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!

Play Report: Return to Land's End - Catching Up

OKAY, OKAY.

I should have learned by now not to say "next, I'm going to..." because my plans are instantly upended. The new drop-in, large-party city game set in the City-State of the World Emperor has been put on hold, for obvious reasons. Instead we've been playing in Land's End with my roommates while my brother joins in over Google Hangouts. We are up to session 18 or so, and things are getting really interesting.

I have been reading various folks throughout the blogosphere mentioning how important actual play reports are. I find them very hard to write, but I do like a challenge! I will say that it's great to have comprehensive summaries I can look back on in the future. I'll endeavour to bring us up to speed on the last year (!!!) of gameplay, by touching on the main points:

CAST

Vuk Thuul - wild half-elf serpent oracle, in search of his mysterious origins
Nahash - lizardman barbarian, cast out from the Black Wings for a crime he didn't commit
Liliana Vess - sylph witch, on the run from Imperial witch-hunters


THE WHITE TOWERS

The party explored partially buried towers built by the ancient snake-men. One spiralled upwards, the other downwards (on the inside) in defiance of all physical laws. The observatory at the top of this tower faced subjectively "down" into the sky - none of the party were brave enough to jump out and see what happened, although they got a demonstration later.

Many clues were found. The snake-men had computers made of metal, plastic and crystal, powered by glass spirit-bottles. (See the Stygian Library for more details.) Only some lucky rolls by Vuk Thuul to recall his dreams at the standing stone allowed interpretation of the language and controls, and he managed to type in a few questions. They learned of the long-lost Bright Empire, which once covered the known world, and several names for Vuk Thuul's mysterious infernal patron, Abraxas - "Cruelty of the Heavens," "Master of the Final Incantation," "The Fourth Way Through Immeasurable Darkness," etc. The library of metallic scrolls in the tower was described as a shrine to this very entity, but none of the scrolls were deciphered.

Wisely bypassing two or three altars to strange & forgotten gods of chaos, they came to a room with seven great sarcophagi. Each the resting-place of a snake-man champion of old. Some held monsters, like the necrophidius that nearly killed them all on the bridge in a tense end-of-session fight: Vuk Thuul tried to grapple it and nearly fell off the bridge, then Leliana cast enlarge on Nahash and the raging barbarian bull-rushed it over the side.

Others had treasure of immense value: like a colossal snake-man greatsword too big for human use, or the False Eye of Abraxas, an artifact which grants insight into the nature of things by allowing the user to view a realm of pure information. Nobody had the stomach for removing their own eye to make room for it, and so it rests in their house in Land's End, nothing but a strange curio (for now).

One of the sarcophagi was packed completely full of tiny spiders, spilling out over Nahash in a flood! While the PCs ran away, the vermin scuttled down the stairwell to the observatory and 'fell' out of the top, flying into the sky and scattering all over the jungle! Will this deed haunt them in the future, or indeed change the ecology of the jungle?

Yes.

The party killed the huge & hungry spider-women infesting the tower, but not without Vuk Thuul suffering immense CON damage from their acidic bites (this would become a theme in his life). This endeared them to the Caiman tribe, who could see his battle-scars with their own eyes. The caimans are their devoted friends now, and the party has been gifted some of the tarnished silver rings they wear.


PUSHING SOUTH

Jeregosh, leader of the the Caimans told them about a great field of cairns & barrows to the south, and they travelled in that direction, completely missing it. Instead, they found a great silver tower on a hill, surrounded by a ruined curtain wall. It glowed and shone even under the clouded sky, flickering blue-green afterimages. They opened the grand doors and saw two great vulture-headed demons bearing polearms, who croaked "ahhhh... guests!" Immediately they slammed the doors shut and ran.

Wandering back to the broken stone road, they followed it west towards the cliffs. The land became grey and dead, even the dense jungle undergrowth thinning out. At the bottom of the cliff they found the great pit of bones, and entered the Tomb of Abysthor.

This didn't last long either, as the endless skeletons issuing from the Font of Bones inside eventually put them off exploring. They tried smashing, Mending, and casting any spell they could think of to shut it down, but wave after wave of skeletons drove them away.

To the north, they found a sacred cave inhabited by the hostile Wolf-totem tribesmen and slaughtered them all. Looted some nice gear, including a fossilized shark-jawbone mask which spews forth a black gas of confusion. What I wasn't expecting was for Vuk Thuul to go full fucking Colonel Kurtz and hang the Wolf shaman's corpse upside-down in front of the cave entrance, the mark of the demon Abraxas burnt into his chest!

What the PCs didn't know at this time was that this sacred cave was devoted to the demon of beasts, rage and hunting, called Droquatraxl. Is this the beginning of a new infernal power-struggle? We'll see...


DOWNTIME

They bought a house in town and dug a storage room out beneath it, using Mending to seal up the floorboards after placing their loot inside. After this they started spending more time in town, and I eventually realized the error of my ways in making this last-stop podunk town too conservative. I basically told the lizardman's player that I would start making the town weirder so that he would fit in a little better.

The first oddball NPC that showed up was Baridian, a scarred, taciturn monk devoted to a secret cult called the Postulants of the New Sun. He has gradually been attempting to recruit the PCs to his side, inviting them to the secret meetings he holds in town where he sits & preaches from inside a brazier full of hot coals! The players attended a few holiday festivals and met some of the Altanians who live a barbaric life in the hills and mountains. They recruited one named Bolgrim to come with them on their adventures, and let me tell you - Pathfinder is not set up to have classed & levelled henchmen following you around. The next one they hire is going to have stats of 11 across the board - I'm not rolling for them.

Later on they heard a rumour that a strange foreigner from up north wearing a holy symbol of Mitra was asking about Leliana, the witch. They concluded that he is a spy sent by Imperial witch-hunters. (That's exactly right.) They added a spiked pit trap just inside the front door of their house, and paid a boy in town to water their plants while they're away on adventures. Oh boy...


THE BLACK PYRAMID

Recently, the action has come fast & furious. Their alliance with the goblins dissolved after the greenskins' leader Guzboch found out who really raided his adamantine treasure-vault (the PCs did it of course). Who told him? It was Absalom Glop, the sinister & manipulative abhorrer the party released from a magical circle in one of the goblins' underground bases.

