E6: Overleveling yourself for fun & profit

I haven't been blogging as much of late because I've spent all my time prepping for our online q-teen game in the City-State of the World Emperor. I have a big pool of players and it's a lot of fun, but we are playing more frequently than I'm used to! As the game develops I'll eventually have a backlog of material that I can share, but for now I am focusing on the most immediately useful stuff.

Here's a post I've been thinking about for a while, as I look to the future of the Land's End game:

What Happens After 6th Level?

Epic 6: The Game Inside The World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game.

Go read it, I'll wait.
Back?
Good.

This modification to the core of 3.x/d20 is the only way I will consent to playing damned Mathfinder. It allows me to chop, flog and edit the system to my heart's content without fretting overly about the rules not working consistently across all 20 levels. If it works with normal humans and 1st level characters, a modification will probably be fine at level 6.

The party just reached level four, and I have to start thinking about how to handle the PCs reaching level 6. More feats will be necessary, obviously. But I think the fun of E6 will be attempting epic-level stuff. Killing legendary monsters, stealing the golden fleece, things that heroes of legends do. When all you get is one fireball, you'd better make it count. How else can the players make the best use of their power in the game world?

First of all, the core tenets of E6 won't change:


Six Hit Dice
It doesn't matter how many cool abilities you have - falling off a cliff, being swallowed whole by a dragon or chopped up by a motivated mob of lowly orcs are all deadly. That doesn't mean you can't take feats like Toughness to get more hit points, of course.


BAB +6
Feats could give situational bonuses and modifiers, or allow fighters to chain up to feats that require a higher BAB. But the whole idea is that the best swordsmen in the world are only a certain degree above a normal human.

Look at it this way: a 0-level peasant with a +5 sword (a godlike weapon, impossible for normal humans to make) is almost even with a 6th-level master armed with his old campaigning sword. I love that symmetry.


No Generalized Power Increases
Bonuses after 6th should improve specific aspects of the character, not upgrade their overall power level. Anything that increases a character's power across multiple dimensions (like lycanthropy increasing hit points, attack bonus, armour class, etc) should come with stiff drawbacks or be only situationally useful.


Extraordinary Results Require Extraordinary Effort
Not a core tenet of E6, but it flows from what I'm thinking about. Taking your allotted feats after sixth level is the natural order of things. Spending a feat or two to take abilities from a prestige class or something takes extra XP, but no extra work.

PCs who want to go above and beyond need to go on quests, consult sages, spend money, peruse forgotten tomes, take risks, utilize lost treasures, risk sanity loss, etc. in addition to gaining the required XP. All the good player-directed adventuring sandbox stuff that I try to encourage!


A Dangerous World
It should be obvious, but things ramp up at this level. Not as dangerous as your standard level 1-20 world - after all, part of the E6 magic is that the ecology of the game world can be at least a bit fucking comprehensible. The world nevertheless needs dreadful monsters that can't be defeated readily in a straight-up fight. Why bother opening up the Necronomicon and risking mutation & madness on the off-chance your wizard can make all his rolls and learn Finger of Death - unless you really need it to kill the dreaded Sludge Dragon of the Drowned Lands and your solitary 3rd-level spell won't cut it?

Players that reach 6th and become "epic level" might think they have no need to take risks. Epic 6 should be more like finishing an apprenticeship: a license to take on bigger challenges, and a sign that your initial 'adventurer puberty' of rapid learning and growth is over. Development now takes hard work.

Epic Problems require Epic Solutions.

E6 POWER-UP METHODS

Finding The Weird Stuff
The most basic option. The epic-level dungeons in Land's End are plentiful: the Tomb of Abysthor, catacombs beneath the lost city, serpent-men ruins, other dimensions, crashed alien... well, I've said too much already. All of these ultra-dangerous dungeons are crammed with as much cool shit as I can fit, and none of it is available anywhere else in the setting. Balancing that out are brutal traps and hordes of tough foes. Most of these locales are optional, extremely hard to find/get into, or both.


