I recently (oh shit, this was like six months ago now) went to a music festival/renaissance fair in the town over and I was struck at the reenactors' commitment to authenticity. As someone who plays a lot of make believe informed by the folkloric traditions of Europe and elsewhere should I have a better grasp on how war was actually waged?
I am torn. So listen to this internal conversation: ConBon: I think it's important that we understand the conditions and reality of combat in the Middle Ages. We want our games to reflect life, even when there are dragons and baby-wizard-clones.
CWilly: I disagree, an attack in D&D is an abstracted way of simulating the action of swinging a sword. We have precluded the need to understand the swing of the sword by having game designers and dungeon masters assign attributes to weapons.
CB: So? If one of our players wanted to use the pommel of his sword to bludgeon a skeleton I would probably let him do that with no penalty, though for less damage than a sword swing. The players understanding of how a sword was built and used improves their ability to use it in game.
CW: Fair point, but the player that doesn't know that may be at a disadvantage.
CB: Good! That will encourage them to learn about their weapons and skills and really immerse themselves in the setting!
CW: No, I think it introduces a layer of complexity and inaccessibility to the game that detracts from its enjoyment. We should absolutely want to encourage immersion and creativity, but never at the cost of penalizing players with less "Player Skill".
CB: Touché my dear fellow. But I still hold that the DM have at least some idea of the means of combat in the setting/era that the game is taking place in. They don't always have to use/include this deeper knowledge, but the ability to answer the PCs probing questions with logical and thoughtful answers is valuable.
CW: Oh absolutely, but the same could be said about having a coherent idea of how magic works in the world. As long as you have a good idea about how you want it to work you can kind of make it up as you go along. Magic laser tanks don't exist, but if a PC asks if their is a self destruct button in one then the answer will vary on what role you want magic laser tanks to play in your Campaign.
And they walk hand in hand into the sunset still arguing...
Some of this may also help make a setting feel more sparse and "gritty" (though I am hesitant to use the phrase). For example, swords were incredibly expensive to make and not very versatile in their uses. Should a fist level warrior-type just starting out on their adventure be able to even have access to a sword? Or perhaps you can have a sword if your daddy was rich, but you get a wood cutting axe or a sickle or a spear otherwise.
I saw something come out of the D&D 5e Homebrew Tumblr a few months back that had stats for Dark Age weapons like seaxes and such. While I like the commitment to the setting and creating usable tools/analogs for DMs to run games in Dark Age Europe, I don't think that it is important to stat a heavy seaxe any differently than a greatsword. Its the same problem I have with the near-fetish like attention D20Modern pays to different gun stats. I don't really care what model Glock I have, I just wanna shoot stuff.
Now when I think of D&D 5e players I think of a lot of young professionals (~20s and 30s) just trying out D&D for the first time. I assume I have a better grasp of medieval combat than they do. But does that mean that my games are more fun? Or does it even mean that my games are a more accurate simulation of what combat would be like if medieval folks where fighting horrible magical monsters? Are those desirable goals? I dunno. What do you think?
According to the locals this is the resting place of all dead souls (and no one has been able to prove them wrong yet).
This island of marble has been completely carved into shrines to the dead.Centuries ago when they realized that the Spirits of their ancestors slept in the very stones beneath their feet they began to pay them homage with tombs. Back then they had the space for "true" tombs, and the monuments were magnificent in scope if rudimentary in execution, and even a modest man could buy his own sepulcher to lay his bones in once he died.
As time slipped on and more Spirits began to reside there in ever and ever more grand housing, the Tomb Builders reached the height of their craft. Indeed, many of the architectural advances of the modern Age come from the Tomb Builders being confronted with the challenge of cutting more houses for bones out of the living white stone of the island.
Almost fractal now in its complexity, every nook and cranny has been utilized and memorialized. The narrow pathways wander over hill and artificial valley, every step you take is on an intricately carved tile for the Spirit of some poor man or woman, around every corner is a little alcove with a hundred shelves where the ashes of those long dead are laid for eternity. Every fountain is an homage to the beauty of a youth cut down too soon, every column a solemn memory of a parent much missed, and every bench a tribute to the hospitality of a generous entertainer long dead.