Pushing northeast along the river, they found a hermit named Idokan living in a cabin on stilts above the swamp. He seemed friendly enough for a half-crazed weirdo. He told them of the lizardfolk, the fearsome witches and other rumours of the swamp. He directed them to a black pyramid in the jungle to the north, having sighted black-robed fellows poking around it. This piqued the party's interest.

Many adventures were had in the black pyramid and mighty treasures gained. They defeated the fearsome death worm which lurked inside and looted some treasures of the old priests: The Sword of Eyes and a mysterious & magical black spear with unknown properties. When Leliana cast Identify on it she learned nothing, only hearing a phrase in her mind: "Our voices are open graves, through which the never-dead escape!"

A major clue concerned Vuk Thuul's mysterious patron Abraxas: as it turned out, those black-robed fellows were the cult of Yredelemnul, the bloated & hircine demon-lord of the dead otherwise known as Orcus. All initiates into this cult are taught elementary demonology, including the names of the greatest Chaos Lords: Yredelemnul, Jubilex, Tsathoggua and Abraxas! Now knowing his spells are granted by an entity unambiguously low in the infernal hierarchy, will Vuk Thuul start behaving even worse? We'll see.

The group learned this by interrogating a captured cultist on their second visit to the pyramid, but failed to pursue his co-religionists inside. This was a bit of a mistake. The remaining cultists have recovered all the loot the PCs missed on their first visit, and are now in possession of some good magic items and the Bone Key.

THE DROWNED LANDS

From the rickety cabin of the hermit Idokan, the party built a log raft and set out into the dark and mysterious swamps. The first strange location they found was a brass tower, 100' high, rising out of a patch of dry ground. Covered in alien scripts that proved unreadable but induced fainting & blackouts when the spellcasters tried read magic.

The party had a few fights here, including one against zombie lizardfolk that emerged sodden and rotting from the swamp water. These foes precipitated a full-scale retreat when the tiny white crabs inside one scuttled all over Bolgrim and almost devoured him right away!

They met some friendly lizardfolk and managed to parley, learning much of the situation in the swamps. Long ago, they were one unified society. About a generation ago, the last time human outsiders visited [1], they brought such strange ideas that the lizardfolk were divided politically and have never recovered. Since then they have formed into four tribes: Yellow Eyes, Black Wings, Purple Claw and Red Fangs. The Red Fangs have not been heard from in a year or more, rumoured to have been destroyed entire by the hateful, toadlike Tsathar. Paralyzed by factional differences, the tribes have not mustered a unified response to this threat.

THE GREAT CITY

Iron-Heel, the leader of the lizardfolk hunting party, urged Nahash to give up adventuring and join his people but the barbarian was having none of that. Nevertheless he brought the group to the Great City of the Yellow Eyes to meet their leader and see the tribe's power. Built on the edge of a great central lake in the swamps, this cyclopean stone city was not made by the lizardfolk. Its walls were raised in the ancient days of the snake-men and thousands of years later their former servants still live inside.

The gang were introduced to the aged warchief Far-Walker who seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts and his witch-doctor Murk-Watcher, whose magic can discern truth from falsehood. Murk-Watcher tested the tale of Nahash's origins, and he was careful enough to pass without revealing the entirety of his exile, imprisonment and escape.

Things seemed to be going well in the city until one more player revealed itself: Absalom Glop stepped from the shadows of Far-Walker's throne room, grinning its hateful grin! What designs does it have with the Yellow Eyes? It wasn't telling - only making cryptic remarks that incensed the players.

When they left the great city shaking their fists at Absalom's mysterious return, Iron-Heel entreated them to find the Red Fangs rumoured to still survive in the swamps, and introduce his ideas of pan-lizardfolk unification to them. This they are now attempting as they wander the desolate Drowned Lands, getting lost and looking for trouble!


*****

[1] - This was the original Land's End game, back in... 2012? Oh lord have mercy.

My group LOVES the swamps, and I do too. It's starting to get actually dangerous out there for them (which I like), and they really seem to like faction play and making alliances. I have a huge spreadsheet of factions and NPCs in this campaign, and most of them are based in the swamps.

As of this writing there are at least eleven factions of varying strength around the swamp, plus lone NPCs like the witches who basically are factions of their own. It's an interconnected web of relationships that I am still developing. Every time I don't know what to work on, I open up my spreadsheet and add a few things. This article on faction play has been a fantastic guideline for simple and gameable prep.

Also, these guys level up REALLY slowly! They are almost at 4th level. Maybe I am not including enough treasure, but that's easily remedied in upcoming dungeons.

This is my main jam when I need to get into the zome for Land's End:

Summoning Rules

Once again, check up on these first:

Fire on the Velvet Horizon

Textual Corruptions and Ritual Disasters

Summoning

The Book of Six Circles

All Are Writ in Blood 

*****

Rules For Summoning with Absturated Tomes
Introduction here.

The one and only Timo Ketola

Skim through all those links yet? Good. Here are my adapted summoning rules, more or less based on all the stuff above and adapted for my home game. Let's check it out:

Faded Ink, Missing Text - There is a chance the tome has become worn through long years of inactivity, its bloody inks becoming difficult to read or vanishing entirely. Roll percentile dice against the "% faded" number for each ritual in the tome. Any results above that chance are fine - no problems.

A result under this chance indicates enough missing text to cause a problem for that particular ritual. Note down the percentile die result: this is now the target number to beat (see below). Then roll on this disaster table to determine what goes wrong when the conjurer attempts the corrupted ritual.

Anyone reading through the book gets a DC 20 spellcraft check to notice something is amiss (assuming the book doesn't come out and TELL you - not all these tomes are talkative).

Recovering Lost Text - The book needs blood, for it is alive - in a way - and can re-write its contents through absorbing vital fluids. Every HD of sentient being (INT > 3) sacrificed to the book will reduce the "% faded" by 5%. These improvements to a tome are permanent (in the span of most adventurers' lifetimes, anyway). Once the "% faded" chance is below your target number (noted previously), the ritual is totally safe to use.

Sacrifices that do not make it to the target number are still useful. Each sacrifice allows a re-roll on the disaster table with a -1 modifier per HD, although results will never go below a 1. Kind DMs might elect to keep an old result if the new one is worse, but this is your call. Or you could just add the modifiers to your previously rolled result.