Magic Item Creation
A classic of high-level play. In E6, level limits on feats still apply. Based on the feat requirements in the PF core rulebook, 6th-level casters can create scrolls, potions, wondrous items, wands, magic arms & armour. Rods, staves & rings are beyond mortal abilities completely (LotR anyone?).

Of course some items in each of these categories are beyond a 6th-level caster anyway. A +2 enhancement bonus and a handful of special properties (distance, merciful & thundering) are all the magic weapons a 6th-level enchanter can create. This is perfect for me - even aligned weapons (axiomatic, etc) are beyond the PCs' ability, as they're products of extraplanar energies.

If the PCs want even better magical gear, they need to pick up the various lost relics & demon-haunted weapons throughout the landscape, grappling with their personalities, properties & curses.

Of course the long & more fun way is available also. Through mighty deeds, the players may create weapons normally impossible for mortal 6th-level heroes, and these weapons will hopefully pass on into song & story after their adventuring careers are over, where a more straightforward sword +2 created by choosing a feat and spending money (yawn....) will not.


Covenants
You all know how much I love Dark Souls and Warhammer!

Entering into a pact with one of the ruinous powers usually helps out. For a while, anyway. None of the PCs are Lawful, so it seems pointless to even detail the benefits those entities would grant. Instead, I'll work up more chaos patron tables for Abraxas, Tsathoggua, Jubilex, maybe a few others as the setting demands. If the PCs want to sign on with the forces of darkness, that's fine with me (they aren't too far off as of now).

Meanwhile, some ancient beings survive from the times before mankind. If they could be bargained with, perhaps their secrets can be learned (this is a subset of Finding the Weird Stuff). For example, the sorcerous giant Nibolcus (see The Man From Before) knows magics long lost to the world. At what price would he take on a new student?

Mutations
I mentioned a giant mutation chart in an old post a while back. Very difficult to control, but maybe a "potion of beneficial mutation" (or an updated version) could be found or created that would limit the number of really harsh effects. Probably too risky for the fearful players in my game, but might come up as a desperate gambit or side-effect of something else. The Metamorphica will come in handy here.


Night Hag
Wouldn't give your witchy PC more levels, but upgrades your Hit Dice and give you more spells at the cost of stat & alignment change, some new vulnerabilities, being cast out of polite society and having to help your coven with various tasks. The process for this will be similar to lichdom - an esoteric ritual known only to few. There is a witch in the swamp attempting this right now, maybe she can be persuaded to give up her secrets? (also see Witchy Wednesday)


Lycanthropy
Easy to contract, hard to get rid of. We know the rules. The dread forvalaka roams the wilderness, so the changing disease could be contracted during the normal course of the game if the PCs aren't careful. The weakest form of transformation probably. It's hard to control and comes with serious drawbacks (I'll be using that chart in the AD&D DMG) but it could be narrowly useful for a fighter or barbarian who needs an edge from time to time.


Vampirism
So far there is one vampire in the setting, a hold-over from a bygone age. Trapped in a lead coffin, it has been waiting for centuries, hopelessly mad. Letting it out is probably a big mistake... but in a land covered in perpetual clouds, being a vampire might not be so bad? Increased stats, undead immunities and some great special abilities make this transformation a great move in a setting with very few high-level clerics. This option is open to PCs, but then we'll have to mess with templates and it will be a real fiddle-fuck. And of course the trapped vampire might just kill them all.



Lichdom
There are a few liches in the region. Mostly they are happy to kill anyone they see, but one of them can be negotiated with. Prying his secrets will be a serious challenge but it could happen. Certainly this would lead to some great immunities, better hit dice and perhaps some more spell slots - I'll have to give it some thought, and dig up PF's stupid rules for templates.

