Review: Deadly Delves Reign of Ruin

Reign of Ruin is a 34 page adventure for Swords & Wizardry by Jon Brazer Enterprises, suitable for a party of 6th level PCs. In terms of transparency I received a complimentary copy for review purposes.

The book opens up with some starting fiction and background. The background is a set-up for the adventure, where the descendant of a long-dead black dragon tyrant mobilizes her minions to menace the warm-blooded races who her forebear terrorized so long ago. The backstory is a bit wordy and rather specific with proper names and regions. I feel that it could be shortened considerably to be more generic for the purposes of individual campaigns.

As for the present era, the plot hook for the party to get involved is via a scout’s last dying words of the razed city of Northam and its need for reinforcements. The other hook involves traveling merchants explaining in more detail that the Ixtupi (lizardmen devotees of the black dragon) have come to attack the village as revenge. Once the PCs get to the town, they find it in the aftermath of a massacre, with a few clues pointing to the identities and motives for their attackers in the form of a survivor’s testimony and draconic graffiti. The clues give a relatively good sense of the opposition for a canny group of players (corpses whose flesh seems to have dissolved off their bodies which is the result of acidic breath weapon), but overall I feel that this adventure could have had a stronger start if it began proper with the party arriving in the town. The merchant adventure hook is too much “tell, not show” and ideally the site of an attacked settlement alone should be enough to attract the PC’s attention.

Further encounters before the main dungeon itself include the village of Mistlevy (the raiders’ next target) and a swamp encounter where the Ixtupi are fighting a rival tribe of lizardfolk. In both of these encounters there is quite a fair number of enemies, but also potential allied NPCs to fight alongside. This does a good job of preventing characters from feeling overwhelmed, but on the other hand risks the GM rolling “against himself” a fair bit if their gaming group is slower-paced. A good idea may be to grant the players the opportunity to control said NPCs; I did this in various campaigns, which made my gaming group feel more engaged with the battle.

Additionally the first encounter has a point where the black dragon main villain makes a personal appearance to wreak havoc before fleeing back to her temple headquarters. The intent of the adventure is that the party will face her down in the heart of her lair, with the first encounter as a taste of things to come. Although mobile and strong like many dragons, the old adage “if it has stats, the players can kill it” holds strong. A bad saving throw or lucky attacks may bring the dragon down at the outset, and given that the final encounter is a pretty clever room full of terrain-based hazards, this would be robbing the gaming group of a good fight later on down the road.

The temple itself has three major levels not counting the aboveground entryway. It has a healthy mix of reptilian monsters, undead, animated objects, and other creature types to prevent combat from getting too monotone. The dungeon is the meat of the adventure, and there are quite a few traps. There was one trap that I liked but felt could have been executed better: stone pillars which summon corrupted elementals if a spellcaster uses magic which deals energy/elemental damage while within their vicinity. It takes an otherwise common tactic of “blast them all” to use against the party in a thematically interesting way. Unfortunately said trap is a one-time occurrence so that it is likely to happen without the players growing aware as to their purpose. A repeat appearances of pillars would engender a cautious mindset in players; they would need to weigh whether they risk using powerful magic against the enemies currently arrayed against them, but at the possibility of biting off more than they can chew. Another involves a room which fills with acidic water while dragonblood brutes (who are themselves immune to acid) attack the party. A hidden lever can be found during combat to drain the room. I particularly like this touch; it combines monsters and environmental hazards together in a way I don’t see often in many OSR modules.

As for enemies, there are mentions of what happens if the complex goes on alert, notably in the form of kobold slaves acting as messengers. However, most of the intelligent monsters rarely go beyond their own rooms and instead prepare to attack PCs who come to them first. This feels a bit artificial, and while it makes sense in some cases (unintelligent undead and constructs) it would’ve been nice to have suggestions for what rooms monsters would retreat to or use as chokepoints in case of an invasion of the temple. Lord knows the complex has enough traps to exploit for this purpose!

The final encounter with the black dragon overlord has a good description of the room in which the battle will take place, with descriptions of terrain for both the party and for the dragon to use to their advantage.

Miscellaneous Thoughts: The maps for this adventure are well-detailed. Full-color and grid-based, they cover the entirety of the main dungeon as well as the first encounter. The adventure also makes clever use of existing class features. The “Open Doors” roll, for example, is used for various feats of strength such as escaping from the grip of a giant venus flytrap or pushing a fallen stone block trap to reopen a passageway.

The adventure itself is rather expensive for its size ($10 for a 34 page adventure). Given that adventures have limited replay value for gaming groups, this reduces its viability in comparison to other Swords & Wizardry products of similar length but at more affordable prices. I understand the need to make up costs especially given the detail of the maps, but as a consumer it will not be an attractive option.

Clarification: The book's price as a PDF dropped to $6.95

In conclusion, Deadly Delves: Reign of Ruin rates well for an OSR adventure. It has the core idea of a dungeon delve, but the terrains, traps, and enemies are varied and well-detailed enough to keep the players on their toes. Its low points are that the BBEG shows up too early (and thus risks the potential for an early death), as well as the fact that temple has a high enough number of traps to the point of triggering player paranoia which can slow gaming to a crawl. But overall the good outweighs the bad in this dungeon crawl. My final verdict is a 3.5 out of 5 stars, rounded to 3 for the purposes of OneBookShelf.

Larius Firetongue's School of Sorcery is out!

Cover Art by Eric Lofgren

Six months ago this book was an assembly of notes in Microsoft Word. Even two years ago it was an idea I had; aside from Redhurst Academy of Magic for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, gaming sourcebook dedicated to magic school adventures and settings where rather rare. Sure you had city-based sourcebooks make mention of a mage's college here and there, but they were but one piece of the setting, one page in a much larger tome. Having grown up on Harry Potter and influenced by
school-based Japanese anime and manga, it seemed odd to me that such a popular and ripe subgenre was going more or less unexploited in the D&D and OSR fandoms.

As the largest book I've published yet, it is hard to describe the feelings going through me now that it is fully finished. For the last 3 days I spent 5 to 6 hours on average in Adobe InDesign, motivated by a newfound burst of energy now that I was nearing completion. As soon as I scanned the book for error-checking and made a prototype PDF which by all accounts worked, the tiredness rushed over me suddenly like a tidal wave. But within that exhaustion I felt satisfaction, happiness at a job well done. The happiness one gets at the end of a long and winding road, and as they look back they see that all their hard work led them here.

Thus the creation of this sourcebook. Larius Firetongue's School of Sorcery is a 100-page sourcebook full of new rules and setting material optimized for campaigns where the PCs are apprentices at a magical academy and all the crazy shenanigans which can only occur from spell-slinging adolescents and grimoires full of forbidden knowledge. It was made with Swords & Wizardry in mind, but can be a useful toolbox for other Original and Basic D&D style retroclones. Even if the magic school campaign does not appeal to you, the book is filled with options sure to please any fan of spellcasters from new spells, a cantrip subsystem, turning books into a new form of treasure capable of teaching readers new and interesting abilities, and the like.

It's available for sale on Drive-Thru RPG and RPGNow, and the product contains bookmarks and is watermark-free.

