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I mean, Sif was all that but with 1 high Strength Bonus in Thousand Thrones. Ulrike isn't quite as strong and tough; she's much more normal for a 'human' character and tops out in the 50s since her really awesome rolls weren't in S and T and she lacks the stat talents for them. Which is about normal for a 3rd tier. S and T are the most carefully controlled stats in the game since they put hard numbers on the table in combat. It's very rare to get more than +20 to them during your career; only Champion, Grail Knight, and Daemon Slayer really go higher to my knowledge. Oh, and Grandmaster, but that class is kind of crazy anyway.
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May 10, 2020 23:30
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Soulbound Money And Power The Equipment section opens with a note that during chargen, you can buy any Common or Rare equipment you want with your starting collection of Aqua Ghyranis; there are two other categories: Special ('cannot be bought at all, needs to be found or given') and Exotic ('will require a specialized contact and some delivery time'), and presumably if you want Exotic goods not in your kit, you have to ask the GM if you can get them. Then it's time to talk about currency. The remnant cultures that survived the Age of Chaos have been reconnected with return of Sigmar and the founding of the Cities. Before now, most commerce was done through barter and direct trade of goods rather than with currency, which tended to be highly local. Local currencies remain popular in many cities or cultures. Excelsis in Ghur uses the Glimmerings, carved slivers of the Spear of Mallus, which can grant minor visions of the future, while mages and nobles often rely on realmstone, solidified and crystallized magical energy infused with a realm's power. An ounce of realmstone is worth a few hundred drops of Aqua Ghyranis, to the right buyer. However, the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous nature of realmstone has led to it being largely rejected outside of the arcane fields. The Kharadron Overlords attempted to popularize metal coins as currency, but ran into problems when people realized they controlled most of the Spiral Crux of Chamon, which is where precious metal is most common. Instead, the primary currency of trade is Aqua Ghyranis, sacred water taken from the area of Verdia in Ghyran. The hardliner isolationists among the Sylvaneth are very unhappy about this, but can't actually stop it. Auqa Ghyranis is infused with Ghyran's pure life energy, causing growth and healing in living things. The base unit is a single drop, typically measured with a pipette. Above that is the phial, typically an inch-high glass one, though they come in highly elaborate designs if you want to show off. Each phial holds about ten drops. Above this is the sphere, a palm-sized orb full of the stuff. They usually are closed with a cork or stopper, but some have a twist-release valve or need a hole drilled in. A sphere contains one hundred drops. Aqua Ghyranis is highly precious in any Realm except Ghyran itself, but none moreso than Aqshy, the REalm of Fire. It was devastated by the Age of Chaos and much of the land was corrupted by Chaos taint. Aqua Ghyranis has allowed the land to be reclaimed, with farming beginning again as plants can grow in land treated with the stuff. Animals have become healthier, and the Free Peoples are slowly reclaiming the deserts and wastelands of Aqshy once more. A full sphere of Aqua Ghyranis can purify a small patch of land of Chaos taint or other unnatural forces, or can be used to accelerate growth within a small area of healthy land. A drop of Aqua Ghyranis can also be consumed to heal 1 Toughness, while a phial heals 10 Toughness and removes a Condition. Consuming an entire sphere heals all Toughness, all Conditions and one Wound. While Aqua Ghyranis has grown popular as a currenct, barter remains common. The value of trade goods depends highly on where you are and who you're selling them to, because each Realm has very, very different needs and resources. Ghur has many strong animals bred as livestock for trade, but must get their metal from Chamon. Shyish has only decaded and easily broken wood, and must go to Aqshy for its stronger, sun-blasted timber from the Great Parch. Aqshy relies heavily on Ghyran for Aqua Ghyranis and food. Barter can typically be handled with just roleplay and comparison of the listed values of items, but an item demand should be treated as double its normal value or even triple, while an abundant or unwanted item might have its value halved. Common goods are readily found in any city, and frequently available even in minor settlements. Rare items can be found in a city if you know where to look or know somebody who does, but you might have to wait a day or so. Outside cities, you can sometimes find them, but not often. Exotic items are hard to get, often requiring unusual handling or rare materials, or possibly even are illegal. You will need a contact to get them, and it'll take shipping. Special goods are unique - artifacts, one of a kind items or divine gifts. You almost certainly cannot buy them. Weapons, at least, are cheap and generally plentiful, thanks to the massive amount of metals on Chamon and the loose alliance of Order. The only real notable thing here is that all weapons and armor thjat Stormcast start with are noted to be made of Sigmarite, and thus get the Sigmarite trait for free. Sigmarite equipment is always Special rarity. Weapons come with tags, which modify what they can do or provide keywords for Talents to draw on. Most wepaons are common, though some of the weirder ones, like finger claws, or dangerous ones, like halberds or great crossbows, are rare. Only a few are Exotic - of the ones anyone can use, only the Runic Iron (a burning iron that can destroy armor) and the Hand Cannon (a very powerful pistol) are Exotic. Armor is just as common, though the heat of the Great Parch can make it uncomfortable. Light Armor gives 1 Armor and has the Subtle tag, but anyone can wear it. Medium Armor gives 2 but requires Body 2. Heavy Armor gives 3 Armor, has the Loud tag and requires Body 4. (And is Rare.) Shields do not increase Armor, but instead give a bonus to Defence when wielded. You can use armor you don't have the Body for, but it penalizes your speed and Defence. Generally, armor is one size fits all, but the sidebar notes that a Stormcast or Kurnoth might run into problems due to their size if the GM wants it and need to find a specialist. (It's wrong about the Kurnoth because they can't wear armor to begin with.) Weapon and Armor tags: Aetheric: Powered by aether-gold, and almost exclusively used on Kharadron special gear. Blast: Damages all creatures in a small area, usually with an explosion. The damage rating will be listed. Cleave: Every 6 on your attack roll with this does 1 damage to all nearby foes, on top of your normal attack. Close: Ranged weapons with this get no penalty to attack foes in close range. Crushing: No effect on its own, but Talents can require it. Defensive: You get a bonus to Defence when using it. Ineffective: It's not meant for combat, such as unarmed attacks without Heavy Hitter or improvised weapons. Double Armor against it, and it can only deal Minor Wounds if it causes a Wound. Loud: Loud weapons alert everyone even slightly nearby when you attack with them, while Loud armor gives a penalty to Stealth. Penetrating: Ignore 1 point of Armor with it. Piercing: No effect on its own, but Talents can require it. Range: Lists the range of ranged weapons - usually either Short or Long. Rend: Permanently damages armor on 6s, but only after the attack resolves. Restraining: Can constrict movements, requiring targets to take an action to free themselves and be able to move again. Sigmarite: Counts as magical for ethereal creatures and others resistant to normal weapons. Cannot be transmuted or destroyed by magic, and if Sigmarite would be damaged or broken, it can't be reduced below 1 Armor. Slashing: No effect on its own, but Talents can require it. Spread: All targets near your original target take half damage, though those with higher Defence than your target can make a Reflexes check to avoid the damage. Subtle: Is easily hidden or disguised. Armor can pass for clothes or be covered with a cloak easily, for example, while weapons can be easily pocketed or look like tools. Thrown: Can be used to make ranged attacks easily as well as melee, will have a range listed - usually Short. Besides weapon and armor, you can get all kinds of useful gear. You can get acid to use as a primitive grenade - the advanced grenades are Kharadron only, after all - or coals from Aqshy that function as endless torches, or grappling hooks, or divination plates, which are glass discs that glow when in contact with Aqua Ghyranis, and glow only faintly if it's been diluted with normal water. Also notable are a few bits of specialized gear. Ethersea Cloaks of the Idoneth allow the wearer to breathe and move underwater as if on land, or sea creatures to swim in air as if underwater. (This also works on your mount if you're wearing one.) Ironbark Oil, created by the Kharadron, is traded to the Sylvaneth and can be used to harden their bark temporarily, increasing their Armor for a day. Corsair Sea-Dragon cloaks use the scales of the Sea-Dragons to increase Defence against ranged attacks. Sylvaneth Waypipes can be used to teleport through grass and plantlife, or even to hide in them and ambush foes. The real weird poo poo starts with Kharadron goods, however. The Kharadron are some of the most technologically advanced people in the universe, thanks to their engineering knowledge and harnessing of aether-gold. Their airships and Arkanaut military are armed with powerful weapons and fly through the skies with ease. The Endrineers and Aether-Khemists are hard at work all the time making new tech, some of which they give away to other skyports, and others of which they hide and hoard. Schematics go for massive amounts of money, and corporate espionage is common. Kharadron almost never sell their special toys outside their own culture, and when they do, it's usually 'salvaged' (read: captured) gear, sold for triple or more of its usual price, and stripped of identifying marks. Kharadron will easily notice the scrubbing and typically have rough questions about where you got it. Most Kharadron goods are powered by aether-gold. To allow them to be used in the field, they have developed Aether-rigs. Which is to say, power armor. Aether-rigs are heavily padded inside for comfort and safety, and are easily modified to allow all kinds of devices to plug into them and draw power. Each rig is powered by a number of power ingots - metal cylinders that contain precious aether-gold. The ingots and rig manage power usage automatically, conserving it when not in use and harvesting microscopic aerial aether-gold where they can. This allows for easy deployment. A basic Aether-rig has six ingots, which in games terms is Power Capacity 6. All devices plugged into a rig have a Power Consumption rating, and the total rating cannot exceed the Power Capacity of the rig, which you can expand by installing more power supplies. A basic rig also provides Armor 1, which can be improved by installing Arkanaut Armor on it. A rig functions at full power for one adventure, which the game suggests should be between 3 and 5 sessions. At that point, you will need to take a downtime action to do maintenance on it. If it doesn't receive its maintenance, its Power Capacity drops by 1, and some of your gear may stop working. This iwll continuie to happen after each adventure if you don't perform maintenance. Lost power capacity appears to be permanent; you'll need to get a new rig to be up at full. Maintenance is important. (Presumably an Aether-Khemist or other person capable of Aethercraft could fix it, but there's no rules for it explicitly.) Aetheric devices are very nice, and PCs can make them - some require Endrineering, others Aethercraft, and they're all longterm projects that are pretty expensive, but cheaper than buying them outright. All Kharadron also start with some of them as part of their basic kit. An Aether-Khemist will start with the rig, Aetheric Lenses (special glasses that provide Witch-Sight and a bonus to Awareness checks, and let you see through solid surfaces up to 5 feet thick), an Atmospheric Anatomiser (a mobile gas-testing lab strapped to your face, which can also be used to spray a gas that increases the damage of Aetheric weapons), Heavy Instruments (a set of devices that detect harmful gases or toxic environments), a Quadbreather (detects aether-gold and makes you immune to airborne poisons, diseases and gases) and either an Atmsopheric Isolation mod (a mod for the Anatomiser that can suck up breathable air, doing armor-ignoring damage to anyone immediately nearby before the air rushes back in) or a Roar of Grungni mod (a mod for the Anatomiser that can fire blasts of poison gas). Endrinmasters start with the rig, an Aethermight Hammer (a giant fuckoff hammer that does insane damage but requires the suit's support to lift), Arkanaut Armor (+1 armor per installed piece), an Endrinharness (gives +1 Body and lets you wield Aethermight Hammers) and a God's Eye (a welding laser strapped to your face that you can shoot people with). An Endrinrigger starts with the rig, an Aether-endrin (the jetpack that lets them fly), an Aethermatic Saw (a chainsaw), Arkanaut Armor, a Rapid-Fire Rivet Gun (a riveting tool that doubles as a short-range machine gun) and either an Aethermatic Volley Gun (a rotating-barrel machine gun) or a Drill Launcher (a nasty stabby drill which can fire its drill heads as exploding rockets) and one replacement head. A Skywarden starts with the rig, an Aether-endrin, Arkanaut Armor, a Vulcaniser Pistol (a gun that shoots superheated gas that can melt armor), either a Grapnel Launcher (a fireable grappling hook you can use to climb with or entangle foes as a weapon) or Skyhook (a harpoon you can shoot at people and recoil to pull them in) and either an Aethermatic Volley Gun or a Drill Launcher and one replacement head. Fyreslayers get Ur-Runes instead, runes carved of ur-gold that are hammered into their flesh. These channel Grimnir's power, and you're limited in how many can be active based on your Soul, but they all stack with each other freely. They activate once battle starts, but if you're Surprised, they only go on once your action comes up. Then they're good for the rest of the fight. Each rune remains active for a single adventure, then goes dead and loses all bonuses. You can get more put in you during downtime, if you have the ur-gold to make them (or can buy them). The game gives several examples of runes, but suggests others exist. They're meant to make up for the fact that Fyreslayers don't wear armor, or indeed shirts. Or pants. The average Fyreslayer goes around in a helmet, loincloth, leather girdle and not much else. The runes are, at least, quite potent. Awakened Steel: Any weapon you wield has the Rend trait. Farsight: You get a bonus to Accuracy. Fiery Determination: You get +1 Wounds. Fury: You get a bonus to Melee. Iron Skin: As long as you aren't wearing armor, you get +1 Armor. Relentless Zeal: You get a bonus to Initiative. Searing Heat: All of your attacks get a bonus to damage. Next time: Animals, drinks, travel and rules. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 01:20 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 01:14