Vagelis Petikas

Other Undead
Servants of Orcus (see link above) might be turned into skeletons, zombies or ghouls up to 6th level, or perhaps wights if they have a great deal of experience beyond 6th. There are other undead in the wilderness that might strike the players and transform them - shadows, ghosts, etc. Still, this is more of a fail state than anything the players will likely aspire to. If they do get transformed, I will offer them the option of continuing play as an undead character with all the relevant drawbacks or relegating the unfortunate to NPC status (possibly a new villain).


Brainstormer/Fuse Meister
Sort of like special cases of lichdom. These two are much more difficult to make work as PCs, and perhaps I'll leave as antagonists, unless someone is really that crazy!


Destiny
As I said back in this post about the black pyramid:

"Ivory Tablets: One of the many long term sub-sub-subplots of the campaign. My attempt to fix the stupid Deck of Many Things into a powerful divination tool & force to rewrite one's destiny. Created by the high elves 5000 years ago. The individual "cards" must be assembled and brought to the shrine of Divine Providence deep beneath the Lost City where the Chthonic Elves dwell. I haven't decided what each card does yet, but I really dug myself in deep with this one. All the major arcana and 4 cards from each suit, for a total of 38!"

Well, luckily Mithril & Mages pointed me in the right direction. Dragon Magazine #77 has rules for an expanded Deck of Many Things based on all the tarot cards. Awesome! The powers aren't annoying things like "dead" or "gain 100,000 xp," rather stat changes (I'll rule that this can increase above normal maximums), strange events in one's life, saving throw modifiers, gaining tremendous wealth or losing all your money, getting pranked by magical creatures, etc. Very cool stuff and if the PCs ever assemble the deck (a tall order indeed, considering where a few of the cards are kept!) they can try their luck with it.


*****

[EDIT: I forgot about the cards! Getting back into a setting you haven't looked at in a few months can take a bit of work...]

As you can see there are plenty of options for the power-hungry player character. Whether they take any of these, well... that remains to be seen. My next move is to seed clues, hints & fragments pointing towards these options throughout the world. Off I go to do that, and write up some more big dungeons. Excelsior!

The Tomb of Abysthor - pt 2 - The Pit of Bones

Part one here. [Status: not playtested. My group isn't too far off - I hope - but this is as much as I'm posting before player contact.]

I have been picking up more game-able ideas from this book Necropolis - London and its Dead, which I bought last year. Did you know: when they dug up St. Paul's cathedral (after it burned in the great fire I think?), under the contemporary English buried in the floor they found Saxon graves. Beneath those were Roman burial urns. Deeper, maybe 20 feet (I forget) were the shrouded bodies of pre-Roman Britons.

The holy sites have been so for a long time.

*****

The sheer cliff a thousand feet high runs north to south, cutting the world in half. The lands below are covered in clouds. Nobody knows what lives there. The Barrier separates civilization from wilderness, known from unknown, law from chaos, restriction from freedom.

The Empire of man covers the whole world except what's past the Barrier. On the Empire's fringes, in the badlands and desolate places by the cliffs, the wild elves live their lives of barbarism. Endlessly the generations churn onwards, violent and brief.

Each tribe has a god or demon that it follows and claims as its totem. These gods might be idols & statues or invisible sky-lords like those of the civilized folk. One such tribe had a powerful idol - a man with a jaguar's head. They lived right at the edge of the Barrier, the final limit of the Empire. As the city-folk spread ever outwards, the tribe feared one day they would have nowhere to go. With no magic and no great pantheon of civilized gods, all they could do is pray & sacrifice to their jaguar idol.

So they threw their own people over the Barrier, and augured the tribe's future from the screams echoing back up the cliff. (Once they threw over a man who didn't scream - who didn't die - but his story is not yet told).

Always in the same place they conduct their sacrifices. Tradition dictates it but nobody now living understands why this particular spot, and not another. Hundreds of wild elves, half-elves and human captives have gone over the edge but they were not the first dead to rest in that holy place. They won't be the last.

At the bottom of that cliff, at the edge of a misty jungle lies the Tomb of Abysthor.