Now the few living Tomb Builders that are left tend to the graves of their ancestors and quietly work on their own. All arable land has been dug out till good solid white marble was hit, the island is now devoid of vegetation expect for the lichens and moss that crawl on the older tombs. The water table now purely serves the ever murmuring fountains, and the Tomb Builders import all of their food from other places as the Sea around the Ivory Island is poison to sea life from the run off of the marble. Other than the Tomb Builders and visitors, this is truly an island for the dead.
How to Use the Ivory Island
Now in its waning days the Ivory Island has become quite the destination for tourists from the not so distant Chalcis Chain, many sages and sorcerers of considerable potency have been interred here from centuries ago when it was still fashionable lay your Spirit to rest on the island.
For this reason one of the many wizards of Chalcis may ask you to fetch them the pinkie toe bone of some ancient mage so that they can enhance their scrying rituals. And of course there are untold but well rumored whispers of riches laid to rest beside the bodies of the dead, and it is said some bold blasphemous soul could simply wander into their tombs and liberate their artifacts.
This is also a popular destination for the descendants of the many people that are buried on the island, they are given special attention when summoningand bargaining with the Spirits of the dead. It would really help your bandit prince's claim on the throne if you can convince his long dead great-great-great-great-great-great-grand pappy to say that he is the heir.
In summary the island can serve as:
A fetch quest destination
A megadungeon littered with undead (the Spirits of the dead do not like grave robbers)
A place to get information or quests from your ancestors
I like the Ivory Island a lot, I may write a follow up post if my players ever find themselves in that neck of the sea...
My players met one of the biggest baddest creatures on my random encounter table last session, "the kraken" (not actually a kraken, just had that name in there as a placeholder for giant squid beast.). They handled it amazingly well by fleeing to the nearest island with a shallow reef to get away from it. They then convincing a Spirit to help them distract it so they could sail away, by making up a song and building a small shrine in praise of the Spirit.
Part of their roleplay discussion with the Spirit was about the nature of the kraken and what it feared. It came out that the kraken is locked in an eternal hunt with what was implied to be a legendary Kētos. Both prowl the Sea looking for the other. This got me thinking about creating simple movement rules for the Kētos and the "kraken" to map and keep track of their struggles against each other.
In the amazing Joseph Manola's post about the Triple Crown he describes three cosmically damned beings wandering the world. The PCs have to find and interact with these beings in order to retrieve the Triple Crown, a stunning example of his romantic fantasy philosophy to gaming. This got me thinking about how one might keep track of these wandering agents on a hexmap as a way for players to concretely get and use information about their quarry, and so these rules for wandering titanic sea creatures were born...
But First, Some Lore!
So we have two ancient sea creatures hunting each other. One is squid like, the other is "The Great One", an ambiguous large animal implied to be one of the Kētos. Since Kētos already exist as an identifiable group with my players, I want to distinguish this as another creature, and my random encounter table says it should be a "dragon turtle" what ever that really is. So we have a "kraken" and a "dragon turtle", lets write something more interesting than their generic D&D counter parts.
Like this...
...plus this and massive and old.
The Great One:
This massive sea turtle is the last of its kind. It once had mates, brothers and sisters, but that was an Age ago before the world changed and before its ancient enemy ripped them from fin to shell. This relic of the ancient ocean cruises the shallow waters of Ánemos with powerful strokes of its fins, grazing on kelp forests and fish when it is not taking long naps near islands. Often mistaken for a reef or a small island the people of Ánemos have many stories of the "island that awoke" or the "reef that lived".
When it catches the scent of its enemy in the water it rises in a flurry of activity, bent on entering a final battle with its ancient foe. This has happened many times before, each ending in a draw were they both flee to lick their wounds and fight another day.
You know, classic kraken but....
...also horrifying gold worm beast.