Red Herrings - Millennia-old sorcerers preserved in book form do sometimes fuck with you. Occasionally extra steps in the ritual or additional components will be listed that aren't actually necessary. These will never lead to a disaster, but cost more money and time and generally make life more difficult for PCs.

Extra Clues - If the conjurer sacrifices enough to bring the '% faded' chance to 0, some useful detail will appear - perhaps an extra magical component, an extra verse of the incantation. It will grant the conjurer a bonus to his skill check when conducting the ritual itself. [These are specific to each ritual and detailed in their individual entries]

Summoning - Once the conjurer has the necessary components, he performs the ritual. Assuming no disaster occurs as above, he must make a skill roll. The DC varies, each entry will have its own details. The text of the tome itself includes information on its difficulty and how likely the conjurer is to succeed. [You can tell the player what target numbers he needs to roll]

The outcome will be one of three things:

Success: The player made the roll.The ritual works. Great job! Now the conjurer can summon the entities involved anytime, with the relevant spell.

Partial Success: Failing the roll by a margin of 5 or less. The ritual worked, but the conjurer's control is not total. Something will go wrong. Maybe not right now, but eventually.

Failure: Failing the roll by 6 or more (or rolling a natural 1). You're screwed!

*****

The first summoning tome in my game world is called Tanith Loraxalin. More information can be found in part one of this series. This is the first binding ritual detailed within:


Binding of the Men of Peace (0% faded)

Gentle dwellers of damp underworld caves, these humanoids are short and reptilian with translucent bluish bodies. Also called "Anemone Men" because instead of heads, a cup of glowing fronds opens up from their necks. These can stretch out a great distance, and the Men of Peace use them to sense vibrations nearby, allowing them to "see." They aren't malevolent but every part of their bodies is extremely poisonous.

The ritual itself is one of the simplest as these things go. It must be conducted in total darkness, mimicking the nighted caverns where the Men of Peace sleep. The slightest glow from moon, star or torch will prevent their appearance. In this darkness the conjurer pours out a pool of shallow water, covering at least a 20'x20' area. Placing several hunks of raw meat on the ground, he intones the words, tempting the Men from their sleep to come and feed. A soft blue glow will emanate from the water, one rarely seen above ground. In this light alone the Men of Peace will come, and if his offering is accepted they will remember it even in their deep dreams and come at his summons in the future.

Mechanics: The minimum level for performing this ritual is 2nd. The player makes a DC 16 check with a bonus equal to: character level + spellcasting stat modifier (INT, WIS or CHA depending on class).

Success: The Men of Peace will appear and feast on the offering. Later, they'll recognize the conjurer in their dreams. He can summon 1d4 by casting Monster Summoning I, and none will ever attack him. Unlike other summoned creatures the Men will remain indefinitely until destroyed. Mostly they just sleep, and like to stay in one area instead of following the caster around. As long as they remain summoned the conjurer cannot regain the spell slot used to summon them. It is bound up with their presence. When they are all destroyed or banished he may memorize a new spell normally.

In addition, summoning the Men of Peace does not give the caster any special power to 'banish' or dismiss them. The only way for them to leave is to destroy them.

Anemone Men: AL Neutral, Init +1, Per +8, Reach 10', Move 20'
2 HD, Atk touch +1 (poison sting), Fort +6, Ref +1, Will +3
AC 10, BAB +1, CMB +1, CMD 12, Morale 9
Poison: Fort DC 14 (roll twice) - Pass twice, excruciating pain (1d6 damage & a morale check). Fail once, the blue sleep (dream-filled coma for 1d6 hours). Fail both, agonizing death.

Partial Success: The Men are bound successfully, but the conjurer's likeness is forgotten in their deep blue dreams. When they are first summoned everything is fine. If the conjurer leaves their presence for at least a day, the Men will not recognize him in the future - treating him and his friends like any other trespasser in their territory. This process repeats anytime the Men are summoned.

Failure: 1d4 Men of Peace arrive during the ritual, confused and half-awake. Not sure what is real and what a dream, they attack the closest thing that moves, attempting to sting it, remove its eyeballs and eat the rest. After a given Man has poisoned one victim and eaten a little, it wakes up somewhat and can make a reaction roll on this table.

Red Herring: None now.

Extra Clue: With this ritual completely restored, Tanith remembers the use of Mandrake Root. Growing in darkness and moisture in the shape of a human, this plant's magic resonates sympathetically with the Men of Peace. Obtaining a whole root and offering it along with the meat will add +2 to the conjurer's skill roll.


*****


Example of Play

Guzboch the goblin cleric of Tsathoggua wants to bind the Men of Peace - there is a standard 20% chance that Tanith's text for this ritual is faded or incomplete, but if he's lucky he can still pull it off. The DM secretly rolls a 3%, so missing text has caused a problem. Rolling on the original d20 mishap table, the result is a 16 - that's Not What I Expected! When Guzboch performs the ritual, the way is opened for an Abhorrer. Absalom Glop, the Excruciator, steps through the portal to make everyone's life miserable.

After some soul-searching Guzboch sacrifices an underling to Tanith, reducing the chance of corruption from 20% to 15%. This is still well above the 3% roll, and Guzboch is going to need plenty more victims. However, the DM re-rolls on the disaster table. Too bad! A 19 is rolled, with a -1 modifier giving an 18 - You Will Never Be The Same! The goblin cleric has begun his slow descent into occult madness.

Sacrificing a few more goblins, Guzboch brings the % faded to 0. Tanith also recalls that the ritual uses mandrake root, which grows in the dark near standing water. If Guzboch can find some, he will make his next summoning check with a +2 modifier.

After a thorough search by his underlings, Guzboch has the mandrake root. He makes his DC 16 summoning roll with a +9 bonus: +4 for being 4th level by this point, +3 for WIS (this is the statistic he uses to cast spells - Wizards can't have all the fun), +2 for using the mandrake root. He rolls a modified 18. Finally, a success! The Men of Peace come to feed, and later he summons them to guard his treasure vault.


*****


[In Land's End there really isn't anywhere the players can 'go research things,' unless they hand the question off to Vantadel, an expensive sage. I needed a different way for characters to solve the problems posed by corrupted texts and ritual disasters, and the absturated tomes of Incunabuli seemed a perfect fit! Be careful to avoid DM dick moves though, since the tomes can communicate with the PCs but may give them false information that could get them killed...]