*PSA: Buy it yourself if you want to see the original, you can get the old one for CHEAP or the new shit HERE*

The Pit of Bones

The jungle around is sickly thin and dying, with no underbrush in the entire hex (~3 mile radius) although the constant mist obscures vision. Nothing grows within 500' of the pit, splinters of bone poke out of the ground everywhere instead of grass. It's impossible to avoid crunching them under your feet.

The pit is a great half-bowl about 150' wide and 40' deep at the centre, focused on the dungeon entrance. The priests of Orcus have been unearthing ancient skeletons for their ever-growing army of the dead. A narrow ramp of earth cuts the pit in half and slopes up to an opening in the cliff face 10' above ground level (50' above the bottom of the pit). This is the entrance to the Tomb.

-At night, make two random encounter rolls. At least one encounter will be a group of Orcus cultists excavating, accompanied by some skeletons. They won't be on guard for trouble unless the PCs are returning to the Tomb after a few delves. During the day, just roll on the undead table below.


Dig Progress [d*]

The cult of Orcus is constantly excavating new recruits. Higher numbers on the table are generally older and buried deeper. The weak corpses on the lower entries normally get chucked into the Font of Bones in L1-6, but they can be fielded in a pinch when the cult is traveling the wilderness (ie. random encounters).

After the PCs' first visit the clock starts. Roll 1d4 to determine the initial undead troops available to the cult. As long as the digging operation persists, increase the die size every week or so (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20). Basically the time it takes the PCs to crawl back to town, heal up and return to the dungeon should bring new challenges.

1-3 - 1d6 Font of Bones skeletons, as normal [2 HD, turn resistance +2].

4 - 1d8 sacrifices made by the wild half-elf tribes above. Bones are shattered after falling 1000 feet. [1 HD skeletons, very fragile, no resistances]

5 - 1d6 neanderthal oldsters of the local tribes who wander here to die when they can't fight or contribute anymore. Recalcitrant and difficult for the cultists to command, their dead dreams are alien to humans. [2 HD skeletons - stone axes 1d6]

6 - 1d6 witches and medicine men of the local neanderthals, died on failed vision-quests or slain by a rival magic-user. [2 HD skeletons - stone daggers 1d4, each can cast a random 1st-level spell]

7 - 1d8 imperial soldiers killed in one of many uprisings at the end of colonial adventures in the area. Speak Skeletongue or Imperial Common, highly disciplined. [Dead Legion: 1 HD skeletons - rusted shortswords 1d6-1, shields and armour 50/50 of chain or breastplates. -2 AC penalty for rusting]

8 - 1d4 imperial missionaries of the 137 gods. Mutilated & tortured terribly for their troubles. They serve Orcus in Hell now. [3 HD huecuvas, rotted robes, tarnished holy symbols]

9 - An animal killed by the neanderthals and buried in the pit as a sacrifice. Hungry! [50/50 - jungle bear or gorilla skeleton]

10 - 1d8 Charau-ka pilgrims thrown into the pit, their souls sent to the underworld as tribute to the demon lords. Happy to work with fellow infernalists! [3 HD ape-men skeletons - thrown rocks 1d4, stone clubs 1d6]

11 - 2d4 warriors of the first "civilized" barbarian kings who ruled the area over a millennium ago. Speak a dialect similar to Old High Imperial. Love a jolly good scrap. [2 HD skeletons with rusting grave goods - hand axe, shield and chain]

12 - 1d12 victims of the Duvan'ku death cult. Not so much "dug up" as unleashed on the world when their bones are disturbed. Can't communicate - souls trapped in a perpetual black void. Come join them! [1 HD lesser shadows - wandering alone, killed the cultists who dug them up]

13 - 1d6 barbarian warlords who died with dishonor and didn't get their own barrow-mounds. Prideful lovers of battle, difficult to control. [4 HD skeletons - rusted greatswords, piecemeal barbarian armour (as splint), great torcs and wristbands of corroded gold]

14 - 3d6 ancient sacrifices. Their bodies long gone, only the severed heads were cast into the pit. Now they fly about in a hungry swarm like airborne pirahnas. [Swarm: HD equal to half no. appearing, anyone inside 10' area takes 1d6/round]

