Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani: Brief Thoughts

After having discovered the Vistani for the first time over the course of reading the Shadowfell book, I endeavored to learn a bit more about them. The main source for 4th edition seems to be Dragon 380, which mentions a bit of history about the Vistani and also provides a few character options for playing as the Vistani.

After reading these few pages, one sort of immediately regrets the loss of the occasionally very high quality material presented, even in the digitally presented, DDI-exclusive editions of Dungeon and Dragon magazines, since they broke the magazines apart and now just post things as individual articles on Wizards' occasionally very difficult-to-navigate and advertisement-laden website. Nevertheless, I do have some thoughts on the Vistani where I briefly compare the 2nd edition/Ravenloft version and the sketchy model presented in Dragon 380. One immediately wonders why the authors didn't spend at least a little bit more time providing any sort of additional background for the Vistani in their context in the Shadowfell, since they felt like they were important enough to the setting to mention at all. I certainly had no idea what Vistani were going in to it, and I imagine that there are probably a good portion of people who, even if they pay for a DDI subscription, won't have read Dragon 380. It seems like a... conspicuous... omission. Perhaps I missed the section on th Vistani entirely in the book, in which case I will consent to wearing the dunce cap at least 4 hours a day for one week.

As it was, I could only gather by the words used to describe them that they were like gypsies that had the ability to travel, seemingly at will, between and throughout the planes, and had at least some small degree of magical power which protects them from serious harm from the more... unsavory sorts of things that they might encounter along their way. The Dragon articles confirmed that they are, in fact, the D&D equivalent of gypsies. However, one of the major differences from the earlier edition Vistani is that in 4th edition, membership is evidently open to all races through a sort of induction process, whereas Vistani in the Ravenloft context seem to have been exclusively human, and the best one could ever come to joining the Vistani was to become a Giogoto, which is to say, someone the Vistani tolerate. All in all, the 4th edition approach to the Vistani seems to take away the magic and mystery of the Ravenloft Vistani a bit, at the expense of making them more interesting, more realistic figures.

In Van RIchten's Guide to the Vistani, one is presented with just about every stereotype about gypsies one can imagine. All of the "negative" stereotypes about Vistani are justified, and all of the "positive" stereotypes are mythologized. There is still a limited amount of this in the 4th edition interpretation: we learn, for instance, that the Vistani swindle people only when it is "fated" that their money should change hands to begin with. A bit of the mysterious fortune teller with untold and limitless magical power details that are so salient in the Ravenloft edition, are softened or flat-out omitted in the 4th edition treatment. In 4th edition, VIstani are a D&D race similar to gypsies; in Ravenloft, they are gypsies, all stereotypes in tact.

In conclusion, briefly, I believe that Dragon 380 will be more of use to utilizing the Vistani in a 4th edition Shadowfell adventure than the entirety of Van Richten's guide would be. It is not to say that there is not anything of interest in Van Richten to add color or flavor to the depiction of the Vistani, but the vision of the Vistani in Ravenloft is too different from the modern type to be of too much use.

The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond D&D Roleplaying Game Supplement

Thanks to the 4th Edition D&D Webchat hosted by the brilliant minds behind At-Will, I've been able to rub shoulders with some very interesting folk in the online D&D community at large, including one of the co-authors of this box set, Matt Goetz, who convinced me (I didn't need much) to pick up the box and check it out. I apologize in advance for the verbose review, but I hope that after I am through I will have done the set justice.

First, the superficial stuff: like many WotC products recently, it comes with tokens. I am less than lukewarm about tokens; I just don't use them. But if you've seen other WotC tokens, they're more of the same: ≈1 mm thick cardstock, artwork recycled from this and previous products, you know the drill. What I'd prefer, just because I don't use tokens, is if they'd instead include some Dungeon Tiles that some of the encounters utilize; wouldn't even care if they were reprinted from other sets. But that's just me.