If this sounds interesting to you, or if you know of a gamer friend who would like this, feel free to take a look and share. I hope my work brings as much fun to your gaming table as I did writing it. But this isn't going to be my only magic-school sourcebook! I am hard at work on an adventure path for Pathfinder and 5th Edition, along with some other work projects. As they're still in the idea stage I'm afraid that I can't share much information about them as of now, but hopefully you'll be tided over with this latest offering.

To all my fellow fantasy academia enthusiasts, I wish you good luck and good gaming!

Video Game Review: Undertale

Screenshot taken from the game

It is not often I talk about video game RPGs on this blog, but over the past week I discovered a rare gem thanks to one of Jim Sterling's videos.  Undertale is a PC game done in the style of 90s-era RPGs, but it turns the genre on its head in a pretty big way.  Basically the main crux is that it's an RPG game where you don't have to kill anyone, where each battle can be resolved without violence...that is, if you choose to do so.

The story starts out with a child of ambiguous gender climbing Mt. Ebott and falling through a hole.  Said hole leads into some underground ruins part of the world of monsters, a civilization of people banished below the earth after losing a war against the humans long ago.  While there you meet a woman named Toriel who adopts a motherly attitude towards our hero and explains the many dangers of this new world.  At first it seems like a typical "explore exotic locales, fight bad guys and return home" type of plot, but early on in the game you encounter some monsters in battle who seem...different.  Ones who seem afraid of you, or apprehensive of your presence.  Beyond the commands for 'Fighting' in battle, you have the option of 'Sparing' weakened monsters or interacting with them via the versatile 'Act' command to come to a more peaceful solution.  But not all monsters you meet are so reluctant to leave a human unharmed?  It's one thing to say you won't fight and will show mercy: can you still do as much when in the face of certain death?

Attempts at subversion of common tropes don't always end well, but the way Undertale pulls it off makes it much more interesting than just a postmodern commentary on the violence-centered aspect of RPGs.  You can definitely play it hack and slash style, or try your best to be a pacifist in spite of the many dangers laid in front of you.  The best thing is that Undertale has great replay value and lots of hidden secrets, with even minor choices having resonating effects throughout the plot.  The characters are all well-detailed, and it's one of the few games which had moments where I burst out laughing or a sense of remorse at seeing a character I grew to like over time come to a bad end.  When I first bought it I found myself playing it for 6 hours in a single day, so engaged was I with everything about it that I couldn't wait until tomorrow to see what happens next.

The game has good replay value; as of this post I'm on my second run, and the story isn't linear even if a lot of the locations you visit are the same.  The events and characters change in major ways depending on your actions.  A monster who you spare in a random encounter might show up later as a person to talk to, whereas ones you kill might come back to haunt you as their friends show remorse on losing a loved one.  But it's not quite a simple "black and white" moral choice like in most mainstream games such as Dragon Age.  It takes major effort to go the route of either a pacifist or remorseless killer, and Undertale's atmosphere and plot changes where it often feels like you're playing a different game entirely: there's a rather significant number of players who simply can't find themselves the willpower to go through the 'evil path,' or "No Mercy" run.  I'm starting to find myself in their camp as well as time goes on.

In conclusion, Undertale is a great game which made me care for the people of its world far more than many other RPGs on the market.  It has a free demo, and can be purchased for ten dollars on Steam's online store.  It has the potential for being one of 2015's top games in spite of being an indie-published.  I highly recommend you at least give it a shot.

My Adventure Ideas Wish List

Torch of the Burning Sky by Claudio Pozas

I realize that I haven't blogged in nearly 3 weeks, and one of my ideas is taking more work than I realized, so I decided to follow up with something nice and quick.

Maybe it's a published adventure.  Maybe it's a pitched campaign concept, but your regular gaming group's not biting.  Maybe you're one of those idea guys, who has all sorts of neat creations yet little time to play them all.  This is such a post, a wish list of adventures and campaigns I'd like to try out one of these days.  It's unlikely that I'll try any of them soon, especially the more long-term ones, but a guy can dream.

Below are the major campaign ideas, both original and published, I want to try out one day.  What adventures are on your wish list?  Feel free to share!

1. X-Crawl Road Trip: The PCs are an internationally famous crew of gladiators in the Roman Empire's most popular reality television contest. Their next destination is a dungeon-crawl in Lawrence, Kansas, and they travel in a luxury entourage of limousines and summoned mounts. Unfortunately their magically-powered transportation runs out of gas smack-dab on a highway somewhere in Middle America. Celebrity status can only get them so far, and they need to get to Lawrence within 72 hours or else their position is forfeit! Do they go monster-hunting to raise gas money, hitch-hike with a bus full of demon-worshiping metalheads, or steal their rival crawlers' truck golem when they stop at the local bar and grill?

Yes, I'm partially inspired by Final Fantasy XV for this.

2. Red Dragon Inn: I actually played 2 sessions of this before, but I'd like to run it again someday. Basically I utilize the rules from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns & Taverns. The PCs inherit an inn which has a statue dedicating to a goddess of hearth and home in the basement. Satisfied customers generate energy of positive feeling, which the statue can then convert into magical items and other things PCs enjoy. Meanwhile the surrounding lands contain room for adventure, such as a fabled magical icebox which can preserve perishable food for weeks. There are also potentially interesting encounters, such as a 1st-level destined hero who stops at the inn...while the demon lord's agents tasked with her destruction are also staying there!

3. Slay la Slay: A Tome of Battle/Path of War-centric game where the PCs are students at a fabled Battle Academy, disciples of a monk's monastery, or some other environment heavily inspired by shounen/seinen fighting anime. And yes, it's expected that people will shout out the names of their maneuvers in combat.

Will include a cloud/storm giant with a size-changing ring in charge of student discipline.

4. Sword of Levity: Published Adventure.  A campaign utilizing the Sword of Air sandbox adventure by Frog God Games, only this plays up some of the more whimsical and sillier elements.

5. Way of the Wicked: Published Adventure.  The PCs are a fifth columnist cell of devil-worshipers plotting to overthrow the holy and virtuous nation of Talingarde.  They will engage in all manner of dastardly plots such as outfitting a dungeon to guard against pesky adventurers, sabotage a border fortress so that a monstrous horde can break through into the heartland, and even form their own evil organization!

6. Zeitgeist: the Gears of Revolution: Published Adventure.  Set in a pseudo-Victorian nation of Risur experiencing an industrial revolution of technomagic, the PCs are royal agents tasked with stopping threats to king and country.  Urban investigation and conspiracies amid a steampunk backdrop.

7. Rappan Athuk Charity Crawl: Published Adventure.  The name of the game is to see how far the players can get in this megadungeon without dying horribly.  Dead PCs are replaced with new ones, so even a TPK is not the end of the campaign.

Inspired by Final Fantasy's Four Job Fiesta charity, turning it into a charity even via livestream can be a cool idea.  Pledging to donate $1 for every dead PC, $10 for every dungeon level cleared, or something to that effect.

8. War of the Burning Sky: Published Adventure.  A mighty empire's ruler is killed, and civil war sweeps over this fantasy world of high magic as twelve would-be conquerors bring chaos and bloodshed to the realms. The PCs join a resistance movement to bring freedom and vanquish Evil from the oppressed realms!

9. The Dragonlance Chronicles: Published Adventure.  Naturally I'll alter the adventure in many ways to update it to modern standards, but its prominent status, as well as being the ur-adventure path, have an appeal to me.

African Fantasy Artwork

Artist Unknown.  If anyone knows, please tell me via PM or the comment section

If you're a long-time reader of my blog, chances are you saw a Magic School Campaign post for Spears of the Dawn.  I am a big fan of Kevin Crawford's work, and his fantasy Africa setting is one of the retroclones I am most eager to try out at some point in gaming.  Even though I haven't found any grabbers yet, this did not keep me from gathering potential material.  Beyond maps and adventure writing, I often find that artwork is another great inspirational source.

Aside from this game and Nyambe, African fantasy in regards to the tabletop scene has been very sparse, and this extends to artwork as well.  I spent a good amount of time looking for pictures which might be appropriate for such a campaign, and ended up with 138 images.  So right here I'd like to share my findings in an Imgur album link.  I hope that people find it a useful resource, whether they're old-school or modern D&D, or using homebrew or published settings.

I'd like to note that the artwork for Spears of the Dawn is available for free on DriveThruRPG for further material.  I showcased a lot of it in my review of the RPG in this thread on GiantITP.

Brainstorming: Monotheism in a D&D World

Taiia from Deities & Demigods

An interesting aspect of fantasy literature is the use of a creator deity.  Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series did not overtly state their world’s cosmology, but there were implications of a single god responsible for the creation and oversight of reality.  This is not a surprise as both men were very religious Christians.  Deliberate or not, it’s quite common for a writer’s personal beliefs and experiences to feature in their work.

  

There is a lot of appeal to polytheist settings, in part because multiple deities offer a lot of variety for players and thus more potential character concepts for Cleric PCs.  But in recent days I’ve wondered about ways of creating a monotheist D&D setting which does not simply replicate the Abrahamic God.  The goal of this is not to create a religion which demands only worship of one deity or who believes in one deity, but a setting cosmology where the existence of but one deity is an objective truth.  Even in settings where one entity is responsible for the creation of reality itself (Ao from Forgotten Realms or the High God of Dragonlance), such “overdeities” are often distant figures who are not worshiped.

True Monotheism vs. Monolatrism and Dualism

Many campaign settings for Dungeons & Dragons attempt to go the polytheist route, but this doesn't always feel genuine.  As mentioned in my earlier Pantheist Priest post, true polytheism is rare.  A lot of fictional religious traditions acknowledge the existence of multiple deities but clerics and mortal populations choose to honor one.  This practice is actually monolatrism, for monotheism is both the belief and worship of one deity.  There is also the case of dualism where both divinities are equally strong and divine.  While Christiantiy and Islam have a Satanic figure and enemy of God, his power and wisdom is but a fraction of the true Abrahamic deity.

In some rare cases there are deities (such as Lolth of the Forgotten Realms) who keep their followers in the dark about the existence of other gods and goddesses so that they can consolidate their power base.  This is a more accurately monotheist, but it is often a constructed lie which flies in the face of cosmological evidence in the campaign setting.  In this case, the setting is still polytheist and monotheism is objectively false.

Nature Spirits, Demonic Cults, and the Granting of Spells

Oath of Druids by Daren Bader

In some settings divine magic can come from non-godly sources.  Druids draw their power from nature itself, while demon lords and archdevils can grant spells to mortal followers despite not being true gods.  While most D&D settings have divine spells as an essential part of deity worship, in a monotheist setting this may not necessarily be the case.  Below are a list of options for one to use in a monotheist setting.

Option One, Lesser Servitors and Patrons: A monotheist deity may act through divine intermediaries such as angels and saints to commune with the faithful.  Perhaps the One God’s wisdom is too great for any mortal mind to handle, so they instill an infinitesimal fraction of their essence into numerous servants to carry to the mortal realm.

Or maybe so-called “divine” spells are merely a powerful entity sharing its gifts with another; a powerful dragon or nature spirit may be able to instill spells, but they are not gods because they can fall prey to the vices of arrogance and short-sightedness.  They are merely children of the One God, like everything else in the universe.

Option Two, Stealing the Gift: An individual’s communion with the One God results in holy gifts in the form of spells, meant only for the most virtuous of servants.  Demons, devils, and false prophets might have found a way to tap into this universal consciousness of divinity and take the spells which rightfully belong to the One God.

This is an especially vile form of spellcasting, for it allows otherwise good men and women to be tricked into following selfish and wicked folk who wield divine magic as “proof” of the One God’s favor.

Option Three, the Nature of Magic: Arcane magic is ill-described in most settings as-is.  It is an irreligious form of spellcasting which comes about via study or a supernatural entity in one's ancestral bloodline.  Christianity and Islam (I cannot say for sure about Judaism) posit magic as a negative force granted by demons, evil spirits, and the like.  One could go this route, although in this case this can be very restrictive on party dynamics if clerics and mages are expected to be mortal enemies.

The Adversary

Eye of Sauron from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings

As a monotheistic setting requires an unorthodox reworking of the cosmology, this raises the ever-important question of the deity's status and why evil occurs.  The true god might be equivalent to a wise parental figure who seeks to guide mortal kind to greater awareness and prosperity.  In many cultures the presence of evil is caused by a fallen figure, a malevolent force which seeks to lead the righteous away from the oneness of God.

Or perhaps the deity is entirely beyond morality, equivalent to a force of nature of the cosmos which simply is.  That very same deity might have multi-faceted personalities, the creator and the destroyer, bringer of harvests and plagues.  Different cultures might worship and prize different aspects as befits their circumstances.  In a way it is similar to druids who revere different aspects of nature, or religious denominations who share certain core assumptions but differ on several key issues.

Or a potential idea is that the deity is actually malevolent, a cruel tyrant who cares more for loyalty above all and will inflict a host of plagues upon nonbelievers.  This is more common in some Japanese Role-Playing Games, where the mortal priesthood is not just corrupt but the creator of the world itself is a tyrant who the heroes must destroy or seal away.  This Game Theory video has a good article on Final Fantasy's religious symbolism.  Such a campaign is the most unorthodox one, as it puts heroic PCs against the power structure of not just established religious orders but the cosmology itself.

Going for a classic fantasy trope of good vs. evil is a ready-made trope common in fantasy media as well as our own culture.  But making the leader and/or originator of evil a deity or equivalent power would make the cosmology a dualistic one instead of a monotheistic one.  If the monotheistic deity is truly good, why does she/he not vanish evil from the world?  Is the creator omnipotent and/or omniscient?  Why are mortal heroes and good-aligned outsiders relied upon as intermediaries?

As these very questions have yet to be answered in a satisfactory manner in the real world and spawned centuries of debates among philosophers and theologians, you don't need to concoct an answer in your own campaign immediately.

Monotheism for Pathfinder

The 3rd Edition book Deities & Demigods had an entry on designing a monotheist cosmology for D&D.  It also contained the sample deity Taiia, a universal entity of creation and destruction with major denominations honoring different aspects (and thus a different set of domains).  The guidelines were that a monotheist deity should have at least 20 domains, which at the time there were 22 domains total in the Player's Handbook.  In Pathfinder's Core Rulebook, that number has almost doubled to 35 domains!  This is not including the myriad new domains provided in supplements for either game.

As the vast majority of domains govern aspects of the world (artifice, fire, war, etc) with only a few specifically devoted to morality (chaos, evil, good, law), one should allow Clerics to pick 2 domains of their choice as a sufficient option.  A Cleric with Chaos and Liberation might be drawing upon the One God's teachings of overthrowing tyranny and fighting unjust social structures, while another Cleric of that same deity derives inspiration from Artifice and Fire to build great creations and temples.  Evil, Madness, and Void might be a little too macabre for a "fair and just" deity of light, but otherwise 32 domains is more than enough for most character concepts.

Further Reading

This idea has been bandied about before, so here's a list of articles and threads:

Monotheism in Fantasy RPGs

Does monotheism have a place in fantasy?

Monotheism or Polytheism?

Making Monotheism Work in Pathfinder

How would you handle a monotheistic religion?

Although it's purely in the idea stage, I'm also hard at work on writing up a sample monotheist fantasy setting.  I might explore it in future blog posts if this one generates enough interest.

Hit Points: Blood & Guts vs. Action Movie

Footage from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A lesser-known yet still much-debated aspect of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset is what hit points are supposed to represent.  After briefly talking about this on my Twitter and some Something Awful forum posts I decided to blog about it, namely the two most common interpretations I spot among player groups.

Blood & Guts: In this model, hit points primarily represent actual physical harm suffered by a character.  Fighters, barbarians, etc have more hit points than mages not just due to fitness but because they're overall portrayed as bigger and stronger.  The fact that large monsters such as dragons and giants have greater-than-average amounts reinforces this paradigm.  Even a large fellow with a high Strength but low Constitution might have a low pain threshold or be afflicted with ailments hindering their ability to fight.

Action Movie: In many shoot-em-up thrillers, it's common for the hero to get beaten up and bruised but manage to largely avoid grievous harm.  Through a combination of quick reflexes, luck, and sheer willpower they push on through where most people would have given up and succumbed to pain and exhaustion.  Even if the star of the show is supposedly a "normal person" in a world without superpowers, their very survival is nothing short of miraculous.  In D&D games with this model, hit points represent not just the physical realm, but a combination of mental fortitude and lucky dodges.  Losing hit points thus represents exhaustion and loss of focus as well as injury.

Sounds all well and good.  Is there a problem?

Both structures have their place, but where it becomes problematic is when gaming groups and individual players develop different expectations.  Such discussions are not unlike alignment debates and arguments in their passion.  During the time of 4th Edition many folks thought that the idea of a Warlord "shouting wounds closed" was a ridiculous suspension of disbelief, when in reality the class' inspiring words restored the will to fight in their comrades so that they can press onward through the dungeon.  A similar thing happened during the 5th Edition playtest, when Fighters had a feature which allowed them to still inflict some damage on a missed roll.  Many gamers were so incensed at this that the moderators at EN World had to create a separate subforum solely dedicated to that class feature to act as a containment section.  That way the complainers wouldn't restart the arguments anew in every single thread.

I think that the major problem is a lack of communication in game design on the part of the creators, and to a lesser extent the suspension of disbelief when it comes to non-magical classes and their healing capabilities.  1st Edition D&D is actually a good example on developer commentary helping inform the experience: Gygax explained that hit points were a combination of health, luck of the gods, willpower, and other factors.  If it was solely relegated to physical injury and size, then a high-level Fighter would be able to suffer more blood loss than horses and ogres, which to him seemed silly and ridiculous.  Compare this to 3rd Edition, which is more vague: "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one."  The former part suggests the blood and guts routine with some willpower thrown in, although the latter can be reasonably interpreted either way.  Is turning a blow into a less serious one represent half-dodging out of the way, or more akin to taking it but shrugging it off?

Does D&D better reflect one or the other?

That probably depends on the Edition, but in my views and experience I'm going to have to side with the action movie interpretation.  Characters who gain levels aren't necessarily packing on additional mass every time they roll a Hit Die, and allowing for hit points to represent a variety of staying power fits better into the games with less house rules and complications. If hit points represented the sole province of injury and were presented as such in the game mechanics, then at some point they're going to cap for human-sized characters; one only has so many liters of blood and internal organs.  Blood and guts can potentially be done, especially for grittier games, but it will take more work to implement.

In which a Gnome Stew apology post brings me to discuss history of D&D's min-max subculture

Here's the article in question.

I figure that a lot of folk are familiar with the concept of min-maxing, although in many circles it has negative connotations.  Some of it is justified, in that there are players who use their rules mastery to ruin the game or to engage in showboating.  However, I often seen the disparagement come a little too frequently, or in the worst case scenarios willfully overlooking genuine design flaws because the person who discovered the glitch in question's a min-maxer (who must certainly be up to no good)!

Accidental Optimization

I have an interesting story to share I saw several years ago on a D&D message board.  Back in the early days of 3rd Edition D&D, there was a group of players which included a Fighter and  a Druid who happened to score a prime spot of land for settlement.  The adventurers wnt about making their home base in the area and doing some domain management.  It was an exciting time for all at first, because who doesn't want to build a super-cool castle/secret base/etc?  The Druid could be the nature dude tapping into primeval wellsprings while the Fighter gets to be a noble commander and leader of men as portrayed in plenty of fantasy media.

Things didn't work out that way.  The party druid realized that his class abilities could contribute greatly to domain management.  Wild shape into a harmless-looking bird and survey the area while being able to rain down lightning bolts on enemy encampments.  Diplomacy was a class skill, meaning that the wildman was better able to negotiate with the other land barons at high society functions than the poor Fighter.  The Fighter's bread and butter, his vast array of potential feat selection, was mostly limited to combat-related tricks he'd have to wait for another level to learn, whereas the druid could swap out his entire spell selection every day.  And not just that, but the druid could wildshape into great beasts, potentially being able to strike enemies 15 feet away or even chaining up to 4 attacks at once on a full charge with Pounce (something martials could never replicate without excessive dumpster-diving for feats and prestige classes through scores of sourcebooks).

So what happened?  The fighter's player accused the druid's player of showing him up and gaming the system, intentionally stepping on his toes and making his contributions to the party irrelevant.  The druid was not utilizing 6+ combinations of splatbooks, nor juggling disparate modifiers to end up with insanely high bonuses.  His player was merely using the resources given to him at his disposal, almost all of which were in the Core Rulebooks.

You see, 3rd Edition is one of the most unbalanced versions of D&D, even more so than a lot of OSR games.  The way the game is structured is that a lot of restrictions on spell-casters in earlier Editions got mitigated or removed, and the bread and butter for martials (feats and class features) were much more restrictive than magic.  Even more so, martials did not have great access to many skills, and a lot of the "role-playing skills" were based on mental scores or not class skills, meaning they got outshined by spellcaster and thief classes in that department.  There's also been a demand among the playerbase and even a few game designers to limit noncasting martials to the domain of real-world physics (or more accurately what they imagined real-world physics to be like) crying "overpowered" whenever 3.X Fighters got nice things.

Lack of transparency led to the demand for min-maxing

The main problem in the previous example was fellow players thinking the worst of others at the table and jumping to conclusions, but this case of accidental upstaging is sadly very common in D20 games.  3rd Edition has not been playtested past 12th level, and the designers played the game like they did 2nd Edition AD&D, not utilizing a huge portion of their own new rules such as leaving spell slots open (which has been imported to Pathfinder) or playing non-healbot clerics.  In fact, Ivory Tower Game Design intentionally left in trap options in the game which looked cool on paper but were not so much in actual play; this was an attempt to reward system mastery.  Dragons were intentionally under-CRed to make them even more threatening to parties (leading to a lot of TPKs for poor GMs who were going by the game's rules and could not foresee it).

D20 is a great and versatile game system, but it's deeply broken.  To prevent accidental nerfs and party members suddenly becoming useless at their own roles, min-maxing became a demand to help people avoid trap options.  Combined with the sheer versatility and options through the amount of sourcebooks, as well as 3.0 being the first Edition to be birthed around the time of a widespread Internet, resulted in a subculture of sorts to grow on Wizards of the Coast's message boards.  A community of min-maxers grew.  Sometimes they tested out the limits of the system by creating utterly broken builds for theorycraft; sometimes they were more practical, writing handbooks which were the D&D equivalent of video game strategy guides; sometimes they helped out non-min-maxing player groups with advice on their current games and any potential mechanical pitfalls which may be lying in wait.  Beyond just this one subforum, D20 min-maxing communities became known as "Character Optimization forums," or CharOps for short.

Sadly, the illusion of D20 balance has carried over to Pathfinder, which hailed itself as being an updated version which solved much of 3rd Edition's problems.  Sadly, old problems were replaced with new ones, and the trends which led to imbalance in the first place (splatbooks full of new spells, unnecessary nerfs to martials, etc) were repeated over the course of the games' history.

Compare this to the OSR, which specializes in Original and Basic D&D and retroclones.  They don't care about game balance, but there's no illusion of their games being such.  It's generally accepted that certain classes are going to be more powerful than others at various levels of play, or characters in parties might contribute less due to poor die rolls and choices at character creation.  However, this is more in the open, and the power disparity between casters and martials in these Editions isn't as wide (OSR fighters have the best saves in the game, unlike D20 D&D).  As a result, there is not as much incentive for a CharOps culture to grow in the OSR because of this.

The disruptive min-maxer has a sad element of truth

D20 D&D is a rules-heavy game.  In fact, it's one of the rules-heaviest RPGs on the marketplace.  The sheer volume of text and sourceboks is unlike any other Edition, and while DM Fiat can be employed, small changes to the system ("we're removing alignment") result in ripple effects on all the smaller related rules.  Like a small cog in a great machine, its removal can result in the whole system malfunctioning.

D20 D&D players who min-max often operate on a different wavelength in games than folks who choose options based on the value of how cool it sounds on the surface.  In some cases, a min-maxer player might see one PC who's going to end up becoming a drain on party resources, or who is adamant on sticking to an underpowered option.

Combined with the earlier druid story and the Stormwind Fallacy being a frequent attitude in some gaming circles, min-maxers can often feel attacked for their play-style or feel as though they're part of a different fandom entirely from fellow D&D players.  It's unfortunate, then, that some min-maxing communities end up taking a hostile attitude towards others.  In some cases it may go so far as to dictating how other players should build their PCs, creating an overpowered PC to prove some point against the DM and/or gaming group.  In worst-case scenarios they might go as far as to assume that their encyclopedic knowledge of build combinations and rules exploits makes them an intellectual ubermensch amid a sea of idiots who just want to game without worrying so much over builds and balance.  Frank Trollman and his fanbase among the Gaming Den are a good example of these previous attitudes, and their attitude for starting flame wars on other boards (including Pathfinder's open playtest) has helped contribute to said negative attitudes simply by being the loudest and most negative voices.

A Personal Conclusion

The odd thing is I consider myself a min-maxer, but when it comes to actual games I don't always have the time or resources to build PCs and encounters to such rigorous positions.  As a DM I often wing it or shift around monster attributes or reskin existing enemies to make for a challenging fight which doesn't become a curbstomp battle.  Sometimes I pick sub-optimal choices deliberately for NPCs, and I've moreso relied upon the advice of other CharOps folks for PC building than trying to do the work required myself.  In spite of agreeing with a lot of their positions I don't really play as one very often.

I do think that hanging out among min-maxers for years has helped me become better as a gamer, and has helped D20 D&D in several ways.  You see, in spite of being very critical of the many flaws of 3rd Edition D&D and its D20 spin-offs, min-maxing communities still enjoy and play the game and find ways to change or work around said flaws.

3rd Edition D&D is one of the most imbalanced Editions on the market.

Its inclusion of trap options "to reward system mastery" is a terrible idea.

Roughly 50% of the games' levels see a dynamic shift in how the core of the game is played, and the prep time of the DM goes up exponentially as they have to patch problems the playtesters never discovered or touched.

I can hold all these opinions, but I can still love this game in spite of its flaws.  Their knowledge of the rules means that min-maxers are very good at being critical of their own game and still loving it.  This is a good tool which can help one avoid the adopting the more obsequious behavior in the tabletop fandom: things like "Strength caps for women are NOT sexist!  Otherwise you're calling Gary Gygax sexist!" or "People who are unhappy with this latest bit of errata should stop complaining and play another game".  I think that the willingness towards relentless self-criticism of one's own games is a much more valuable lesson than all the Handbooks and class guides put together.  Without it, so much more of the D&D fandom would remain stagnant and unwilling to change, willfully blind to its own flaws in fear of losing the love they have for their own game.

PS JaronK's tier system for classes is another good read, examining game balance between classes (or more so the lack of it).  It's a great thing to show to D20 newbies, and this post examines how the various classes interact with each other.

All of Quasar Knight Enterprises product off 40% for one day only!

For one day only, D20 Pathfinder SRD is holding a sale on almost all products on the store, mine included.

Although I price my work at very reasonable rates in comparison to other D20 products of similar size, at 40% off you can get a lot of content for a few bucks.  My selection is sure to please Pathfinder and OSR fans, especially folks who find the idea of monstrous PCs, cool fighter feats, and alignment-free games appealing.

If these books are new to new, I'll give a brief rundown on what each one can enhance your play experience.

The Abstract Thief is a Pathfinder base class based around the mage-thief archetype.  Basically the class is a talented person who sees the threads binding all of reality, and can manipulate said threads to steal essential concepts from others, such as luck, youth, vitality, knowledge, and more!  The Abstract Thief has a diverse skill set of roguish traits such as Sneak Attack, is a prepared caster who specializes in subtle arcane magic (such as enchantment and illusion), and has access to Abstractions which usually take the form of a ranged debuffing attack where they "steal" an intangible trait from an enemy.

A Fine Bunch of Monsters is a mini-bestiary of 12 new monsters for Pathfinder.  The game is very short on monsters of Fine and Diminutive size which aren't some variety of insect swarm, so I rectified the situation by making varied monsters for a wide range of Challenge Ratings.  It contains unique entries such as the grubalugs, gluttonous walking miniature mouths with extradimensional stomachs; animated vegetables which distract and splat against enemies; the magebeetle, every wizard's bane and consumer of arcane knowledge.

Death to Alignment is by far my most popular product.  It is a supplement with one simple purpose: to alter Pathfinder's game mechanics, from class features to spells, so that GMs can run alignment-free games without little unforeseen consequences such as paladins getting nerfed now that they don't have smite evil.  Also included are sample variant morality systems, such as evil being measured in Corruption Points or a 3-axis alignment of good/neutral/evil.

Nice Things for Fighters is intended to appeal to the demographic of Pathfinder players unsatisfied with the lack of game balance between martials and spellcasters.  The book provides a sampling of new feats both easy to qualify for and intended to shore up martial weaknesses.  For example, Dancing on the Wind allows your PC to jump vast distances by gaining an effective 1-round fly speed; Mighty Lungs and Thunderclap where super-strong heroes can blow gusts of wind with their breath and create shockwaves with a strong stomp.  Also included are new archetypes such as the Grappling Cord Acrobat and Warrior-Poet.

Old School Monster Classes is a Labyrinth-Lord Compatible Product which not only provides racial classes for iconic beings such as the giant and medusa, but also new interesting cultural details to provide setting incentives for how their societies might coexist with baseline humanoids.  Giants are the mighty descendants of a fallen empire; nagas are serpentine magical guardians of ley lines and planar crossroads; doppelgangers are sneaky hunters of forgotten lore created by a mysterious organization of scholars; and harpies are tainted human women fond of the arts who find ample demand for their natural flight and mesmerizing voices.

Playable Monsters, Vol. 1: Fantasy Iconics & Mythology is like Old School Monster Classes, except it utilizes the Pathfinder ruleset.  It also contains 2 new races not present in the former, the Boggard and Sahuagin.  Basically my monstrous variants contain the creatures' most iconic abilities, only scaled down when necessary to be balanced alongside the "core races."

I hope that at least one of these sound appealing to you.  I'm grateful for any support you can give me, whether it's purchasing my work or sharing the page with folk you know who might find it interesting.  Although my specialty right now is in Pathfinder, over time I plan on writing more supplements for other game systems, and funds I gain from sales of current work will be utilized for the creation of even more products!

I now have an ask.fm

Here's the link. The "E" is for Enterprises.

For those not in the know, Ask.fm is basically a social media site which allows you to ask questions (anonymous or by username).  It's a pretty interesting website, in no small part due to various folks in geek culture having their own profile, such as Let's Play's slowbeef or Pathfinder's F. Wesley Schneider.

I used to have an old account, ask.fm/quasarknight, but I deactivated it several months ago.  I changed my mind, but to my dismay I could not find an account retrieval option.  So I decided to make a new one.

So if you like my posts, are a fan of my work, or just feel like asking stuff, come and check it out.

Interesting 3rd Party Finds: the Water Chinchilla (Pathfinder)

So over on Drive-Thru RPG I spotted a 55-page setting book for the low price of one dollar, and figured that was more than enough content to justify the purchase.  While I expected a generic desert-themed world, instead I got a book full of rather novel ideas.  So this new 3rd-party find isn't going to focus on one mechanic or idea, but several.

Basically, Eiklatha is an arid desert region which was once ruled by the Thruli Empire who ruled both the surface and subterranean worlds.  The human Nephrites (with elements loosely modeled off of Japanese society) hold several cities renowned for their lore.  The other races are entirely new creations, such as the symbiotic Avialae who are nomadic bird-people with sapient plants sharing their body; or the theocratic frog-like Reskal, who live in stilt-cities on oases and wear shoes made of blessed reed to avoid touching the sand (which they view as the evil creation of the demon kings).

Basically the strong points of adventure ideas involve old Thruli ruins and the secrets and hostilities of competing civilizations.  A good 32 pages are devoted to mechanical information (races, equipment, new archetypes and monsters, etc), while the remaining 23 detail aspects of prominent settlements, history, and culture.

There are several things I can cover in this book, such as the races and racial feats, but for now I want to show the cutest thing ever in a Pathfinder product:

Water Chinchilla CR 1/3

XP 135

N Tiny animal

Init +2

Defense

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 10 (+2 Dex, +2 size)

hp 6 (1d8+2)

Fort +4, Ref -1, Will +0

Offense

Speed 30ft., swim 30ft.

Melee bite -2 (1d3-4)

Statistics

Str 3, Dex 8, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 10, Cha 14

Base Atk +1; CMB +1; CMD 7

Languages None

Ecology

Environment River

Organization solitary, cage (3-7), barrel (8-20)

Treasure none

Special Abilities

Purify Water (Su) A water chinchilla placed in any liquid will absorb up to two gallons of the liquid into their body. Once at least one gallon is absorbed in this way the water chinchilla will loose it's land speed but gain +2 natural armor due to swelling. If squeezed, any liquid inside the water chinchilla will be wringed-out, this does not harm the water chinchilla. Liquid that has passed in and out of a water chinchilla in this manner is treated as if it has had the Purify Food and Drink spell cast on it with a caster level equal to the water chinchilla's hit dice. A water chinchilla may only purify 2 gallons of liquid per day in this manner.  A water chinchilla that absorbs a liquid is subject to the same negative effects that would be inflicted upon it if it drank that liquid, though it gains a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves against the effects of those liquids.

Water chinchillas are small, almost spherical creatures with gray fur. They have large rabbit like ears. When a water chinchilla touches water they absorb it and swell up like a balloon allowing them to swim around easily.

This cute, adorable animal is a highly prized creature for its ability to turn brackish water into clean drinking source.  They are commonly sold along the banks of river villages and in adventurer's shops, on their own or in water-filled barrels of 10.

And yes, they can be obtained as familiars.

Even the most jaded of gamers will grow to love these fuzzy little rodents if not for their adorableness, but for their vital function in an arid desert-based campaign.  Just picture it; chefs at restaurants holding the bloated furry creatures over plates, squeezing out soups and drinks for thirsty patrons!  A sudden rainstorm causes the sorcerer's familiar to balloon up in reaction.  This is the perfect way to inject some lightheartedness into a harsh desert setting, and I might just borrow this creature for my home games.

What is a Paladin to you?

Artist Unknown

"Justice and retribution are but trifling things.

There are victories of greater worth.

Someday you will know them."

The paladin is many things to many people.  To some it's a holy warrior, whose main mission is to strike down evil.  Others are paragons of law, caring just as much about tradition and authority as serving the greater good.  Unfortunately many Dungeon Masters take a narrow restriction on the paladin, insisting on placing them in situations where they're bound to fail or applying Judeo-Christian ethos of sin on an already-restrictive code of conduct.  All too often we have DMs willing to strip a paladin of their powers for small reasons which wouldn't land other Lawful Good players in hot water, as demonstrated in this RPGnet thread.  A lot of times this stems from DM and player not being on the same page, having different ideas of what a paladin is supposed to be in the game.

After reading an interesting post over on Bat in the Attic of what a paladin means to him, I figured that it would be a fun idea to get some discussion rolling about not just your imagining of the Paladin, but what existing pieces of media best encapsulate the archetype.  In my view, the protagonist of Final Fantasy IV is one of the best examples of a fantasy Paladin.  Below I'll detail why.

Spoiler Warning: Although this game was made back in the early 90s, to truly get a sense of appreciation for Cecil's trials, I'd suggest playing it yourself or watching a good Let's Play (HCBailly's starting a run on this game right now on YouTube).  I'm also still in the process of playing the game, so it's possible I didn't cover some future character development.  If you have FFIV on your gaming radar, return to this blog post when you've reached that point.

Final Fantasy IV: Cecil's Redemption

Cecil Harvey was a loyal soldier of the kingdom of Baron.  Trained in the ways of the Dark Knight, he draws upon fell powers to strengthen his battle prowess.  In spite of this, Cecil is not a wicked soul at heart.  The game starts out with him leading the Red Wings airship legion to attack and steal magical Crystals from the holy shrines of other nations, ordered to by his King to ensure the safety and security of Baron and its people.  Although he loyally carries out his orders, a seed of doubt spreads in his mind when the people of Mysidia beg him not to take away their Water Crystal and put up hardly any resistance.  Combined with the King's recent strange behavior, Cecil raises his doubts to his lord, which results in his demotion and being sent on a mission to Mist, a remote village of mystical summoners.

His King betrayed him, for the ring he was entrusted with to deliver conjured an army of living monsters of fire.  They slaughtered the people of Mist nearly to the last person, whose magical powers were long seen as a threat to Baron's King.  Horrified at his unwitting accessory to ethnic cleansing, Cecil saves a village girl named Rydia and sets off to the nearby kingdom to spread word of Baron's atrocities and hopefully rally enough support against the crown he once served.

Cecil is genuinely repentant and acts altruistically, but he is still a Dark Knight.  Eventually he arrives alone at Mysidia, the land he once invaded at Baron's behest.  The locals stare venomously at him, but the village's elder believes his words and change of heart and tells him of a trial at Mt. Ordeals.  Those who pass the test can become a paladin, a holy warrior sworn to the cause of good.

The above scene is very powerful.  To become a paladin is a true test; you do not simply begin play as one, but it comes along as the result of the story.  The battle with his evil self is unorthodox because to truly pass the test, Cecil must not strike his alter ego.  It's a way of telling one who did wrong to face what they did to transform into a better person, not condemn and deny it like a foreign entity to destroy.

Cecil is a paladin, but he did not start out as an icon of righteousness.  Even after his class change he still must atone for his past by stopping Golbez from wreaking havoc on the world.  It's all too easy to imagine a paladin as less of a person and more of an archetype.  Before the slaughter at Mist, Cecil was not so much a willing accomplice to evil so much as a good man who did nothing and let his trust in his lord stay his hand for too long.  By resolving to courageously do what's right in spite of one's own fears and doubts, that's what turned him into a hero, long before he took up the title of paladin.

Cecil is my ideal paladin.  He's not an archon of Law forced to respect those in power, nor a crusader motivated to convert others under the banner of one religion.  All that matters is to do good in the world and stop the spread of tyranny and misery.  That's what a paladin should be to me.  All the other aspects of the Code in Editions, such as never lying, upholding Law as well as Good, is unnecessary window dressing to a class which can easily stand on its own feat as a warrior of virtue.

After all, justice is not the only right in this world.

Is there a consumer demand for Death to Alignment for the OSR?

Cover Artwork by Sade

I've never been a fan of alignment in general for various reasons.  First, the changing definitions over the years mean that descriptions such as Chaotic Neutral in 1st Edition mean something entirely different in 3rd Edition, confusing already contentious online arguments when nobody's on the same page for definitions.  Second, it is not a very well-fleshed out or consistent morality system, as most game designers aren't professional philosophers or theologians and go more by "feel" than a solid framework.  One only has to see what elves get away with in settings, which would land other races firmly outside the Chaotic Good camp.

It's rather common for gaming groups to house-rule away alignment, but the rules-heavy pecularities of Pathfinder meant that simply removing it meant that entire classes, spells, magic items, etc become gimped or useless.  So I wrote Death to Alignment, a series of rules changes, alternate morality systems, and mini-essays discussing how to alter or remove alignment in Pathfinder in a consistent, thoughtful way.

I often considered making an OSR version for Death to Alignment, like I did with Playable Monsters Volume 1.  But in comparison to Pathfinder most OSR games do not devote a lot of rules to it.  You might have some fluff personality descriptions, or whether the Cleric harms or enslaves undead, but aside from this there isn't really much ground to cover.  I considered focusing on the retroclones which do have rules beyond this simplistic framework, such as Dungeon Crawl Classics, but overall it seems that a simple house-ruling isn't going to have a lot of ripple effects in a game such as Labyrinth Lord.

If I do an OSR Edition of Death to Alignment, I might try incorporating system-neutral things, such as Corruption Points to represent the taint of supernatural evil warping those it touches.  I might also have a chapter for popular OGL retroclones and view how alignment interacts with their framework.

But more than that, I want to see how much enthusiasm there is among OSR gamers for such a book.

What do you think?  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Interesting 3rd Party Finds: the Variant Adept (Pathfinder)

The Wizard's Apprentice by fUnKyToEs of deviantart

For those not familiar with the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game, anyone who belongs to the major races and is not a monster has class levels.  However, there are no 0-level humans in the game like in earlier Editions.  Instead, there are five NPC Classes meant to broadly cover the non-adventuring common folk of the realm.  The Aristocrat is the rich noble who doesn't know much in the way of fighting; the Commoner is the peasant or unskilled laborer; the Expert represents a skilled tradesman; and the Warrior a common soldier who knows how to fight but does not approach the level of the Fighter (a master of war).  The Adept is the sole spellcasting NPC class, yet surprisingly it only covers a narrow purview: the folk shaman living away from civilization who gains minor spells from a patron.  Given its limited spell list and the differing game mechanics for magical traditions, the Adept can't really reflect the studious hedge mage, cunning illusionist trickster, or other minor apprentices common in magic school campaigns and Sword & Sorcery demonic cults.

By sheer chance I stumbled across an interesting Variant Adept within a free adventure for the Scarred Lands Campaign Setting.  Basically, it allows the Adept to expand their spell list to a small selection of ones from PC classes, and to trade in their Familiar class feature for another supernatural boon.  That way, a DM can have adepts who are wizardly apprentices, followers of a druidic faith, or even cultists to a vile god.  As this section of the rules in the adventure is designated as Open Game Content, I'm going to post it here in its entirety.

Optional Rule: Variant Adepts

These variant rules can make the adept NPC class much more versatile, representing anything from a simple apprentice wizard to a strange prophet, or even a druidic cultist who worships some primordial titanic power.

Spellcasting: An adept can cast either arcane or divine spells (choose one; this cannot be changed once decided), which are drawn from the adept spell list in either case. Like a cleric or wizard, an adept must choose and prepare her spells in advance. An adept cannot spontaneously cast cure or inflict spells.

To prepare or cast a spell, an arcane adept must have an Intelligence or Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against an adept’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the adept’s Intelligence or Charisma modifier.

A divine adept must have a Wisdom or Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against an adept’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the adept’s Wisdom or Charisma modifier.

Arcane adepts acquire their spells from books or scrolls and prepare them through study. The arcane adept keeps a spellbook just like a wizard, and uses it in exactly the same way that a wizard does.

Divine adepts must meditate or pray for their spells, in the fashion of a cleric or druid.

Where the adept class table indicates that the adept gets 0 spells per day of a given spell level, he gains only the bonus spells he would be entitled to based on his Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score for that spell level.

Adept Talent: At 2nd level, an adept can choose any one of the following options:

Arcane bond: As the wizard class feature of the same name (either a familiar or a bonded object).

Bloodline: As the sorcerer class feature of the same name. She gains the bloodline arcana and bloodline powers for that bloodline as a sorcerer of the same level, along with any bonus skills. The adept may add the bonus spells for that bloodline to her spell list, but does not gain the bloodline’s bonus feats.

Cleric domain: As appropriate for the adept’s god, philosophy, or religion; she gains a bonus domain spell of each level she can cast, as a cleric, along with any domain powers. She uses her adept level as her cleric level for this purpose.

Nature bond: As the druid class feature of the same name. If she chooses an animal companion, the adept treats her druid level as half her adept level for that purpose; if she chooses a cleric domain, she gains a bonus domain spell of each level she can cast, along with any domain powers. She uses her adept level as her druid level for this purpose.

This ability replaces summon familiar.

Favored Class Benefit: At 1st level, the adept may choose cleric, druid, or sorcerer/wizard; once chosen, this class cannot be changed. For each favored class level in adept, the adept can effectively add one spell of any level she can cast from the chosen class’s spell list to the adept spell list.

Personal Thoughts

You might notice that while the Variant Adept draws various abilities from the major spellcasting classes of Pathfinder, they are neither as powerful nor as versatile as the magical traditions they're meant to emulate.  The ability to add more spells to the base Adept list (which is quite small in Pathfinder) only comes via a Favored Class Benefit, meaning that only races which have Favored Class: Any will be adding things like fireball, silent image, and third party spells to their repertoire.

I also find it interesting in how an arcane adept is not limited by an arcane spell failure chance, and thus can potentially cast spells in plate mail with the expenditure of feats.  There's also no restriction in the text for a divine adept drawing Favored Class spells from the sorcerer/wizard list, or for an arcane adept to do the same with cleric/druid spells.  Although the base Adept was a strong contender for being the most powerful and versatile NPC class, the variant version makes it good enough to be on par with some lower-tier PC classes.

The utility of a spellbook and allowing others to copy spells from it might present a potential problem in regards to the Leadership feat and followers.  Even though the rules prevent a wizard from copying spells not on his class skill list into his spellbook (see "Adding Spells to a Wizard's Spellbook"), this can end up as a way for said PC to exponentially gain more spells for free.  Adepts copying spells from PC class spellbooks is not as much of a problem, in that they only gain cleric/druid/wizard spells not on the Adept list via Favored Class, and thus only 1 per level at most.

Use in a Magic School Campaign

The variant adept is a good way to populate your academy with low-level student NPCs without worrying about class features, at-will cantrips, and the like.  The adept's poor base attack bonus, lack of any martial weapon or armor proficiency, and low Hit Die and skill list make its minor spells and adept talent its sole strong suit.  This archetype is perfect for the mass of fresh-faced youngsters dedicating their school months to study, and having all Knowledge skills as class skills for this last part doesn't hurt either!

Quasar Knight's Christmas Sale

Christmas Image from WP Clipart

It's hard to believe that I've been writing role-playing sourcebooks for half a year, but here we are.  I've always sought to make my work both original and affordable in comparison to the many other offerings online by tackling concepts and ideas which have been relatively unexplored in 3rd Party  fantasy d20 games and retroclones.  I decided to host a sale for the holidays and the end of the year, but instead of holding it for one day I'm extending it from today to New Year's Day.

My entire catalog is 50% off on Drive-Thru RPG.  I specialize heavily in Pathfinder at the moment, but I do have an OSR book I'm sure classic fans will enjoy.  If you had any of these items in your shopping cart or wish list, now would be a good time to check them out!

The Magic School Campaign, Part 1: Themes and Motivation

Image Courtesy of Little Witch Academia, designed by Studio Trigger

Since early August I've been running Arcana High, a Pathfinder campaign for a solid group of four players I've had the pleasure of befriending online.  Even before the popularization of Harry Potter the concept of a wizarding academy has been a strong fixture in the fantasy genre.  It might go back as far as 1968, with Usula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea.  Even our own table-top community has made inroads to this subgenre with Redhurst: Academy of Magic back in 2003 and an upcoming Sigantium: Academy of the Arcane project on KickStarter.  Another major influence for my campaign are the Persona series of video games, where students at a normal Japanese high school secretly go out and fight supernatural monsters while balancing their social lives (an equally important aspect of the game).

Even before I first set out my first planned adventure, I realized that the overall themes and design considerations of such a campaign would be very different than a typical Dungeons & Dragons adventure.  The setting would be based around a central school/city hub rather than adventures traveling the world; the party make-up would lean entirely towards spellcasters over the mundane classes; and the drama and conflict of a young adult's social life is too ripe for role-playing opportunities to pass up!

This is but the first of several planned articles for this unique kind of campaign.

Themes, Motivations, and Experience

Unless your school's set up to be an adventuring academy, your student PCs probably have hopes and dreams unrelated to exploring dank dungeons in search of gold and artifacts.   Perhaps one of them wishes to continue the long and proud tradition of family illusionists; another might not even want to be there, viewed as cursed for their sorcerous ways and shunned by family to get their budding mage out of their hair.  They might even be inheritors of a heroic legacy or members of a secret organization safeguarding the mundane world from the forces of evil.  

Traditional D&D gives an incentive for player behavior by making the accumulation of experience and gold add to character growth.  In a magic school campaign, experience points should be handed out when the PCs stay in line with the themes of the game.  Altruistic mages who use their spells to save a burning house full of innocent citizens deserve just as much of a reward as if they were saving the people from a vicious monster.  A prospective gnome studying necromancy in spite of her culture's taboo on it might gain experience for tasks and quests related to the advancement of this goal.  Social interaction, conflict resolution, and personal identity are all major influences on the PCs in a magic school campaign.

The Theme System

Drow Prodigy by Maxa-art of Deviantart

PCs choose 2 themes at character creation, reflecting some kind of goal, personality trait, or social bond to another character or group of characters.  The DM is encouraged to create conflicts focused on said themes, and PCs who successfully overcome this conflict gain experience points for doing so.  This is not the only way of earning experience in the game, but it encourages a sort of group-based means of adventure generation by having the Dungeon Master create scenarios his players will be most likely to follow.

In order to benefit from a theme, it must occur during the course of the gaming session and inconvenience the PC in some way, shape, or form.  A PC or party which manages to overcome the theme’s challenge is awarded bonus experience points depending upon the severity of the theme.  PCs who manage to overcome and/or deal with obstacles related to their theme receive bonus experience points about equivalent to one near the average party level.  A minor conflict might be monsters up to 2 levels lower, a conflict with some noticeable risk of tangible loss equal to the party level, and a significant and urgent matter up to 2 levels higher.  In the case of Pathfinder, levels represent an equivalent monster's Challenge Rating, while for an OSR game the level might represent an equivalent monster's hit dice.

Asking players about their character's backstories and what they want out of life can be a great way to design obstacles and tasks.  All experience gained is divided among the party, even if said challenge really affects only that PC.  This encourages teamwork and cooperation, in that everybody stands to gain something if the PC’s struggles are overcome.  Plus, it’s always nice to know that your friends got your back!

My next post on Magic School Campaigns will cover group composition and the unique considerations and  challenges facing an all-caster party.