15 - 1d6 Duvan'ku stranglers. The earliest humans who fell to Orcus worship, preying on each other and sacrificing to the Goatlord to escape the iron fist of the High Elves. [4 HD wights, rotted black robes]

16 - 1d6 Chthonic Elf corpse-fathers, awakened from slumber. These semi-mythical patriarchs were the first to devour their own dead millennia ago. Now grown massive and corpulent on carrion, spreading terror - and an unbearable stench - wherever they go. Their progeny will hear of their return eventually and take them to the lost city. [4 HD fat ghasts]

17 - 2d12 servitors of the High Elves. A mass grave of these now-extinct humanoids. Bred to the whip, easily controlled. [Skeletons of (d4) - 1 Pig-men (1 HD), 2 Gnolls (2 HD), 3 Hobgoblins (1 HD), 4 Bugbears (3 HD)]

18 - 1d6 High Elves, freed once more to crush the globe in their mailed fists! These apostates are distant kin to the sin-knights in the lost city. Their long, thin bones radiate Jack Kirby x-ray light through glowing armour. Wouldn't serve a human, least of all grimy cave-dwellers venerating a giant goat! [6 HD skeletons - two-handed swords and plate mail of lambent red which fade away when they're destroyed, each can cast 1 random wizard spell of 1st-3rd level at maximum effect]

19 - Unique Result. Once rolled, cross it off and write your own. Here are two:

(1) Forvalaka. The dread beast arises, bloodthirsty and insane after long ages of sleep. It goes its own way to hunt prey through the jungle as it used to in the ancient days. [A vampire were-jaguar. I'll probably have to use a few templates. In your system, it's a maximum-HD vampire with a tropical theme: transforms into a jaguar instead of a bat, summons local animals (jackals, hyenas) instead of wolves, etc]

(2) Lich. The sorceror-king of an empire lost to time. His reign ended when he was bound and thrown into the pit, but now the cult has dug him up and you're fucked!! Scintillating crystal manacles cause his spells to fail 33% of the time. If the cult can remove them, he is at full power. Defeat him beforehand and recover them intact, they're worth 12,000 gp. [8th level wizard - remember this is E6! - knows spells of a lost age. Dig out that supplement you've been meaning to use, open up a different gamebook, whatever you gotta do]

20 - 1d10 Snake-Men skeletons! So old they're almost fossilized. Woken from their serpentine dreams of sex, death & black sorcery to terrorize the mammalian races again. They'd never serve some idiot humans, but strike out on their own to cause trouble elsewhere in the campaign world. [10 HD large skeletons - 50/50 warriors w/ silver swords, sickles and bronze breastplates or sorcerors with 1d6 spells your players have never seen before]

Once a 20 is rolled, the great pit is exhausted. No more useful bodies can be dug up, just parts & pieces for the Font of Bones.

*****

Once again the Tome of Horrors delivers the goods! I love the Font of Bones in the original adventure, but after Vuk Thuul's player had the idea of cliffside human sacrifices, everything fell into place and I had to frame the Tomb this way. Player-directed worldbuilding!

E6: Variant Experience

So I was collecting some experience rules from around the internet, and came across this classic on Jeff's Gameblog!

Since Land's End is all about striking out alone (with your friends) into the wilderness, I've decided to adopt and expand upon this awesome eXPloration idea. My version gives out more experience but the benefits should slow down as the PCs gain levels. (It makes more difference to the whippersnappers when they spot cool new things.)


XP For Exploration

First time you enter a hex (50 xp)
Discover a 'major' hex location (100 xp * average challenge rating of the area)
Discover a 'minor' hex location (50 xp)

This is 'normal' experience, divided among the PCs just like treasure or monsters. In addition, I picked out a few major locations that are more significant. Reaching one of these gives EACH PC the stated xp bonus. I am considering awarding these once per player as well: your character discovers it for the first time when you do.