Next up, binding rituals for the rest of Tanith Loraxalin, and maybe ideas for some other terrible tomes scattered around the campaign world. I can't tell you how excited I am to have my home players deal with the presence of this terrible tome one way or another!

Play this on your next dimly-lit dungeon crawling marathon:

Play Report: Return to Land's End - Sessions 8 & 9

This almost brings me up to date. Still a few random encounters to go. We'll see what happens this friday...

*****

CAST:

Vuk Thuul - half-elf serpent oracle 2
Leliana Vess - sylph witch 2
Nahash - lizardman barbarian 2

*****

This time, the party explored the abandoned white towers of the snake-men. They scooped up buckets of treasure and sweet items, uncovered strange secrets and had some tense fights. Let's review the highlights:

-At the bottom of the first tower was a complex relief carving circling the room depicting the various orders of life: at the bottom layer, the lower animals (dogs, crabs, monkeys). Standing above them were the humanoid races - humans, dwarves, elves (although they didn't look much like the wild elves of Vuk Thuul's tribe), orcs, gnolls, ogres, crabmen, etc. [In fact each of the species carved here has a preserved member in a tank in the room above. The PCs didn't quite notice that.] Above and behind these were seven hooded, long-necked figures [the snake-men of course]. Behind these, three strange tentacled monstrosities with gaping mouths. Above and behind them all, reaching to the ceiling, arose a great swirling pillar of eyes with two enfolding wings and a long outstretched neck, terminating in a shapeless, faceless head.

-In a room lit in sickly green and pink by a luminescent jelly cube, they were ambushed by a CENARACH! Poised to strike from the ceiling, Leliana beat it on initiative and used her slumber hex, knocking it out but leaving it stuck above them. Nahash managed to poke it with his spear, but the real money move was Vuk Thuul Command-ing it to "drop!" On the ground, its corrosive bite and claws made the oracle's life difficult, but he managed to avoid the worst of it with some lucky rolls (no CON damage), breaking its neck with his lethal constriction ability.

[Vuk Thuul's wrestling skills are absurdly good. But as we'll see, any PF character with exceptional abilities in a certain domain will inevitably run into situations that render their "build" useless.]

-In the buried passages underneath the towers was a storeroom. Somewhere, a thumping sound was detected. It turned out to be a TROLL CABINET! Chop a troll up and put the pieces in various drawers. Open them up and the pieces will try to reassemble themselves. There were some frantic moments, but once Nahash got a torch lit they put that old troll in its place and ransacked the storeroom for strange items and curiosities to sell back in town.

-They crossed the narrow bridge to the second tower and entered a strange ritual chamber. A seven-sided altar carved with a network of channels led into the floor. On the wall above, a carving of a skull-headed snake-man with a gigantic forked sword, poised to strike. A little experimentation proved the channels were for carrying sacrificial blood into the floor and down to the room below.

Descending the stairs from the ritual chamber brought an odd sight: the party was looking DOWNWARDS into the open sky, from an observatory at the top of the tower! After parsing this strange vista they decided to take the stairs in the other direction.

-Upstairs was a room with seven grand sarcophagi, six of them carved with strange scenes and symbols. One depicted an underwater cave, another a field of mushrooms under a strange sphere, one more a giant sword wreathed in flames. The first one the group tried to open was carved to resemble a snake-man skeleton, the ribcage spreading and reaching outwards as if to grapple.

Inside lay the loose bones of a snake-man champion of chaos. As it had served its demonic master in life, so its carcass did in death. The bones animated in the shape of a long skeletal serpent and attacked as a necrophidius! [and this is where things got dangerous.]

Nahash was dazzled by the necrophidius' hypnotic dance. Leliana grabbed him and everyone began running away as fast as they could. Vuk Thuul cast Monster Summoning I, calling a pony to assist him in his fight. Very quickly it became apparent that summoning ponies was good only to distract the bloodthirsty monster for a round or two, but since the oracle had plenty of spells left, this became a viable strategy!

Beating a desperate retreat, the party turned to face the onrushing monster on the narrow bridge. Using the last of her spells, Leliana Enlarged Nahash, and with a strength born of barbaric rage, the lizardman body-checked the construct right over the side!

Unfortunately it fell sixty feet and didn't die. Still Enlarged, Nahash sprinted back across the bridge, dragged the sarcophagous lid out of the burial chamber and dropped it down on the skeletal snake. Narrowly making his fortitude save to avoid a hernia, he collapsed on the bridge from exhaustion - the party was safe.

Plenty of other secrets were unveiled, and the towers aren't fully explored but the party couldn't carry any more loot and decided to get out while the gettin' was good.

TREASURE

-an untarnished silver snake-skull mask, sized for a large creature
-two giant metal spearheads
-bone sickle
-whip made from the vertebrae of an unknown creature
-a ton of stuff I swiped from the Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper
-ornate two-handed sword sized for a snake-man [far too big for anyone to use]
-an alien orchid, preserved in a jar of vivimantic slime

*****

Now for a slightly different kind of jam:

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!

Play Report: Return to Land's End - Sessions 6 & 7

Well, it's 8:30 PM in Edmonton and the sun is just about to set. Seasonal Affective Disorder (or "half the year" as we say around here) has wound down, it was +14 C and sunny this afternoon, Zakgate seems like a distant memory and the Oilers' season ended in ignominious defeat - just the way I like it. The calendar's nigredo is over, and as the heat increases we climb toward the red of summer.

The home games have been thin on the ground for a minute with the boys taking vacations, getting sick, visiting family, etc. We had some short sessions so far this year and I want to blog about how it's been going and what I'm doing right or wrong in my game. I hate to make promises but I'll have two more sessions' worth coming up soon. Work was quite slow for the last two weeks, leaving me plenty of time to brainstorm cool new shit which will also pop up here this year!

*****

CAST

Vuk Thuul - 2nd level half-elf serpent oracle
Nahash - 2nd level lizardman barbarian
Leliana Vess - 2nd level witch

Newly minted to second level, egos boosted by doubling their hit points, the party returned to the jungles. Opting never again to visit the fungus-infested goblin cave and not as interested in the eastern swamplands as previously suggested, they instead bore east towards the "stone forest" on their map.