The Tentacled Fiend:
Resembling a giant squid or octopus in appendage only this fiend of the deep lays in wait in the deep ravines between the shelves of islands, letting its rubbery arms drift with the currents. Perhaps it slumbers, each tentacle with enough autonomy to grasp and wrestle whatever poor creature happens to graze it. Then the tentacle pulls the poor thing to the depths to its gaping maw, all with out the greater beast awakening. Few sailors have sighted the true beast, though the stories are many of the piece of drifting flesh that would rise up and drag men to their graves.
After its long months of quiet rest the Fiend again extricates itself from its deep crevasse in search of its ancient enemy, either in a deep-seated pattern of predator seeking natural prey, or ancient vengeance for broods lost to the fell beaks of a scavenging enemy.
Their "True" Nature
Legend has it that the Tentacled Fiend and the Great One are halves of the same whole. The Fiend is the incarnation of the terrors of the deep, the Great One the mildness of the shallows. They are the rent asunder Avatar of the Spirit of the Sea. Some say when they finally commit to it their final battle will be their reunion, and as they are locked in each others death grips their blood will mingle with the sea foam and the Spirit of the Sea will be whole as in the ancient world.
This must never be allowed to happen. As every channel, bay, reef, and shoal has a splinter of the greater Spirit, they are short sighted and self interested fragments. Would a unified Spirit of the Sea tolerate the presence of Civilization on her shores? Would she let people fish her bounty to eat her children? Could a man ever feel safe aboard a ship again? No, humanity would crumble underneath the fierce apathy of the Sea.
But these are just stories...
Tracking their Movements
So when the PCs encounter the Great One or the Tentacled Fiend on the random encounter table for the first time you start tracking their movements (or when they start caring, perhaps to hunt them or to commune with them). On your hex map they can move three hexes each week, rolling a 1d6 to determine their heading, discounting results that have them back tracking. They also have a 1 in 10 chance of settling down in a hex and "sleeping" for 1d6+2 weeks.
Information about their movements only reaches the PCs if they:
Enter civilized waters, there are sightings by trade/military ships
They encounter each other and engage in titanic combat, some poor fisher man is bound to see that
Get rolled on the random encounter table again
I like this system because its simple enough to keep track of, and should give the PCs enough info to track them, but still gives them an element of surprise with them showing up unexpectedly as random encounters. I'm implementing this system right now, so I'll report back with how it goes!
One of my players is playing a Lipimancer! And he is rocking it! So now I have to take my half baked idea and make it into a usable 5e sub-class.
Some quickly obvious problems arise from the original post:
It implies an infinite number of spells per day assuming you can find enough food
Having spells cost calories means that I have to figure out a way to equate relative cost of different spell levels
The simple solution is to use an already built in mechanic of the sorcerer class, sorcerer points, and keeping the spell casting system intact.
Invest in suspenders, you'll need them
The Lipimancer:
Regaining Spell Slots: When you take a long rest you regain all of your spell slots but it consumes all of your stored calories, AND unless you have full calories stored you only regain half of the number of spell slots per spell level, rounding down.
So a 4th level Lipimancer goes to sleep with only 10,000 stored calories she wakes up hungry (no calories stored) and with only 2 1st level spell slots and 1 2nd spell slot restored. Lipimancers are cranky in the morning if they are hungry.
Wellspring of Vitality: At 2nd level you learn how to tap into your bodies stored energies to augment your casting. 4,000 calories are equal to 1 sorcerer point, and unlike sorcery points you do not regain all of your calories at the end of a long rest, you have to eat to get them back. You can never have more calories stored than your current calorie cap (see table below).
Let the Fat Flow: You can translate your stored calories into magical energy and vice versa, either by spending calories to get spell slots refreshed or spending spell slots for more calories (but never more than your cap!), both are bonus actions. You cannot regain spell slots greater than 5th level using this ability.
