceptance, and max Defiance forms so we can compare and contrast. For Acceptance, which modifies parts of the base template, I’ll mark changes to preestablished elements by bolding them. Let’s start by looking at Golems:
Now, Mummies:
 Those illustrate the discrepancies within tracks pretty well, but the discrepancies between Witchbreeds can be even more dramatic. Case in point: the Ophidian, who at Defiance 3 can raise their Vigor more easily, gets a single extra Benny, and can talk to snakes with a Spirit roll. That’s it. Compare that to Acceptance Golems and it starts to look just a little… insufficient. End result? A system that’s supposed to facilitate following your heart and becoming what reflects what’s inside you ends up easily gamed. And yet, I can’t find it in me to dislike this section, despite the mechanical flaws that I just spent nearly a thousand words dissecting. In fact, I consider it my favorite part, the reason I come back to the book. For all its faults, the Fate Track serves to guide a character’s personal journey through the game in a way that reinforces the game’s mechanics, providing measurable changes potent enough to alter their playstyle every time they hit a new emotional milestone. I suppose a lot of what I’m complaining about is just window dressing, stuff designed to make that journey interesting that doesn’t always stick the landing. I just wish it was better at it, you know? Next time, we wrap this bad boy up.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:44
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I mean, just to compare the Illithiad and Thoughts of Darkness... the Illithiad has roughly one major fight vs Illithids per module. Shuluth's asssassin squad in the first, the tracking team in the second and... actually in the third one you can mostly avoid actually fighting any Illithids except for Lugribossk. And outside of the very first one of those, odds are the remainder of them the PC's have a chance to decide when and how to engage, as well as a decent chance to win. In Thoughts of Darkness I haven't seen a single encounter that's well-balanced or one that the players choose. Every battle is an ambush or otherwise forced on them. Not a single loving one.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:51
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