Pathfinder Beginner Box

This article has been edited from its original form.
I've been interested in Pathfinder, based mostly on the hype about it across the blogosphere, and when I learned that they were releasing an Essentials-style Beginner Box for the game, I planned on getting it. There was a stack of them on the counter at my FLGS, so I figured that there was no time like the present and picked it up. The first thing that I noticed about it was that it was heavy. The cardstock of the box seemed very solid, and it seemed to be quite full of contents. This was a good sign; 35 dollars is about the limit on what I'll pay on impulse, and it turned out to be worth the money.

The first thing I opened in the box was the baggie of dice. I was pleased to see a full set of 7: d4, d6, d8, d10, percentile, d12, and d20. The Essentials box only came with 6; percentile rolls are generally not part of D&D4, so it's not surprising that they did not include one of these dice. The next thing I noticed about the Pathfinder dice is that they just felt like ordinary Chessex dice, whereas the Essentials dice felt less substantial, like knockoffs. To test this, I weighed them.

	PF	D&D4	Chessex
d20	6g	6g	6g
d12	6g	6g	6g
d10	6g	4g	6g
d8	4g	4g	4g
d6	6g	4g	6g
d4	2g	2g	2g

For the most part, they were pretty similar. But, as you can see, the Essentials dice were actually made out of lower quality material; they feel less substantial in the hand, less dense. Just as a "test" I also weighed a Chessex set that I bought at DragonCon; they were identical in weight to the Pathfinder dice. I think, without any other evidence, that the Pathfinder dice are just Chessex dice rather than cheaper knockoffs.  The only other baggie in the box was a set of standee bases, for the cardboard standees. I set that aside.

On top of the stack is a sheet which suggests to new players which book to read and which book to avoid, whether they want to be GM or player. One of the remarkable things about this set immediately is that directly on the inside of the front cover of the "Hero's Handbook" is a step-by-step checklist, with page numbers, on how to build a new character. I don't think Wizards of the Coast has ever discovered how useful this is; even in the Gamma World books, which are relatively well laid out, you have to dig through half the book to find the character building process. Having an easily located and organized guide for building characters is very useful, especially for a beginner's guide such as this, to make generating characters more quickly and easily just in case their lower-level beginner characters don't survive the process. Like in older versions of D&D, character death is a lot more common in Pathfinder than it is in 4e.

Identical to D&D Essentials, the "Hero's Handbook" starts off with a choose-your-own-adventure style setup in order to help new players get an idea about how the game works. Unlike Essentials, however, the Pathfinder starter adventure does not help you select your class, only get a feel for how the play works. It is, therefore, entirely optional. It is well written, easy to follow, and exciting as a solo adventure. It does help bring the game alive; immediately after it is an "example of play" using stock characters going through an ordinary series of actions, which also gives something for new players with which to compare their experience with the game.

The bulk of the book is dedicated to explaining what a role-playing game is, what races and classes there are, and then how to level the characters up to level 5, very similarly to how the pregenerated characters for the D&D4 quickstart rules had instructions for leveling them up to level 3. It has very thorough descriptions of skills and feats, as well as decent lists of spells and prayers to customize wizards and clerics a little bit from the get-go. Finally there are equipment lists for the sorts of things that might be available to first level characters, but what impresses me the most is that each item has a small icon next to it of what the item would look like.

The book ends with a "crunch" section; how to actually play the game, the mechanics and format of play, combat, etc. Miniature relationships, as relevant in combat, are presented very similarly to how they are in the D&D4 books, and players of 4e should have very little trouble understanding that part of the rules. I have a suspicion that the crunch section was written with a D&D4 audience in mind, based on the remarkable similarities in appearance. I would place myself within that audience as well, since I never played D&D3, and I can say that to me, it is very easy to follow.

Overall, there is a lot more art in this Pathfinder starter set than appeared in the Essentials box, and the binding is stronger; the books have glossy covers, instead of just paper. It was also 15 dollars more than the Essentials box. The Pathfinder box has gate-folded folios with prefilled character sheets, with helpful descriptions of what each field on the character sheet means in the (sizeable) margins; then there are blank character sheets with which to actually build characters (although it is completely feasible to just use the prebuilt characters right out of the folios). The folios do have a lot of description about what sort of things that type of character tends to do, what skills they excel at, and what sort of people might want to play that sort of character, which is helpful. It's a different technique from what was employed by the Essentials box, but I don't think it's necessarily better or worse.

However, Essentials really was the "bare essentials" to start a game; you are required, nearly immediately, to buy the Rules Compendium and Heroes of the Fallen Lands (another 40 dollar investment at the bookstore) as well, whereas the Beginner Box for Pathfinder guides characters through level 5 and, though the characters' progress is "tracked" exactly as in Essentials, there are flavor options that were lacking in the Red Box. The adventure in the Red Box was a good enough introduction to the world of Dungeons and Dragons, but seemed more as a "teaser" than any attempt at an immersive experience.

The Game Master's Guide contains a moderately well detailed starter adventure, quite detailed tips on how to start, prepare for, run, and continue an adventure, how to build maps, run encounters, develop your own "game world," how to use terrain, traps, hazards, and exploit NPCs effectively. There are many magic items and monsters to peruse, again with helpful icons and images to help visualize what the items look like. All in all, it was a very nice, concise way to get GMing explained, without having to buy a separate Dungeon Master's box.