[Finally they failed a navigation check and veered off track, while I rolled a few hex encounters. The party doesn't get lost much because normally they stick to known landmarks, like the river. Smart move boys, but now you're in my house.]

[My tables still result in really infrequent encounters! I am rolling once per hex. Rereading the "Hexcrawling" series in the Alexandrian, I realize Justin rolls an encounter check once per four-hour 'watch.' That will spice things up! During these sessions, it was crowded if I rolled a single encounter on a three-day journey.]

The first odd location was a small clearing where the driving tropical rain slackened to a mild drizzle. At the center stood an ancient stone carved with mysterious letters. Boldly using Read Magic to interpret the runes, both Leliana's and Vuk Thuul's eyes rolled back and they collapsed into fits...

In the dream, I walk through a great darkened hall. Long-necked beings in voluminous robes work on strange constructions of metal and glass. Their purposes are known to me, but I don't have the words to explain them. The robed beings recognize me as one of them. One turns, and I see it's a green-skinned man with the head of a snake...

This bizarre dream or vision was ended by Nahash slapping the two awake, splashing them with rainwater. After a short rest the party moved on, wondering at this strange portent.

[Lots of significance, as we'll see shortly.]

Further to the southeast, the party ran straight into an encampment of wildmen, different from the last. Instead of wearing wolf pelts, they had inscrutable masks of alligator skin. Lucky for the group they were friendly and open to talking. Leliana was able to translate and along with a few gifts of metal weapons they were able to pump the warleader for information.

[Reaction rolls are one element I'm happy with. I gave the PCs a bonus because the Caiman tribe believes in helping out strangers (I rolled for this). My language rules are tricky but again it worked well. Leliana knows the Wild Speech, which shares a common root with the primitive tongues of the neanderthals, giving her +5 to communicate with them. Adding to her high INT bonus, it was a slam dunk. If she had failed hard we could have played charades I guess!]

The PCs spoke with the Caimans' leader Jeregosh long into the night and learned much about the jungles to the south. Stories of the black-robed men, skeletons, a giant castle, some barrow-mounds, a cursed pit, the forbidding white towers, the stone forest. His people were even aware of the ancient demons known as forvalaka. He said the Caimans were menaced by them generations ago, and almost nobody believes in them anymore.

In return, the party agreed to head west and find one of the Caiman womenfolk who went missing while looking for edible plants. She had been gone several days and things didn't look good.

Hunting for the missing Caiman woman took the team to the west, back towards the Barrier. They found her (with the help of Leliana's fox familiar) barely staving off starvation by stealing honey from the hive of some giant jungle bees! Unfortunately for her the honey also had hallucinogenic properties and she was rendered insensible. While rescuing her, they noticed a few giant bees floating around what looked like a large flower with humanlike plant-arms and -legs. What the heck?

[No encounters here, I wonder if the guys will ever come back and try to steal honey from the giant beehive? The hive itself is from d4 caltrops' 100 wilderness hexes, which fits perfectly because I already had giant bees on my encounter table. I took the orchidmen from False Machine, they're too good not to use in a jungle. They've never seen one before, random encounters have been so rare.]

With the party's successful return, Jeregosh declared a great feast! There were games, contests and feats of strength. Vuk Thuul competed in the wrestling event, and almost had the win but was pinned. Leliana (hopelessly) attempted the footrace, but was quickly outdistanced by the hunters. Nahash on the other hand dominated in the strength contest, lost at the javelin throw, and then put everyone under the table in the eating contest. The Caimans flavour their food with painfully hot jungle spices, making that part no picnic!

[I wanted to create some fun downtime events that might affect the tribe's views of the PCs. I feel that mechanically they weren't interesting and needed some more tactical elements. For all the annoying complexity of Pathfinder's grappling rules (I have to use flowcharts), they are terribly boring in isolation because there are no choices to be made. All the contests were basically I-roll-you-roll type affairs except for the feats of strength - highest STR wins. This wasn't very exciting. Next time I'd either gloss over it faster with one or two rolls, or spend a bit of time beforehand expanding the rules of the contests. Make the wrestling match more of a full combat and the like.]

For his victories in the contests, Nahash was presented with several of the silver finger rings that all the Caimans wear. Their significance wasn't exactly clear, but he accepted them graciously.

The team was interested in Jeregosh's tale of the forbidden white towers to the southwest. Apparently they were covered in strange carvings and runes as well. Could they be related to the standing stone that granted visions of snake-men? Vuk Thuul especially was determined to find out, in case they held clues to the unexplained origins of the brand on his face and the snake-powers he had been granted.

[Whadda YOU think?]

The next day with full stomachs and warm hearts despite the rain, they bid the Caimans farewell. A few hours' march brought them to a great clearing in the jungle with the white towers rising up ahead. Wonder of wonders: there wasn't a cloud in the sky here! The party relished the chance to get out of the rain and see the sun for the first time in almost two weeks.

Climbing over the ruined walls, they approached the towers. To Vuk Thuul's satisfaction, they were covered in the same runes and scribbles as the standing stone! Strangely, the taller tower was surrounded by dense plants and undergrowth while not a blade of grass grew around the shorter one. No doors presented themselves, but Nahash managed to get his rope up to an open window in the taller tower.

They climbed into a room crowded with dusty glass tanks. Eighteen in all (plus the shattered remains of a nineteenth), they each contained a creature preserved in cloudy, foul-smelling fluid. Human, dwarf, gnome, goblin, pig-man, gnoll, tsathar, lizardman and stranger creatures too - a massive humanoid pressing against the walls of its tank, an ape with green skin like a plant, a merman, an elf with cartoonishly exaggerated features, etc.

From upstairs a sickly mottled light shone, changing from green to purple to pink and back again. Downstairs led only into darkness. Hoisting his torch, Nahash led the group into the depths...

[I am really excited about this dungeon. Built by the snake-men millennia ago, the towers are filled with secrets, dangers and treasure from a long-lost culture. If he's lucky, Vuk Thuul might even find a clue about himself!!]


*****

PS: Wow! 21 followers! 20 was my goal for last year, and now I can confidently declare that I've 'made it' in D&D blogland. Next stop kickstarter!

[I would never do that to you guys.]

PPS: Apologies, I am posting this from an unbelievable shit-box of a macbook at my girlfriend's house. No pictures and definitely no youtube videos. I'll link to some smokin hot tracks on my next post, don't worry.