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Karak Azgal DO CRIMES So our heroes are presented with the Crime Town. For the first time, Anya's magical cockney fox speaks up. Portia notes they are now among 'her people' and it is definitely a place where one should 'do crimes'. Anya tells her to be quiet. One does not simply announce to all around you that they intend to 'do crimes'. Elena asks her when the heck she got that; Portia had been kind of quiet on the trip. Vendrick is already annoyed by the 'ear tax' and heads into a local bar to get a drink, narrowly dodging a dart flung by a man trying to claim he could hit the bullseye while riding a sheep. He could not. The bartender watches wistfully as more of the patrons try ridiculous trick shots and money flows on the dart game betting, knowing all are too weak to challenge him. This is Jasper Appleberry, and he is justly proud of his skills at darts; he's legitimately one of the best shots in the Old World, having an 85% BS. Vendrick being a marksman himself, he asks the halfling (while ordering a drink) what game everyone is playing. While dodging another dart flung his way. He gets a long description of how exactly to play Moot Darts, which seems to be 'make up a crazy trick shot the audience thinks is awesome, try to hit the board at all, bonuses if you get the bullseye'. No-one will challenge Jasper anymore. He always wins. Vendrick frowns, then tosses down his share of the team's purse, 100 crowns. He bets he can make any shot the halfling suggests. The patrons go quiet. Nobody has challenged Jasper in years, and soon a collection is taken up among the patrons to match the 'arrogant knife-ear''s bet. The eventual stunt they settle on is a coordinated dance number, followed by throwing one dart from each hand at the same time. Whoever is closest to the board, wins. Both being exceptionally agile, elf and halfling pirouette, spin, and high-kick to a jaunty beat before both going into a final twirl and unleashing their darts. Unluckily for the halfling, while his shots are genuinely excellent (by the mechanics of the contest, he hit inner ring and bullseye, as it's 3 DoS to hit a bullseye) Vendrick has Fortune points and was able to reroll his one miss into a bullseye and a bullseye. While rolling at effectively BS-50 on the off-hand shot since he isn't ambidextrous. The tavern takes 5% of the betting, but the elf wins 190 crowns. While he did just take a bunch of money from a bunch of patrons, people are awed enough that anyone beat Jasper (hasn't happened in a decade). Jasper was the better dancer, Vendrick the better shot. He spends the rest of the night doing increasingly stupid things with darts while increasingly drunk. Meanwhile, Ulrike is attracted right to the fighting pit. It's what she does, and they praise Ulric in their own way. The local hero, Buurf Treadknuckle, has WS 80, SB 6, TB 7, and Agi 55, with +20 Dodge and 3 attacks. And they're bare-fisted fights, with the dwarf having Street Fighter for an extra +10% WS with his hands. Even the rather brave Ulrican knight can recognize she can't beat a warrior like that when she watches his first bout. The man utterly demolishes anyone he's put against, Karl wincing and mentally calculating how he'd put the guy's opponents back together as the champion goes through five local toughs at once. Ulrike goes to congratulate him afterwards only to find the old dwarf already headed for the bar, barely taking the time to wash the blood off. She's not a Priestess, but she's still an Ulrican, and hearing the troubles of a warrior with such fury is one of their duties while Karl volunteers himself to the pit master to help see to broken jaws and cracked skulls. Being good with people, she's able to get him talking, after a round of drinking. Note she doesn't have Consume Alcohol, but you don't really need it; it's TB in drinks before you even make checks and someone as tough as Ulrike can handle a couple bottles without flinching. Getting him to talk a bit, the old dwarf tells her (through an increasing slur) all about the men he's killed. So, so many men. Always screaming. In the classical Ulrican style, she listens, letting him get it out for himself. Some of the Kislevites, she notes, are always buying him more drinks. Encouraging him to get worse. The dwarf is clearly being used, considering he wants to get away from violence, but his tabs, his 'friends', all of it seem to be keeping him trapped there. This is a problem for Karl. Meanwhile, Anya is realizing two terrifying truths: One, Portia's yelling has attracted the Ranaldans and she's being run in to talk about 'taxes' because her cockney fox familiar won't shut up. Two, not a single member of the party actually speaks Khazalid fluently. This because said Ranaldans have led a patrol of very angry, bearded men to her and apparently told them she has stolen dwarf-gold, and she has no idea how to explain herself without causing A Grudgin'. Yes, she's probably going to defraud the cops later but not yet. A disguised figure from the shadows grabs her and yanks her around a corner, helping her hide; she quickly recognizes that it's Elena, having learned to conceal her regal bearing in the last few months. The two decide they're going to send a message about taxes by breaking into one of the Ranaldan hideouts, the Crystal Palace, and robbing their best thief. Between illusionary magic, Elena's skill at disguises, and an extremely exciting evening, soon both of them are being brought to the Temple of Ranald for dearly overestimating their abilities and getting an offer to join the 'guild' or else. As neither wants to rely on the dumb fox to rescue them, they agree, getting access to the extensive fencing network and tool supplies of the Ranaldan guild for a simple 10% of their take, showing that trying to lone wolf this out of pride alone was kind of stupid and it's way better to just join the reasonable if somewhat dickish religious thieves. Really, how did they think that was going to go. They got off primarily because the high priest thought it was really daring of them and admired the attempt. Seriously, you get way better bonuses as a Thief or Criminal type PC like Elena and magic rogue Anya if you just talk to the crime people about doing crimes and pay your 10%. You get all kinds of perks and it's not that much money. And really, you want a fence in this adventure. They even sell cheap medical supplies! Meanwhile Gilbert is obliviously having a pleasant evening meeting and chatting with the local blacksmith, a Norscan monster hunter named Siegfried who is happy to tell a knight all about killing all kinds of giant monsters and where their weakpoints are. By the end of it, he's handed over a considerable sum of money (500 GC, most of their savings outside of the pile Vendrick just won) to buy a unique axe the man sells to his friends, as a long-belated wedding gift for his wife. It's a Best Great Axe that loses the Slow trait and just does Impact. It's primo, and definitely worth the money if you can afford it. He has no idea two of his friends tried to out crime some crime guys and got sent to crime jail before talking out of it. Nor that Ulrike is currently making enemies with the entire Kislevite mob in a bar fight in the background while Karl slowly helps talk a sobbing dwarf through his alcoholism problem and finds out the root of it is his brother's death. Vendrick is impossibly, irresponsibly drunk and still somehow hasn't pegged a single actual person with a dart. It's been a crazy evening for everyone but Gilbert. Everyone is glad to see he didn't get into trouble until he reveals he spent almost all their money on a present for Ulrike, only for Vendrick to stagger through the doors of the inn, spectacularly hung-over but sporting more than enough to fund their expedition from his insane night at darts. And that's about how the plot hooks in Deadgate can go. There's tons more they could do, and there will probably be the occasional interlude here again when they get out of the tunnels to sell stuff and resupply. It really does have a lot of plot hooks and makes a nice break from just combat and tunnels, or a good appetizer before you get into them. Next Time: Skalf Hold, and Slaaneshi Gordon Gecko
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May 11, 2020 01:16
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century Communications, Security, Gadgets and Gear: Facetime, OF THE FUTURE! So the main thing I take away from the Communications section is Man, these guys did not anticipate the cell phone revolution at all. Cell phones are mentioned but the tech has not advanced, and obviously Ill let them off the hook for not anticipating smartphones and such but its interesting. Maybe you can handwave that all the satellites we rely on now got shut off in the Last War or something. Basically there are two entries here, one for Personal Radios, one for Videophones. A personal radio costs 10 cr and weighs up to half a pound, and theyre all pretty small. These are transceivers that can patch into phone lines as long as youre within 20 miles of a circuit. Outside of that theyve got a practical range of 100 miles before the signal starts to drop, and after 150 it disappears completely. One big disadvantage is a radio cant send and receive at the same time like a telephone. Personal radios use solar batteries with last for 48 hours, and can be recharged by exposure to Earth-level sunlight for an hour, or being plugged in for 10 minutes.  Videophones are common, though some people use plain non-video phones for privacy reasons. A telephone still has to be wired into a circuit or, if theyre cordless/cellular, be within 1/2 mile of a phone line. Videophones, on the other hand, work like weird directed TVs- you send a signal out on a beam that only a designated receiving unit or units can pick up. Its also mentioned that these are used for interplanetary calls, but it doesnt really go into the tech of that, surprisingly. Next up is Security- most of these arent gadgets the PCs will be carrying, its more stuff they might see in the field. Pressure Sensors, at 40 credits a piece, detect changes in air pressure, and are usually tiny things placed in walls or on ceilings. Works kinda like the motion sensing in the Alien movies I imagine. Infrared Sensors, at 50 credits, detect temperature changes down to a single degree, and more sensitive versions (75 credits) can set off alarms if a man-sized warm object enters a room. Recognition Pattern Sensors track audio and video and look for authorized faces/voices, unrecognized persons setting off an alarm. At 100 credits you get a sensor that can recognize up to five different people, for every additional 25 credits you get five more personnel. Which seems like a weird way of doing it to me. Theres a category for Voice Prints, Retinal Scanners, and Palm Scanners, which average out at 25 credits (they dont really go into specifics for this.) Theyre all basically more primitive versions of the Recognition Pattern stuff, but cheaper. Finally, theres an entry for Locks, Guards, and Watchdogs, which lists the cost as variable and basically only exists to note that all these things still exist in the 25th Century. Thanks? Okay we finally get to a section full of stuff the PCs are gonna use: Gadgets and Gear. A Plasmatorch is basically a futuristic welding torch, just a fuel canister, nozzle, and lighter. It can be used as a weapon to do 1d4 damage but you have to keep your finger on the switch to keep the flame lit, so theres a -2 attack penalty. You can use it to cut or weld and its 60 credits, nothing fancy. Macroglasses are super-advanced binoculars, they can enlarge an image up to 10 miles away. They can also take pictures, storing up to 10 images, with each additional image you want to store requiring an extra microchip. Man thats quaint. Anyway the basic thing costs 150 credits.  A Bioscanner is a handheld device that can be used to monitor the vital signs of a subject and do basic diagnostics (like detecting poison in the bloodstream.) It costs 400 credits and is designed for use on humans only, but 50-credit memory modules let you scan different kinds of animals. A Tech Scanner, for 500 credits, does a similar thing for machines, but works on a weird scale- the base unit only effectively diagnoses problems in machines costing up to 100 credits, and for each 100 credits you spend on upgrades it can diagnose an additional 100 credits worth of machinery. Compdexes are portable PCs (I forget even laptop wasnt really a common term back then), measuring 9 by 6 by 3, weighing three pounds, and costing 200 credits. Thats actually kinda reasonable. Theyve got wifi set up and can interface with main computers up to 500 miles away, but a NEO compdex wont read a RAM computer and vice versa so were not exactly cyberpunks here. You can also get a printer module for 50 cr. We start getting into heavy survival gear next. A Pressure Tent is sealed well enough that two people can survive up to 5 days in a vacuum, and the exterior is a hard fabric with an AC of 3. Theres tech inside to recycle air and water, as well asheat the place. They cost 250credits, with larger models also available.  A Watchbox is a small robot (about a cubic foot) that acts as a basic security system, it recognizes individuals and gives off an alarm if someone not-registered approaches. I mentioned these guys earlier when talking about equipment, theyre still neat. An Atomic Generator costs 600 credits and can generate power for 72 hours before the battery which regulates the very small fission reaction inside it gives out (at which the thing shuts down, thankfully.) A Gillmask extracts air from water so the wearer can breathe, and this actually doesnt have a duration on it- the chemical reaction involved just keeps going. Makes underwater adventures more viable, which is good considering the multiple species of Gennies that live there.  Finally theres the Fieldfence. This is another one we looked up in the Equipment chapter, it consists of a generator and at least two six-foot posts, which, when properly hooked up and set up to ten feet apart, send out a magnetic field which will act as a barrier against any projectile containing ferrous metal, and will also gently caress up any electronic devices caught between them. Mechanically this translates to a 70-90% miss chance for any projectile attack the field can affect- it wont stop lasers, it wont stop the slugs from Bucks old pistol because those are lead, but it will hamper things like the common needle and rocket pistols, as well as Desert Runner crossbows. Each fieldfence post also comes complete with a free packet of metallic chaff you can throw into the field- the magnetic field will make it swirl around and it does 1d6 damage to anyone in the field who doesnt have a natural armor of AC 5 or better (if you do then its harmless.) It takes about 5 minutes to set up the basic set of 2 posts and a generator, which costs 900 cr. Additional posts cost 250cr each and each take an extra 2 minutes to set up. The fieldfence is a pretty cool gadget because it doubles as an environmental feature in a combat encounter- if the players run into opponents who have one they have to strategize around it, and if they have one and are anticipating some kind of siege they can use it to their advantage. Its nifty. With basic gear out of the way, next time we will cover Medicine and Power.