Next in the box is a large, thick, glossy folded cardstock double-sided map. The creases are very well-set, and I am finding them nearly impossible to smooth out, which is a liability for the very light-weight standees that will be set upon it. Here at least I think there is a point for Wizards of the Coast's thinner paper foldout maps. They flatten effortlessly, though they deteriorate much more quickly. Besides trying to carefully reverse the creases and work them out, or place a large pane of glass over the top to keep it flat, I can't really see much utility in the map, and since the cardstock is very thick it seems like the printing around those creases will get overstressed very easily and very quickly begin to look bad. I can't see myself ever using this map though so I am just going to leave it there. I like the idea of printed maps more than I actually like the actual utility of them. Usually I prefer to draw a diagram out on my Chessex mat and try to fill in the details verbally.

The rest of the box has die-cut cardboard standees for male and female characters of each race and each class, so no matter what sort of character you generate using the Hero's Handbook, you have an individual standee to represent them. Which would only be a problem, I suppose, if you have two people who are dead-set on being a male human fighter, or something like that. I really do genuinely like how they have individual standees for each player character possible, and it also helps that they are all very distinctively dressed, and the art is phenomenal. The rest are monster standees, similarly styled.

Overall, I would like to laud the extremely high quality of everything in this set. It would have been nice, at very least, if they could have also included a cheap dice bag to keep the dice in, but for 35 dollars you do actually get a lot of really good looking material. The game, which has a reputation for being a bit complex, is presented in a remarkably simple format, and it seems like beginning to play the game from this box set would be quite effortless. I'd say that everything, from the art, the books, the writing, what is actually contained, the box itself, is of a higher quality than the Essentials Red Box, although the price is 15 dollars higher. I do have a preference for standees over tokens, because to me they look less out of place mixed with actual pewter or plastic miniatures than the flat tokens do.

I can't see how a product like this would be at all useful to people who already had the Pathfinder core rulebook, but then again that is not the target audience. No matter what, this is intended to be a "gateway drug" for the significantly more expensive core book, and there would be, I expect, quite a bit of adjustment from the Beginner rules to the "full" rules. One thing Essentials has going for it is that, between Heroes of the Fallen Lands, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, the Dungeon Master's Kit, the Rules Compendium, and other "Essentials" line products, you can play an entire 1-30 campaign without ever leaving the protective Essentials Umbrella. The Pathfinder Beginner Box provides very simplified rules to begin the game, but provides no transition guide for moving on to the "big kid" book.

I do not think the scope of it would justify any further comparisons to Essentials, although the presentation is very similar. Instead, I would say that the Pathfinder Beginner Box provides an extremely thorough set of "quick start rules" for both the player and the game master, as well as tools to set up and run a game with only like a half hour or hour of prior reading and preparation (generating characters, reading rules, etc). It is more detailed than the Essentials Red Box, and probably makes running a game without any other material much easier.

In my original version of this, from nearly 2 months ago, I was reviewing a damaged copy of the box. Many complaints I had were not about the content of the product, but the appearance of the product. Later I contact Paizo, who suggested to first contact my FLGS owner and see if he would be able to replace the damaged merchandise, and then if I was unsuccessful there, to contact them again. This is noteworthy because I received an email from their customer service representative less than two hours after I had sent my original email; fortunately the game store owner had opened a copy of the box for himself as a "demo copy" and he swapped out the undamaged books from his copy for the damaged versions from mine, saying that he didn't care so much what the books looked like since they were just going to get damaged anyway by customers manhandling them. Nevertheless I appreciated Paizo's very quick and courteous response, and that (combined with the quality of the product) encouraged me to buy the Pathfinder core book a week ago (it is now January 2). It hasn't arrived yet, but I have been enjoying reading the online SRD (another very useful feature of the Paizo product constellation).

The Horror in Holyoke: A Savage Worlds one-shot Halloween adventure

A group of friends are invited to a killer Halloween party at their friend Jared's house. His parents are out of town, they've taken his little sister with them, and he lives out in the middle of nowhere, so there are not really any neighbors to complain. Only, very quickly into the night, Jared is nowhere to be found. And what is that orange glow, growing on the horizon?


pdf, 9 pages, hosted at mediafire.com: Download Link.

Does not include pre-generated character sheets.

The Village Above the Sea -- A 2nd level Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition, adventure for 3-4 characters

What begins as an end-of-summer sojourn in a seaside town ends up being far more sinister. The PCs discover a terrifying secret that threatens the entire village, but can they find the source and stop the threat from getting far more out of control?

pdf, 22 pages, hosted at mediafire.com: Download link.