Some Tables:
Level
Sorcery Points
Calorie Equvilent
1st
-
4,000
2nd
2
8,000
3rd
3
12,000
4th
4
16,000
5th
5
20,000
6th
6
24,000
7th
7
28,000
8th
8
32,000
9th
9
36,000
10th
10
40,000
11th
11
44,000
12th
12
48,000
13th
13
52,000
14th
14
56,000
15th
15
60,000
16th
16
64,000
17th
17
68,000
18th
18
72,000
19th
19
76,000
20th
20
80,000
Spell Slot
Level Regained
Sorcery
Point Cost
Calorie
Cost
1st
2
8,000
2nd
3
12,000
3rd
5
20,000
4th
6
24,000
5th
7
28,000
(I like this because it builds in a cap to the number of calories the Lipimancer has stored away to use for magic but leaves the spell casting system intact so that they can use them seamlessly with the sorcerer's class abilities, and I don't have to mess with fudged spell level equivalence)
Metamagic: At 3rd level you gain the Metamagic ability, as described in the PHB, except that you expend calories instead of sorcery points.
Spontaneous Lipid-Generation: At 20th level you regain 16,000 calories just by taking a light nap (a short rest). You must be asleep for this to work.
Suddenly giant chickens become the most desirable enemy to hunt.
Okay great, we've tweaked the sorcerer class enough to work as a Lipimancer, now lets make their sub-class abilities:
Way of the Fat Mage: At 1st level you gain access to your calorie pool, but only for use in determining spell slot replenishment. You also get all of the tweaks to the sorcerer class as described above. In addition you the following spells to your learn able spell list:
Spell Level
Spell
Cantrip
Consume
1st
Emesis
2nd
Swallow Whole
3rd
Vortex of Excess
4th
Dimension of Flesh
Over Burn: At 6th level you can choose to spend more calories than you have stored, sending you into calorie debt. When you over draw this way you must make a DC 12+(1 per 4,000 calories expend bellow 0) Constitution save or fall unconscious and takes 1d6 Con damage. You can only be awoken if force fed enough food to get you back to positive calories, but the Con damage remains until magically restored or taking a week of downtime recovery and eating your full calories every day per point of Con damage.
So a 6th level Lipimancer has only 4,000 calories stored, but he really needs to cast one more 1st level spell. He expends the calories (8,000) to get the spell slot as a bonus action and then he rolls a DC 13 Constitution save. If he passes she acts normally, if she fails she falls into a low-energy coma state and take 1d6 Con damage. He can continue to over draw this way down to -24,000 calories (bottom cap mirrors top cap), at which point he falls into the coma state regardless, but she only takes Con damage if she fails her save.
14th Level: Leaving for player and I to work out. 18th Level:Leaving for player and I to work out.
I was listening to the radio while driving for work (both things I do often), and there was this interview with crime novelist Catriona McPherson about her newest novel "Reek of Red Herrings", the latest in her series of murder novels. It was a nice interview, but what caught my attention was her attention to the peculiar wedding traditions of the Banffshire coast in Scotland, of which I had never heard.
Some juicy bits from the cold, grassy hills of Scotland:
The men fish all year so they hold all of their weddings at the same time as a community around Christmas time
Weddings last a week and there is a different event/activity every day
Generally they do a "handfasting" (a ceremony where the groom/bride's hands are tied together) as a pre-wedding, these aren't binding if they can't have kids, so they try out the marrige first by trying to have a kid. If the bride gets pregnant they get married, if not they court others.
The blackening of the bride, as the groom nails his bride's colors to his mast this makes her interesting to demons and other malevolent fey, so she has nasty stuff poured over her (rotten eggs in cabbage water for example) to dissuade them from taking her
So to just to throw out some ideas of how to use these:
The party shelters on an island from a storm, they get roped in as part of a wedding party in exchange for shelter. But! Body parts of one of the many grooms are found in fish barrels. Who done it? They have a week of weird traditions to deal with to solve the mystery before everyone goes back to fishing!
An ancient murder victim is found preserved in a peat bog, seemingly confirming that dear great-great-great-great-grandpa really was murdered, not just lost in the bog! Old tensions boiling over after the body is found, and the long dormant blood feud is renewed. Soon brides are killing their grooms and grannies are poisoning their grandchildren from the other side of the village feud! Can you solve the ancient murder and smooth the tensions in the village? Maybe a marriage would help!