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May 11, 2020 01:47
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I am always happy to see more of Buck Rogers, the 2e variant Young Night would have goddamn loved. Always interesting to see what sci-fi from 27 years ago didn't predict.
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May 11, 2020 01:55
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Soulbound Other Stuff Mounts are extremely important to a lot of cultures in the Realms, but the really big stuff - tame Magmadroths (read: angry reptilian fire hippos) or the Gryph-Hounds (read: wingless eagle-dogs) and Gryph-Charges (wingless eagle-horses) of Azyr are too valuable to sell. The average person that travels using a horse and prays they can outrun the monsters, undead and bandits that threaten what paths exist. Horses tend to be highly trained and have huge blinkers to avoid them spotting the things around them and dying of fright. Carts and wagons exist, but they aren't nearly as common - their slower speeds mean they're easy targets. Those merchants brave enough to travel the Realms have developed armored coaches, which work decently well until they run into ghosts, and there's been developments in trying to stud coaches in Realmstone to render them impermeable to spirits. This might or might not end up working. River and sea travel are equally dangerous, between the pirates, the sea monsters and the undead awakened by the Necroquake. Trade is a matter of getting a lot of armed guards and working together. As a result, what's available to eat and drink is highly variable by region. The Free Peoples are pragmatic and will eat anything they can. Anvilgard is reliant on the meat of fish and sea monsters retrieved by corsairs, while Hammerhal Aqsha and Hammerhal Ghyra, twin cities, trade meat, spices and grain with each other. The Kharadron make a steady living bringing in goods via the sky ports, as their fleets are usually better armed than human caravans, and settles from Azyr often bring large amounts of food with them. The fruits and vegetables of each realm tend to be unique, changed by the magic of the environment, and cooks have to be clever and creative to deal with the fact that what's available is never constant. Alcohol is, however. The Fyreslayers and Duardin each produce very strong beer, but they don't generally trade it. The Bugman's XXXXXX and Grumgar Brothers Pale Ale has been retained by the Kharadron, while the Fyreslayers produce the powerful Magmalt. The most common drink among the Cities of Sigmar, however, is Twin-tailed Ale, a generic name for an ale brewed on filtered water and whatever the local grain is. Most cities have small inns, since travel is rare, but they usually have a few spare rooms or a common room that they'll rent out. Industrial areas also have bunkhouses for workers to sleep between shifts, and there are a few high-end hotels, though they're quite expensive. Infirmaries are also fairly expensive, but do good work if you need healing - while normal rest will heal 1 Wound, rest in a good infirmary will heal 2 Wounds. The general rules are fairly simple. As stated, you roll dice equal to your stat plus your relevant skill Training. Tests are shown as DN X:Y. X in this case is your target number on a d6, and Y is the Complexity, or how many successes you need. These two axes are determined differently. Difficulty measures how hard something is, but Complexity is usually about how many steps a job will take or how long. Thus, while climbing a sheer cliff in a snowstorm might be Difficulty 6, it's still a relatively simple, one-step task, and will be Complexity 1, or DN 6:1. Searching a cluttered room might be quite easy, but take a while, so it could be DN 3:3. There's a note saying there's more advice on setting Difficulty and Complexity relative to dicepools in the GM section. That's all for normal, single-roll tests. When two characters are directly opposed, they instead use Opposed Tests. In this case, both characrers roll a dicepool determined by the GM, which may not be the same for both characters, and try to get more successes. By default, both rolls are at Difficulty 4:1. However, that can change. A character in an opposed roll who has something helping them that the other doesn't has Advantage, and rolls at 3:1 instead - or, in very rare cases, Greater Advantage, and they roll at 2:1. A character that has something hindering them that the other doesn't has Disadvantage, rolling at 5:1, or 6:1 if they have Greater Disadvantage. Greater Advantage and Greater Disadvantage are both very rare, but there's a lot of Talents that grant Advantage. Sneaking around and lying to people also get special rules - rather than do a normal Opposed Test, the Difficulty is based on the circumstances, and the Complexity is equal to the opponent's Natural Awareness. We also get a sidebar on not rolling dice if there's no time pressure or penalty for failure, and not to roll dice if the character's dicepool is greater than (Difficulty*Complexity) - they're going to succeed at that automatically. Getting extra successes can also be good - if you beat your target by 1-2, the GM should give you a minor benefit, like extra info or a bonus die to the next future check related to the task. If you beat it by 3 or more, you get a major benefit, like finishing much faster than expected, discovering hidden or lost information, or getting a bonus die on all checks related to the task for the next day. The final kind of check is the Extended Test. Typically, these have a much higher Complexity than you can manage in a single roll, but the GM will determine how many rolls you can make total and how often you can roll. You keep track of the successes cumulatively. Most of these are used for downtime actions. The Complexity of each individual roll will typically be the total divided by how many rolls you plan to make. Now we get the Mettle rules. Mettle, as I mentioned, recovers at a rate of 1 per turn. Miracles usually have a Mettle cost associated with them in some way, though as you saw, not all of them do, and the cost is often optional. Mettle also gets used by non-Blessed in combat. See, by default, every character gets, on their turn, one Move and one Action. You use Move to travel between the different Zones of the battlefield, the abstract spaces that the area is made of, like 'a hallway' and 'a room' and 'a cart' and 'a large monster's back.' Your Action is whatever you decide to do that round. The game notes: Mettle spends only matter in combat. Outside combat, you don't have to track Mettle at all and can assume you get all of it back by the time combat starts up next. (Yes, this means you can freely throw around healing miracles; the game explicitly notes that's fine, but it does have optional rules in the GM section if you don't like this.) You can spend 1 Mettle to:
Besides Mettle, a party also has Soulfire to spend. Soulfire is incredibly powerful. A party shares their Soulfire, and it can be spent by Soulbound - which explicitly excludes Stormcast. They don't get to use Soulfire for themselves or have any say in its spending. To use Soulfire, you declare what you want to do and how much you want to spend. If the rest of the Binding agrees to it, you do it and that's fine. If the Binding does not unanimously agree to let you do it, you have two choices. Either you don't spend it, or you spend it but the Doom increases by 1. A note says that if this would create out of game tension and not be fun for people, then don't even allow that and require all spends to be unanimous. You can spend 1 Soulfire to:
That last one, as a note, can be used to save Stormcast or NPCs. It's very powerful, but unlike the rest, it has to be used as an action on your turn, because you're actively channeling Soulfire into them. So, how do you recover Soulfire? Well, if the party achieves a Short-Term Goal, you get 1 Soulfire. If the party achieves a Long-Term Goal, you recover all Soulfire. If the Binding's max Soulfire ever increases somehow, you recover all Soulfire. All members of the Binding can take a downtime action to recover all Soulfire, and a single member can take a downtime action to recover 1 Soulfire. Further, if any member of the Binding makes a Last Stand, you recover all Soulfire. We'll get to what that means in a moment. Maximum Soulfire is usually equal to the number of members of the Binding, but any time the party accomplishes a task the GM decides is great and heroic enough, which improves the lives of the people of the Mortal Realms, such as rescuing a besieged city from the forces of Chaos or permanently ensuring a safe trade route between settlements, they may reward the party by giving them +1 Max Soulfire. On the other hand is Doom. Doom represents the doubt, selfishness, fear and other such things that threaten both the world and the party. These are the cracks which allow Chaos into the world, and they empower the Dark Gods. While Doom is low, the GM is told to describe the world in generally positive terms. People are living normally and trying to help each other out. As Doom increases, so does internal argument among NPCs, random crime and violence. At high Doom, everyone is tense, crime is rampant and betrayal is common. Further, certain powerful enemies have stats that increase based on the Doom. By default, Doom starts at 1. It goes up by 1 when:
The GM can also increase the Doom if the party allows some terrible thing to come to pass through their inaction, but that should be rare - it's for when you really gently caress up and everyone's lives are made worse by it. But hey, you can decrease Doom by 1, though never below 1, by:
Next time: Combat.
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May 11, 2020 02:03
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Using healing potions as money is loving brilliant. Well played, Age of Sigmar
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May 11, 2020 02:15
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Having pippetted things before, using a pippette every time you need to make change sounds like a very special kind of hell.
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May 11, 2020 02:29
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I feel like using spheres for the 100-drop ones is not a great plan, spheres don't stack. Use flat flasks. If we all ragged on Invisible Sun for spherical money of an infinitely dumber kind, we should still at least mention that with Soulbound, even if the healing potion thing is pretty clever.
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May 11, 2020 02:33
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I feel like a healing potion standard is clever, but given the many problems with transporting liquid, people in most places would pretty quickly replace it with paper money or the like. Then again, I suppose that applies equally to the massive weight of gold any reasonable D&D party drags around too, so eh.
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May 11, 2020 02:37
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That monetary system sounds awful. A liquid currency creates all sorts of nightmares. I mean, just imagine what happens if you drop a handful of change. Your coins might bounce a little, but you can go pick them up. Drop your liquid life water and it's gone unless it's a water proof surface. Save maybe you have a nice flower growing there to commemorate your losing your lunch money. And then there's the manner of keeping it clean and pure enough. And then there's the special nightmare of storing large volumes of it... Water is *heavy* and awkward to store. And using a fairly complex device to measure out change is a pain. Do you just keep a pipette on your belt beside your 'sphere' of magic water? What if the sphere has ten 'drops' removed? How does a seller know it's full or not? Do they have to whip out graduated cylinders and check the total volumes for every purchase? And then carefully pour back 100 drops into every Sphere and 10 into every phial? And when you're working with liquids, what happens to the stuff that inevitably clings to the insides of measuring devices and empty containers? And this is assuming a 'drop' is a standardized unit of volume here. And the liquid doesn't change density, but at least that's a safe assumption. Usually. Oh, goodness. Does it freeze? Boil? Now I'm imagining walking through a blizzard, going into an inn, and trying to melt your wallet. Or finding out it evaporated in the summer. But I suppose it might've just leaked out, instead.
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May 11, 2020 02:48
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And this is why barter still exists.
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May 11, 2020 02:53
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Ultiville posted:Then again, I suppose that applies equally to the massive weight of gold any reasonable D&D party drags around too, so eh. One of the jokes in my 'D&D slams into alternate 18th century Earth' campaign when I tried Pathfinder was the D&D people being completely astonished at what the people from not-Earth called 'gold' and how heavy and rare it was. Because the 'gold' that existed in places like Faerun turned out to be insanely lightweight, common, and perfect for making what was effectively paper money but 'coins'. It was my silly joke answer to how the hell parties carry like '10,000 GP'.
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May 11, 2020 02:56
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Yeah it's not a super effective currency, but it's really valuable and useful, which is why it has become a sort of one. Aqua Ghyranis does not get dirty. But it can be watered down. It's why the device to check if the Aqua Ghyranis is pure or not exists, said device is also a measuring tool that can divide liquids in varying amounts between different containers. And people that are real into the exact measurements are noted to exist.
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May 11, 2020 03:00
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Put a fixed quantity of the healing potion into some kind of durable gold casing. Gold pressed healing pot.
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May 11, 2020 03:03
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I really like the Doom thing. And am looking forward to the extra ways it will be implemented. Emmet also said that the plan on giving a few more monsters Doom interactions in the next version of the PDF. Soulfire and Mettle are nice too. Because Mettle recharges 1 a round you will always have at least one extra action you can do per turn. It also makes Soul a super valuable characteristic.
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May 11, 2020 03:08
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah it's not a super effective currency, but it's really valuable and useful, which is why it has become a sort of one. You do know that describes things like gasoline, right? We never use oil as a currency for a reason. It's a commodity. Healing potions as money is like using antibiotics or remdisivir or morphine as currency. Things people find actually useful and consumable rarely work as currencies and so we used useless (but durable) things like gold instead. Before moving on to socially agreed upon made-up stores of value. It's just... bad for a host of reasons, but it's one of those bad ideas that people find appealing, like the gold standard or future dystopias using bullets or water or toilet paper for money.
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May 11, 2020 03:14
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kommy5 posted:You do know that describes things like gasoline, right? We never use oil as a currency for a reason. It's a commodity. Healing potions as money is like using antibiotics or remdisivir or morphine as currency. Things people find actually useful and consumable rarely work as currencies and so we used useless (but durable) things like gold instead. Before moving on to socially agreed upon made-up stores of value. Barter and goods are still the primary currency of the realms outside of local ones. Aqua Ghyranis has just become a widely used trade good. The Cities are only roughly a hundred years old at this point and are ironing out many kinks in the system. Because most of them are not unified or close to each other they all have many different standards and values. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 03:19
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IIRC using something as money that's also really useful in itself is a bad idea for two reasons. The first is constant deflationary pressure caused by people drinking the stuff. Pre fiat currency mercantilism was a dominant philiosophy where countries would try to obtain and retain bullion by hook or by crook so they could expand their money supply and let their economy expand. Here we have currency disappearing down peoples throats and making economists tear their hair out. The second is that the good (healing potions) becomes less available to the people who want to use it, because of all the people hoarding it as currency.
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May 11, 2020 04:06
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kommy5 posted:You do know that describes things like gasoline, right? We never use oil as a currency for a reason. It's a commodity. Healing potions as money is like using antibiotics or remdisivir or morphine as currency. Things people find actually useful and consumable rarely work as currencies and so we used useless (but durable) things like gold instead. Before moving on to socially agreed upon made-up stores of value. EDIT: It's a dumb idea but it's also a dumb idea people might do, especially in the lack of any central authority able to produce actual currency, but it's a commodity and as such the price should vary quite a bit depending on where you are and the circumstances. Price spikes in a warzone or during a plague, drops somewhere things are calm.
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May 11, 2020 04:11
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Note: this is explicitly the case, Aqua Ghyranis is in fact more or less valuable depending on where you go. Aqshy is one of the places where it's significantly more valuable, for example.
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May 11, 2020 04:17
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Yeah but prices should also spike if, say, there was a big bar brawl or something and a bunch of people got hurt. You never know how much it's gonna be worth tomorrow.
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May 11, 2020 04:23
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Zereth posted:Yeah but prices should also spike if, say, there was a big bar brawl or something and a bunch of people got hurt. You never know how much it's gonna be worth tomorrow. No one is going waste something that can grow a years worth of crops in a month or make tainted soil fertile again, on some idiots in a bar brawl. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:28 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 04:25
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 The concept of RPGs that are like Dungeons & Dragons, but X! is a very dry well by late 2019. Straight clones of every major iteration of D&D are over 10 years old, while popular newer products attempt instead interesting and novel spins. The Nightmares Underneath is a cross between Darkest Dungeon and a fantasy Middle East where dungeons are otherworldly invaders of malevolent disposition. Wolves of God is B/X era D&D, but set in a fantasy Dark Ages England. Games like Troika! and The Ultraviolet Grasslands are very much their own systems, departing majorly from standard fantasy in favor of something closer to an acid trip. The OSR movement is moving to more novel boundaries in recent years. Whether or not this coincides with the public denouncing their more conservative and toxic holdovers in recent memory is a factor in which Im unsure of, but wouldnt be surprised if its helped their corner of the hobby chart new ground. But there is an avenue the old-school crowd hasnt really touched: making hybrid versions of old-school and newer-school systems. Dungeon Crawl Classics and Castles & Crusades came the closest in borrowing some 3rd Edition elements, but overall were very much their own systems. Five Torches Deep sought to strip down the mechanical chassis of 5th Edition to the bare bones, layering OSR muscle and sinew to make a rules-lite alternative. Its more accurate to describe Five Torches Deep as a 5e clone than an OSR one. To what extent its successful in this endeavor, and whether its worth playing on its own apart from its existing influences, well discuss in this review. What Is This? covers the core concepts of 5TD and what it strives for in a handy single page. It seeks to make combat more dangerous than basic 5e, less predictable magic, and a greater emphasis on resource management while dungeon delving in the form of rations, light sources, and such. 5TD PCs are designed to be weaker than their 5e counterparts, notably in the HP and ability score generation. Bounded accuracy in the form of a D20 + modifier vs a DC, proficiency bonus, and ability modifiers are kept. But the DC for most things is a default 11 unless otherwise noted, which can make characters with higher scores quite competent in proficient fields. Player Characters covers ability scores, race, and class. Scores are the same as in 5th Edition (although the max modifier is +4 at 18), although dropping to 0 in any causes death rather than unconsciousness. There are 4 races: humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings. They have no special abilities of their own besides the non-humans starting automatically with a 13 in 2 favored scores and rolling 2d6+3 in order for the other 4. Humans roll 3d6 in order for all 6 scores, but can swap the results of 2. Non-humans are restricted in their class choices, and need a 13 or better in classes with which theyre not traditionally associated. For example, a Halfling needs a 13 or higher Strength/Intelligence to be a Warrior or Mage, while an Elf needs a 13 or higher Strength/Wisdom to be a Warrior or Zealot. Given that their max in such scores can only be 15 due to the alternate rolling, races are heavily pushed into playing as certain class types. Im not really fond of this change. I understand that various OSR games often gated classes based on race, but even in Basic D&D virtually every race could be a Fighter or Thief, and it was more generally the advanced classes like Paladin and Ranger which were humans-only. Additionally, nonhumans no longer have any unique features, which makes them less appealing options. Leveling up takes longer than in 5th Edition, and the maximum level is 9. You level up to 2nd at 2,500 XP and it costs double the amount every level thereafter until 5th (20,000), at which point its 10k more for 6th, 20k for 7th, and 25k each for 8th and 9th. There are four classes which fit the typical Warrior/Thief/Mage/Cleric fold, but the Cleric is renamed to Zealot. Every class is proficient in two ability checks plus 3 (or 4 if Thief) pseudo-skills known as proficient checks relevant to their class. They gain bonus proficient checks automatically from their subclass archetype. At 1st level they gain their starting HP plus automatic equipment. At 2nd, 5th, and 9th level each class gains a unique ability; at 3rd and 7th they gain access to an archetype and one of its features;* 4th, 6th, and 8th they gain a +1 to an ability score of choice. *the archetype chosen at 7th must be the same as the one at 3rd, so no Warrior Barbarian/Rangers for you! The initial skills and equipment are automatically chosen at 1st level, but with some allowance of choice for weapons and armor, and Sundries which represent miscellaneous equipment rolled randomly at a table in the back of the book. One of the first things youll notice when reading Five Torches Deep is the layout. Every single page has everything relevant in one convenient spot, with nothing in the way of orphaned lines or half-empty columns. This is really helpful in navigation, and visually pleasant to read. However, when it comes to classes this brevity is a bit of a detriment, particularly in regards to archetypes.  The Warrior looks rather interesting, although I do spot some peculiarities. For being proficient in will, does this relate to willpower and thus resistance towards enchantment and similar features? The Warrior gets a Healers kit, but it doesnt look like its initial checks and abilities cover that kind of thing. Is first aid training something in which all adventurers are presumed to know? The ability to counter in melee is pretty cool, and making bonus attacks is something we all expect from Fighters. For archetypes the Fighters Order is really good: although discussed later, an Active Action is the equivalent of a normal Action,* and as such can grant bonus attacks/spells/etc during the round. Immune to Weather for the Ranger is rather broad, and does beg the question of if this means that they can avoid the effects of damaging hazards such as being able to swim normally in stormy seas or tank a lightning strike. As a GM this is one of the level-based choices so Id rule as such, given that the brunt of danger is doing to be underground. *there are 3 actions in Five Torches Deep: Active, Movement, and Quick.  The Thief is proficient in all kinds of weapons, which is interesting on account that this will include things such as polearms and heavier weapons. Being proficient in tools may mean that theyre sort of an omnidisciplinary craftsman beyond just thieves tools. Its core features are quite good, particularly the 5th levels defensive ability. The Assassins Stealth after Attack option is really powerful; stealth is covered under Gameplay, but when you successfully Stealth no enemy effect or attack can directly target you for as long as you do not take any hostile action. The Bards ability to auto-detect magic can be helpful for avoiding supernatural traps and danger. The Rogue doesnt get anything as amazing in comparison.  The Zealot is pretty much your old-school healbot cleric, but with a few nifty features. The 5th level ability may seem quite strong, but 5TD doesnt have alignment and the evil tag is reserved purely for aberrant and supernatural foes and those who traffic with them. The sadist tag I presume is meant to make up for this given that typical monsters such as bandits/goblins/orcs wouldnt register but are typically portrayed as loving violence for its own sake. For archetypes, theres mention of turning undead, but it is its own spell now rather than an innate feature. Advantage vs injury is a bit broad; does this include checks to avoid injury of all types? To recover from? It may be very broad in this instance and a no-brainer choice depending on how the GM rules. The Druids wildskin left me sad; I get that such a broad feature is hard to consolidate in such a rules-lite system, but druids in other games are able to take the shapes of dangerous animals such as wolves and horses. In Five Torches Deep, theyre more or less confined to being very fragile scouts. The Paladins advantage to help allies is similarly broad as the Clerics advantage vs injury dilemma.  Im a bit interested in what finesse entails. In basic 5th Edition it was a weapon descriptor which allowed the use of Dexterity instead of Strength for attacks. Does this mean that 5TD mages are lithe and nimble? The ability to reduce damage is nice, but more limited than the Thiefs 5th level equivalent. Auto-dispelling spells is a good utility feature, but given its time limit is not something of use in combat. The 9th level capstone is very powerful on account that cantrips function the same in 5TD as in 5e: an at-will ability. For archetypes the Sorcerer and Wizard get some very nice features. Quickcast means that you may be able to cast 2 spells during the same round which can be useful for a variety of cases, while doubling area and duration is also good. There are no stats for familiars, so I am unsure to what extent theyd be treated as a Retainer. The Warlock is clearly meant to be a more martial mage but given the class terrible HP is an inferior option. The ability to deal bonus damage by inflicting it on yourself may have uses, but spells in 5TD overall avoid direct damage save for a few, making the Warlock more limited in utility than the other archetypes. Equipment is highly simplified in 5 Torches Deep. Armor and Weapons of all kinds are consolidated into a few clear categories. Light Armor, Heavy Armor, and Shields which grant levels of protection and can only be used by certain classes. Heavy Armor imposes disadvantage on Stealth and stamina checks, unlike 5th Edition where its just the former. Melee and Ranged weapons are separated into Simple and Martial categories, which have larger damage entries depending on how theyre gripped. The base die type for simple weapons are d6, martial d10. Two-handed weapons deal one die type higher for damage, but wielding a one-handed weapon in 2 hands allows you to roll the base damage die twice and keep the best result. Some melee weapons have reach of 10 feet, and ranged weapons can hit anywhere from 15 to 300 feet depending on what makes sense but impose disadvantage in melee. Weight is calculated differently in 5 Torches Deep. Everything is measured in Load, where 1 Load measures any object around 5 pounds. PCs can carry Load equal to their Strength score, and reduce their speed by 5 feet for every 1 Load above this value along with disadvantage on all checks. Being encumbered is something you really dont want to have happen to you! What about smaller items and bundles, as well as multi-use items? Well this is handled as Supply, or SUP for short! Instead of tracking individual arrows, lockpicks, torches, etc, a PC announces what kinds of equipment they seek to stock up on before their next adventure. Their SUP is determined by their Intelligence score and can be spent to refresh kits, get one more lockpick when your current set breaks, have a handy potion on hand, refill your lantern/quiver, etc. Theres a nice table of how much SUP things cost, although a few pieces of equipment such as Alchemical Grenade, Dragons Breath Bomb, and Quicksilver are mighty costly (5 to 9) but are never mentioned again in this book. Foraging in the wilderness can restore SUP with DC 11 and 1 hour worth of time. We get 3 new rules for less common cases of gear. You attune magic items much like in 5th Edition, but the primary limit on the amount you can attune at once is equal to your Charisma modifier. For equipment, gear has a Durability score from 1 to 5, and said score reduces by 1 when said items are put in stressful situations or damaged on a critical hit in combat. Shields are very useful in this regard, for they can automatically block the damage of an appropriate attack in exchange for losing Durability. As shields have 2 Durability, this makes them super-useful for dodging certain death. Our final rule involves repairing and crafting items; the former allows one to restore Durability if the person is proficient in the proper tools and takes 1 hour per attempt (usually during a rest), and Crafting is a more involved 4 step process where an item is built but takes half a day of work per stage and attempt. Overall I like these equipment rules, especially for Supply. Shields in 5 Torches Deep are incredibly useful and allow PCs a safe means of avoiding one-hit kills particularly at low level. That every class is proficient in them means that virtually every party will have a few on hand.
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May 11, 2020 06:19
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 Gameplay covers the nitty-gritty of the system, notably where it differs from 5th Edition. Saving throws are now consolidated into ability checks, and skills are now known as proficient checks gained from class and archetype. There are 3 types of actions, each of which a character can do once in a round. Active actions cover most of what would be normal Actions in 5th Edition, while Quick Actions cover what would be bonus actions and reactions. Drawing items and weapons, maintaining concentration on spells, and readied actions are now Quick Actions. Finally Movement is its own type of action; it can be broken up in segments when used for normal movement as part of another type of action. Initiative is never rolled, and people go in order based upon their Dexterity scores barring ambushes. For critical hits, the entire damage is doubled rather than just the damage dice, while rolling a natural 1 when resisting a damage effect doubles the damage as a result. Healing is similar in a few regards, but the biggest change is that you no longer spend Hit Dice to heal. Rests are divided based on where they take place and represent a nights worth rather than 1 or 8 hours. Safe rests restore your level in HP, while Unsafe Rests inside dungeons, in the wilderness, etc restore a mere 1 HP. Characters reduced to 0 HP become unconscious and die in 1 minute or by the end of the fight (whichever is sooner) if not stabilized in time. The 0 HP rule makes 5TD PCs much hardier than their OSR counterparts, but falling to 0 HP still has consequences even when you recover. Theres a 1d20 table of various effects, mostly 1d6 ability score damage,* and only a natural 20 has a positive result where you heal 1d8 HP due to a speedy recovery. *which can also be caused by disease and poison and takes several weeks to cure unless magic is used to speed the process. For smaller various rules, NPCs and monsters roll for morale (Wisdom modifier plus morale bonus plus proficiency if a brave type of character), and traps cannot be found on a skill roll but based on players describing how they interact with the environment.* The primary means of gaining experience points is based on how much GP is taken back to a safe haven, and enemies typically have 1d20 times their Hit Dice in GP worth of loot. Magic items can also grant XP equal to their monetary value...but in 5th Edition magic items no longer have an attached cost to them, and 5TD gives no example values. *albeit the text states that the GM must forewarn all traps via narrative cues, no matter how well-concealed the traps designer may have otherwise made them. For the dungeon-crawling aspects of rules, we have several meant to simulate old-school resource management. Travel Turns represent every hour spent in a dungeon or unsafe area, and torches and lanterns can last 1 to 3 turns. Every Travel Turn that passes the GM rolls a d20, the lower the result the more disastrous the event which occurs, ranging from random encounters and traps to environmental catastrophes. An 11 to 19 gives the PCs time to prepare in some way for a danger, while a 20 is safe in that nothing bad occurs. PCs also have a new feature: Resilience, which is equal to their Constitution score and represents the number of hours they can remain active while traveling without needing rest. Every hour beyond that forces a check of increasing DC, and failure causes Exhaustion, with further failures causing actual HP damage. Exhaustion is still debilitating, and is all or nothing rather than the 6-level gradient in normal 5e. It reduces your speed to 0 and you cannot perform any significant actions including combat and magic. Exhaustion is only healed via a Safe Rest or by magic. There are also rules for chasing foes and running away from combat, as well as Rolling to Return for times when the GM doesnt want to roleplay the PCs exiting a dungeon or making it back to civilization in detail. For chases the pursuer uses Strength or Dexterity based on the terrain, and the DC is 1 greater than 11 for every 5 feet of speed the one being chased has over 30 feet. For PCs and their retainers retreating from combat, they can give up their turns worth of actions to make a retreat, which fails automatically if they are damaged or stopped by an enemy. The Chase rules are used if foes pursue them further and are able to outmaneuver any PCs/Retainers that are remaining in combat. Rolling to Return is a DC 10 check which increases by 1 for every Travel Turn that has passed to a maximum of DC 20. The check can differ depending on circumstances, and failure causes the PC to either take 1d6 damage for every value of 1 they failed the DC, or they lose 1 Load worth of equipment. Those reduced to 0 HP somehow died or fell unconscious due to the arduous journey, and less-secure and valuable equipment is targeted first. The rules overall do a good job of simulating an old school feel, plus or minus a few hiccups. I do feel that the danger from Travel Turns is a bit too high in terms of trigger frequency, and ability score damage is something that neither 5th Edition nor most OSR games have and will thus create additional book-keeping. I do like how there are rules for chases and fleeing, as many OSR games emphasize knowing when to retreat. But if a monster is fast and mobile enough, a lot of times it is impossible unless one PC valiantly holds them off or the DM is merciful in some way like the monster being too big to fit in a smaller tunnel. The Resilience score feels a bit unnecessary, as its all-or-nothing state means that most PCs will play it safe so they dont have to worry about lugging around a defenseless party member who will be worth a poo poo-ton of Load all their own. Magic is greatly simplified in comparison to 5th Edition, with a few changes in place. Both Zealots and Mages are akin to sorcerers in that they automatically know a number of spells based on level, and use a unified table to determine how many spells they can cast per day. Casters also know 3 cantrips, and any known spell can be cast as a Ritual which takes 1 hour per spell level to cast in this way but obviates the need for a casting check.* Speaking of which, casters now roll a Spellcasting check equal to DC 10 + spell level, adding their relevant ability modifier and proficiency bonus. A failure causes a Magical Mishap, which is a d20 table of various negative qualities ranging from affecting the wrong target, the caster taking damage, an orb of light blinds the caster and nearby creatures, etc. Concentration spells function similarly as they do in 5th Edition, but any form of damage or distracting effect automatically causes the spell to be lost rather than the caster getting an opportunity to resist and maintain it. Finally, certain items can act as a Magic Focus, which eliminates the need to use material components and/or have one hand free in order to cast a spell. Nice! *unlike normal 5th Edition where it doesnt cost a spell slot to use. We have a discussion on converting spells and magic items from other games. Generally speaking Five Torches Deep discourages converting direct damage spells, and no cantrips should cause damage. Spells which target enemies are treated as an attack roll (or in some cases an appropriate check) rather than the enemy resisting with a DC. Scrolls can only be used by spellcasters and require a check, and wands can be used by noncasters but use Charisma to determine checks and damage. Consumable items never require attunement, and all magic items must have their features identified before they can be used. We get 2 pages detailing all of the Zealot and Mage spells in Five Torches Deep. They are very minimalistic, with an entire levels worth easily fitting on an index card:   The casters of Five Torches Deep are much less versatile than 5th Edition in what they can do. The Mage only has 2 spells out of 25 which deal direct damage, and most of their features are some form of utility. The Abjure spell is really useful, as is Charm, and Astral Rifts object transportation has quite a bit of uses. I am a bit sad that classic standbys such as Fireball and Lightning Bolt are not present. The Zealot has the typical cleric abilities, and I do like how the various healing spells can work at range rather than touch which is a big step up from 5th Editions Cure Wounds. The specification of evil targets isnt as useful as one would normally think given how said descriptor is more restrictive in Five Torches Deep. NPCs & Monsters is self-explanatory. For the NPC side of things we talk entirely about Retainers and Henches. Retainers are NPC allies the party can hire on to aid them during adventures, and Henches are higher HD trusted allies who work for free. Both types are limited in how many can accompany one PC based on their Charisma score, with Henches based on level and Charisma. Retainers cost 10 GP per Hit Die per level per day of work, and add their proficiency bonus to their Hit Die for tasks in which they are skilled. PCs can give Orders to Retainers in combat as an active action, allowing all of the Retainers/Henches under their command to do a single special action. Charge order causes them to move forward and attack, Form Up grants +2 AC until their next turn, Focus Fire gangs up on one opponent, and Retainers unable to follow orders can still act independently. Theres also brief rules for Renown and Reactions; the former determines how likely NPCs are to recognize the party, while the latter determines an NPCs initial first impression with a higher result on a d20 indicating a more positive impression. The latter is a particularly common old-school rule, but is a bit odd to use in that it makes social results at the mercy of the die rather than the other way around of PC actions determining NPC reactions. For Monsters, this also includes wicked humans but the overlying rules remain the same. Monsters are grouped based on their role (Brute, Leader, Sniper, etc) rather than their type or species for determining what theyre good at. Abilities, saves, skills, etc are divided into Weak, Normal, and Strong Categories depending on the monsters areas of expertise. We have a table for these modifiers along with Hit Dice, average HP, and average damage, while their Armor Class is 10 + their most relevant modifier depending on how nimble/sturdy/etc they are. Monsters also have a list of sample Techniques to choose from, ranging from 0 to 3 based on how strong they are (bosses have more than mooks). The sample Techniques are rather broad in application and can cover a wide variety of attacks, spells, and the like.  We have new rules in this chapter as well. Monster Hoards serve as the most protected treasure in a dungeon and are equal to 1,000 times the Hit Dice of the strongest monster. For alignment of both NPCs and monsters, Five Torches Deep ignores it entirely save for Evil. Evil in this case represents the physical manifestation of otherworldly corruption and those who willingly give themselves to it. Evil is thus only appropriate for demons, necromancers, undead, and the like. Creatures who do not fit this criteria cannot be Evil, now matter how wicked and destructive they may be. We get a discussion of how to convert monsters and NPCs from 5th Edition and OSR games. For the former ruleset, Five Torches Deep claims that stats can be used as-is save that hit points should be halved due to this books lower-powered nature. OSR monsters determine their Armor Class via 20 minus the Descending value (AC 6 becomes AC 14) with negative AC becoming AC 20. Monsters who attack as Fighters* use the Brute category for seeing how skilled they are in regards to physical actions and attacks. For determining Dexterity for initiative, the value from a 5th Edition monster can be used, but for an OSR monster their Hit Dice + 10 determines their effective DEX for turn order in combat. *which interestingly is most monsters in B/X era retroclones. Our section ends on general advice for how to use these rules to build your own monsters, along with six sample ones whose stat blocks can each easily fit on an index card. I do feel that the custom creation rules are simpler and in line with 5TDs ethos, and I particularly like how monsters are grouped by roles rather than the typical types of dragon/fey/etc for determining important core statistics. What I am iffy on is how easy conversion from other systems will be, particularly for 5th Edition. 5TD PCs are much more fragile and with less means of regaining hit points, so monsters with damaging double digit values can be much more deadly than their Challenge Rating in the base game would indicate. Legendary Actions, Lair Actions, and actual spellcasting can up this threat even further, and given that quite a few monsters have abilities keying off of Conditions which dont have hard and fast rules in Five Torches Deep, this is a complicating factor for the GM. Running the Game covers generic advice for Dungeon Masters. A lot of it is things weve already read about elsewhere, such as how to space out threats and obstacles and creating a stable of allies and enemies for the party. We also have a Generator for creating adventure/plot ideas on the fly, with entries for Things, Actions, and Fallout along with Descriptors for subjects like treasure, emotion, etc in case more specifics are needed. But the novel feature that sticks out is using a Rubix Cube to generate random maps, with the colors on one side corresponding to room type: white is open path/entrance, orange has danger of some kind, green has treasure or an important feature, etc. If the GM doesnt have such a cube they can roll 9d6 and convert each dies result and placement based on the colors. Sounds rather nifty, but cant state how straightforward this is in play. Our book ends with a 2-page Quick Reference summing up the major rules for Five Torches Deep and a 1d20 Sundries table for random equipment. Our very last page has a custom character sheet with just enough space to neatly pack in every little detail. Final Thoughts: Five Torches Deep is a 5th Edition variant with some interesting ideas. But as a wholesale system I cannot really see the appeal in comparison to the ones from which it takes inspiration. Theres also the fact that its incomplete in several areas; no sample treasures and magic items are a big negative, and for monsters were heavily encouraged to borrow from sourcebooks of other systems. The book also presumes that players are already familiar with 5th Edition and want an old-school experience, so it cant really be run as an entry point to 5e. As a means of easing in 5e players to an OSR game, it does ape the playstyle in certain areas but is a far shot from the real thing. Cost and readability isnt an issue when so many retroclones are legally free and rules-lite, so this book primarily appeals to 5e players who want to play another kind of D&D but dont want to learn a new set of rules...which is a bit of a moot point when Five Torches Deep changes its parent systems mechanics in quite a few large ways. Even then, it does have a demand, as it is a Best Mithral Seller on Drive-Thru RPG. For those unfamiliar with that category, it includes the top 0.22% percent of best-selling products on the entire website. I admit that Im not entirely sure what book Im going to review after this. My remaining options for 5th Edition are far longer than the ones I covered, so itll take some reading on my part to get familiarized enough for another in-depth review.
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May 11, 2020 06:21
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Night10194 posted:Having pippetted things before, using a pippette every time you need to make change sounds like a very special kind of hell. I still have nightmares about the old school method with the loving rubber balls. Bless whoever invented mechanical pipettes. Also, Night, I just want to say, you sound like a genuinely competent and entertaining GM in your concepts and descriptions of games run in the past. kommy5 posted:That monetary system sounds awful. A liquid currency creates all sorts of nightmares. Perhaps if instead the Aqua was stored in some sort of centralized vault, by someone who kept it safe and at stable temperatures and atmosphere, and in return they gave you some kind of certificate denominating an amount of stored Aqua that you were good for. Perhaps made out of some sort of hard-to-damage material like stone or metal, which you could then exchange with other people as a signifier of value...
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May 11, 2020 09:31
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PurpleXVI posted:I still have nightmares about the old school method with the loving rubber balls. Bless whoever invented mechanical pipettes. Still in widespread use. Autopipettes cost money. (not that I would ever, ever use a manual pipette in microbiology. But analytical chem still uses them.)
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May 11, 2020 09:45
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The Lone Badger posted:Still in widespread use. Autopipettes cost money. Ah but are they the OLD old school rubber balls or the NEW kind? Because the old school ones can only either suck or hold. The new ones have a couple of secondary valves so they can also release small amounts of liquid without releasing all suction, thus allowing you to not have to redo the whole pipetting just because you got 5mL too much hoovered up. The old old kind are made of pain.
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May 11, 2020 09:52
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Oh I've only ever seen the ones with the release valves. But the way my chemistry teacher taught us to do it was to deliberately overdraw then pull the bulb off and put your thumb over the end of the pipette. With dexterous thumb movement you can lower the level very precisely, then just take your thumb away once you're over the receptacle. He probably learnt that using the old old ones, but it's habit for me now.
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May 11, 2020 10:00
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"What took you so long at the bank?" "Guy in front of me wanted to get two jugs and five flasks exchanged for vials." "ouch" "yeah, and he didn't bring a vial pouch with him, guy was rattling like a wind chime on the way out"
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May 11, 2020 10:44
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Karak Azgal Greed is good, beardling Skalf's Hold is also open to your PCs, provided you can pay entry fees and aren't just looking for endless crime and crime adventure in Deadgate. One of the nice things is that the adventure hooks up above ground tend to focus on non-combat tasks so you can use other skills for adventures in Deadgate and the Hold, while the dungeon below is mostly about combat, trickery, and stealth (though there are definitely some fun options for diplomacy down there, too). The actual Hold is well built (it's dwarfs, if it wasn't something would be wrong) and very well defended, with a 20 foot tall wall protecting it. They'd prefer if the whole hold was underground, but that's for when they clear out the hold below. Until then, a heavily defended castle-town with well protected entrances into the ruins and plenty of heavily armed dwarfs will have to do. One of the oddities of this book is that it has dwarfs using divine magic. I think this is something of a throwback to 1st edition, where dwarfs were totally able to use divine magic (and could use arcane magic, but were terrible at it), but this normally isn't a thing in later 2nd edition. You see this in the Temple of the Ancestors, a grand temple Skalf Dragonslayer commissioned to honor the Ancestors of the dwarfs and thank them for watching over his heroic deeds. While all the Ancestor Gods are honored, the High Priestess is Balkina Furlisdottir, Priestess of Valaya. Valaya is the Goddess of the hearth, protection, and healing and the wife of Grungi and Grimnir. Apparently when the other two chief dwarf ancestors quarreled over who would marry the beautiful Valaya, she got so fed up with their arguing that she just declared them both her husbands and that was the end of it. Balkina is an old dwarf, but old dwarfs stay surprisingly strong and tough, and don't tend to die while they still think they have something important left undone; her life's work is trying to get the dwarfs to stop focusing on bringing up gold and treasure and start actually cleaning the drat ruins and retaking them to live in, not just to loot. She despises the practice of hiring adventurers and then grabbing/taxing their loots, thinking that it's the dwarfs getting rich off the hard work of others and sending others to die while the halls of their ancestors stay uninhabited. There's a radical anti-adventurer faction called the Forked Beards, but she doesn't especially like them because they're effectively a right-wing dwarf supremacist militia; she wants it to be policy to end the adventuring licenses, not for them to get murdered in the dark by thugs. She also has her own secret entrance to the ruins. If you win her trust despite being an adventurer, she can send the team down on secret rescue missions or ask them to recover artifacts of Valaya or the other Ancestors. There is one extremely important relic of Valaya down there that will be critical to one of the missions, so she could also be a good way to learn it exists, especially if the PCs are sent into retreat on their first attempt at the undead mission. There's also an extensive temple of Myrmidia and Shallya. Karak Azgal is closer to Tilea and Estalia than the Empire, and many of the respectable human residents (about 15% of the permanent residents are human) are immigrants from those countries. The dwarfs are religiously tolerant and happy to let the humans build temples to their Gods and worship in peace as long as it isn't that damned Ranald (who seems like a God Of Stealing Dwarf Treasures, which is fair, he partly is) so the temples are a respectable part of the city's architecture. The local Myrmidian priest, Gaetano Rivera, is so good at drilling and training people that if you pay 25 crowns and spend 2 weeks in drill, with a +10% Int test you gain 100 EXP to spend on any one physical or combat advance immediately. Once per character. Like all excellent sergeants, he is also a short-tempered tyrant, but his results are very good. The temple also hosts friendly gladiatorial games to honor the Goddess, with contestants wrestling and fighting unarmed with Strike to Stun in the old Classical style. A good place for the stun-specialized Elena to maybe honor her Goddess and have a little side adventure some time. The Temple of Shallya is a very busy place in a city where the economy focuses on dungeoneering. The local priestess, Hildeguard Grunwald, really dislikes how people are constantly running off and getting themselves stabbed. She'd never refuse to help, but she never lets a patient go un-chided, either. Expect lots of 'How did you even do this to yourself? You should know better. Have you considered taking up a safer trade? I know someone who could use an apprentice-' dialogue while you're getting stitched up in the temple. A neat detail is that the prices for healing at the temple go up and down depending on how much money you appear to have. If you have a lot, they charge more, because it's understood that if you lose your shirt messing around in town or drop your coins in the dungeon or something they'll be willing to help you for nothing, subsidized by what you paid when you were doing well. So PCs can always get healing at the temple of Shallya even if they're dead broke after doing something foolish, but if they're rich at the moment they'll be charged a bunch so the money can go to helping the dead broke guys. They also have a magic fountain that sometimes really does cure all ails, supposedly when Shallya can manage it (in myth, Shallya can only directly aid one person a moment; her dad Morr made her promise, because she almost starved the realm of the dead before then). The most important temple, though, is the temple of Hegakin didn't have any luck. People laughed at him and his God. He just wasn't very charismatic, and he was doing all this while concealing that he was really an exiled scholar anyway. He had no luck at all until a dissolute charlatan of a noble, Elgrom Dragonslayer, a distant relative of the Hold's ruling family, decided that Gorlaz sounded like something he could use. Elgrom loved the doctrine of gaining wealth and power, how it was okay to want everything. He started out wanting to just use this to squeeze gold out of rubes. Elgrom had a long history of this; he'd built himself a reputation as a mere incompetent when in fact he was a master criminal. He'd tricked others into investing in mining operations he knew were worthless and pocketed all the extra money before the business failed, and other such ventures, but his noble name meant he could usually find new suckers at court even if he was too far from the throne to advance in position. This Gorlaz seemed like a perfect way to diversify his scams. However, he came to really believe in it over time, and his skills as a charlatan made him a highly effective missionary, as did 'One of the Dragonslayers themselves believes in Gorlaz, and look at all it's done for him!' He's a genuine Slaaneshi now. He knows what Gorlaz really is and he loves it. Slaanesh promises him everything he desires: All the gold, all the power, everyone listening to him. He will own the Hold, and the mines, and the ruins, and everything in Karak Azgal. He and Hegakin. Like Hegakin, he's actually been to the temple below by now and sworn himself to the real God. The Gorlaz cult has grown; its message has begun to resonate with the nobles and the successful businessdwarfs, who love the idea that they should have everything and share nothing. As it spreads, it makes them greedier and greedier, exacerbating the same flaws that make Deadgate kind of a shithole and that keep the dwarfs searching for treasure instead of freeing their home. Slaanesh has awakened the dragon-like lust for treasure and power in people like Elgrom, and I note that his mutations (he has definitely begun to mutate) feel like they're making him turn draconic: He's got a spiked tail and some leathery wings he's able to hide with big cloaks and dramatic vestments. Knowing the story of Sigurd and Fafnir (the dwarf whose greed turned him into a mighty dragon), I immediately have an idea for a more impressive finale for this campaign/adventure. The Beast of Chaos downstairs is good for a big gribbly fight (the dwarfs dug too greedily and too deep if you want the 'basic' final boss) but I've definitely got a great idea for an explosive finale to this campaign and the core Slaaneshi plot thread from Elgrom. This is meant to be the core investigation/intrigue plotline for Karak Azgal, as well as the main Chaos plot. And surprisingly, it's really good! It's a Slaaneshi plot through and through, taking advantage of desires and heartfelt wishes, but without sexual menace and cocaine sexmurder, so it can actually be used at a gaming table. It's got actual characters with actual motives, and while I'm definitely going to be adding some more crazy poo poo to it because it instantly reminded me of another myth, it's also really good in how it relies on exploiting actual decisions people are making rather than the forces of evil just grabbing people and instantly 'corrupting' them. Elgrom getting into it to 'fleece the rubes' and then really falling for his own line is great. Slaanesh's evil plan is to turn dwarfs into libertarians. Yes, dwarfs love gold and jewels, but it's usually for the hold as well as the individual dwarf. This takes stuff that sounds normal to dwarfs (we should recover all the valuables from below and we deserve money) and plays to temptations and unhealthy impulses to make them do evil things and embrace greed itself as a good. To embrace desire. You can totally understand people being taken in by it, and it still clearly glories Slaanesh in secret in a way that won't involve 'twisted orgies of flesh and fluid' to quote the terrible Slaanesh material in Tome of Corruption. So yeah! This is part of why I wanted to cover this book at all: It has a good Slaanesh plot that isn't creepy. That it also has an excellent, excellent Skaven plot, some crazy orc and goblin antics, and an amazing necromancer villain down in the dungeon is secondary: The Slaaneshi are actually well done and take advantage of a much more interesting aspect of their evil God than usual! Next Time: More of Skalf's Hold
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May 11, 2020 12:27
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Night's Black Egents: Solo Ops Part Eleven: Never Say Dead, Chapter Four quote:Leyla Khan Eczes You recall a potential ally in Budapest a gambler and crook named Eczes. He was your contact, not a servant of the vampires as far as you know. It could be good to see a friendly face. Discard for a +2 bonus to a Network roll to contact Eczes, or for a free Interpersonal Push when dealing with him. The Rosewater Flask This elixir blocks vampiric mental influence for a brief time. Theres enough left in the flask for one drink; this allows the imbiber to resist vampiric influence and automatically Hold on Cool checks for a scene.[/quote] Leyla's character sheet is getting pretty chonky with all the Edges and Problems she's accumulated thus far. I wish the boards had a collapsible text block function so I could hide it, but oh well. If I wasn't writing these updates primarily on my lunch breaks at work I'd upload images instead, but the network blocks imgur and most other image-hosting sites. Anyways, it looks like nobody was curious about following up on the weird potion or the photo of the old crucifix we found, nor was anybody bonkers enough to try and doorstep an SAS-trained Renfield. So, with two votes each for our next stop being the church or our old fixer, Eczes, I'm going to exercise my tiebreaking vote: After getting settled in an anonymous hotel suite on Margit Sziget (Margaret Island, in the middle of the Danube) and leaving Magda with strict instructions to not invite anyone into the room, not even Leyla, our heroine is off to the Hill Cave Church. (There's nothing really to the scene with Eczes anyways--he's a Contact with Accounting, Forgery, and Streetwise, none of which Leyla needs for clue interpretation right now. You can pick up some ledgers he's been keeping about shady money transfers that might come in handy later, but it's very much a "here's a seed you can plant now for a later adventure" sort of thing. He's really only there in case you somehow miss all the other opportunities to gear up.) Taking care to drive down the east bank of the Danube, across the river from Sinclair's apartment, Leyla makes it to the Gellért Hill Cave church. It's an old Pauline monastery, dating back to the 1920s, and as the name suggests it's literally built in a network of caves under Gellért Hill. During WWII the Nazis used it as a field hospital, and the Soviets sealed it up in the 1950s, but with the fall of the Iron Curtain it reopened in 1989 and is now back in the hands of the Pauline Order. Leyla reads all this in a helpful tourist plaque while casing the place, trying to figure out why she left herself a note to come here. That mystery is solved when an old, grey-bearded monk, looking extremely agitated, approaches and says she was expected last night and her friend is waiting for her. Some gentle questioning of this Brother Adolpho makes it clear that he knows little about what's going on--only that a woman matching Leyla's description would be arriving, probably confused, and that he was to bring her to "Dr. Hulier," who is waiting for her in a chamber upstairs. If this sounds extremely fishy to you, you're not the only one--but Leyla's Bullshit Detector isn't going off, and she did bring a gun, and "Hulier" might explain the "HUL" label on the Rosewater Flask--and so, alert to trouble, Leyla follows Brother Adolpho upstairs. In what appears to all the word to be a small waiting room (like you might see at a particularly religious dentist's office) is a thin, bespectacled man in a rumpled suit that looks like it's been worn for at least 24 hours. He introduces himself as Dr. Jean Hulier, and says he understands that Leyla must be confused--"absolution" must have been a very disorienting experience. He can confirm what Leyla has already pieced together from her fragmented memories--she was taken by the vampire Jovitzo, who made her his servant through the controlling power of his blood, and Leyla recently broke free. Hulier is part of a small group of vampire hunters--an elderly Catholic priest named Father Loretti, himself (a biochemist), and a woman they know only as Rostami. Hulier's role in the group was to recreate, in modern laboratory conditions, a medieval alchemical concoction purported to be able to break someone free of vampiric mind control--judging from Leyla's presence here, it worked, but it is at best a short-term solution. Now he's to take her to some... mutual friends who will ferry her to a private airfield at Tököl. Throughout the whole conversation he's twitchy, sweating despite the chill in the caves, alternating between barely-contained terror and what Leyla can only describe as deep, soul-wracking guilt. Leyla pushes Bullshit Detector and realizes he's speaking very carefully, like he's trying to conceal something--not from her, but from someone else. Motherfucker is wearing a wire. Judging from his attitude, this isn't a betrayal but a coercion. Slowly, casually, Leyla produces a pad of paper and a pen and writes down "SOMEONE LISTENING?" Hulier nods frantically and opens his mouth like he's about to confirm, but Leyla manages to shut him up in time and hand him the pen. She's got to keep him talking so whoever's on the other end of the wire (her money's on Sinclair, though this seems unusually subtle for him) doesn't suspect, but she also has to get whatever he knows out of him. This is a Cool challenge, so thank God we refreshed our abilities before this. Our first roll is a 2, and Hulier--who is emphatically not a spy--nearly blabs. But our second die comes up a 5, which gets us an Advance--we keep Hulier calm and avoid suspicion while getting the relevant intel. We also get the Edge "Impending Sucker Punch," which will give us a bonus die when we spring the trap. In a series of hastily scrawled notes, Hulier reveals that yesterday some madwoman with a shaved head, backed up by some heavily-armed toughs, hit their safehouse. They have Father Foretti and are threatening to kill him unless Hulier delivers Leyla to them for delivery to their master. Leyla doesn't know of any of Jovitzo's slugeri or assigns who fit that description, and then Hulier throws another wrinkle into things: apparently the woman referred to her master as "Carlyle." Who the gently caress is Carlyle? Unfortunately, further attempts to question Hulier are cut short. From downstairs comes the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of submachine gun fire and the screams of panicking tourists. Oh. Yeah, that seems more like Sinclair's MO. Leyla barks at Hulier to take her to his "friend," nodding exaggeratedly to make it clear she knows what's up. They hustle into the caves, pursued by the echoing footfalls of Sinclair's goons, and as soon as they pass a little sign warning tourists that they are now leaving the church proper and entering the larger cave system, they meet up with the woman Hulier described. She says her name is Stokovich and that she's with Hulier and his friends. She's armed and clearly knows how to use her weapon, and Leyla decides to let her keep thinking that she's been snookered, operating on the old spy's adage "the enemy of my enemy who thinks I think she's the friend of my friend" or something like that. Unfortunately there's no time for pleasantries as bullets start pinging off the stone, the gunshots deafeningly loud in the confines of the cave. It's murder in the dark down here. Leyla and Stokovich work surprisingly well together, holding the enemy at bay, alternating fire-and-move tactics. Stokovich doesn't seem to give a poo poo about Hulier, but Leyla makes it a point to get the biochemist out safely. By the time they clear the caves and reach a windowless white panel van (because kidnappers are nothing if not predictable) the only thing that's following them is the rising wail of police sirens. This was a pretty tough Shooting challenge, but mitigated by Stokovich's help--we're at -1 die to protect Hulier, but +1 die for Stokovich being on our side. Even still, with our first two dice we only came up a 6, which is a setback, so I decided to both Stunt Evasion and take an Extra Problem in the form of Heat. Turns out I only needed one, because our next roll was a lucky 6 which got us to an Advance even with the -1 from Hurt, so with one unused die we get both a Push and another instance of the Attrition Edge. Stokovich throws open the door of the van and orders Leyla in. Now, even if she didn't have years of MI-6 training, Leyla would know this was a bad idea, and Stokovich can't quite hide the hungry look of impending triumph in her eyes. Leyla steps in like she's going to get ito the van, then throws a vicious elbow at Stokovich's nose. It shatters with an immensely satisfying crunch, but she recovers faster than any person should be able to and grabs Leyla by the throat--holy poo poo she's strong. She's slamming Leyla against the side of the van, shrieking about how they could have been immortal sister-brides of the Master (which, just eww), but Leyla takes everything she's dishing out and focuses on keeping control of her gun--Stokovich may be strong, but she's not bulletproof. It pays off--the gun goes off once, and Stokovich slumps, gutshot but alive. The cops are getting closer, there's not much time for a full interrogation--just enough to confirm (amidst a lot of Gollum-like babbling about the Master) that yes, there is a private plane waiting at Tököl Airfield to take Leyla to London, and that Stokovich's master is a far better one than Jovitzo. She's adamant that there's no way Leyla can resist Jovitzo, but that Stokovich's master, Carlyle, can protect her. By now the sirens are right on top of them--they must have reached the church. Leyla considers executing Stokovich right then and there--but she can't help seeing in this woman a reflection of herself--or at least herself as she must have appeared when she was deep in thrall to Jovitzo. Instead, she waits until she can hear the shouts of "Police!" from inside the cave. Then she fires a couple of quick rounds into the air to get their attention, bundles Hulier into the van, and vanishes into the early-morning Budapest traffic. I had to tweak that last challenge a bit, as the book assumes you either get in the van and leave with Stokovich (in which case Hulier flips out and she shoots him) or refuse to even get in (in which case she shoots Hulier then and there and drags Leyla into the van at gunpoint). That strikes me as bullshit, so I ran this as a Fighting challenge with a Filch stunt for the ambush part, and burned our "Impending Sucker Punch" Edge for another bonus die--and on our third die out of four we hit the Advance threshold (and by hit I mean hit exactly, what with that pesky Hurt penalty, which gave us the chance to interrogate (and optionally kill, but I don't think our Leyla is that cold-blooded) Stokovich and gave us back another Push. It also means that Leyla is continuing to collect medical personnel, because I figure the sucker punch means Stokovich doesn't get a chance to kill Hulier. Next Time: Another vote! We have Hulier, who can fill us in about the flask and the crucifix photo in the car, so we don't need to research them any more. But we have three main options:
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May 11, 2020 13:15
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Rescue Foretti Leaving Stukovich alive means he might be on borrowed time. I'd like Sinclair dealt with but priorities, and we need anyone we can get connected to actually hunting vampires.
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May 11, 2020 13:21
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Save Foretti We are playing this as spy/hero and I think doing this is much more time sensitive. Alongside that, we now have a much more advanced biochem corpus, so according to my research we just need to find Sinclair's kill phrase.
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May 11, 2020 13:53
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Karak Azgal Clean and Orderly Since the Slaanesh Plot exposition meta-hook stuff is out of the way, the rest of Skalf's Hold will be through the eyes of the protagonists as they move on from their poor financial decisions (Ulrike certainly appreciates the axe, at least, and it's honestly way better than her old hammer) and into Skalf's Hold to wait in line for licenses. Her hammer is certainly a flavorful weapon, but +1 damage just doesn't end up cutting it compared to having Impact now that she has an option with constant Impact. It gives you a higher damage ceiling on most attacks, but statistically the average damage result for an Impact weapon is 8 on the d10 (51% of rolls will be an 8+ on 2d10 keep 1) and it gives her a much better chance to crack skulls with maximum damage (19% Fury opportunity chance vs. 10% on a non-Impact weapon). The Hammer will kill the hell out of someone round one, but she has to make sure she sets up getting a full attack round 1 to make it work. The axe lets her be more proactive more easily instead of needing to maneuver so that her first swings come with feet planted. Losing Slow means it no longer advantages people trying to parry or dodge her, too. Plus, it's a really nice axe, and Gilbert even got one with a wolf head engraved into the blade (okay, that was there already, but it's what made him think it would make a good present to begin with). Ulric loves axes, wolves, pecs, and winter. It just wouldn't be right not to use it. Similarly, the Crime Misadventure has helped renew Portia's focus: She has realized her boss is not going to be as good at doing crimes if she doesn't help more with the magic. She thus spent the 300 Familiar EXP accumulated through the traveling and Deadgate adventures to buy another power, and got Magic Power, the one you really want a Familiar for. Anya is now Mag 3. This opens up extremely exciting possibilities for Anya that will let her gently caress with people a ton during the adventure; spells like Pall of Darkness are now very doable (throws down an area of magical darkness people can't see through with Night Vision, which also suppresses them and limits them to a half action unless they make a WP save. Perfect for if they run into, oh, emplaced MG turrets manned by nazi rats), she can potentially cast Dread Aspect and terrify enemies, and with a bandolier of 'cold-forged' iron knives bought from the Ranaldans to use as Ingredients, Shadow Knives is doable with a Channel test. Shadow Knives is one of the best magic missile spells in the game. Sadly for Anya, she originally didn't think she'd be using such magic much and didn't buy Mighty Missile, but it would still be 3 Damage 3 hits that ignore armor (unless it's magic, which will actually be relevant with some bosses). She already had the tricksy side of Shadow Magic with spells like Cloak Activity (do one thing while appearing to do another, perfect for picking locks and pockets) and Doppleganger (look like another kind of person) and Shadow Cloak. Bewilder was already an excellent combat debuff/randomizer. Now she can actually do stuff like turn invisible, Extreme Opposite of A Flashbang people, or toss out dark soul knives. She's not yet good enough to make freeform illusions, and probably never will be, but trust me: You can get up to all kinds of fun stuff with Shadow Magic, especially when it's backed up with actual mundane rogue skills. Portia gets a couple treats for unlocking her potential, as well as a promise that she may request one (1) unwise crime during the stay in Skalf's Hold. This will cause havoc. The party immediately finds that the dwarfs are extremely unhappy to see Vendrick on entering the hold. More taxes are charged for his ears, and his attempts to explain that the name 'Caledor II' is literally a curse-word among his people (after all, the dumb rear end in a top hat is why the Asrai had to hide in the forests and hope they don't all get murdered by dwarfs) only leads to one of the Lawbringers mentioning there sure are a lot of Grudges against the 'woodsy elfs' too and that he ought to pay and move along. Vendrick is really not in for a pleasant stay in a dwarfhold. He heads for the Foreign Quarter with Elena to be away from the dwarfs some and to look for the legal entrance to the ruins so they can start planning their expedition, while Gilbert and Ulrike (being the most respectable, at least by dwarf standards) go to see the noble quarter and get a license for the team. Anya and Karl first go to see the Temple of Shallya (Karl insists on stopping at all of those, everywhere they go, to see if they need help) and after discovering it's both reasonable and orthodox, Karl gets stuck for a moment explaining that he'll personally make sure his friends don't die in the ruins to a concerned Hildegard. Gilbert and Ulrike meet Furagrom Kazorson, the Thane of the Lawbringers, because Gilbert is mistaken for a visiting dignitary (being an actual Lord of Bretonnia. Sure, he only has a small castle in a swamp and one or two villages, but he is a Lord). Being a very honest man, Gilbert quickly explains something has gotten mixed up and they aren't actually here on any sort of affair of state, but this offers a chance to both meet the man and pay their licensing fee quicker and easier. The dwarf explains that licensed trips are 5 crowns per party, with a 20% tax on all holdings of the deceased if anyone should die down there, a 15% yearly tithe if they stay that long, and 10-20% taxes on all treasure recovered as well as an oath that they will return any item the dwarfs request, free of charge. Ulrike wonders how many adventurers they actually get with such incredibly unfavorable rates and why they don't offer a finder's fee, only to be met with a scoff; why should the dwarfs pay a manling who finds a rune-hammer down in the dark? The weapon belongs to the dwarfs. The finder's fee is all the other dwarven property they'd get to keep as thanks. Gilbert says they're really here to help clear the ruins and aid the dwarfs in destroying monsters so this shouldn't be a problem, but gets a kick from his wife under the table before he turns down any actual rewards. While talking to the old dwarf, they notice he seems kind of off with Ulrike, pointedly asking if she was involved in a brawl with any 'upstanding citizens' from Kislev in Deadgate. Gilbert vouches for his wife's honorable character as a Knight of the Empire, and the matter is dropped, but they later mention that odd imposition to Anya and Karl when they meet them coming out of the temple. Portia pipes up that this is time. Time for the crime. Both Gilbert and Karl try to say no, but Anya is curious about the Lawbringer Thane apparently 'enforcing' the law a little more harshly on people who mess with the Kislevite mob. She points out that if he's corrupt, it would hurt the entire Hold, and it's their duty to use whatever means they have to investigate. They can't stop her, and soon she's using magic to pretend she's a Lawbringer herself (she picked up Khazalid extremely quickly) and slipping into the offices that night to look for evidence and clues. She discovers promissary notes and oaths to Dimitri, the boss of the fighting pits. As well as a promise to arrest Buurf and hold him (with proper dwarven ale) until he reconsiders the retirement he talked about with Karl. Furagrom's plot is that he's a gambling addict. He can't help himself. He LOVES betting on things, fights, etc. And so he's secretly in debt to the Kislevite mob, and the Lawbringers' lovely performance in Deadgate is partly to mask that his cops are backing one organized crime faction so that his secret doesn't get out and his debts can be paid. PCs can use this in multiple ways: Blackmail is obvious, though Furagrom is more frightened of being revealed than he needs to be. He's one of the most important men in the city, and it's mostly his conscience convincing him he'll be punished if anything comes out; it's more likely the city council just quashes the rumors and backs him to the hilt. But it's also possible (and since it's more honorable, what our heroes will do, especially as Ulrike made an enemy of the mob) to tell him you know and offer to help. PCs can make a friend for life in the upper echelons of the city if they can deal with Dimitri, and Dimitri the Crime Lord is a huge rear end in a top hat with a big personal treasure stock anyway. They'll be tucking this subplot away for later to space out the 'city' adventures, but Anya now knows something's up and can tell her friends. Meanwhile, Vendrick and Elena are shopping in the city quarter, picking up ammunition, food, lantern oil, and all the other stuff they need to go down into the deeps. Vendrick is pleased to discover that the dwarfs even sell actual elven wine; they grumble about it a lot, but it makes the humans happy and sells well. Elena being the only person on the team who is actually good with money, she manages to befriend a local merchant named Gondrolla, who runs a somewhat overpriced but very high quality supply shop with her son. If you befriend her, while she's a very honest merchant at heart, she also has a few less-legal goods for sale; things people unofficially brought up, or that she's bought from some of her less honest suppliers. One of the items is an actual Gromril helmet, giving +3 AV to the head (stacks with normal armor, so can give someone AV 6 head). Sadly, thanks to Gilbert, they can't afford it. Elena promises to be back for that incredibly sweet hat. Gondrolla also offers a service where she'll prepare a funeral for fallen adventurers and an actual message (and sending of some of their treasure) for their next of kin. Many merchants offer this, but she's the only one who actually sends the treasure and message, and actually does the funeral properly. Elena remarks she won't be needing it. Hopefully. There's much more to explore in Skalf's Hold, but again, these will be spaced out. With the party rested, fed, supplied, and licensed, they set out that morning to descend into the blackness and begin their delve beneath Karak Azgal. Next Time: Pre-Plot Open Dungeon
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May 11, 2020 15:03
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Rescue Foretti We're actually well on our way on building a network of assets. And being a big drat hero is always nice.
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May 11, 2020 15:09
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Karak Azgal I suspect that once she shows her new axe to some of her fellow White Wolf knights, that Norsican blacksmith in going to be super busy. I doubt that it will replace the hammer as their official weapon, but there might well be some debate about it along those lines. That's a nice axe. Regarding the crime lord and his treasures, I think returning one of them would make the group some powerful friends among the dwarves. In which case some of the party's stuff might get enhanced by Runes. Think about how terrifying Vendrick might become with a Runic Elfbow with runes of Cleaves, Fury and Speed (+1 Damage, +1 Attacks, + 1d10 to Initiative). Vendrick would go from Sniper to Sniper-with-a-machine-gun-bow.
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May 11, 2020 15:52
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I don't expect that Ulric himself is too stuck up about what hefty piece of steel the knight uses to smite hellvikings with, he'd probably be okay with some lunatic waving a reclaimed orcish sluggah around.
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May 11, 2020 15:55
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let the man tell his story, geez edit: specifically directed at Everyone Leraika fucked around with this message at 16:00 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 15:56
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Karak Azgal Random Encounter Table, You Absolute Bastard! The section on the general ruins beneath the city are the worst part of the book. Completely randomized encounters just kind of don't work great in WHFRP. It's much better to plan out what a party will be fighting, and if they'll be fighting; lots of parties aren't insanely combat capable and WHFRP doesn't usually assume lots of mandatory combat, even though this is a pretty combat heavy module. Look back at Barony of the Damned and Plundered Vaults: Our heroes have definitely done some fighting, but lots of it was optional. Just rolling to see what they fight isn't that great. It's also potentially pretty long. The actual planned encounters and dungeon plots start all the way down on level 3, so you might have several sessions of mostly randomized and ad-libbed dungeon crawling before you start to get into the fun rat craziness and undead. The adventures are also listed a bit out of order from what the map of the tunnels suggests, so I'll just be rearranging them. Partly because I want to get to the undead plot line sooner rather than later (it's probably my favorite, though the rats are strong contestants) and leave the Greenskins for last, since they generally have the weakest plot. I also want to show off the results of the extremely extensive encounter-building random tables, because they tried their damnedest to kill the heroes right off the bat. There's also a lot of good material on evoking what dwarven ruins look like and how their mines would look, and how to show off that other creatures have moved in and how to put down other traps and hazards on the way. As our heroes aren't actually going through a full randomized dungeon experience before getting to the plot (I both don't have any graph paper and it would be pretty boring) we won't be covering Chapter 4 a huge amount. Just keep in mind that it's not great, and that the actual designed dungeon bits are much better. If you're going to add extra levels and dungeon challenges, I'd really recommend making them yourself rather than using these tables. When the heroes descend into the extremely-well-made tunnels and arches of the old Hold, they are surprised when a sound of thunder so loud it can be heard underground rings out all around them and they have their first random encounter. Part of the wall nearby collapses completely, crashed down by the enormous warhammer of a huge, centauroid creature that looks like an ogre's torso growing out of the body of a small dragon. Yeah, rolling on the table, I got 93 (Bizarre Encounter), then 18 (Dragon Ogres), then 83 (4 Dragon Ogres, which is already bad enough, but it adds they should have the Brute career and 6 Advances each). An entire party of these immense creatures stumbles into the corridors in front of the shocked heroes as Portia hides behind Anya and Gilbert and Ulrike move to the fore. The leader points his immense hammer at them, and asks something in a language they don't speak. He asks again, and Anya recognizes he's speaking the Language of Magic. "What year is it.", she translates. They reply it's 2537 by the Imperial calender. The leader looks puzzled and says it took 15 years to tunnel out of their cage, and asks what became of Archaon and if the Storm is still happening. The party kind of shuffles their feet a little and says 'no' and 'he got kicked in the dick by an orc and ran away'. The Dragon Ogre notes this only raises further questions about what their duty is under the agreement, but as the Everchosen is technically still alive if he fled, they must answer the call. He apologizes and raises his hammer, and the heroes face one of the hardest fights they've ever had. I was nice and didn't give the Dragon Ogres +1 Attacks from the Brute career. This is going to be bad enough already, with higher skill (thanks to the EXP), tougher, giant enemies with 3 attacks each and a ton of wounds. The saving grace is they got lucky on Fear. Gilbert had to Fortune his check, but nobody actually failed Fear. The party is also much faster, which gives Vendrick and Elena time to fire their damaging ranged weapons and Anya time to break out one of her knives (she's got 5) and throw down Shadow Knives. She hit the CN exactly, and got 18 Wounds into one of the Dragon Ogres right off the bat, rolling well on damage. Vendrick missed a shot, but Fortuned it into a hit, and their AV 2 is completely ignored by his bow for another 12 Wounds. Note this didn't drop the guy they focused. Dragon Ogres have *34* Wounds. Most of the time when you put 30 ranged wounds into someone round 1, they drop. Elena bounced off. Gilbert and Ulrike charged the wounded one, and revealed the other weakness Dragon Ogres have: No Dodge and no Parry. Gilbert and Ulrike managed to bring that one down, and then things devolved into a melee. The sheer number of attacks the Dragon Ogres got hurt. A lot. Anya got lucky on Round 4 and Bewildered one into helplessness for a turn (low chance of working; they get a WP save and the Helpless action is only one of 5 random actions they can take) that let Ulrike and Gilbert kill him easily, but bringing another down by raw attrition without that Shadow Knives volley took several turns. During which Gilbert got pummeled. The only thing that kept the party from burning fate during this fight is that Karl is an absolute bastard for a GM to deal with. Any time someone was getting low, d10+2 healing. Combined with full plate and tough frontliners who wouldn't let them past, and Elena's whip still working on dragon ogres to help control and shut them down, and the party barely managed to win without getting hosed. If they didn't have Elena and Anya's control whip and magic and Karl's healing, they'd have been dead. And this is just a random encounter roll. Exhausted, with their armor dented and bodies battered (despite Karl's healing magic), they stumble into the chamber the drat things came charging out of, wondering what the hell they just fought. And encounter the random Treasure tables. The Dragon Ogres were 'Hard' on the Slaughter Margin (though I'd say fighting 4 of the drat things should really make it tougher) so they get a roll on Coins, Gems, and Special. I elect to use the extra rule that you can shift a harder encounter down to an 'easier' column but roll more, so they roll twice, but with slightly lower chances in each column. There's a stock of coins, no gems, and 2 Special items. They get a terrible roll on coins, and so find no actual coins despite finding coins. Their Special rolls are interesting, though. They find an ancient tome full of hidden rune lore (can teach a PC who spends a month studying it the Arcane Language (Runes) skill, letting them ID runic items easily, also worth a ton. Somehow despite being one of the most sacred and hidden mysteries of the dwarfs, they don't auto-confiscate these) and a piece of Gromril armor, from a long-dead hero. What's more, they're lucky enough that it's sized for a human-sized wearer, not a dwarf. It's a beautiful breastplate done in an Imperial style, able to slot onto a normal suit of armor. Gromril is always, always taken away if the dwarfs realize you have it. They lust for the stuff more than gold. Anya quietly takes the book to study when they have spare time, while Gilbert fits the gromril armor to his suit. They'll figure out how to smuggle it out later. Still, inside the dark chamber, they find tunnels showing the Dragon Ogres tunneled up through the mountain from a rune-laden chamber, marked with (according to what Anya can translate from the reference sections in the book they found) a bunch of warnings that something terrible and blessed of the Dark Gods lies below in the dark. It seems ancient rune-smiths had sealed these creatures of Chaos long ago within the mountain, and somehow the binding had worn away over the centuries. The Runic warnings speak of sealed beasts of Chaos within the rock below, but surely that just refers to the insane badass Dragon Ogres they just slew, yes? While searching around the ritual chamber, they find a hidden door that leads them out and immediately down to the first actual plot thing. Random tables for treasures and encounters are a tradition. I don't mind the random treasure tables much; they're full of flavorful stuff in with the badass items like Gromril, and you have a lot of extra moneysinks and fun stuff to spend crowns on up above in the city. The encounters, though? If this team wasn't mid second/early third tier, they'd be dead as hell. And the same table can produce '1 goblin'. The encounter table swings wildly from 'not even worth rolling dice' to 'holy poo poo, this should be a major plot end boss', the exact same problem I had with the random encounter tables in Tome of Corruption. If you're going to fill in the plot-less parts of the dungeon, please, make the dungeon yourself. Don't risk 'giant swarm of badass ancient dragon ogres'. If they didn't have multiple ways to snare, confuse, and mess with enemies and a hell of an opening volley and two great front-line fighters plus an actual magic healer, they would be very dead. Next Time: I'm a rat. SCREAMING RAT.
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May 11, 2020 15:56
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