An entry for Jeff Dougan's blogging carnival, On a Night in the Lonesome October.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Beta Rules: The Demi-Human Classes

For my final installment of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG races, I will look at all three of the "demi-human" races. In DCCRPG, we see the retroclone-classic race-as-class construction. In other words you can be a cleric, a fighter, a thief, a wizard... or an elf, halfling, or dwarf. Apparently all elves, halflings, and dwarves act the same, much like how in science fiction humans are incredibly diverse, but all aliens have monolithic, undifferentiated cultures. Additionally, with the "character funnel" mechanic in DCCRPG, if you want to potentially have a dwarven, halfling, or elven character, you need to preselect those races for your 0-level characters, because, as far as they're concerned, dwarves, halflings, and elves have no job prospects besides their prescribed roles.

As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the ways in which the character funnel fails most utterly. You're supposed to start with generic townspeople sort of characters, which you then assign a class to should they survive, but dwarves, halflings, and elves don't get this option. You already know what their class is going to be; it's a dead end situation, no different than if you had just simply chosen, without the character funnel, that you wanted to play a dwarf, halfling, or elf. In fact, you can easily abuse the character funnel by just making all your 0-level characters dwarves, halflings, or elves. Or you can just skip it. DCCRPG seems very dedicated to making everything random, which is just not something that everybody playing it is going to want.

Dwarves themselves do not have much to distinguish themselves. As a class, they are remarkably similar to warriors, having the same attack die mechanic, as well as also having access to Mighty Deeds of Arms. In fact, under "Mighty Deed of Arms" in the dwarf section, it doesn't even bother describing it, referring instead to the description under the warrior entry. Dwarves have a racial ability of "shield bash," which deals negligible damage against a harder threshold (d14 instead of d20 to hit), as well as the ability to see in the dark. However, they are slower than humans. Of course, it also says that dwarves can smell gold and gems, and can navigate underground flawlessly without a compass. While this would likely be pretty handy in a dungeon crawl, it seems a bit... strange. Dwarves are limited, lastly, in their ability to spend Luck.

Like warriors, dwarves have to specialize, at character creation, with one weapon, and then can only use Luck towards attacks with that weapon for the rest of their lives. Overall, dwarves are very similar to warriors in skills and mechanics, only they are slower, weaker, and spend a lot of time sniffing gold. They have +1 on Willpower saves compared to the warrior at any given level, but that is basically where they distinguish themselves. Dwarves only crit on a 20, use a lower crit die per level compared to the warrior, and do not have access to most of the abilities that make warriors really stand out. Additionally, they have fewer hit points and gain fewer hit points per level, but I suppose this is supposed to be balanced out by the fact that they all are running around with shields and are therefore marginally more difficult to hit. Dwarves, at the end of the day, are just a crippled version of the warrior class. They are described as being "demi-human," and one must assume that is in abilities as well as appearance.

Elves are described as being older than humans, yet also as "demi-humans" (but wouldn't that mean that humans are demi-elves?). It is said that they can cast spells as competently as human wizards, but that they will usually wear mithril armor, despite the fact that it gimps their spellcasting ability. Elves can see in the dark like dwarves, but in fact also have all other senses heightened as well. Elves can only spend Luck on one specific level 1 spell, no matter how long they live and no matter what all their other abilities are. They can't be magically put to sleep or paralyzed, but also can't touch or wear anything made of iron. This doesn't matter though, because it says that at character creation, elven characters can just buy mithril armor instead of steel armor at no additional cost. Elves are sort of like thieves in their mechanics, only are better at casting magic (and have an innate magical ability). They favor lighter, longer weapons, don't deal much damage and have very limited critical hit abilities, but are also much better at fighting than wizards, so overall are a much more balanced class than dwarves are.

Halflings are small, good at sneaking, can see in the dark, remarkably lucky, are great at fighting, and are the only other class in the game that can recover spent Luck. In fact, Luck is where halflings shine, since they can spend luck on other party members, as well as act out of initiative to do so. Additionally, halflings get a +2 bonus on spending luck, rather than a +1 bonus (although it is still +1 when spent on other characters). The problem with halflings is that only one halfling in the party gets all of these special Luck features. If there are any other halflings in the party, they don't have access to any of this. It doesn't say what additional halflings' Luck features are, but, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, one has to assume that they will still recover Luck, get the +2 modifier on their own rolls, but can't help allies. Halflings are said to excel at two-handed fighting, but not in any way that is very far superior to warriors fighting two-handed. I don't see any modifiers for halflings or dwarves being any more difficult to hit on account of their small stature, so there doesn't seem to be any advantage, as far as combat is concerned, to being short. One only gets a penalty in speed.

In short, there is no reason in DCCRPG to play anything besides a warrior. Wizards get transformed into tentacle beasts, sweat excessively, and grow tails and gills and have to cut large pieces of flesh out of their bodies in order to continue casting magic. Clerics have to destroy all of the party's possessions in order to keep getting boons. Dwarves are like wizards with chronic fatigue syndrome and bad knees, elves are like wizards suffering an identity crisis, halflings are particularly incompetent thieves who have a tendency to come after you with two knives. Thieves and clerics end up getting off the easiest, but there is absolutely no reason in DCCRPG to play a magic user, or any sort of demi-human. Warriors get a whole extra chapter to describe all of their incredible abilities, but wizards end up looking like pustule-covered frog-octopus versions of Peter Pettigrew, finding it harder and harder to cast spells or read scrolls on account of the fact that their hands turned into flippers several weeks ago, and they are constantly exuding large amounts of sweat from all parts of their bodies. While this could all potentially be ripe material for roleplaying in a zany, off-the-wall one-off adventure setting, DCCRPG makes it difficult, in my opinion, for players to become too attached to their characters, because there are too many random penalties for playing any class besides warriors (who all look like Conan the Barbarian and get laid every night, or so it seems).

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: The Thief

Returning to the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, today I'm going to talk about the Thief, as written in the July 2011 "Beta" rules of the game.  I'd read a lot of people were critical of the thief, but as you will see, I think those reservations are unfounded. I will be comparing the DCCRPG to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition Thief, for no other reason besides that's the book I have at hand, and the thieves from these two RPGs are mechanically comparable.

Thieves in DCCRPG have quite a few innate abilities, most of which are directly drawn from the D&D "stock." For example, consider things like Thieves' Cant, backstab, pick lock, read spell scroll, find trap, hide in shadows, climb walls, etc.; all of the thiefy things like you'd want. In fact, all of the thief abilities, like in AD&D2, are percentile rolls, rather than d20 rolls. In such a d20-heavy system, this seems a bit odd. A few people have commented that this was one thing they didn't like about AD&D, and wished that DCCRPG normalized the system a bit. Personally I am also baffled why you'd need percentile rolls for thievery checks, rather than just a straight d20 check like in D&D 4.  Since all percentile values are given in multiples of 5, could someone just set a d20 DC on the roll? certainly. 25% chance turns into a DC of 15; 5% chance turns into a DC of 20. Kill any modifiers on the roll (for now), and you have a straight n-in-20 chance of succeeding just as the Twin Gods Dogar and Kazon Gygax and Arneson intended.

I'm no statistician, but my gut says that the only reason for rolling two dice across a larger spread than one die across a smaller one is that it SEEMS like the d% system would give a slight statistical advantage of succeeding. It might be thought fallacy, so I did an experiment. I rolled a d20 against a DC15 threshold, and d% against a roll-under 25 threshold 30 times, each (successes in bold).

d20	d%
6	5
15	86
19	6
8	9
20	55
3	88
18	98
7	17
16	67
8	72
9	31
6	95
8	16
20	65
14	54
10	70
19	57
7	52
10	44
6	59
2	95
20	9
11	61
10	48
3	19
7	54
4	21
3	52
11	71

As you can see, in my experiment (I was rolling GameScience Precision dice on a hard wooden table covered in a thin cotton tablecloth), for both configurations I got 8 successes out of 30 attempts or...  roughly a 5 in 20 chance of succeeding. DCCRPG DOES concede that the Thief's agility modifier affects the success rate, where every +1 earns another 5% chance to succeed. AD&D2 is much less forgiving. Given the statistical harmony between a d20 roll and a d% roll, I see no reason, personally, to not houserule in substituting one for the other; instead of the agility modifier bonus being +5%, just leave it at the modifier value and add it to the d20 roll. The only caveat to this is that, while most skills improve at a rate of 5% a level, "Climb Sheer Surface" improves at 1%. But, given that it's a skill rated at 90% at level 1, I hardly think an improvement of a 92% chance would mechanically have much different than an unmodified DC of 2.

Another significant difference between AD&D2 and DCCRPG is the Thief ability to read spell scrolls. At level 10, Thieves gain the ability, in AD&D2, to read spell scrolls at a 75% accuracy. Failures result in the spell backfiring. In DCCRPG, Thieves gain the ability to attempt reading spell scrolls at level 1, albeit with an almost impossibly high rate of failure. Good and Chaotic thieves can make a spell check, but must use a d10 for the check die; given that the spell check DC is 10+(spell level x2), a first level Thief would not be able to cast a first level spell from a scroll, since their maximum roll would be 10, and the minimum DC is 12. It does say that clerics add their Personality modifier, and Wizards add their Intelligence modifier to spell check rolls, but it does not say that Thieves add any modifier to spell checks, so therefore though the possibility exists, and considering that there do not appear to be 0-level spells in DCCRPG, it is actually impossible for a first level Thief to succeed on a spell scroll. This quickly changes, since by level 5 Thieves may use a d14 (usually) to attempt a spell check. Neutral Thieves apparently have an easier time casting from scrolls, because at level 1 their check die is a d12, and by level 5 they have already advanced to a d16.  The pattern set from the level 1 to 5 table is every other level the check die improves, so at level 10, if the pattern continues, the Good and Chaotic Thieves would be rolling a d20.

Backstabbing is not particularly different between DCCRPG and AD&D2, despite some apparent opinion to the contrary. The only rule is that "when attacking a target from behind or when the target is otherwise unaware, the thief receives an attack bonus." This is actually more generous than the AD&D2 provision, which also states that the victim must be humanoid.  Additionally, AD&D2 only has a damage multiplier for backstab successes, whereas DCCRPG automatically awards a critical hit.  Critical hits reward a roll on the crit table, which can occasionally be very damaging, but also can be uneven. The luck of the dice can mean the difference between an additional 3d3 or 2d4 damage, or a result of "Foe is reduced to making wet fish noises" without a real benefit (except, perhaps, that it can't call for help?). Being a longterm fan of MERP, rolling critical hits on tables is very appealing to me, but I can also see why many people would just want an additional attack die, or a damage multiplier.  It's hard to hit with a backstab in DCCRPG; but so it is as well in AD&D2.

The last thing to discuss regarding the DCCRPG Thief is the issue of Luck. All DCCRPG characters have Luck, and all can burn Luck points (permanently) in order to avoid something particularly sticky from happening on a failed or botched roll. Thieves luck out (heh heh) on this one: they are the only class that can (slowly) recharge Luck points; evidently to be more in accorance with their Tricksy™ nature. Additionally, the Thief gets to add a die roll modifier to checks when burning luck, instead of just 1:+1 like for every other class.

Besides all that, the D&D Thief and the DCCRPG Thief are more or less similar. Overall, I like the DCCRPG changes to the Thief, and I think it makes the class more playable and more interesting.

Wizards of the Coast's Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium fulfils a need that D&D 4e has had since its inception: cursed items. While I could go on and on about how it has tons of really great new weapons, weapon powers, weapon feats, magical items, and flavor text, what you're really buying it for are the cursed items. I suppose I should back it up just a little bit. MME is presented, loosely, in the fom of a book written, but then later redacted and then destroyed, by the archmage Mordenkainen. He adds in some nods to his archmage buddies (including Tenser, of Tenser's Floating Disc fame, and Bigby, as in Bigby's Grasping Hand), but mostly pontificates about himself. It's a nice stylistic flourish that makes the book more fun to read, and also is an excuse for the authors to have a bit of fun in writing it. All throughout the book, there are little sidebars with knocks about certain items by Mordenkainen, which, for the most part, are pretty entertaining, and each chapter is introduced with a longer monologue about the topic in Mordenkainen's distinctive style.

The book does have some good mundane and magical items in it. It unlocks the "superior" training feat, as well as specific weapon-based special attacks utilizing superior weapons training (and superior weapons); along those lines was something I suggested myself in one of the early days of this blog. It goes into much more detail with arcane implements, with new wands, orbs, holy symbols, tomes, staffs, foci, and totems, for all sorts of character classes that can utilize such things. Up to this point, one could easily call Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium "Adventurer's Vault 3" (which it is) and be done with it. However that would completely belittle the fact that this book is organized and presented in a far superior way to either of the Adventurer's Vault books, and is ultimately a lot more useful than those books (when it comes to wondrous items, and other magic doodads). However, my favorite thing about Adventurer's Vault 2, immurements, did not make it back to MME, which was a bit of a disappointment.

The last part of the book concerns itself with artifacts and cursed items. It defines artifacts, broadly, as those sorts of items which are more important, narratively, than mechanically. Many of the examples they list are items created by or formerly owned by the gods, and which possess extremely potent innate abilities. However, the introductory piece on artifacts makes it clear that their proper place is as the "McGuffin," an otherworldly item which moves the plot in the adventure forward, and so therefore the PCs' possession of that item may be very brief. This is a concept which I think is pretty cool, and I think the only thing lacking is variety in examples. I think there were about two or three items per tier listed.

But the cursed items are exactly as you'd expect. Many are an obvious nod to earlier, more deadly editions of D&D, recreating some infamous items for the 4e world. One of the best comments that the book makes, however, is for DMs to consider: cursed items, by and large, are extremely powerful magic, requiring a lot of time and effort, and sometimes a lot of resources to bring together. Therefore cursed items should not be used lightly, or indiscriminately. Because of the considerations involved with the manufacture of cursed items, one must assume that most are made, specifically, for the torture and punishment of one specific individual. Cursed items for cursed items' sake, therefore, would be gratuitous. But this warning about considering the cursed item's past also is a very strong reminder to justify why you, as DM, are inserting this item into your adventure; what is its background, why is it there, who was it intended for, was it successful? The best part about cursed items is that they are virtually indistinguishable from the item that they are intended to copy until the curse is activated, in which case it is too late. Mercifully, though the cursed items usually cannot be removed after they've been triggered, it is not unnecessarily difficult to remove them outside of urgent situations.

Overall, a fan of older editions might criticize Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium's cursed items as not being nasty enough. But, overall, they fit well into the general schema of how things work within 4e. I believe it is by far the best in the "loot" series of books, but is also not remarkable when compared to the others. However, a completist will find it more than satisfactory, and if one were to only buy one of the three loot books, I would argue that the Emporium would be the one to choose. There has been a clear evolution of thought and style over the course of 4th edition's publishing history, and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium reaps the benefits of this.

Wizards of the Coast's Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale

The first time I read it, i was ready to declare Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale the greatest book ever published under the Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition moniker. While my feelings at this point are much less enthusiastic, I will still readily declare that it is a fantastic book. By the title, one can identify that it probably is in line with the "Essentials" line of products, which to many people will probably make it sound next to worthless. While I do have my own reservations about Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, I do not believe that wholesale disapproval of the Essentials line is justified, since there are a few products (this included), that stand out, even above many "non-Essentials" books published over the last few years.

The title of the book suggests both that it is a sequel to the first Monster Vault (which it is), and that it will focus primarily on the Nentir Vale (the default setting for Essentials). Unlike the first Monster Vault, it does not come with a prewritten adventure which utilizes the monsters contained within, but instead takes a more organic approach, which I think is much more successful. The book begins with an introduction of some of the "powers that be" within the Vale, and then goes in to descriptions of the sorts of monsters found there (to build upon the first Monster Vault), and, in doing so, takes a narrative approach to describe why and where these monsters might be encountered within that setting, including often multiple adventure hooks to go along with them.

There are a few monsters in the book that seem a bit "tacked on," in that they initially seem inappropriate for the locales of the Vale, but through narrative description, their presence is justified. Many of these "tacked on" monsters were classics or peculiar ones from previous editions that had not yet been statted out, so their inclusion in the book I can understand, but the fact that the authors went out of their way to try to coax them into the narrative of the rest of the book made them really believable and appropriate. Foremost among these, for example, are the Cadaver Collector and the Penanggalan, which are pretty out there as far as creatures are concerned, but with the descriptions one can quite easily come up with ways to use them. Still, most of the statted enemies in the book are ones mentioned specifically in the introductory area, so that they are not just vague background noise, but actual, legitimate "threats." So therefore many of the described enemies are factions.

To me, the best part about the entire book are all the factions.  Factions are not a new concept in 4e; they've been used, with varying success, in almost all of the location guides (Hammerfast, Vor Rukoth, Gloomwrought, etc.), but I thought that the factions presented in this book were particularly colorful, interesting, and believable. Upon reading about many of them, I immediately had ideas in my mind about how to create an adventure featuring them as allies, antagonists, or even both at different times, as well as ways to transport them "out of" the Nentir Vale into my own game world and use them independently.

This last point brings up another aspect of the book: modularity. While it is ostensibly set in the Essentials world, in the Nentir Vale, there is not one creature, faction, construct, anything, that couldn't be lifted out of its "set" location and used elsewhere. There are a whole flock of creatures who dwell in and around the Witchlight Fens. Got room for a swamp in your campaign? Drop them there, even in the Shadowfell, in the Oblivion Bog.

The dragons in the book take a tack which has been more common in more recent D&D publications. Namely, that rather than ascribing them a color and a demeanor, the dragons are all given names and personalities. Calastryx is a three-headed red dragon; Shadowmire is a black dragon changed by his long residence within the Witchlight Fens. Dragons are among the most interesting (and enduring) enemies in the Dungeons and Dragons universe (they're even part of the name!), and so therefore the recent emphasis on individual dragons, who could be poised to be one-off adventure-ending opponents, or just as easily tier-long orchestrators and more distant threats, makes the seem a lot more interesting, alive, and, most importantly, usable.

A personal favorite from the book are the Felldrakes, low level monstrous drakes magically mutated by the corrupt wizards of Bael Turath to serve the empire and their Tiefling masters. These creatures specifically would feel right at home in Vor Rukoth, and actually I think would significantly improve the playing experience of a party exploring that city. Vor Rukoth by itself didn't seem unique enough; it had lots of locations and lots of adventure hooks, but still nevertheless didn't feel very populated, since there wasn't any time spent really getting in to the sort of things that had taken up residence there. Adding in marauding Felldrakes, gone wild from being abandoned for so long, would be a great looming threat for adventurers exploring the ruins there, and would be a great go-to creature to throw in to just about any encounter that needed a few extra jaws to chomp on the good guys. While the Felldrakes themselves are only levels 1 to 4, there are special ones described, Dark Drakes, that go up to level 8. Combining them in different ways and scaling the numbers up, one could pretty easily come up with felldrakes of any heroic or low paragon level.

Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is probably the best Essentials-keyed product on the market, and even a strong contender among all of the monster manuals among the 4th edition products. Oh, and it comes with a two-sided fold out map (as everything seems to these days), and 8 sheets of die-cut tokens (ditto). All of these things are enclosed in a sleeve, rather than a box, so you have to be careful if you want to keep everything together to squeeze it well while you're taking it off the shelf, or else things might slide out the bottom. I could dock points for the packaging, but I'm sure they expected most people to throw the map in whatever box they have that has all their other maps, pop the tokens out and throw away the sheets, and to just file the book on the shelf. I don't use tokens, so I just keep all of it together for propriety's sake.

Winter Is Coming- New Monster [D&D 4e] The Iceshard Skeleton

This is a second entry in response to T.W. Wombat's  Winter Is Coming RPG Blog Festival.

The Arnerian Empire once stretched across thousands of miles in the furthest north, but now resides only in legend. Before their slow and steady invasion of their more southerly neighbors, it was assumed that nobody, and nothing, could survive in the impossibly high and hostile mountains known, aptly, as the Roof of the World. Tales of the brutality and unforgiving nature of the Arnerian Empire have been passed down from generation to generation and survived, even when descriptions of their people and their cities have been lost to the ages. Nothing, however, stands out as much in the imagination as the strange and terrible tales of the dark magic that the Arnerians were said to control. It is said that even the gods feared the powers that were under the Arnerians’ command; that their powers came directly from those beings from outside the gods’ domains, from the strange and terrible beings that occupy what we now call the Far Realm.

The secrets of the corrupt magic dreamed up by the Sages of the Arnerian Empire have been lost, many would say thankfully, forever, but their legacy in their creations remains. The most fearsome and terrible of their ranks were their Frost Giant slaves, magically bound to guard their lands, and tortured until death if they refused to obey or became derelict in their duties. But the torture for the Arnerian Frost Giants did not end at death: the Arnerian Sages had the flesh stripped from the giants’ bones, and then reanimated them in a state of undeath so they could continue to serve even beyond the length of their own lives. Any mind or spirit left from the Frost Giants were irrevocably lost; the giant skeletal forms did not recognize kin or kind, only the need to kill instilled in them by their masters, and the will to obey even the most terrible of commands. With the Arnerian Empire destroyed and lost beneath the shifting snow, the skeletal giants continue in their duties, directionless, without an empire to protect or commands to fulfill. Usually, the presence of one or more of these monsters is the only indication that there ever could have been a citadel or tower amidst the wastes, sometimes standing without moving for hundreds of years.

At first, the Frost Giants of the Verdenstak Mountains made war upon the abominations. Directly succeeding the downfall of the Arnerians, the giants sought revenge for their enslavement, laying waste to their wasted cities and trying to destroy everything that they had created. However, it became soon evident that wherever the skeletal monsters were felled, they seemed to eventually rise back from the rubble, and then even the giants began to shun the accursed lands. Now nothing walks among the peaks and passes at the Roof of the World, abandoned even by those who would wish to call these lands home. All the time, the silent, unmoving, unthinking guardians of the carcass of the Arnerian Empire remain, ready to confront any who dare trespass in their forgotten lands.

Winter Is Coming- New Monster [Shadowrun 4e] The Golo-Golo

This is an entry in response to T. W. Wombat's Winter Is Coming RPG Blog Festival.

The Golo-Golo is a creature with no accepted taxonomy, which has only been documented within the last twenty or so years, though as with anything, there are sketchy reports of sightings from before that time. The name is a bastardization of a pidgin Russian name, Golodnaya Gololed, hungry hoarfrost; a reference to the only time the creatures seem to be prevalent, which is on the heels of a particularly cold weather front. It has not been observed where they go when temperatures warm, because they are never found when the temperature on the ground is above freezing. It is thought that they have some degree of burrowing ability, or some other means by which to sink underground and keep their bodies cooled. Not surprisingly, it has been found that they have a particular weakness to heat or fire, and that is the primary means by which they are repelled.
The creatures themselves resemble a large, meter- to two meter-wide whitish-gray pancake, with no discernible orifices, sensory organs, or appendages on their dorsal side. Their skin is rough, similar to shark skin, but much more pliable (and remarkably resistant to puncture). However, caution should be taken when handling them, because their skin excretes a small amount of a venom which has a powerfully narcotic, soporific effect.

On their ventral sides, they have a complicated series of mouth-like organs which excrete digestive enzymes and also reabsorb the resultant digestive slurry. All around the edge of the animals are curved, venom-containing hooks, which the animal can either rapidly flip into an upward-facing direction, or else seem to involuntarily flip up if sufficient pressure is applied to any part of the dorsal side of the animal. The result is that if the animal is stepped on, the hooks flip up and pierce the ankle of the offender, and deliver a powerful dose of its venom. Within seconds, the victim begins to become dizzy, sluggish, and weakened, finally collapsing on the ground, usually only steps away from the animal. It then uses a rhythmic contraction of its muscles to slowly propel itself over top of the victim, where it will engulf them and begin excreting digestive enzymes from its many mouthparts. Since it continually exudes its soporific venom from its skin, the victim will usually not awaken while it is being consumed alive, and, ultimately, there is little that remains. It should also be noted that the venom seems to be remarkably volatile, readily soaking through layers of clothing and being absorbed into the skin, but also not remaining in the material for more than twenty or thirty minutes before dissipating.

The creatures do not appear to have any sort of eyes, but do exhibit a small degree of thermal sensing in addition to what seems to be their primary sense of detecting vibrations in the earth. Additionally, their ventral sides seem to have thicker skin, and more ability to resist heat than their dorsal sides, evidently a mechanism by which to resist the body heat of their prey while they are feeding. The animals seem to have no capacity to right themselves if turned upside-down, nor any ability to move whatsoever. A strange observed ability is that they seem to be able to move themselves through thick snow much more quickly than they can simply by wiggling across the ground. It is not certain whether this is merely observers’ bias, or if it is actually an innate ability by the creatures.

The most unique aspect of these creatures is their paranormal abilities. While they do appear to be dual-natured (this is debated), they do not seem to have any ability or desire to astrally hunt. They do, however, appear to have a marked ability to compel victims which approach within a 30 meter or so diameter to move directly towards them. The area of their psychic affect seems directly connected to their size, with larger creatures being able to influence victims from farther away. This psychic influence does not seem limited entirely to compulsion, either, as many people have nearly trod upon the creatures without noticing them, before being pulled away by a more observant (or less readily affected) companion. This effect seems to function in the astral plane, where they are frequently overlooked amidst the other astral noise of the area. Finally, it has been observed that there might be a correlation between frequency of blizzards and number of Golo-Golos in the area, indicating that they might have some sort of limited ability to influence the weather, based on some as-yet unobserved psychic link between the animals.

Transporting the creatures has proven to be an extraordinarily difficult endeavor, as well as creating an environment for them in which they can survive for more than a few hours, drastically limiting the ability for study in controlled environments. Nevertheless, some very enterprising (and resource-laden) individuals have captured the animals and created enclosed environments for them as curiosities.

Note: both the Dual-Natured power and the weather control powers are optional, based on how the creature is intended to be used.

Average Size
B    A    R    S    C    I    L    W  Edge Ess  M  Init  IP
4     1     4    2     4    2    0     3       2      6    4     7     1

Large Size
B    A    R    S    C    I    L    W  Edge Ess  M  Init  IP
5     1     4    3     5    3    0     4       3      6    5     8     1

Movement: 2 / 5 (through thick snow)
Skills: Infiltration (5), Perception (4), Unarmed Combat (4)
Powers: Compulsion (Paranormal; Movement only), Concealment (Paranormal), (Dual Natured,) Enhanced Senses (Vibration), Hardened Armor (2/4), Immune (Cold), Magical Guard (3), Natural Weapon (digestive enzyme: DV 4P, AP 0, acid damage), Venom (Soporific; see below), [Weather Control (Blizzard)]
Weaknesses: Reduced Senses (Blind), Vulnerability (Heat, Fire)

Soporific Toxin:
Vector: Contact
Speed: Immediate
Penetration: -2
Power: 10
Effect: Disorientation, Stun Damage
Penetration is negated by a sufficiently high rated environment suit (such as the Mitsuhama EE Suit, AR55) which protects against environmental toxins. Effect is immediate, often within 20 seconds or less, with delirium and disorientation taking effect before unconsciousness. Stun damage from this poison does not carry over into physical damage.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: The Cleric

This is apparently going to be part two of me talking about Dungeon Crawl Classics classes. Today, we're going to be talking about the DCCRPG cleric.  Let me just start this off by saying that I love clerics, and I am happy to see DCCRPG handle them in a way that is honestly pretty great.

First, clerics have a "failure" table just like wizards do. Unlike wizards, clerics do not suffer horrific, permanent mutations and deformities. Rather, they receive relatively minor, temporary effects to reflect the fact that, in failure, they have earned their deity's disapproval. Typically the time required to gain a deity's approval back is just 24 hours, but for some effects it can take up to 1d4 days. But like the wizard, it is resolved randomly, and so occasionally the required atonement action would not make sense with the character (for instance, would an evil god really want an evil cleric to go on a quest to heal the crippled?).

Also unlike the wizard, there are myriad ways for clerics to get around disapproval, and it results in them feeling like much more multifaceted, interesting characters. The base mechanic is that a cleric can cast a spell once per day, but then each additional time the spell is cast it is at a cumulative -1 penalty, ostensibly to represent the increasing burden on the cleric's deity to "intervene." And, of course, each time risking disapproval again.  Penalties can, additionally, be shaved back off by the cleric making sacrifices, usually to the tune of goods worth 50gp, per -1 penalty removed. Additionally, the GM can judge a "great deed, quest, or service to a deity" to be a sacrifice as well. In short, clerics are far more useful than wizards.

Clerics also have some neat little additional abilities for flavor, like how laying on hands works better on characters who share a similar alignment to the cleric than those of opposite alignment; additionally, healing someone of an opposed alignment can count as a "sin," which can curry disfavor from the cleric's deity. For some reason, on the deities list, Cthulhu is there, as a neutral deity, as "Priest of the Old Ones." Clearly, this is not your mother's Cthulhu.

The last perk of DCCRPG clerics over D&D clerics is that turn undead doesn't just turn undead. It has been reskinned as "turn unholy," and then you refer to your deity list to determine what, exactly, the deity constitutes as unholy.  Apparently Cthulhu doesn't like mundane animals OR monsters, OR werewolves, OR perversions of nature, in addition to undead, demons, and devils. So, in short, be a neutral cleric, since your "turn unholy" repels just about everything (...). Hopefully the finished product will have a LOT more details on the deities, because this is pretty sketchy.

The only thing I might add to the DCCRPG cleric would be, on the theme of making sacrifices to stave off penalties, for the cleric to be able to take a stricture which limits or constrains their ability to perform a kind of magic.  For instance, a lawful cleric might worship a god who specifically hates demons, might have an unlimited ability to utilize turn unholy against that specific kind of enemy, maybe at the expense of using any other kind of magic in the interim. Something, at least, to play with. Since there is no paladin in DCCRPG, the cleric sort of functions as both, and should be satisfying as either. The ability to play a neutral or evil cleric is an added bonus.

I went into this expecting to cut into the cleric like I did the wizard, but I'm surprised that honestly, with the system the game sets up, I feel like the cleric works pretty well. I have been reading, by the way, a lot of other people complaining about how single-minded the corruption table is, and a lot of people suggesting building their own custom corruption tables based on the wizard's patron... which seems like a lot of work, at the beginning, but also probably a lot more satisfying in the long run for the player.