For most of these, you can assume the caveat "... and live to tell about it."

• Discover another human civilization (1000 xp)
• Enter the Tower of Brass (650 xp)
• Enter the pillar tombs (500 xp)
• Enter the palace of Izizktharad (500 xp)
• Reach the summit of Deathfrost Mountain (300 xp)
• See the Pit of Bones (200 xp)
• Enter the lizardmen's Pyramid of Silence (150 xp)
• See the lost city of the elves (100 xp)

XP For Treasure

This is easy. Using the silver standard, 1 sp = 1 xp.

SOME experience awarded for goods and treasure looted and sold off. Selling your old weapon after you buy a new one shouldn't net any experience. Beheading some orcs and selling off their chainmail should, I think. In general once you make use of it, you aren't getting any cash = xp out of it.

NO experience awarded for magic items. They are rare enough and should be their own reward. There isn't anybody around who will buy them from you anyway.

True bastard that I am, I am awarding loot & starting wealth based on a silver standard, but all items have the listed cost IN GOLD PIECES in the Pathfinder Core Rules - ie. PCs have 1/10th the buying power they should according to RAW. This way they can scoop up huge sacks of money but they're still broke and hungry for the first several levels.

XP For Monsters / Conclusion

Experience is awarded as normal for monsters, based on their Challenge Rating. You might think between exploration, treasure and monsters there is way too much experience flying around to have a reasonable game. Two techniques exist for dealing with this:

Firstly, Pathfinder gives three XP charts: fast, medium, and slow. Obviously I'll be using the slow advancement chart, so PCs need 3000 xp to reach 2nd level and a total of 35,000 to reach 6th, as opposed to the 'medium' 2,000 and 23,000 respectively. So this should make up for the multifarious ways a character can grow.

The other option I'm considering is some kind of attenuated XP reward for low-CR monsters. Gary describes this in the 1e DMG, although the wording is a bit obtuse.  I think for our purposes, he is suggesting I modify experience awards by a ratio of enemy Hit Dice (CR for Pathfinder purposes) to average party level. (eg: an equal number of orcs vs 1st-level PCs is a 1:1 ratio. The same group of orcs vs second-level PCs is a 1:2 ratio, and defeating them should net half the normal experience.)

This seems a bit harsh and there are other factors to consider - CR is calibrated for a 4-person party and I only have three players. CR is also calibrated for wealth and magic items by level: that's completely out of whack given my vicious economic system outlined above and a low-magic setting. I won't institute this change unless it looks like the PCs are rocketing up through levels with the current system.

*****

(I have more posts this year by September than any other year by far. How many can I do before the end of the year? Think I can make it to 100?)

Now play this when the PCs dig their greasy mitts into that next treasure-sack!!!

Mathfinder is on the ropes!!

Inspired by this, let's collect all the hacks, chops, floggings and punches I've delivered to the otherwise bloated body of Pathfinder. 


*****


SKILLS:


Some skills are useful, plenty are garbage. I cut maybe 1/3 of the skills and simplified others. Basically I'm following the example set by Hack and Slash and Papers & Pencils.


I cut PF's base skill points awarded by class in half. There are fewer skills to spend points on, so characters should have commensurately less points to spend.

ELIMINATE:

Appraise: What a waste of time.

Disable Device: Have you MET me??

Disguise, Intimidate, Bluff: Rolling to avoid the fun.

Sense Motive: Look into my eye and figure it out.

Escape Artist: There is already a sleight of hand skill!

Fly: Casting the Fly spell isn't enough...?

MODIFY:

Diplomacy: Now a passive skill called “Sociable.” I use the reaction rules from Labyrinth Lord, and the CHA modifiers listed there. You can't spend points in this except to offset CHA penalties, up to +0.

Linguistics: Doesn't teach you a brand-new language with each point. If you want to learn a new language, find somebody to teach it to you. Make a roll to understand bits & pieces of languages related to ones you know. Spend points on it as normal.