Then, the map: Large map of Gloomwrought on one side (useful, point a finger and say "you are here"), and a generic city-street-and-some-houses scene on the other side (less useful, but hey, they had to put something there, I'm not complaining).

Lastly among the incidentals, the Despair Deck. What can I say about the Despair Deck that has not already been said? Not much. Mechanically, you draw a card every time you take an extended rest and you are bound by what it says until you can shake it off, and these build up the longer you stay in the Shadowfell. Once you shake it off, you get a temporary boon from overcoming the effect. They're split into three categories: Apathy, Fear, and Madness, with examples like Craven, Frail, Clumsy, Reckless, Quarrelsome. It's a sort of neat idea to remind players that this realm is different from the real world, and that living people dwelling in the world of the dead has consequences; one can empathize, if only a tiny bit, with races like the Shadar-Kai, who have not really gotten terribly much character development in the published materials.

In to the meat! The encounter book, I am relieved to say, actually has some substance to it, and has battles and skill challenges for levels 7-23, although so much of the material in the Encounter book and the Campaign Guide is for low-to-mid Paragon levels that I'm just going to call this entire collection a Paragon-level setting guide. It's pretty easy to scale the 7-10 encounters up to Paragon levels, anyway. One of my favorite challenges in the Encounter book is "Scouring Undercity" which, as the name implies, involves going underneath the city of Gloomwrought. Undercity is described as a labyrinth of old buildings that have sometimes literally been sucked underground by cataclysmic events, but more often seem to have been "replaced" by newer buildings by the mysterious and ineffable Keepers. I'd like to imagine that there would be a fair amount of seepage from the Shadowdark into the Undercity, making it even more dangerous and strange than Gloomwrought above.

I'm also quite a fan of the "Rooftop Chase," which I can imagine could be run very tense and frightening, not unlike the hotel escape scene early on in the Xbox game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth." There are also very neat enemies in the Encounter book such as the Hearth Golem and the Oblivion Wraith. Unlike a lot of the prefab encounters published in various WotC materials, these encounters give life to certain areas of the realm, above and below, and are useful, even if one doesn't plan on running them as they are written, to give those areas described in the Campaign Guide more flavor.

Lastly, the largest book is the Campaign Guide, which is also the best part about this whole set. If I'd have bought this second hand and not had any of the other material except for the Campaign Guide, I would still feel like I'd have gotten my hands on a top quality product. Also for the most part the art in this book is exceptional. Oftentimes I don't have a lot of high hopes about art in an RPG product, but here with very few exceptions (13, 36, 93, 101, 106) I am genuinely impressed. The last book I bought that had this level of artwork overall was the Cthulhutech core book, which I still think is a really great example of a small company being able to pull of top quality work.

Chapter one gives us a rough overview of the Shadowfell at large, a much-needed expansion from the depressingly small amount of information contained in the Manual of the Planes, as well as explains some of the game mechanics introduced by this set (including the Despair Deck).

Chapter Two is dedicated to Gloomwrought and is formatted just like any other location guide (such as Hammerfast, Vor Rukoth, etc.) where it gives you a map of the city, divides the city into districts, and then gives you notable locations within those districts, as well as "hooks" to help the DM come up with ideas of what sort of game ideas can come out of each of these locations. And, unlike Vor Rukoth (another of my favorite D&D products), gives a lot more detail than is usual with location guides and really helps to set the flavor of the whole city. After finishing the chapter, Gloomwrought feels like a real, living place. Of course there are some aspects that require a bit of suspension of disbelief (like the Dust Quarter, to me, seems just a little bit hokey, but given the right treatment could be done well), but overall the sort of strange and alien mood the city as a whole receives is right in tone with what a location like this should have. There are also descriptions of "factions" at work in the city, that the DM could throw in to add a bit more "local flavor."

Chapter 3 moves out to the wider world of the Shadowfell, including what I think are really neat locations like the Oblivion Bog, the Dead Man's Cross (what a way to enter the Shadowfell), the Darkreach Mountains and, to me the coolest, Letherna. Letherna seems to be a sort of "pocket dimension" not unlike Ravenloft that is the personal domain of the Raven Queen, where high enough leveled adventurers could even potentially have an audience with her. A conversation with a god? Yes, please. This is so cool I can't even really describe it well. My only complaint is Vorkhesis, but that's probably just because I don't think he's cool enough and I'm jealous.

The last chapter, Chapter 4, introduces more more factions and mostly just serves as a new enemy list (gotta provide stats for all those tokens somewhere, right?). The list is mercifully diverse: you've got domestic terrorists (the Ghost Talon), murderous zealots (the Ebony Guard), Golems (man do I love golems), and, finally, the Keepers. The chapter is rounded out with some stat blocks for some heavy hitters in the city; nobles, the ruling prince, and their ilk.

Some final observations. Gloomwrought, as a whole, seems to be overwhelmingly influenced in its tone by the film Dark City, which is not at all a bad movie and if you haven't seen it, especially if you want to run a Gloomwrought adventure, check it out. The Keepers of Gloomwrought seem very influenced in appearance and function by the Strangers, and the city rearranges itself at the will of the Keepers, again just like the Strangers from Dark City. However, this is not any sort of complaint about riffing on other content, as I think that the influence serves its purpose well here. The fact that they are called "Keepers," and nobody knows what their true function really is (but it is also a crime to bother or attack them) was also reminiscent of the Keepers aboard the Citadel in Mass Effect, who also turned out to have a sinister purpose. These are very neat concepts which I think would make it very easy to write a compelling overarching story for a Shadowfell-based campaign to exist within, and the set as a whole seems to do the realm of the dead great justice. I am very pleased with this product, and easily ranks up there among my "top 4th ed products ever" list.

Although I must add that, like so many of WotC's other books, the binding is atrocious and the book is already showing signs of strain after having being opened and laid flat only about 10 times, in total. Be gentle with this one, friends, as it may suffer an untimely decay like so much else in the Shadowed Realm.

Gamma World encounter setting idea

This article is titled "25 Abandoned Yugoslavia Monuments That Look Like They're From the Future" and, as the title implies, they are crazy war monuments that do look like they're from the future. The first thing that popped into my head though would be to use them as crazy terrain or settings for Gamma World encounters, or even areas that can be explored (or have been occupied as bases by enemies like in Fallout). You could probably approximate knockups of the overhead view for the map, and then use the photos as a play aid to show what the characters are actually gathered around. I love using real monuments and locations to add spice to an encounter, and I love objects in an encounter map that can be used as cover or concealment to keep the fight more interesting.

Gamma World character sheet, Savage Worlds character sheet

I said before that the previous GW character sheet should be considered a "version 1.0" copy, and here's why. I wanted to fit in vocations onto the sheet itself, figuring that cryptic alliance would be taken care of by the card. I've also tweaked a few other things, but it's all in all pretty similar. You can download that here.

In the same spirit of creating a very stripped down, printer-friendly version of character sheets, I also made up a printer-friendly Savage Worlds sheet, color optional just to designate where in the experience track one initiates a new tier. That can be found here.

Vor Rukoth: Review

I had been interested in this adventure site guide for a while, since I read about its publication on wizards.com. I have to admit that Tieflings, as a race, were not really interesting to me, as I think that their origin makes for potentially problematic gameplay. However, I do like the idea of an abandoned city with a dark past, so I thought I would revisit Tieflings through the setting guide, and see if I couldn't come up with some ideas for how to use them more effectively.

The first thing to note before even getting in to the module itself is that it sort of assumes that you already have the Player's Handbook Races: Tieflings book, which gives an overview of what Tieflings are, where they came from, what Bael Turath and Arkhosia were, and what happened to them. It references these things, and gives very cursory descriptions sometimes, but most of the time you feel like you do need a little more information about the background, which the Tieflings books provides.

Like the other setting guides, it consists of a cardstock "cover" which actually folds out into a map of the entire city, and encloses the actual book (which doesn't have its own cover), as well as a play map, which has an infernal looking "throne room" sort of setting on one side, and a generic ruined city street setting on the other. The maps are never alluded to anywhere in the book itself, but one can assume the throne room setting is the Horned Throne Room in the Ruby Court, where one would likely have the climactic encounter of the module, with Najala the lich queen. Unfortunately, Najala herself is never statted out, requiring you to either use a generic lich build from the MM or else build your own custom Najala. Her phylactery is statted out at level 15, however, and it looks like an interesting battle in and of itself.

There are a number of specific locations designated and described within the city (36 is the number, fact, although some numbered locations have other sub-locations), and with each location, a few adventure hooks and occasionally a statted special enemy. A lot of these are not very inspiring (as they are very specific), but most are adaptable enough to be usable. My chief complaint, however, is that since the location is intended to be a repeat adventure location over a broad spectrum of levels, each "neighborhood" has a variety of levels of encounters written in, but without much saying how players might traverse an area populated by high-level encounters in order to reach one with low-leveled encounters in a neighboring area. I suppose that is under the purview of the DM and limited only by imagination though, so it's not really even a valid complaint. They do suggest environmental effects: an earthquake, sealing off some areas and opening up others; flooding, revealing long-underwater locations while inundating others; even a meteor shower, destroying large portions of the city. Additionally, some of the adventure hooks also have their own environmental outcomes as a result of completing or failing their objectives which could have effects on large portions of the city. But it's all very sketchy.

In my current campaign, we began with The Slaying Stone , where part of the adventure was clearing the city out, so that one day people could move in again. I can foresee Vor Rukoth having a similar eventual outcome, having an epic-level campaign culminating in creating a new Tiefling homeland where Vor Rukoth is the new capital. But that's for the future, I suppose.

Overall, I wish that the module had come with more maps, rather than just the generic street view and the throne room. There are so many interesting locales described in the module, I'd have liked to have seen some settings for them to play upon without having to buy more and more dungeon tiles, especially because there are not a lot of "demonic" or "ruined" terrain tile options. With most "setting" modules, having only one map is not so bad, but with an adventure setting where the focus is tons of different locales, multiple maps would have been a plus. The adventure hooks, I feel, all said and done, are adequate enough to stimulate a lot of good ideas, and the locale descriptions, though sketchy, are still good enough to come up with more ideas. I'm excited to try to get one or more Vor Rukoth based adventures in my campaign, especially testing out some of the more interesting mid-heroic-level demonic enemies in the Demonomicon and the MM 1-3.

Adding a little Old School flavor to D&D 4e

I can't say that I honestly have much invested in the D&D "edition wars" that seem to be neverending, but I have nevertheless been observing sort of the back and forth between proponents of different systems. For instance, Pathfinder, at least to me, seems to be the system that has been fully adopted by people who didn't want to let go of 3.5, and then there are any number of "retroclones" for the previous editions of OD&D, AD&D, and even BECMI. I see nothing wrong with any of these, in and of themselves, I've even downloaded the OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord free pdfs and have been pawing through them in order to sort of see what the distinguishing features of those clones are, since it seems like even among the OD&D fans, there is dissention over what's the "best" part about that system.

But the property which I think really separates D&D 4e from ANY previous edition is the relative downplaying of magic items (and the devaluation of magic items that comes with 4's very casual dispensation of them) and the emphasis on "class powers" rather than equipment in and of itself. In other words, you've got your At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, and if you've built a decent enough character you may never even have to use a basic melee or a basic ranged. And it seems like this level of abstraction is what especially alienated a lot of OD&D fans, who were used to having to account for a lot more details, coming out of specific different kinds of weapons, rather than abstracting so much stuff like weight, length, shape, material, and attack style and just saying "1d6+Str." It doesn't matter whether it's a warhammer, a sickle, or a broadsword. Then even among the "military" or "masterwork" sort of weapons it's just a matter of another +1 or +2 bonus; weapons aren't interesting at all in 4e, they're just a nondescript vehicle through which to deliver (some) class powers.

So I've been thinking about this, especially with regard to 4e "Essentials" and the possibility of a 5e coming some time in the next couple years, and wondering why you couldn't build a weapons "subsystem" into 4e, which is already very modular and easy to modify, and create your own rules for weapons-heavy characters, emphasizing not only the particular qualities of the weapons themselves, but the proficiency with which each class handles those types of weapons. In other words, say you have a dwarven paladin with a particular proficiency in military hammers, which rather than to just simply get another +1 on attack rolls, you could unlock the "proficiency" option on a weapon, at the sacrifice of the regular At-Wills for the class, to instead use the weapon's special qualities.

So using the hammer example, you could swing the hammer in different ways in order to knock the enemy aside, daze the enemy, sweep the enemy's feet from under them, etc. in order to actually be "proficient" with using the weapon, and still get to keep class features, or have the option of turning one at-will or encounter into a "class feature" in order to still preserve some of those qualities. I haven't actually tried to stat out any specific weapons or make a build using this yet, so I'll have to see if it introduces too much imbalance. But I do think that it may be a way to introduce a more "old school" feel to the original game, and remove some of that abstraction that makes weapons by themselves sort of worthless, as well as remove the occasionally very silly and unbelievable class powers that have come out for each class. Though there would be a lot of work on behalf of the DM in order to set this up, it would be a much more satisfying, I think, exercise in the basic striker than what Essentials provides us with the fighter.

New Terrain: Witchwood

Witchwood is a magical vine of uncertain origin. It seems to be more prone to growing in climates which are mild year-round, as any place where the ground is subject to a hard freeze it is never found, and where the ambient humidity is generally over 70%. Its true method of propagation is a mystery, as it has never been observed to flower, but it has been observed that it has a profound ability to self-propagate through cuttings of the stem or root, with the most vigorous regrowth coming from the transplanted root crown. Functionally, this means that if the plant is cut off at ground level, the aerial vine can re-root just as readily as a new plant will grow from the underground roots still remaining, and if the vine is chopped up into small pieces, each piece has the potential to grow into a new, separate plant. Its aerial parts can be readily destroyed by burning, but as the roots remain untouched by fire, it will regrow.

For most of the year, it appears as just a thick mat of intertwined thin brown vines, forming what looks like a net which covers existing vegetation, as well as climbs up and over buildings and other artificial structures, choking out whatever it grows over. In fact, the vegetation it grows atop has the tendency to wither and die at a rate much faster than can usually be accounted for by simply light deprivation, which is in accordance with its most infamous observed property: its seeming tendency to draw the life energy from living things in its proximity. Its growth habit is usually that a cutting will first grow underground to establish a root system, and then send out a thin rhizome just under the surface, from which small suckers grow from which, in time, will result in a mass of anywhere between 1 and 6 vines. They spread out in all angles, growing around each other and climbing whatever obstacle is in their way, eventually growing small, simple, opposite, acuminate leaves, of a greenish-red color along the length of the new vine and then dropping after only a matter of a couple months. New vines grow from the tips of old vines, or else from any place where the vine is broken or cut, and only new growth gets leaves. Very old growth, that is, growth that is undisturbed for several years, can create very thick mats that are so tightly interwoven and layered that it creates a more or less steady surface that one can walk across without falling through. The youngest vine growth is nevertheless very brittle, and is easily snapped.

Though it prefers places of high humidity, moderate to high temperatures, and high light, it can occasionally be found growing in places with no light, as the vines can sometimes grow into or underneath something and be nourished by the other vines attached to their roots that are above ground. Over time, one can occasionally find startlingly large growths of witchwood in caves and abandoned buildings, as long as it has another source of nourishment at hand. Namely, sources of arcane energy. Therefore, in some places where there is a lot of magical activity, such as mages' towers and lichs' phylacteries, witch wood can grow very vigorously and even completely conceal the entrances or the entire structures.

Functionally, witchwood has its strongest effect on wizards and warlocks and those who use the arcane power source. Standing in a square occupied by witchwood, one suffers a -2 modifier on all rolls which use the arcane keyword. Furthermore, if someone drops to zero hit points in a square occupied by witchwood, they get a -2 modifier to their saving rolls, and others trying to help them get a -2 modifier on heal checks. Additionally, if an arcane character drops in a square containing witchwood, they take a -4 modifier on saving throws, as it is sucking away their arcane energy.

Lastly, witchwood, depending on the thickness of the mats, can be either difficult terrain or hindering terrain, tripping characters walking across it.

Cross-Contamination

I forget where already, but some time in the past week or so I remember reading on a blog where someone was using Fudge Dice in order to flavor up some random encounters in D&D. Fudge Dice, as we know, are 6-sided dice that have two blank sides, two + sides, and two - sides, and come in packs of four. I really liked that idea; it ties in to really what the FATE system is all about; that the dice don't so much determine exactly what will happen, but rather that they will slant the outcome one way or the other. In the case of Dungeons and Dragons, something that 4th edition doesn't really preserve as well is the idea of the random encounter. You're a group of adventurers, blazing the trail and rediscovering some lost or forgotten temple, or underground lair, or some ancient magical forest, or whatever, but you go from space to space, or room to room, and there is another group of often homogeneous monsters. But why? To ensure that the time and work spent exploring the area provides enough experience points to reach a certain goal at the end of the major quest? I have to admit that I myself design games around a set XP goal and then everything else pours out of trying to make a reasonable situation to place the encounters in, but another part of that is that I am dreadful at making believable skill challenges. But besides the standard gamut of dungeoneering, stealth, perception, whatever skill rolls determining whether or not the group of goblins detects you walking past, or whether you can find some way around the dragon's lair, why not use Fudge Dice to determine whether the dragon is even there at all. Why shouldn't there be a chance, like in the Hobbit, that it's simply out for the moment, terrorizing villages, devouring virgins; whatever dragons do. In other words, have something a little bit more dynamic than a d10 or d8 or d20 roll to determine what sort of situation they may find themselves in. I like the idea of having the players themselves roll the Fudge Dice; they're the adventurers after all, and then they can all see what sort of situation they are getting themselves in to. While it would make sense that the party leader, or at least the person in front or taking the "active" roll would make these sorts of checks most often, there could be other situations where someone else, perhaps in a failed assist roll, instead does so poorly that they "trigger" a roll, which in game terms could mean something along the lines of "you knocked the suit of armor down the well and it made a very, very, very loud noise for a very long time. Fool of a Took." In terms of actual rolls, at this point a - - - - would probably mean, if still using the Dragon Lair example, that the dragon feels like returning just at that moment, and that the entire party is right in the middle of an open space, and all the doors suddenly close, and they all simultaneously realize that they forgot to put on pants that morning. A + + + + would mean something more like the dragon decided that the weather was just not to its liking and it went on vacation for a couple weeks. In skill challenges, they could be implemented in a way to be an attempt to subtly alter fate, which would be determined by what sort of character they are like. For instance a Paladin or a Cleric character may make a sacrifice to their deities in the form of not being able to use a power for an encounter, temporarily losing access to their class features, or something like that; or a fighter would lose a healing surge or two. In exchange, instead of accepting that the critical roll on the skill challenge just failed and the entire party is going to be in a world of hurt, they can roll the Fudge Dice and instead see if the fates are actually in their favor. Something like a very positive roll could mean that even though they technically failed, they failed in such a way that accidentally made things still turn out right. And a really negative roll would mean that they failed even more spectacularly and the situation went from really bad to absolute worst. And either way, they'd be out whatever they chose to sacrifice for the encounter or situation that that event might have triggered. I see no reason why this also couldn't be used in combat, a la Fortune Cards-style meta play. Use an action point, roll the dice. Do you recover so quickly that you get to swipe your sword up ferociously and get bonus damage on a roll that at first failed? Or do you accidentally fall face-first into the magical brazier and become blinded by magical fire? For something that is such a crap shoot, I can't imagine that people would want to do it very often, but in a do-or-die sort of situation, it could mean the difference between a TPK and a clever escape; a sort of release valve to free players from their own potentially bad decisions. I can't wait to try it out.

Disfigurement and Dragons

Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead is one of my favorite volumes of addon material for D&D4. Not only is the premise of it delightfully hilarious (that it will teach you, among other things, the physiology of how undeath works in the D&D world, and justifications for it), but that they nevertheless manage to treat the subject matter so well (in my opinion).

I've decided to page through it again, and it's gotten me thinking about the mechanics of heroes in D&D. A lot of other, more high-stakes, RPG systems have rules regarding permanent disfigurement or mental damage from dealing with situations that are beyond the control or ken of the character, and even past editions of D&D had creatures that permanently sapped levels away from characters that they then had to earn back. D&D4 (as evidenced by the new "Fourthcore" movement) leaves a little to be desired in terms of high-stakes, high-impact encounters (in terms of theoretically-winnable-but-not-without-cost) sorts of situations.

Open Grave I think does a pretty good job at jarring me back into the notion of "oh yeah, undead are actually potentially really scary. There's something about the abstract, mechanical nature of 4e combat that ends up in making me a little jaded about the sorts of encounters that people can fly in to.

DM: You are surrounded by a ton of decrepit skeletons.
Wizard: Oh, I use Burning Hands.
DM: Ok, they're all dead now. again. For real this time.

There's something really existentially threatening and horrible about the idea of something that is dead rising to its feet again, charged with malign energy, that is trying to kill you too. And if it kills you, you may be dead forever. Or you may lose your mind and rise up again as one of them. I'm sorry, but the first time you walk into a room full of dead people that stand up at attention again when you step to the side and knock over a cup should be a really jarring situation, even among so-called "heroes."

I'll probably get in to why I love Heroic-Tier games much better than high-level games at another time, but Paragon- and Epic-Level undead provide a way to raise the stakes without necessarily getting the adventurers involved in a battle of potentially cosmic import. It's amazing how much godslaying there is in 4e; you begin to wonder why the gods bother to keep coming back.

But anyway, taking a page from Call of Cthulhu, I don't see why there shouldn't be a variant rule in place that dictates having encounters with something so cosmically wrong as undead that it is difficult to walk out of the situation in some way unscathed. These, of course, should be mainly boss-type encounters, but as a lot of RPG video games have taught us, optional mini-bosses can oftentimes be more frightening and more damaging than the main course of the game anyway. And this isn't even limited necessarily to undead, either. I see no trouble at all with having variations for aberrant creatures or demonic creatures, or other types of things that are belched up from the Abyss that have no business at all existing in the first place and should be destroyed as quickly as possible for the safety of the entire world. And they don't even have to necessarily be high level, either. Something the size of a pea could eventually feed and grow to threaten the entire cosmos.

But here's what I propose: rather than bringing back level-sapping attacks from previous editions (because leveling is so gnarly in 4e to begin with, unless you want to also hand out more experience things/create more experience-generating situations), to introduce variant enemy attacks that instead cause a permanent decrease in a core ability score. Liches are, after all, what's left over after a wizard or sorcerer transgresses the boundary of what is possible, so it would make a reasonable amount of sense that they might occasionally have the ability to grab hold of someone and literally sap the life from them, permanently causing a reduction in constitution, or strength, or something. Or some aberrant beast from some unknown plane that slips through a dimensional crack and literally destroys the minds of its victims, creating crazed half-dead animals in what were formerly commonfolk, and effecting a permanent loss in wisdom, intelligence, or charisma in a heroic character.

Depending on how nasty the DM wants to be, these effects could literally be permanent, or instead symbolize a sort of deep sickness from coming into contact with something so deeply "Wrong" as ordinary reality and the natural order struggle to again right themselves and restore balance (where in game terms the lost ability point would be regained after a level, a few levels, or at the next tier). Not only would these sort of profoundly weakening attacks encourage more tactical gameplay (like oh my god keep away from that lich, don't let it touch you), but would force contact-based players like fighters to have to potentially come up with alternate strategies, since just standing next to it and whacking on it while acting as a meat shield puts your character in even more mortal danger.

Lastly, it could be used as a sort of plot point for specific characters. Meaning, instead of the stat loss being literal, like they've been scarred or damaged physically in some way, that it was actually a blow to the psyche, and constitutes a loss of confidence, or faith, and that they therefore need to undertake some sort of personally redemptive quest, or join a religion (an introduction to multiclassing?), or accept some sort of stricture in order to get their abilities back. This last bit I got from Shadowrun, which I think despite some of its other faults, has a lot of really good mechanics in place to encourage good roleplaying. This sort of mechanic could also be used, in the D&D world, to explain why characters gain certain abilities and not others as they level up: this traumatic event at level 3 was why the character has the ability to do this daily at level 7. Adds depth to characters.

Finally at last referring to the title of the entry, it is a time-honored practice when referring to permanent stat loss to reflect the stat loss in a type of corresponding disfigurement. Why did the person suffer a point loss in Charisma? Maybe because that fire elemental burned his face with some sort of special hellfire. This is a readymade plot hook, as well. Perhaps over the course of their travels the party get wind of a mysterious sorcerer who has created a healing salve that can repair the damage from these sorts of attacks, but the path is fraught with danger and the salve itself is a king's ransom. And then there's the matter of the little rumor that the sorcerer himself may actually be a lich...

I love creating special magic items specifically for a particular adventure or campaign. Not only do I think does it make the adventure more immersive, but it also adds the level of surprise in case the players have been spending a little too much time reading the Adventurer's Vault. It is the latter reason that I also nearly exclusively create custom bosses for the climactic scene in adventures. Sometimes out of mixing together two or more enemies from the MM, or sometimes just out of whole cloth. It's especially joyous when I can successfully drop hints that misconstrue the true nature of the final enemy, so that the party is caught completely off guard. It would only add that much more depth to have an enemy that could potentially maim someone without having taken the necessarily precautions, which could even be hinted at all throughout the adventure leading up to it. Something to think about more fully, to be sure.

Rules Compendium, Dungeons and Dragons Essentials

After having paged through the Rules Compendium as well, many of my reservations about where Heroes of the Fallen Lands left me have been alleviated.  It seems that they basically split the PHB in half for the Essentials book.  The Rules Compendium copies and pastes a large amount of the material present in HotFL, but also adds in everything missing from it from the PHB.  I think, overall, it's again nothing new, but it's a much better book in terms of actual substance.  I think that even if you own a copy of the PHB, it may be worth getting a copy of the Rules Compendium as a "table book," because it's much better organized and contains all gameplay-related things, on top of being smaller and lighter than the PHB.  It does not, however, lie flat, so you need to prop it open or leave a bookmark if you want to keep a page in mind.

Overall, it's again nothing new, but as a tableside companion (or if your copy of the PHB has fallen apart, like they are so good at doing), it may be worth getting this as a replacement.  It's like the Quick Start Rules, except has all the relevant gameplay rules as well.  A handy reference guide, nothing more.