The PCs badly misinterpret the social situation and they all get married! (Not unlike that Firefly episode...)
Actual demons and cruel fey want to take away the bride, have to fight them off while the really long and intricate wedding ceremony goes on.
This is the first of my follow up posts to this project, today's class is the Barbarian. The goal of this project is to create a "minigame" of sorts for each sub-class for D&D 5e that allows the character to grow in ways not directly tied to their level progression and that makes each sub-class feel unique and interesting.
Path of the Berserker:
Original Idea: "Your rage and fury are your deepest joys, track the most amount of damage done in a single rage. With each new level of destruction you find deeper wells of joyous ruin."
Fun fact, historically a berserker was just a champion or one who wore a bear or wolf skin shirt as a sign of rank. There was not indication they had anger issues. So this image is at least partially correct.
So the idea here is to keep track of the amount of damage done in a rage. Pretty simple stuff, and for players that want to play a Berserker I think a logical step.
After playing with AnyDice for a few minutes with an "average" berserker I came up with some appropriate thresholds (note the highest damage thresholds are only possible once Extra Attacks are earned at level 5, criticals occur, and/or they are buffed to the moon).
The real challenge is going to be finding enough things to kill/hit while raging to get to these high levels of damage. *Sigh* The challenges of the berserker.
75 damage/rage: +1 to hit while frenzied
100 damage/rage: +1 to damage while frenzied
150 damage/rage: Fast healing 2 while frenzied
200 damage/rage: Add half proficiency bonus to Unarmored Defense while frenzied
300 damage/rage: Additional +2 to hit while frenzied
400 damage/rage: Additional +2 to damage while frenzied
500 damage/rage: Fast healing 5 while frenzied
750 damage/rage: Add proficiency bonus to Unarmored Defense while frenzied
1000 damage/rage: Fast healing 10 while frenzied
Totem Warrior:
Original Idea: "You find your totem animal in a dream or an ecstatic trance over the heady fumes of a ritual fire. You and the animal meld in body and spirit, you are the primal incarnation of the bear, the eagle, the wolf, or some other. Track the number of animals you help, these must be the same as your totem animal(s)."
You can play that crazy hairy man the wandered out of the mountains asking "Say, have you seen any wolves in distress lately?"
You have chosen a totem animal for your barbarian for the sweet fighting buffs, but this is to make actually confront and interact with the animal that you so admire. Every adventure you go on is going to be like this:
Anyway, down to the juicy stuff. These things all count as helping your totem animal:
Freeing a bear from a bear trap
Raising orphaned hawk eggs
Leading a wolf pack out of the ranch lands to new grounds for safe hunting
But are they equivalent? I dunno, probably. So instead of accounting for exactly how many animals you actually save, (Are 9 eagles equal to 2 wolves? The math gets weird.) lets use an abstract rating of how helpful you are being to the abstract totemic ideal of the animals you help.
Rank 1: You help an individual of the animal group during a time of distress (ie nurse a she wolf during a risky child birth, help a lost faun find its mother, give a thirsty bear clean water after a wild fire)
Rank 2: You defend an animal in combat
Rank 3: You help a community of animals during a time of distress (ie lead the wolf pack out of newly settled ranch land for safer hunting, you teach a momma bear and her cubs to collect honey and forage for a season)
Rank 4: You defend a community of animals in combat
Rank 5: You help the whole of the animal kind (Super amorphous, DM discretion)
So you can kind of see the magnitude of help that each rank merits. Lets say you once helped a whole wolf pack through the winter by bringing them meat periodically (Rank 3) and you find a wolf about to be killed by an angry shepherd and you save it by fighting him off (Rank 2), that's nice but it wont help you get to Rank 4, you gotta do something really special for that.
If you have more than one totem animal you can gain favor with each of the animals you have a totem of.