Profession: Maximum 1 point at 1st level. This is your background (villager, woodsman, carpenter, etc). Could be useful for general questions relating to that background, but maybe take knowledge or crafting skills if you want to do more useful things.

Perception: Passive skill. I'll roll it for you (do you see people sneaking up on you?). Discover things in the world by poking around and asking questions.

Spellcraft: Many magic items’ general purpose is identifiable by a character of the relevant class after 10 minutes of examination. In Epic 6 this hinges on the item's caster level - if it's above CL 6, it's beyond mortal beings, more or less an artifact. These will require research, questing, consulting sages, etc. to identify.

The other functions of the skill we can keep for now - recognising spells as they're cast, crafting magic items and the like.

Swim:

-1 or less: can’t swim

0: can avoid drowning, paddle along with help

+1 or more: fine swimmer

Climb:

-1 or less: climb at ¼ speed with help (friends and gear)

0: climb at ¼ speed OR climb at ½ speed with help

+1 or more: climb at ½ speed

Armour check penalties still apply. Can spend extra points to offset penalties, but no mechanical effect beyond +1.


LEAVE AS IS:

Acrobatics, Craft, Handle Animal, Heal, Perform, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Use Magic Device: Nothing wrong with these as far as I can tell.

Knowledge: Has utility in my setting for dealing with strange monsters beyond the Barrier. Maybe you read something in an old book about this little green guy you just met?

Survival: Huge in a wilderness hexcrawl that's totally uncharted by civilization! The PCs need this to find food and water and avoid getting hopelessly lost. 

*****

FEATS: Cutting out feats altogether for a more 'old-school' feel runs counter to the entire point of Epic 6. I will be approaching this ad-hoc, and deleting feats that seem pointless or dumb case-by-case. Some 'epic feats' need to be added later if/when the PCs reach 6th level.

Item creation may get its own post, I am going to make it a more involved process: magic items should be rare and hard to find, doubly hard to make yourself. Selecting the feat is only the first of many steps.

ENCUMBRANCE: Why mess with it? You can carry one significant item per point of strength. The sum of all your miscellaneous stuff counts as one significant item (subject to eyeballing if you have lots of stuff). medium armour counts as two items, heavy armour counts as three, same goes for shields.

Example: A totally average fighter with 10 STR can wear plate mail [3], a tower shield [3], a sword [1], and bring a bag with some food and stuff [1] without being encumbered [8/10]. If he wanted to carry a lot of treasure out of the dungeon he might have to leave his shield or downgrade his armour. As it is, he should probably content himself with bringing a spare weapon or two!


This seems pretty fair to me, and reminds me a bit of Dark Souls. When your inventory system is simple enough, you can actually MAKE DECISIONS about what to bring, because the units are small enough to think about.

EXPERIENCE: Multiple ways to gain XP: exploration, treasure and defeating monsters.
COMBAT: Simplified and streamlined where possible. Attacks of Opportunity are minimised except in specific cases (a wizard getting hit while he tries to cast). This is one place I haven't dug too deep, mainly because my players don't know the rules that well. I just run combats the way I'm used to doing, and it seems to work out alright. As they gain levels and things get a bit more complex, this will require more attention.


MONSTERS: I flat-out fucking refuse to write up brand new monster stats for this game. I have shit to do. This isn't really tough since the Tome of Horrors and other books abound, except that nobody has written up Pathfinder stats for Fire on the Velvet Horizon. I have yet to reach a solution for this. I suppose I must poach and reskin stats from existing monsters as I see fit.


*****


I'll add more to this as I come up with it or find cool links. Eventually PF will be easier to use, less annoying and make more sense, but retain the absurd variety of options that makes it so much fun. 

In the meantime: 

DIE.

The Tomb of Abysthor - pt 1 - Overview & Wilderness

I was looking for modules to cram into the wilderness game, and wondering if they are even worth the bloody effort. 

Those old Necromancer Games adventures (and their Frog God Games updates for Pathfinder), like The Tomb of Abysthor? I talk a big game about using them. But the inferential distance is... vast, at points.