Play Report: Return to Land's End - Session 5

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Vuk Thuul - half-elf snake oracle 1
Nahash - lizardman barbarian 1
Leliana Vess - sylph witch 1

*****

This was a short session, because the team decided against entering the dungeon! I count this a success. I'd much rather have my players acting to survive and avoid danger than charging in with confidence the dungeon is meant for them to conquer 'just because it's there.' They were sent north by Sgt. Horgh to investigate a cave and decided that bringing back a short report was better than getting killed solving the goblins' problems for them. Especially when they realized the goblins were contagious. Smart move boys!!

They still got enough treasure (from Sgt. Horgh's reluctant payout for their report) to make level 2! Now things get really interesting, as they've decided to push east into the swamps (Nahash's home turf) in search of Aercius' lost holy symbol. I have the whole Christmas holiday to research, do prep and flesh things out. That's good, because The Drownings are really the centerpiece of the region and contain a huge portion of the cool places, NPCs, factions, monsters etc.

Time to dig out some pdfs: Challenge of the Frog Idol, Fever Swamp...

*****

This session was also a great use of the Level One Creature Generator, which I wrote about back here.

I had been reading a lot of Incunabuli, so I wanted to include goblins who had: something. The plague? A curse? I wanted them to be possessed in some way: individually pretty useless but dangerous in numbers as their controlled minds worked in sync. It wasn't gelling. I rolled on the L1CG to see if it could jog my mind in the right direction.

Rolling on the FORM table I got this: "Vegetable/flora in nature, green leaf, flower and vine ridden. +1 to all tests during the daytime, can regrow limbs and regenerates 1 HP a round."

Holy shit. There you have it. Since goblins live underground, I reversed the day/night modifiers and made them mushroomy fungusoid hive-mind goblins. Then I rolled on the ABILITY table and got this: "Covered in spikes or some other dangerous offensive armour, melee attackers must test DEX after every attack they attempt to avoid d6 damage."

Fuck me, it's a perfect fit. A mushroom spore-cloud attack! Explains how the possession spreads. One goblin comes home and starts acting weird, as soon as the others try to fight him, POOF! Everyone gets infected.

That's what I want from random table: cool results that push me in the right direction when I need it, or put the pieces together in a new and interesting way. Hats off and fuckin' bonus points to Mr. Raston.

*****

Play reports are tough for me. I don't really like writing them all the time, and if the pageviews are any indication, you folks don't like reading them. I'm going to try something different for now, extract the useful talking points and lessons instead of doing blow-by-blow accounts.

DANCE TIME:

What's a 'demon' anyway?

Recent post here with my first reaction to Paizo's Book of the Damned.

You should also try reading THIS post from Against the Wicked City, and the "conceptual density" one linked on the side of the page. I find ATWC pretty accurately drills into some of my objections with Pathfinder's setting.

*****

Sometimes the Book of the Damned has really cool ideas. They are often in the smaller paragraphs of hints or suggestions. The most fun I've had reading this book is in the section on infernal dukes, qlippoth lords, kyton demagogues, nascent demon princes, etc. Pages upon fucking pages of entries like this, most which could be the inspiration for a super-cool demon cult.

The kyton demagogue Fharaas:

As one might read a tree’s years in the exposed rings of its stump, followers of the Seer in Skin divine all a mortal’s days by scrutinizing the whorls and layers within its flesh. Some even teach that, if a destined bond exists, a killer’s life is reflected in a victim’s fateful meat.

Pretty cool right? Other times, Paizo's style really makes me sad:

Orcus is the ruler of this realm of frozen seas, haunted cities, infested swamps, and ragged mountains... The demon lord’s minions include powerful liches and undead-demon hybrids that populate necropolises and ruins across the realm.

What in the hell ass is an "undead-demon hybrid"?

I just... ugh. Words fail me. If the word 'demon' means anything at all, how can such an entity be undead too?

This is what happens when design decisions are made by what we might call "restricted association." The nearest related thing. The shortest possible distance between two points.

Demon prince of undead? Put in a necropolis! Never mind the question of who/what could possibly be buried in a necropolis IN THE ABYSS. Or who the fuck built it in the first place. It's just meaningless window-dressing. Style without substance. How can you tell me that someone actually thought about this before writing it?

I guess this is my fundamental objection to extraplanar settings in D&D generally. Planescape fought against this mightily, but detailing these ineffable realms could only go one way, eventually. It reduces them to human terms. Hell - by definition the worst place that could possibly exist, the very inferno of damnation itself - has mountains, cities, marketplaces, forests, houses, graveyards and even sewers! All the same terrain that clutters the normal world, only the inhabitants have red skin and horns. I find this deeply vexing, and I wish some more imagination could have been put into these other dimensions.

On the other hand, Moloch does look fucking awesome.

JOIN THE LEGION

That guy makes me want to sign up with the forces of darkness. Also on the upside, the book has SO MANY demons in it that I could pick a handful for every campaign I run and never exhaust it in my whole life.

That's the strength of the book. It's a big multiverse and the weird, almost throwaway nature of the one-paragraph entries I find most exciting. Like someone at Paizo got stuck with writing pages and pages of minor demon prince filler entries and said "Fuck It, I'm going to have fun with this!"

Maybe in Land's End I could team Orcus up with: Shax, the Blood Marquis; Zurapadyn, the Beast who Waits in Smoke; Slandrais, the Watcher in the Walls; Jiravvidain, the Duke of Fissures; or Sugroz, the Voice in Screams? Now I'm actually getting excited!

*****

Let's listen to something ACTUALLY demonic for once:

Tweaking the random encounter tables

I have been reading the Alexandrian and thinking about dice probabilities (both highly worthwhile pursuits). His series on hexcrawls is fantastic and has given me a great format to follow for my random encounter tables, where before I was really haphazard (every region had something different). I can trust that guy to present information that is useful, battle-tested, well thought out and incorporates knowledge of the underlying math.

The Numbers

As for dice probabilities, I have always flip-flopped on how to spread out the chances of running into each monster on a random encounter table. Rolling 2d6 gives you a 'pyramid' distribution (it's unlikely you'll meet those monsters on 2 or 12), which I always liked. You can hide some really evil, nasty beasts under those numbers. But just what are the chances, really? Well I looked it up. Bookmark that one, you'll thank me later.

This pyramid is actually steeper than I thought at first glance. Rolling a 7 is six times more likely than rolling a 2. I think these numbers (6/36, etc) are the limit of the kinds of probabilities that are easy to imagine and manipulate in your head, without writing them down. In fact, I think it's too granular, in a way. Let's compare two possible random encounter tables and see how much I care about the details...

This is the table for the Rainy Jungle as I used it last session. You can see there are a few oddities that could be fixed:

2d6

2-3  -  giant bee     (3/36, 8.3%)
4  -  1-2 giant geckos   (3/36, 8.3%)
5  -  1-3 neanderthals   (4/36, 11.1%)
6  -  1-3 giant botflies   (5/36, 13.8%)
7  -  1-3 goblin hunters  (6/36, 16.6%)
8  -  1-6 capybaras   (5/36, 13.8%)
9-10  -  1-3 steam beetles  (7/36, 19.4%)
11  -  1-2 orchidmen   (2/36, 5.5%)
12  - roll 2x and combine   (1/36, 2.7%)

Why are steam beetles so popular/? Because the probabilities are in 'chunks'. I can't freely add or subtract 1/36th to any result, except by adding 2 + 3 or 12 + 11. If I have less than 11 results, some have to group up and this creates odd 'lumps' in the probability pyramid. The 2d6 table works well when you have exactly 11 results. Any less and it becomes really awkward to use. 

I *could* move goblin hunters to the 9-10 spot and steam beetles to 7, but this seems needlessly fiddly and annoying to format. Is there a better way?

Let's change it to a straight d20 roll and see what happens:

1d20

1  -  1 giant bee    (1/20, 5%)
2-3  -  1-2 giant geckos    (2/20, 10%)
4-5  -  1-3 neanderthals    (2/20, 10%)
6-8  -  1-3 giant botflies  (3/20, 15%)
9-11  -  1-3 goblin hunters   (3/20, 15%)
12-14  -  1-6 capybaras   (3/20, 15%)
15-18  -  1-3 steam beetles   (4/20, 20%)
19  -  1-2 orchidmen   (1/20, 5%)
20  -  roll 2x   (1/20, 5%)

The probabilities are almost the same (within 3.3%), and I can fit the same number of monsters. But all of a sudden the table is much more adaptable. I can modify a result in the middle of the table (like making the goblins 5% more or less common) without having to rework everything!

The small downside is that I can't have a 2.7% result for the REALLY rare monsters. The smallest unit is 5% but that's a fair trade for versatility, ease of use and less mental math. 5% is the chance of a critical miss, so there is a nice symmetry in it also being the chance of rolling the blood-mad Wights of the Murderous Moors, or whatever harshness is on your table.


The Monsters

Can you feel... the danger?

Random encounters haven't happened often in the last few sessions (my dice seem to love going easy on the players). Given their rarity, I have decided to move away from the more 'naturalistic' monsters. Having the only random encounter in a three- or four-day expedition through the steaming jungle wilderness be with mundane capybaras (pictured) is a bit weak. 

Even if they should be there for 'realism', the encounter can at least be with giant capybaras the size of VW buses, or vampire bats instead of a swarm of normal bats, or sneaky camouflaged giant chameleons with 25' long tongue attacks (that's a cool one actually...) instead of plain giant lizards. Capybaras can be the kind of thing you hunt for dinner.

So here's my rectified random encounter table with better monsters and everything streamlined a little bit. Thanks again to the Alexandrian for this.

1d20

1-3  -  1-3 goblin hunters
4-5  -  1-3 neanderthals
6-8  -  1-3 giant botflies
9-11  -  1-3 steam beetles
12-14  -  1 man-mantis   [2-HD version of giant mantis]
15-16  -  1-2 giant chameleons
17  -  1 jungle bear (hairless)  [too good not to use!]
18  -  1 giant bee
19  -  1-2 orchidmen
20  -  roll 2x and combine

Now the monsters are a bit more exciting. Nothing you could actually encounter on Earth (a few variations are okay). I'm going to do all my random encounter tables in this format. It's customizable and has just enough granularity for me to work with, not so much that it takes any mental strain to manipulate.


*****

I'm on fire this week. Let's see what's on the playlist next?

Play Report: Return to Land's End - Sessions 3 & 4

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Vuk Thuul - level 1 half-elf snake oracle

Leliana Vess - level 1 sylph witch

Nahash - level 1 lizardman barbarian

*****

A Big Score

When we left our adventurous trio, they were in the goblins' basement treasure room digging through all the cool stuff they had found.

Nahash used his cheap 50' rope to strap the two treasure chests to his back. Throwing the last of their hacked-apart neanderthal corpses outside the room distracted the two surviving anemone men enough for the PCs to escape the basement. Imagining themselves safe, they barred the door and rested for the night to recover spells and a few hit points. At this point the wildmen leader snuck into the inn in the dead of night seeking revenge.

Nahash heard something, and crept upstairs to investigate. Unfortunately lizardmen don't have darkvision, so when he saw a pale shape moving in the darkness and lunged with his spear, he succeeded only in crashing into a pile of furniture and waking up the other PCs. Lucky for him, since the wildmen leader's greatclub smote him fiercely for 12 points of damage, leaving the seemingly-indestructible 15-hp barbarian close to a KO. Leliana woke up, ran into the mix and one sleep hex later, Vuk Thuul knifed his ass and everyone went back to bed.

The next day the PCs headed back home with the treasure. [The wandering monster tables were quite lenient these two sessions, and I wonder if I should step them up even more, but that's a subject for another post]. They scrambled back up the cliff and arrived, muddy and bleeding, back in Land's End. The first order was paying the sage Vantadel to house Nahash away from the prying eyes of the villagers (nobody likes foreigners, especially not 6-foot talking lizards with spears).

After all the gold, silver, trinkets and art objects were tallied up the crew had raked in about 5400 silver, and almost 6000 XP!! Vuk Thuul used most of his share paying the sage for research projects. The other PCs bought new clothes, backpacks, adventuring gear and a few better weapons.

[I am using a silver standard, but the costs in gold listed in the Pathfinder book - so everything is 10 times the price it normally would be. They had to pull in this big score just to get some 'standard-grade' items instead of rope that's falling apart, weapons that break, etc.]


Return to the Inn: Exploration and Revelations




Deciding to push their fucking luck in a serious way, the party returned to get paid by the goblins who first gave them the job. You know, the job where they swiped all the goblins' treasure they could carry?

After burying their visible loot (Nahash's bone sword, etc) they returned to the goblins' ruined fort and showed them some wildmen scalps. Sgt. Horgh gave them their bounty of silver and offered a new job: go north to the goblins' caves near the quarry, and find out why nothing's been heard from them for weeks. They elected to rest up in the fort and spent some of their night trying out the strange magical torches they... erh... looted from the goblins' treasure room. [I don't think any of the players realized what they were doing. When those turn up missing, someone might remember those adventurers...]

Instead of going north, the team returned to the goblins' inn and climb down the well they meant to check out before. Turns out it opened into an old cave system underneath! The wildmen had wrecked everything, and fled with some goblin prisoners. Those they didn't eat, kill or enslave were a few goblin children and some wounded adults in a cage. They spoke common (these goblins are a pretty well-educated bunch. I wonder why?) and were a bit helpful, especially when the PCs released them and Leliana healed everyone with a hex [the witch is a resource monster - those hexes never run out. Jesus Christ].

Delving deeper, they passed through a deep flooded cave and into the goblins' underground base, originally built by the dwarves in ages past. The place was ransacked, corpses of goblin and neanderthals everywhere. The wildmen had fled with the valuables, except a few boxes of palm-sized heavy brass coins stamped with outlandish faces and creatures. The party took a few as the full crates were far too heavy to carry.

One barred door opened into a tiny foul-smelling room. A great crude stone idol of a hideous toad squatted on a defaced altar to the dwarven gods. Ritual implements, knives and tools littered the room. In the center, a great basin filled with slime, covered in moss and mold, emanated a deathly odor. The party poked into it with a stick, which promptly dissolved and they decided to leave it a lone. Leliana did find a wickedly curved ritual knife (normal dagger stats, but a well-made metal weapon is still a precious commodity at this point in the game!). Nahash pried the smooth yellow-green gemstone eyes out of the frog statue.

[I know I put them there, and it was kind of obvious, but my heart still filled with joy when he pried those eyes out with the other two holding a blanket so they wouldn't fall into the vat of slime.]

Another room had goblin-sized fortifications in it - facing inwards. In the center was a shaft going straight down, with climbing gear, anchors for ropes and travelling equipment everywhere. When Vuk Thuul cast light on a pebble and dropped it in, I played him this video:

They elected not to climb down. [Smart.]

The last door in the complex had debris and furniture piled haphazardly in front of it. Clearing it away and sticking his head through the door, Nahash was greeted warmly.

"Come in," a deep and sinister voice purred. "I've been waiting for more visitors..."

The voice belonged to an eight-foot tall, fire engine-red talking slug with a smug grin. ABSALOM GLOP was trapped inside a glowing circle of salt on the floor. Leliana's arcane knowledge identified it as a Magic Circle against Law. Curious...

Absalom explained that it had been summoned from deep underground by the white goblin priest Guzboch and trapped inside the magic circle. It was desperate to be freed. This led to some hard bargaining. Absalom explained its (currently very weak) Lawful aura prevented the PCs from stealing any goblin property or taking any of their stolen loot out of the room. [Remember when they signed a mercenary contract with Guzboch back in session 1? I was planning for this.] If the circle were broken, it could leave and they'd be free to take anything they desired.

Vuk Thuul struck a deal. Absalom swore to wage no aggression against the party for one month, answer three serious questions and one personal inquiry. Vuk Thuul asked about these things:

1 - What do you know of the ancient god called VORN, who sleeps beneath the Dreaming Mountain?

2 - Do you know anything about these carved ivory plates we found?

3 - Tell us about the petrified forest?

Absalom answered these as its knowledge allowed, expounding on these topics long into the night. It lived deep in the earth, and has travelled far, even visiting the surface sometimes. It is is old - personally remembering the rise of Vorn's priesthood a thousand years ago, and relating some facts about that time. Of the ivory plates it could say little except they were of high elven make, thousands of years old. The stone forest was created during the cataclysmic fall of that same ancient race, when their magic ran amok and nearly destroyed the world.

4 - For his last question, Vuk Thuul pulled down his ragged bandanna to reveal the mysterious brand that mars his face and neck: two serpents coming down his chin and curving around his jaw to whisper in his ears.

Absalom was intrigued by this development, leaning in close to Vuk Thuul's face and murmuring to itself about "definitely being on the lists." It could only relate a tale of a tattooed man it had met once, who hailed from a place called Scrivenbough and named his master - ABRAXAS.

His questions answered, Vuk Thuul scratched the salt circle. Absalom was out of the room in a flash leaving only a trail of slime, diving into the cistern in the cave outside and swimming downward into the darkness out of sight.

*****

[The day after this session I realized I had forgotten to describe a series of adventure hooks in the form of the goblins' intelligence reports piled in a closet the PCs had searched. I posted them up in our 'scheduling a game' group chat. I reproduce it here so it won't get lost, and because I feel pretty good about it.]

"When you were searching the cabinets for treasure after Absalom left, there was a 'booklet' of papers bound together with string, and some loose pages scattered on top. None are magical. The booklet is written with Imperial characters, in a language or code none of you recognize. The loose papers are scratched out in Imperial Common and each one is a brief report on some subject of interest to the goblins. All written in different scribbly handwriting, they read as follows:

1 - 'Black robes a few days south in jungles. Look like pinks, maybe. Tall bone-walkers too. All of them hunting for something.'

2 - 'Tall, tall white buildings in the jungle southeast. Scouts afraid.'

3 - 'Tall green lizards more fighty for months. More with the red paint come out of the swamp into our territory. Yellow-eyes down the river too hard to fight.'

4 - 'North along the river past the fork. Stone building is covered in trees. Big snake carvings. Lots of dead black-robes around. Smells bad!'

5 - 'The rock pit by the cliffs is dangerous. A few scouts and guards have disappeared. Why do we have to build a new fort anyway?'

6 - The last piece of paper is a series of scribbles and scratches, done in charcoal. Some notes underneath in a different, more practise handwriting say: 'Stone under the inn. Bears further study.'"


The next day my brother said "Oh snap. This is better than Elder Scrolls."

Feels pretty good!!!