Bonuses from each Rank and Animal: Rank 1: All: The animal you save becomes a close friend and ally, appearing at most once per session at an opportune moment to help you. (Example: the cub you rescued from drowning wanders out of the woods just in time to give you a boost up over the stone wall) Mechanically this means that if you can explain how the animal can help you, once per session your animal friend can give you advantage on one skill or ability check. You can have many animal friends, but only use this ability once per day.
Rank 2: Wolf: Your sense of smell has gotten very good. You can now track by scent as a wolf could. You have disadvantage against smell based attacks. Eagle: You gain a piercing scream that gives you advantage on Intimidation checks with civilized people or advantage with Persuasion checks with birds (player must actually scream for this to work). Bear: You gain the ability to eat completely omnivorously. You can eat anything and anything you find, including raw meat, grass, branches, bees, moss, and mushrooms. This lets you get advantage on your save against ingested poisons.
Rank 3: Wolf: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 3rd level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon wolves or wolf like animals (can use dire wolves or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate). Eagle: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 3rd level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon eagles or wolf like animals (can use giant eagles or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate). Bear: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 3rd level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon bears and bear like animals (can just use the different bears in the MM or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate).
Rank 4: Wolf: In the Spirit Realm you can choose to take the shape of a Dire Wolf with HD equal to your level. Eagle: In the Spirit Realm you can choose to take the shape of a Giant Eagle with HD equal to your level. Bear:In the Spirit Realm you can choose to take the shape of a Polar Bear with HD equal to your level.
Rank 5: Wolf: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 5th level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon wolves or wolf like animals (can use dire wolves or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate). Eagle: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 5th level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon eagles or wolf like animals (can use giant eagles or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate). Bear: Can cast Conjure Animals as a 5th level spell as a ritual once a day, can only summon bears and bear like animals (can just use the different bears in the MM or re-skinned other beasts as appropriate).
Thoughts
Are they balanced? Probably not, but what ever, its going to take a Berserker a long time to get all of that damage in one frenzy. It does incentive-ize combat in a perhaps undesirable way.
The Totem Warrior I feel like better exemplifies a more whimsical and less combat oriented path, which is the goal for this series of posts. But it also more complex and unwieldy.
The Rock voiced the big guy and it was actually pretty good
I watched the movie Moana and it was very pretty looking and fun.
It also got me thinking about how cool Polynesian tattoo culture is. It's a nice half way between geometric and natural art. So let's use sweet tattoos as a stand in for armor, because a big muscely guy with a ton of tattoos is protected by his shocking look as much as by his ferocious speed.
(Some other bloggers have talked about this kind of idea before. Arnold K's fashion idea mostly)
Your tattoos only protect you when they are uncovered, so you gotta run around showing a lot of skin so everyone knows how cool you are. You get the basic (+1 AC) tattoo for free if you are a barbarian or a monk using the unarmored defense class option in addition to the Con/Wis and Dex bonuses. Other classes can use the tattoos instead of armor, AC=10+Tattoo bonus+ Dex bonus.
You can get more tattoos, but you'll need better and better tattooists for the new ones to be effective, and finding a grand master tattooist in Ánemos is hard, and the right to be tattooed by one is worth shedding blood over. The new tattoos must represent one of your great deeds.
Let's see a price chart. Tattoos are never going to be quite as effective as plate, but they don't weigh anything, you just gotta scrap off that mud and show em off. You also get an extra bonus to intimidation/persuasion type rolls corresponding to the bonus of your tattoos. This represents the fear and respect your mighty tattoos instill in strangers.
Tattoo Bonus
Tattooist Level
Cost (Drachma/Silver Pieces)
Time to Tattoo
+1
Novice
500
1 week
+2
Journeyman
1,000
2 weeks
+3
Expert
2,500
1 month
+4
Master
5,000
2 months
+5
Grandmaster
10,000
4 months
You have to get tattooed with every successive level of tattoo, any Expert tattooist worth their ink will laugh you out of their studio if you show up clean and blank as a baby.
There are of course magical tattoos you can get, perhaps finding the design in ruins or tattooed onto the corpse of a long dead Sea King. You may even be given one as a reward. Magical tattoos is probably a blog post itself.