Can I tweak it just a little bit - enough that it would make sense to include, and be worth the effort?


***** WHAT DO? *****

MAPS / LAYOUT

The maps are one of this module's main strengths, the dungeon has plenty of twists and turns. Nothing to complain about here, if I had to I could just steal the maps and happily write my own dungeon.


GODS / BACKGROUND

Orcus can stay obviously. Thyr and Muir I am 50/50 on, probably replace them with something local to my game. Tsathoggua I will keep: although I have been beating the Mythos drum a lot around here, why look a gift horse in the mouth?


HUMANS vs HUMANOIDS

In the wilderness, there are no civilised humans, and NO ORCS. I will need to change the orcish priests of Orcus to another humanoid race. Have to be careful not to overshadow the 'Orcus-ness' with whatever racial traits they have going on or their place in the campaign. Think about this for next installment.


ALIGNMENT

I use simplified alignment (Law and Chaos). This changes all the magical traps that would be triggered by a Lawful Good-aligned PC walking past. Most of my players are going to pick Chaotic, so if the magic traps are triggered by 'the first lawful character who walks past' this opens up the stealth option, and I like it. It also means all the saints' and heroes' graves are tough places for the PCs to hide out in, and they won't be able to use the holy relics.

This brings up another problem though:


TRAPS IN GENERAL

How many glyphs of warding can one dungeon have? Did people really play like this back in the day? What a fucking grind. 

MOST of these will get subtracted, and the ones that remain will be made visible. And what is this shit about Disable Device DC 28, like your thief can just "oh yeah, I disabled that magic glyph. Don't ask me how." I hate that. It needs to be changed somehow.


TREASURE

A +1 buckler? Stroll on pal. 

Almost all of this will have to be revamped. I am giving out way fewer magic items in this game, and trying to make them more interesting. The single-use stuff like scrolls and potions can *mostly* stay, but all +x whatevers get deleted. SOME will be replaced by cool new stuff, and I'll try to tie them in to the setting, the dungeon or some aspect of the story. This is WAY more work, but there are plenty of random tables to help things along.


LEVELS / CHALLENGE

Epic 6 means everything has to get nerfed pretty hard. 

Dark Natasha, Balcoth, the higher priests of Orcus, Abysthor himself will all get their levels reduced. Without fussing OVERLY about balanced encounters, quite a few of the monsters will have to get swapped out or toned down. 10- or 12-HD demons need to be placed much more carefully in an E6 game, they are so much more powerful than any human can be. This will make life easier though, as lower levels means less stats!

There is a damn LICH in this dungeon. He can stay, but will be nerfed down to a lower level. An article on 'dangerous ways to get more levels in E6' will follow later: lichdom is obviously in there.


THE WILDERNESS

Nothing really exciting. What is it about 'the wilderness around the dungeon' that just drains the creativity of adventure writers? I haven't liked this part of any module I've ever read. 

We have:
-ruined and defaced shrines to Thyr and Muir
-a lake with some giant frogs
-a one-eyed troll
-a gnoll village
-some giant spiders
-an entrance to the underdark
-a black dragon with some orcs

-a wandering beholder (fuck!!)
-some sinkholes

-a random encounter table with all this stuff, plus stirges, acolytes of Orcus, ghouls, goblins, manticores, ettin, wyverns, etc

All pretty standard stuff, and easily replaced by the shit in your own game world.

This can all get scrapped, except the ruined temples to Thyr and Muir with all the secret treasure inside. They can come along whole cloth, I'll place them somewhere out in my campaign world and fill them with clues pointing towards the dungeon.


SUMMARY

It seems I have my work cut out for me. The maps, monsters, story hooks, villains and encounter tables are cool, but stats will need to be severely edited, traps and treasure almost totally redone.


Next time Level 0: THE BURIAL HALLS and Level 1: THE UPPER CAVES!


*****

Now go HAIL ORCUS while listening to this: