Theater of the Mind Rules for 4E

This is so ridiculously simple I am now very interested in trying it. Thanks to Uskglass for this post, it's immediately got me interested in trying 4E again with the TotM approach. Here's the text of it, but click his link at the WotC blog forums for the original.

This is an adaptation of a relative proximy zone, ToTM stylem combat system (as seen in WFRPG 3e and 13th Age) to D&D 4E. It can be used as replacement of grid combat, but since it doesn't change the basic stats and numbers of 4E it is always possible to switch from one to the other for each battle.
It makes combat a bit more hazy and unpredictable, trading off a some tactical control for the sake of smoothness and a more organic, freeform feel.

Background: As seen in WFRPG 3e and 13th Age, the system works using zones of relative proximity. Basically once in combat anything is either Engaged (melee reach), Nearby (1 move action away) or Far Away (2 move actions away). It is still a good idea using minis or tokens for ease of visualisation (we do), but it's not required.

STATES AND MOVEMENTS
• Engaged = Melee (base contact)
• Nearby = One move action away (5 squares or more)
• Far away = Two move actions away (10 squares or more)
• Disengage = Shift; with # being the number of enemies disengaging from (shift 1 = disengage 1 enemy); no roll required
• Difficult Terrain = Slowed = Movement 4 or less : Nearby becomes Far Away, Shift is halved (round down)
• Flanking = two or more allies engaging the same target

RANGES AND AREAS OF EFFECT
• Range 10+ = any Nearby or Far Away target
• Range 5+ = any Nearby target
• Blast = Nd3 Nearby targets (3=1d3; 5=2d3)
• Area burst = Nd3 Nearby targets to origin (1=1d3; 2=2d3)
• Close Burst = All Engaged targets + Nd3 Nearby (2=1d3; 3=2d3)
• Walls = 1dN Nearby targets to origin per square of wall (round down). One move action to bypass the wall, if possible
• Friendly fire = allies engaged to affected targets need a saving throw to avoid AoE/Walls targeting ‘creatures’ in the area

FORCED MOVEMENT
• Pull = Move towards origin
• Push = Move away from origin
• Slide = Move anyway from origin
• 5+ = Specific position Nearby in the direction
• 4 or less = Generic position Nearby in the direction (roll 1d6 and add it to the forced movement: a total of 6+ means a specific position is achieved in the direction of the movement)

Original Source: Uskglass's Community Page


Sigh...I really miss playing 4E sometimes! Stuff like this makes me want to jump back in, though I can usually assuage my sense of longing by delving deep into my massive Pathfinder collection or messing around with Magic World, Runequest and BRP.

And Then The Nexus 7 Appeared

I have accomplished three things this week, none of which involved blogging. First:

First, I worked on recovering from a flu-like sickness that was keen to turn into a bronchial infection (I'm prone to these) which meant I missed a bit of work. Not the exciting part here!



Second, I resolved my long-standing love/hate relationship with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. In the wake of the latest round of playtest materials I decided that the new edition was shaping up to be pretty decent, something I actually want to play, and lots of. Poor 4E, meanwhile, languishes in a weird limbo where I want to play it but can't get a consistent group together, as Pathfinder has gained a near-Stockholm-Syndrome like grip on the gaming community at large. More over, when I do run 4E, I inevitably am reminded of its idocyncracies, the reasons I get annoyed with it in the first place....they are little, but devilish bits which always rear their ugly heads because they are baked into the rules, and are hard to extract without a functional rewrite or simply ditching the system entirely (ergo Pathfinder).

So I took all of my 4E collection down to the local Hastings ("Books and More") and managed to get enough credit to pick up a Nexus 7 tablet and extras)....a worthy sacrifice! Which leads us to...



I had previously bought a Nexus 7 for my wife as a XMas present. I couldn't say much about the hardware from her experience, as all she has done with the thing is feed virtual dragon colonies, but I had it on good authority this was a decent gadget. I was not disappointed!

I'll be raving more about the coolness of the Nexus 7 in the coming weeks, and also talk apps on it. The device isn't entirely replacing my Nook, which will remain my main ereader, but it is expanding my repertoire to include the wide world of Android apps on a Tegra quadcore processor. There are some really fantastic games out there for Android, and some even cooler game resources for tabletop (the entirety of the Pathfinder SRD at my fingertips in a fine app called Masterwork Tools pathfinder Open Resource, for example). I have also packed it to the gills with games, many quite good (Dead Space Android, Mass Effect Infiltration, Order & Chaos Online, Chaos Rings, NOVA 3, Dead Trigger, Shadowgun and NFS Most Wanted, to name a few).

I can safely say that I know why the dedicated handheld market is shrinking, now. Nintendo and Sony appear to be behind the times with their quaint, costly dedicated game systems, while any old Android tablet can run fantastic games now. People who think tablets are just for casual gamers....yeah, keep on telling yerself that....



Finally, I managed to pick up my copy of Champions Complete, an innovative take on the Hero System that gets back to its roots, and repackages the game in a very attractive 240 page book that does not resemble a pre-internet-era Yellow Pages phone book. Sweet! I'll be reading through it as time permits, maybe I'll even be inspired to run Champions again for the first time in many, many years.

So much for the Revolution!

Well I am happy to have the 3.5 books again and while I'd like to us them, it looks like (as I expected) doing so will be tantamount to my getting into dentistry and pulling teeth in a matter of weeks. Maybe further down the road....but Pathfinder has its fangs very, very deep.

4E interest still percolates among some players, but not enough in any one spot at the same time for group consistency. While I managed to get a legitimate 4E game started two weeks ago it has already led to a quiet rebellion...or at least a decision this week to switch to low-level Pathfinder. My concession is I'll keep running the campaign I intended (which is a return to Chirak after a lengthy absence) although if I had my way I'd be running straight 3.5 or 1E, just so I could enjoy the fancy new books and keep the game under a D&D title. all me a brand whore, but I kinda like the idea of playing legitimate, official D&D. Heh. Hell, I'd be happy to stick with 4E even though I know it would be once more a count-down to when I grew frustrated with the limited board/minis scope of the system.

Well, the blog serves one great purpose if no other: its a vessel for me to write about the games I like but hardly ever get to play! So expect more 1st edition stuff as time permits. Maybe even more 3.5 analysis. We shall see...

On an unrelated note, I have spent the last couple days trying to play The Secret World. They have an option for recurring payments through paypal, which is good, because I had a bad experience with a credit card setup with Funcom on Age of Conan long ago, and didn't want to repeat that. Well, despite being set up for reasons unknown I couldn't log on. When I went to check my account it said the payment wasn't processed and needed my action to confirm it. Still didn't work. A customer service on their live chat (it was nice that they had live chat) said it could take two days to process paypal payments. I went over to paypal, and they showed that I had Funcom all set to pay monthly and that the only thing missing was the actual payment. I gave it a while, then in frustration decided this was yet another warning flag with Funcom, just like the Age of Conan incident a while back where I ended up massively overcharged after a long wait to get a sub going, and cancelled the recurring payment option through paypal.

I want to play your games, Funcom, so why won't you meet me halfway? I wanted to give you my money, but you wouldn't take it. I guess I might just wait until The Secret World goes free to play after all...

AD&D vs. 4E

I started a new 4th edition campaign for Wednesday nights (first session should be done and over by the time this sees print) after a year's absence. After three Pathfinder campaigns all reaching high level play, with two of the three now effectively concluded, I am ready for 4E again. I have been reminded of what I liked about 4E and what it did to repair or fix issues with 3rd. I'm also ready to play 1st edition again, and even 3.5, but more on that later! For now let's just say I've had an epiphany that I happen to really like each edition on their own individual merits, and find it very hard now to play favorites.

As I am also busy reading AD&D again, its impossible not to compare where 1st and 4th edition are philosophically and ideologically different, as well as where they are occasionally united. I'm one of very few people out there who feel that 4E was a good spiritual successor to classic D&D, and as I read through the AD&D tomes I can see both why I feel that way and also see compelling reasons for why so many find them to be diametrically opposed. Anyway, I'll have to give it some thought, starting here and with more to come.

A few minor observations so far about points where the two editions diverge wildly:

1. AD&D was very much opposed to experimentation with non-human races (while still leaving such decisions to the DM). 4E embraces this and empowers and encourages the player to experiment (while also discouraging the DM from limiting race options).

2. AD&D focused tightly on keeping the mechanics on the DM's side of the screen as much as possible, to the extent that no single rulebook gives you the whole story (PHB vs. DMG). 4E is the opposite, placing a great deal of mechanical control in the player's hands. The DMG provides building tools and advice, but doesn't contain any play mechanics (to be fair it's been this way since 2nd edition).

3. AD&D has a lot of randomization and probability at play. 4E is generally focused on precision and a design that encourages specificity; encounters are built, items are chosen according to what works best for the players and not randomly (for the most part), and so forth.

4. AD&D's randomization can lead to swingy characters; you can theoretically roll up an amazing PC, get lucky and gain psionics, and get even luckier with high hit points. 4E contrasts with precision in numbers: you rarely have uncertainty in the values of what you're about to attain. In exchange, however, the system practically guarantees a decent character...effectiveness is baked into the rules.

Now, to be fair 4th edition can support (and even offers rules for) some randomization, as during its development cycle it became clear that many people wanted an element of chance in the game. You can still roll for stats, you can use randomized treasure parcels, and you can build wandering monster tables in 4E just fine (and the rules provide for it). However, 4E's nature by design encourages structure within those random limits: your character's random stats can be re-rolled if they fail to meet certain minimums, treasure parcel rolls still lead to item selections within level and party appropriate suggestions, and wandering monster charts are more complicated in 4E if only because the rules assume you will try and build challenge-level appropriate random encounters. You don't have to by any stretch, but the game's focus on scaling means a more holistic old-school approach can lead to some messy TPKs (or even worse, prolonged battles of attrition).

You can also view player vs. DM agency in 4E as being about "the DM is in control" but with the caveat that, "the rules provide for all, and are meant to be understood by all." In contrast to AD&D this is remarkably different. I think 4E (and 5E when it arrives) are by virtue of D&D's ubiquity in today's gaming culture forced to adopt this posture, because players and DMs alike are all too savvy, too familiar with the mechanics and structure of RPGs today. AD&D was unique in its power to separate player understanding from DM control, because back then the hobby was young and many, many people played the game straight up and without a good understanding of what was going on behind the DM screen.

I like to always drag out Call of Cthulhu as my example of a game that has fundamentally changed over time not due to edition changes (as it has changed little over six editions) but because everyone is either familiar with it or has read Hello Kitty meets Cthulhu. Or, to put it another way, in 1983 when I discovered Call of Cthulhu I could run games that shocked and surprised my middle school cohorts. Even in 1990-1995 in college it was possible to do this. Today, it's actually kind of difficult to find people willing to play CoC who haven't either drunk from the Lovecraft firehose or who think they know what Cthulhu is because they shopped at Shanna Logic once or played CthulhuTech.

So put another way, D&D's current editions can't separate "what the DM knows and controls" from "what the player does and knows" anymore...or at least not easily, and not in a "forbidden knowledge" way like AD&D did it.

The 4E conundrum in item 1 mentioned earlier is an interesting one, and I want to talk about more at length in the next column, but I'll put it this way:

AD&D has expectations for what it's world looks like (which is very Tolkienish, even if Gary doesn't like to admit it in the text). A great deal of work goes into enforcing why this should be so, and the discussion of alternative player races pulls out my favorite straw man argument (player who wants to play a dragon or demon) to suggest that no player wants to be a monster for purposes other than power. It says a lot more about Gary's games and players, I think, as well as the notion of power gaming back in the late seventies than it does about role playing games and D&D as it was shaping out to be. But beyond that Gary does aknowledge that some players may just be experimental, and wraps up with a "it's your table, you decide" approach.

Cut forward to 2008ish and 4E arrives, acknowledging the endcap of what's been going on since Unearthed Arcana in the 1st edition era, the Complete Humanoids Handbook during 2nd edition, Savage Species in 3rd edition and is more or less baked in to the PHBs in 4th edition: players like playing weird things. 4E's philosophy of "a universe where all races are permitted" is a flaw, however, which vexes DMs aiming for specific flavor. But that's another issue entirely.

What's interesting about 4E is that it allows for a range of races, which on the surface seems contradictory to AD&D's premise of "don't let them do it," but that's only half the story. AD&D's actual suggestion is more correctly, "Don't let them do it to be power gamers, but if you've got players who are genuinely curious about running creature X feel free to let them do so and see how it feels for your game." Which is actually exactly what 4E does, ironically. And in fact 4E designs race building in a fashion that both encourages experimentation and prohibits power gaming by design. So...maybe #1 is out the door, after all...

Then again...

My latest 4E campaign has the following lineup: a gnome artificer, shadar-kai spellsinger, shardmind blackguard, dragonborn hybrid paladin/sorcerer, dwarf runepriest, and satyr skald. Not one human among them. I was joking with the group that the only plot lead-in I needed was "the circus has come to town."

It's not hard, I suppose, to imagine why some people might look at their 1E AD&D experience, contrast it with the average 4E experience, and find it difficult to draw comparisons!

Sifting through D20 Debris

With Wizards of the Coast announcing their 3.5 edition reprints even as their 1st edition remasters are imminent, and with so many D&D-variant systems popping up every day (most recent of which is Dungeon Crawl Classics) I have to say the market for RPGs now seems utterly clogged with dozens of games all trying to do basic variants on the same thing.

I gave a fair amount of thought to the 3.5 edition situation, and contrasted it with Pathfinder. I realized I probably don't care to do anything with 3.5 (though as a collector I may still buy them, we'll see) as Pathfinder really has done more than I often give it credit for to advance the game in meaningful and structured ways. Pathfinder needs a "real" revision, I feel...an actual "Pathfinder 2nd edition" sometime in the future to give it its own credence as more than a 3.5 spin-off, but I am pretty confident that Paizo will do it right when the time comes, by simply cleaning up and advancing the actual system Pathfinder fans enjoy rather than ditching it for an entire revision.

WotC seems to be really bad at this for some reason. AD&D 1st and 2nd edition may have been different, but 2nd was clearly an evolution of 1st. 3rd edition was decidedly a different game that accomplished the same thing in meaningfully similar ways and so was fine, but 4E was a whole new beast (worthy of its own identity apart from D&D)....and my first playtest impressions on 5E leave me feeling that rather than building on what has come before they are instead reconstructing it, and fairly arbitrarily at that. So I don't have high expectations for the future of D&D right now.


Games like Dungeon Crawl Classics are fascinating beasts in their own right. I've finished reading DCC and I am keen to try it out, although I doubt the chance will ever come. This is a system which manages to capture D&D's essence but packages it in a unique fashion, a manner which stands on its own in contrast with both classic editions and retroclones alike. I might honestly be looking forward to the 1st edition reprints more if DCC hadn't come along. As it stands, DCC has stolen a bit of that thunder with a fresh take on a classic experience.


Anyway, just some random musings....

Bizarre Plot Arcs: The Gateways Beyond

In an ongoing series in which I occasionally post some notes on the stranger plot threads I worked up (and sometimes even used), I offer you....an alternate story arc for the paragon plot for the 4E campaign that I was running up through last year.

Mark (alias Stondar), I don't think you read my blog, but if you do stop reading, everything below is a spoiler for you! Even though you guys pursued an entirely different storyline set in the Xorian Wilderness, the plot bits below are still revealing.

The rest of the world will wonder who and what all these beings are in the plot below (the stuff that isn't tied to Planescape/Sigil, anyway). The characters and plots tie to the region of Therias in the Realms of Chirak (described within that mighty tome, as well). All of the key figures, including Khaelos, Morrigan, Aspylion, Thaldyron and Thalion are ancient spirits, survivors of the apocalypse who served as the generals of the fallen gods; they each tried to steal divinity and found it forever out of their grasp, and so now they each play mortals as pawns, to manipulate them into harnessing the divine energy found within the "etheric pools" which are said to have been formed from the blood of the god Gerigos.

Anyway, the important detail is I have something to blog about which is already written. Also, keep in mind this was intended as a story arc for 4E, demonstrating that no edition is immune to overly complex and mythic story arcs, if you are but willing to push it to the limit, one more time.

The Gateways Beyond: Paragon Level Planar Campaign Arc

Premise

   Khaelos the Bold has sought refuge in the city of Sigil, where he knows that his more powerful brethren among the Spirit Lords can not find him. He has divided his essence equally between his astral self and the corporeal form of a shadow rat, and uses this to masquerade his quasi-divinity from the Lady of Pain.

   Khaelos needs a way to return to Therias that will insure the Spirit Lords can’t once again imprison him. To this end he has conspired to discover some means in the outer planes by which he may return, warded against their spells of imprisonment. Attached to his champion Stondar, he has insured that the dwarf did not return home like his companions, and is now working day and night to find clues as to how he may insure his own freedom.

   Some weeks in the City of Doors are spent with constant searching and toiling as the Shadow Rat form works through agents to study ancient tomes and lost librams of lore, seeking out some clue as to how to reverse his fate and return home, triumphant. He stumbles across something unexpected, a vague reference to an ancient word of power, the fabled Code of the Tetragrammatron. With this word of power, Kaelos could achieve true divinity in the planes….and perhaps even reawaken the soul of Ga’Thon once more.

   To get the ball rolling, the rat hires an astral corsair named Zernadas (an eladrin rogue) and his ship, the Eternal Night to begin the journey. Ostensibly the purpose of the trip, made manifest by the shade-patron (created by Khaelos’s magics) Garnagas the Wise (a tiefling scholar), is to travel to a remote Astral Dominion known as Naelandras. There, it is said the ancient Nurimites dwelt in eternal splendor, a race born out of the magnificence of the creation of the First World. Garnagas contends he is a scholar who wishes to study the ancient ruins of this grand race, but the truth is that Khaelos thinks the ruins hold the key to uncovering the Code of the Tetragrammatron.

The Plot of Baelisko

    Meanwhile, the rogue githyanki overlord Serathys has unexpectedly entered the fray. The spirit lord Baelisko is, like Khaelos, a thousandspawn, but unlike Khaelos he long ago managed to subdue his innate compulsion to carry out the will of Ga’Thon. Baelisko hires Serathys and his small fleet of githyanki vessels to carry him through the astral sea, to seek out Khaelos and stop him once and for all.

    Elsewhere, four of the Spirit Lords have determined that Khaelos has escaped, and Morrigan, Aspylion, Thaldyron and Thalion have assembled to determine how to bring Khaelos back from the planes and imprison him once more. They have sought out the services of a small company of mercenary angels, the Steel Wings of Kharyldor, led by the ancient general Metaron to find Khaelos and his crew and return them.

   Amidst all of this, there is a fourth entity involved in the matter: an unstoppable sorcerer turned in to pure energy, contained within ancient armor, called the Herald of the Sleeping Dark.  Surrounded by fanatical cultists who seem to follow mindlessly, suffused with potent chaos magic, this seems to be some sort of entity being manipulated by or in service to the beings of the Far Realm, and it too seems interested in Khaelos’s discovery.

Secrets:

1. The Code of Tetragtrammatron exists, and a clue can indeed be found at Naelandras. Indeed, it may even appear that the code was what destroyed that ancient civilization. The evidence points towards the last of the race’s kind fleeing to a realm beyond even the Far Realm, to a domain of an entity known as Ea…alias Io.*

2. Io has the secret of the code but protects it, for the code can unmake all of existence if it is revealed. It is not so much a prescription for godhood as a key to unraveling existence and then remaking it in the image of the code-reader. Only a “Blank Slate,” a being of pure a priori existence with no imprinting of this universe upon its mind could read the code safely. An innocent being, essentially.

3. The Herald of the Sleeping Dark** represents an unnamed Far Realm entity (in this case the being called Yaggath), one of the so-called Star Gods that seeks to burst forth in to the mortal realm and unmake existence.

4. Most lesser beings can’t even begin to contain the power of the Code. Most will simply be extinguished and then absorbed by it; only true gods can even have a chance of surviving an attempt to read it. Khaelos believes he has a chance, if he can use his shard of the chaos stone to imbue his mind with sufficient divine force.

So this plot never took off, due mainly to the fact that I wanted to keep the campaign centered on Chirak proper and not cavort off into the planes. Mark has noticed that when my campaigns migrate into the planar realms (Planescape style or otherwise) they tend to stall and return later as reboots, so I realized this could have to do with the fact that I simply wasn't as interested in planar adventures as I thought, and so I scratched the tale above and went with something a bit more...prime material.

*Io, alias Ea, continues to exist in a sort of spiritual form at the edge of the known universe, beyond even the Far Realm. This is one of those "big reveals." Especially if you are dragonborn.

**The Herald of the Sleepind Dark demonstrates how I get a theme/name concept in mind and if I don't use it when I intend to it eventually morphs into something I do (ala the Temple of the Whispering Dark).

Artifact Weapons in 4E: Frostbane and the Blade of Malib

Two fantastically powerful artifact swords that saw the light of day in my ongoing 4E Chirak campaigns over the last few years....enjoy!

Frostbane

Elemental Frost Longsword+3, Artifact of Pale

Enhancement: attack and damage rolls

Critical: +1d6 cold damage per plus

Property: Frostbane levels up its modifier by wielder level; at level 3it is +1; level 8 +2; level 13 +3; level 18 +4; level 23 +5; and level 28 +6.

Normal Concordance:

Property: Frostbane looks and acts like a normal Frost weapon:

Power (At-Will , Cold): Free Action. All damage dealt by this weapon is cold damage. Another free action returns

damage to normal.

Power (Daily, Cold): Free Action. Use this power when you hit with the weapon. The target takes an extra 1d8 cold damage and is slowed until the end of your next turn.; Level 13 or 18: 2d8 cold damage; Level 23 or 28: 3d8 cold damage.

Property: you can speak, read and understand elvish of the Paleic region

Satisfied Concordance:

Property: you develop resistance 15 to cold damage when holding the blade

Property (daily): Frost Burst Instant; Trigger: you strike a foe; Effect: that foe and all foes in a burst radius 1 centered on the struck target are immobilized with ice (save ends).

Pleased Concordance:

Property (daily): Chilling Weakness Instant; Trigger: you strike an enemy outsider; Effect: that foe takes 10 ongoing cold damage (save ends) and now has vulnerability 10 to cold damage until the end of the encounter; This becomes 15 ongoing damage and vulnerability 15 at level 21.

Goal of Frostbane:

   Frostbane is one of several blades specifically created to fight the Winter Scourge, a horde of demons and monsters trapped in the deep north by the great ice-flows from the primordial rift devouring the edge of the world. Frostbane will be released from its duty if the Nine Cold Lords of the army are ever slain.

   Frostbane is also built to help all elves and their kind (not merely the frost elves), and any use of it toward that end is a boon.

Concordance:                                                     Gain/Loss

Owner gains a level                                                             +1D4

Owner is an elf or eladrin                                                  +2

Owner saves an elvish life                                                  +1

Owner completes a quest for the frost elves                 +2

Owner slays a demon                                                          +1

Owner slays a demon of the Winter Scourge                 +2

Owner disobeys a directive from the frost elves           -2

Owner attacks an elf, eladrin or fey being                      -2

Concordance Effects:

Pleased (16-20):  Gain the Chilling Weakness property.

Satisfied (12-15): Gain the Frost Burst property and gain the resist cold 15 property.

Normal (5-11): You gain access to the Frost weapon power properties, and the ability to understand elvish.

Unsatisfied (1-4): You lose access to the frost weapon power properties.

Angered (0 or less): You grant combat advantage whenever wielding the weapon (though not to outsiders or cold-typed monsters).
Moving On: When the sword has slain at least one of the Cold Lords or its owner dies it will find its way to a new elf or eladrin.

Blade of Malib

Longsword +5

Enhancement: attack and damage rolls

Critical: +5d8 necrotic damage

Property: The Blade of Malib is a +5 weapon

Normal Concordance:

Property: Blade of Malib grants the following powers:

Power (At-Will , necrotic): Free Action. All damage dealt by the blade is necrotic damage. Another free action returns the damage to normal. It radiates an eerie purple light when this is active that illuminates a burst 5 region centered on the wielder.

Power (Daily, necrotic): Free Action. Use this power when you hit with the weapon. The target takes an extra 1d8 necrotic damage and is weakened until the end of your next turn.; Level 13 or 18: 2d8 cold damage; Level 23 or 28: 3d8 cold damage.

Property: You gain a +5 bonus to intimidation, diplomacy, bluff and sense motive when dealing with undead.

Satisfied Concordance:

Property (daily): Vampiric Blade Instant; Trigger: you strike a foe; Effect: expend one healing surge; do that amount of damage to your target as necrotic damage and heal yourself for the same amount.

Pleased Concordance:

Property (daily): Harvest of Blood Free Action; Trigger: you strike a living foe; Effect: expend two healing surges; you deal that amount of damage (equal to your bloodied value) to the target and heal the same amount.

Goals of the Blade of Malib:

   Malib was a god of death and one of the most malign of the Betrayer Gods. He personally crafted this weapon and imbued it with the soul of Kadarthas, one of the most potent vampires ever spawned in history. The dark energy of this being empowers the blade to reap a great harvest.

   Malib’s undead form is said to be trapped beneath the watery deep of the Sea of Chirak in an eternal prison. If the wielder of the weapon were to free Malib, then the sword would be freed of its bond to the dead god.

Concordance:                                                                               Gain/Loss

Owner gains a level                                                                                             +1D6

Owner is undead                                                                                                 +2

Owner reduces a foe to 0 hit points with one of the blade’s powers        +1

Owner slays a servant of Akquinarios                                                              +1

Owner slays a rival undead encroaching on his territory                             +2

Owner lets a targeted prey live                                                                        -2

Owner refuses to feed the blade when the opportunity strikes                -1

Concordance Effects:

Pleased (16-20):  Gain the harvest of blood property, and the weapon becomes +6.

Satisfied (12-15): Gain the vampiric blade property.

Normal (5-11): You gain access to the standard powers of normal concordance (above).

Unsatisfied (1-4): You lose access to the base powers of the weapon.

Angered (0 or less): You at -2 to hit and damage with the weapon and all diplomacy/bluff checks.
Moving On: When and if the sword is used in aid to free Malib from his watery prison, or if it senses an even greater undead master nearby. If it leaves satisfied, it will spawn a +6 Vampiric blade in its place.

Choronzon Demons in Legend and 4E

This is going to sound bad, but I feel like I may have published this in the blog already although I can't find evidence of it. So here you go, maybe for the first time, or maybe for an encore: Choronzon Demons in both Legend and 4th edition.

Choronzon (Demons of Lamashtu) in Legend


The dreaded Choronzon come from the Outer Darkness and are said to have been servants of darker beings and entities from beyond time. The first chronzon appeared not long before the arrival of the dreaded being Molabal in the lands of Pelegar, predating humanity by untold eons, and that much later when the dreaded Lamashtu and her lamia kin rose to power she found these dark entities in the depths of the earth and bound them to her will.

Physically these are dreadful looking beasts with four massive, ape-like arms of pure corded muscle, vast bat wings, dark, stumpy heads with strange, vestigial insectoid eyes and a lengthy, ululating tail. Still, few see these dreaded creatures in their true form, for most choronzon take more pleasing, deceptive forms and then use their unique powers of domination to afflict themselves on the mortals they toy with.

STR 17; CON 14;  DEX 20; SIZ 14; INT 16;  POW 20; CHA 10
Average Height: 8'5” to 9'6”
Average Weight: 350-525 lbs
Ability Scores: STR 4D6+3, DEX 4D6+6, CON 4D6, SIZ 4D6, INT 3D6+6, POW 4D6+6, CHA 2D6

CA: 3 (+3 off-hand attacks) Move: 8m/10m flying

SR: +18 Damage Bonus: +1D4 MP: 20

Traits: Dark vision, 50% chance of chaos mutations, common magic, flame breath, possession, flight

Skills: Athletics 60%, Disguise 100%*, Evade 60%, Lore (Planes) 40%, Perception 55%, Persistence 55%, Resilience 65%, Stealth 65%

Typical Armour: natural AP 5, no skill penalty; AP 7 with horns on head, and AP 4 wings and tail

Common Magic 50%: typical spells include Bandit’s Cloak 4 (+40% stealth), Bestial Enhancement 4 (+20% attack and +4 damage) and Glamour 3 (to improve their social skills when masquerading as something else or possessing another).

Divine Magic: about 15% of choronzon are dedicated to Lamashtu, usually taking Berserker and True Weapon (Claw) for their abilities if they are of sufficient rank.

Weapons:
Claws (four attacks; 70% attack; 1D6+1D4 damage; bleed; AP/HP as limb)
Flame Breath (50% attack; 1D6+2 fire damage; 10m range; 3m cone spread; costs 1 MP to use)

Choronzon Traits:

Dark Vision: In addition to dark vision, Chornzon demons can see in total darkness. without penalty, even if blinded.

Possession: Choronzon can possess a target, entering that target’s body if they succeed at a resisted Power vs. Persistence check. This requires 1 CA and 1 MP to activate. The victim is under total bodily control (but can still think, see and feel what is happening to him/her) while under possession. The choronzon’s own form is vulnerable while possessing another. There is no range limit once a possession is established. The possessed party may attempt a new resistance check once per hour.

Shapeshifter: Choronzon may take the illusory form of any dead being they have had contact with; this transformation takes 1D6 minutes. They may use the disguise skill (above) to ascertain the accuracy of their appearance when scrutinized. They are unable to emulate personality traits or memories, however.

Chaos Mutations: About 50% of choronzon demons have one or more chaos mutations

Choronzon Demons in 4E

The choronzon demon appears in its natural state as a massive demonic humanoid wreathed in whispery tendrils of eldritch ectoplasm. The creature exhibits four powerful arms ending in scythe-like claws that appear to have hollow claw tips, into which it is said they can siphon off arcane energy. Arcane spell casters find that merely being near one of these demons makes them ill.

Choronzon demons manifest initially in the writings of the 16th century occultist John Dee, described as dwellers in the Abyss that serve as obstacles on the path of occult enlightenment that must be overcome. These “demons of dispersion” are formless in nature but can take on various physical forms when summoned to the mortal plane of existence.

While the Enochian version of choronzons might be true of the occult views in the mundane world, the choronzons are much more powerful as tempters and stealers of occult lore in the greater planar realms. Choronzons as presented here are shapeshifters and can become incorporeal at will, but in their true forms they manifest as twelve foot tall demons with four spike-like arms and an insatiable lust for arcane power, to be ripped from the minds of their victims through swirling, invisible arcane siphons.

Lore
Arcana DC 22 Choronzons are a form of demon that thrives on magic, siphoning off arcane power to strengthen itself. In its physical form it is a ferocious brute of a demon, but it can become insubstantial, and merely getting close to one can prove deadly to any mage.
Arcana DC 28 Some truly evil orders of sorcery force their acolytes to seek out choronzons and defeat them as a challenge to allow the acolyte entry into the inner sanctum of that order.

Choronzons In Chirak
This particular breed of demon is known to have appeared in the dark kingdoms of Pelegar, where they served the Lamia queen Lamashtu for a time. The legends say that they clawed their way up from a primordial realm, the domain of the first chaos gods called the Skaeddrath, and that the choronzons were spawned from the detritus of these ancient and terrifying titans. Among some arcanists it is regarded as a necessary ritual of passage for acolytes to seek out the summoning of a choronzon, to confront and destroy the beast to prove his worth to the order.

System vs. System: Character Building in 4E vs. BRP

I was messing around for the first time in a good while with actually writing game material, and got inspired to make a character using the Heroes of Elemental Chaos book for 4E, and compare it to an equivalent character build in BRP. I'm seriously entertaining the idea of going all BRP all the time right now, but one selling point is to make sure that the system can and will support the many weird fantasy archetypes that I love in my games, and which are already supported by a wealth of info in D&D and Pathfinder.

So for this experiment I first made a genasai stormsoul who is a hexblade with the windlord theme. She's a blue skinned, crystal haired woman with a perpetually shocking quality to her. The short version of her character write-up is like so: she's bound to an elemental pact, which grants her a blade of chaos, through which she can channel devastating blows. She has the traditional eldritch blast, can occasionally fly in the air and strike foes as she does, moves fluidly through rough terrain, and can conjure up some powerful armor that damages foes around it. Her 4E character sheet looks like this:

Okay! So lots of text. This is a sample of how I stat out 4E characters for home use, just for reference; I try to condense the necessary info on one page or as close as possible. I use short hand like "uteoynt" and such for "until the end of your next turn" and so forth. Anything that ended up requiring thumb-flipping through the books would be a Bad Thing in terms of game pace. I don't like the 4E Character Builder PC records, either; they're okay, but if I don't have a hands-on design, then I tend to lose touch with what and why my character is doing what it does mechanically.

So anyway, enough of that. Good functional planetouched warlock hexblade stormlord adventure. This is one of the things I like about 4E: it has a lot of stuff you can cram onto even a 1st level character, in terms of thematics and flavor. One of my players (who is not a 4E fan) however once mused that the problem he has with 4E was fairly simple: never did he play a character who felt so godlike in description but in actual play was relatively pathetic. How true this can be.

So designing an equivalent character at level 1 in Pathfinder is nigh impossible, but you could probably get something that simulates the power range and effects by maybe 3rd to 5th level. BRP is a different beast entirely, however. It's not level based at all, for one, and it doesn't specifically have genasai and such, but you can fake it a bit and make one anyway.

For BRP, I picked "heroic" to start her for character generation, as  heroic feels comfortably at the same power level as low level 4E characters. I made her a wizard specializing in sorcery with the option to spend her bonus skill points on general magery if she so desired. I am calling her a genasai planetouched on the sheet, but did not bother to work out any special genasai stats; we're going to let the sorcery do all that work for us. In the end, I generated this:

 Not bad, eh? I even added a few extras in that she had the points for (heal, moonrise....two things her 4E counterpart can't do) to make up for one omission involving her armor spell. She has Sorcerer's Armor, which protects her, but it doesn't also deal damage, unfortunately; there may be spells that would do this, which could be linked, but I was going for quick and easy. Likewise, Sorcerer's Razor simulates the blade of chaos element (to which I provided her a broadsword she can enhance for damage), and wings of the sky provides some of the elemental knockdown effect for her. She learned two basic magician's spells: blast (to simulate eldritch blast) and lift (for flight).

Anyway, the BRP version of Atalasia injects the flavor (albeit with some player caveat toward what she is) but with better overall functionality; this character can do a lot more than just fly 30 feet and then spin someone off 5 feet with a quick sword thrust. About the only thing I didn't get right was the armor that damages with intense cold....will have to play around with BRP's sorcery a bit (or look in the BRP Magic Book) and see if there's a way to do it.

(EDIT: it did just occur to me that with giving her the ability to summon an elemental, then maybe what's really going on here is she's summoning a cold elemental that she binds to her armor, which in turn generates cold damage through its attacks against those who come too close....so, problem solved!)

Three Whole Months!

That's how long it took me to try and stay system-monogamous with Pathfinder....but I've fallen off the wagon and am going to start up a new 4E bi-weekly (or maybe weekly, we'll see) game soon.

A few reasons:

1. 5E's announcement has actually diverted all the attention of the Edition War gang away from bashing 4E to bashing Monte Cook's blogs and polls. This has effectively left 4E as "just another old edition" which I rather like.

2. I have my quibbles with 4E, and I really hope all the stuff I have issues with goes away in 5E and it also keeps all the stuff I like, but sticking with Pathfinder for a while has once again reminded me very much of just how much I dislike the 3rd edition approach to D&D. It's not that 3.X is bad, but it goes out of its way to make the process of simply enjoying a game for those with limited time too difficult to manage. I absolutely adore how 4E made the DM's job easier, and I really need that right now to be able to keep enjoying fantasy gaming. Traveller is good this way, too. So is The Mutant Epoch, for the record, and I still plan to run that soon.

3. Part of the problem is my new job. I've always noticed that there's a massive inverse ratio between "time I have to dick around designing stuff for scenarios" and "time I spend working my ass off." Right now, and for the forseeable future, I am in ass-worked-off mode. So in order to enjoy gaming, I need a system that lets me enjoy a night of gaming with minimum prep time (without also feeling like I'm cheesing it and basically providing a suboptimal experience; I can do 3.X ad hoc, but the experience is always shallower and less satisfying for it). 4E is one of several systems that handle minimal prep time really, really well.

4. I kinda miss the tactical combat that has clean, smartly designed rules that don't require constant rulebook flipping. Yeah I'm looking at you 3rd/Pathfinder. Regardless of the minis issue, 4E's streamlined combat mechanics are somehow more involved and interesting than 3rd edition's rules, while simultaneously being simpler and easier to moderate. Except for all the status markers, but we're all used to that now.

Okay, got that off my chest!

Ages of Lingusia: Languages of the Middle Kingdoms

Languages of Lingusia       

   Lingusia is home to a diverse range of dialects and languages, many harkening from ancient roots. Some species have languages shared universally by one another, and other species are given to as much linguistic diversity as humanity. In fact, the root of Lingusia comes from the idea "of many languages" in the Old Tongue.

   The “common” tongue of Lingusia is the Middle Tongue, closely followed by tradespeak, a language of common reference cobbled together by traders and merchants across the globe. Any character listed as knowing “common” is assumed to know one or both of these languages.

 Below is a chart of many fo the languages all characters can learn. Characters always have their native tongue as a base language, and some multilingual characters learn more than one, depending upon circumstance. There is at least one invented language as well, a sort of Esperanto called Tradespeak, which was created around the time of the founding of the Great Old Road, and while it has evolved dramatically over time, tradespeak remains the favored language of traders and merchants around the world. Anyone who speaks one of the common human tongues of Lingusia can communicate at least 30-50% of the time with a person who speaks tradespeak but no other common language. Likewise, a man who speaks tradespeak but not, say, one of the the Northern tongues can still speak to and understand a user of the northern tongue with 50% accuracy as well. The Merchant Houses of the Middle Kingdoms and the Eastern Kingdoms have conspired to make this so.

   Some of these languages are special. No character may begin play knowing Prehunate, which must be learned from a practiced student of the languages, and is never considered a class skill. Likewise, no character can pick a language for which no possible exposure could have occurred prior to the beginning of his or her adventuring career.

Bonus Language Rule: Because there are more than ten conventional languages in this setting, all characters may begin play with additional bonus languages equal to their Intelligence modifier (or none if negative).

A Sampling of the Languages of Lingusia

The Languages of Man:

Middle Tongue (common)

Tradespeak

New and Old Galonian

Southern Tongue (Galvonari)

Eastern Tongue  (Zuedi)

Cretean

Amechian

Northern Tongue (Nordamani)

Autrengardian

Steppelander’s tongue (no written language)

Zymharian

Avilinian

Nakamuran

Caelernin

Northern Hettanari

Starthiic

Hotepsalan

Foreign Tongues:

Old Karaktuan

Mataclani Haxitol

Mataclani Talay

Taian

Lako-no-hongo

Al’jhiri

Karakani

Khozakani

Neberanii (Gray Kingdom)

Old and Lost Languages:

Old Tongue (Arcane Script)

Ancient Middle Tongue (Holy Script)

Prehunate Script

Ancient Elvish Script

Kadantanian

Celestial

Abyssal and Infernal

Monstrous Languages:

Deep Speech

Minotaur

Goblin Tongue

Orcish (vandal)

Hidden Tongue (red orc)

Setiteese (serpent men)

Hashykirii (lizard man)

Draconic (Marlack, dragons)

Hyshkorrid

Thargonid Trollish

Mihidir Trollish

Fey Languages:

Faerspeak (elvish)

Darkspeak (ashtarth)

Syllenic  (sylvan)

Gnomish

Dwarvish (Endurian)

Faerie Tongue