Year: 2012

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

The trees bent aside like twigs to make way for the creature that stepped out of the darkness. It’s appearance was grotesque and alien. It wasn’t until it opened its colossal jaws to choke out a guttural roar that the adventurers even realized where its mouth was. Yaril drew his blades and stepped forward.

“Alright kids, we do this by the book. I’ll try and sneak behind the bastard.” His apparent confidence was belied by the tremor in his voice. Graft none the less nodded silently and began pulling an arrow from his quiver. Behind them, Vortican was already mumbling the beginnings of a spell, arcs of magical energy gathering around his fingertips.

“I’m going to seduce it.” Tassandra said. The rest of the party’s jaws dropped in unison. It was Vortican who spoke first.

“How do you intend to do that?”

“Well…ya know. I look at him with lusty eyes, and open my mouth just a little. Then I turn so he can get a really good view of my ass, with a little sideboob for good measure. Then I take this big stick thingie I have and hold it like its his penis, just to make sure he gets it.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a valid strategy.” Yaril managed, still dumbstruck by his companion’s foolishness. “I’m not even sure that thing is a ‘he.'”

“Shut up, it will totally work!” were the last words Tassandra spoke, before the entire party was devoured by The Beast Who Hates Sexist Fantasy Art.

The Paladin's Oath, and GM Clarity

After purchasing the first book recently, I was prompted to re-read The Order of the Stick by Rich Berlew in its entirety. Odds are that if you’re reading this site, you’re at least somewhat familiar with the comic. If you’re not, go ahead and leave. Just click over to the giantitp.com and start at the beginning. Reading Order of the Stick is a far better use of your time than reading my half-assed ramblings is. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you’re done.

The story of one of the comic’s characters, a Paladin named Miko, got me thinking about how game masters should handle the unique challenges presented by a paladin character. I had already written a piece a few months back concerning how I believe a paladin should be played, but I realized that the way the GM treated the paladin mattered at least as much as how the player played their character. That prompted this past Monday’s post on how to provide ethics based challenges to a paladin. So now I’ve covered both how players should enact a paladin’s morality, and how GM’s should challenge a paladin’s morality, but I still haven’t covered the element which makes a paladin’s morality worth talking about in the first place: the code of conduct itself. The paladin’s oath which, when broken, causes the paladin to fall. (Which is precisely the event which makes Miko’s story so compelling.)

The oath is the central element of a paladin’s morality, which makes a thorough understanding of it essential to the task of testing a paladin’s morality. I’ve also got a few ideas on how to make the oath a bit more interactive and engaging. But before we explore those ideas, I think it’s essential to define unequivocally what the Paladin’s oath actually is. Because I don’t think we’re all on the same page here; that page being number 63 in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. It reads:

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class features except proficiencies if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates: While she may adventure with good or neutral allies, a paladin avoids working with evil characters or with anyone who consistently offends her moral code. Under exceptional circumstances, a paladin can ally with evil associates, but only to defeat what she believes to be a greater evil. A paladin should seek an atonement spell periodically during such an unusual alliance, and should end the alliance immediately should she feel it is doing more harm than good. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

That is the extent of what the book states explicitly about the Paladin’s oath. (If I’m missing anything, please let me know.) Oftentimes the meaning of these relatively simple sentences can be a source of great contention, so lets examine them more closely before moving on. Note the wording of the sentence which makes reference to a paladin falling (there’s only one):

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class features except proficiencies if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

It doesn’t say “A paladin loses all class features if she ever willingly commits an unlawful act.” Nor does it say anything about a paladin losing their powers for breaking their oath. Using a strict interpretation of the rules as written in the book, most of a paladin’s code of conduct is fluff. There is no mechanical penalty for using poison, or lying. Doing so would not be very paladin-like, but the rules don’t state that such actions should be punished. It seems unlikely that this is unintentional, since the Pathfinder entry is identical to the entry in the 3rd edition rulebooks. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to clarify things if this was not the intended reading.

Continuing on the assumption that we’re abiding by a strict understanding of the rules, what constitutes an evil act? Page 166 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook states:

Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.

Hurting, oppressing, and killing others. That’s what evil is. Those types of actions are, according to a strict interpretation of the rules, the only actions which should cause a paladin to fall. And unless you’ve had some conversation with your player about an extended list of fall-worthy actions, then you should abide by a strict interpretation of the rules. For the sake of clarity.

Clarity is one of the most important skills for a GM to have. It is the ability to communicate with your players effectively. To communicate in a manner which gives your players a solid understanding of what the consequences of their actions will be. Clarity is always an important skill to practice, but this is doubly true when the question of whether a paladin falls comes into play. If your player does not feel they were given a fair chance to avoid losing all of their class skills, they will be justifiably upset. If you’re in doubt about whether or not you’ve been clear, there’s nothing wrong with simply letting your player know explicitly.

“Do you realize that if you kill the city’s lord, and he is not in fact evil, your paladin will fall?”

It’s as simple as that. And if you’re worried about giving anything away, consider the possibilities of obfuscating your tells through volume.

Now, having discussed clarity, lets return to the oath itself. As discussed above, the rules state explicitly only that evil actions can cause a paladin to fall. But the rules also describe a number of other actions which a paladin “cannot” perform—though it describes no specific punishment for performing them. There’s no reason these can’t be included on the list of fall-worthy actions, so long as the player is made aware of it. In fact, there’s no reason any number of actions can’t be included in a paladin’s oath. Which leads me to wonder: what if a player could select from a number of different oaths, each with their own specific requirements, and benefits.

Dungeons & Dragons played around with this in the 3rd edition “Book of Exalted Deeds.” That book included a number of “Sacred Vow” feats. The idea was that your character took some manner of ascetic vow—such as a vow of abstinence—and so long as the vow was kept, the character received a mechanical benefit related to that vow—such as a +2 to resist charm effects. The vows were not specifically for paladins, but they functioned in a similar manner to the paladin’s oath. I always thought it was a great idea, save for the fact that it falls prey to my problem with feats.

So what if the paladin’s oath was extensible in a similar manner? At first level, a paladin could choose to add a vow of abstinence to their oath. So long as they kept that vow, they would receive some type of benefit. It could be a +2 to resist charm effects, but it need not be mechanical. There are already a lot of mechanics involved in each of the Pathfinder classes, and none of them needs to be made more complicated they already are. Instead, a paladin who takes a vow of abstinence could gain access to the services of certain monasteries scattered throughout the game world. And, of course, if this vow is broken, the paladin would fall. So the Paladin can exchange greater restriction on their actions, for greater power.

It’s an idea I find intriguing. What are your thoughts?

A Paladin's Fall

My paladin had taken a vow of celibacy. Not the feat from the “Book of Exalted Deeds,” mind you. It was simply something my character had done in-character, with no mechanical benefit. The villain in this particular campaign was an enchantress. It was a lame self-insert character by our GM, but the group tried to put up with it. In our last session I got separated from the rest of the party while we were hunting the enchantress. She jumped out at me, and cast Dominate Person. Once I failed my saving throw, and was under her power, she tried to seduce me. I told the GM that, since this was against my nature as a celibate man, I ought to get a new saving throw at a +2 bonus to resist. Do you know what she said to me?

“Deep down, all men just want to have sex with women, no matter what they say.”

She denied me the right to a new saving throw, and went on to describe my character and her’s having sex. Once she was done, she said that since I had broken my vow of celibacy, I lost all of my paladin powers.

So how can I get back at her for this?

-Paraphrased from a tale told by one of the Anon’s on /tg/.

Every gamer knows the rules. A paladin swears an oath. That oath demands that they do good, and fight evil. Any paladin who willfully breaks their oath will be forsaken by the gods who grant them their holy might. Their powers will be stripped from them, and they will go from being one of the most powerful melee combat classes, to being a fighter without any bonus feats. This fall from grace leaves the Paladin next to useless; worse than that: it represents a fundamental failure of the paladin to uphold the ideals to which they’ve committed their lives. It’s the kind of life-shattering failure which might actually make a person consider becoming a blackguard.

Playing a paladin means holding your character to a higher moral standard. Those who play the class take on an additional challenge for themselves. Not only must they survive the dungeon, save the captives, defeat the villains, and recover the treasure; they must do it all without compromising an ironclad code of ethics. I’ve written in the past about how I believe a Paladin should be played. In my next two posts, I’d like to discuss how I believe a game master should handle a paladin character. Because, after all, what is the purpose of a GM if not to challenge his or her players?

It’s always dangerous to generalize, but I think it’s safe to say that most players who play paladins want to feel noble. They want to feel as though they are the righteous fist of their god, meting out justice one moment, and mercy the next. In other words, people who play paladins want to feel like they’re playing a paladin. And as GMs, it’s our duty to facilitate an environment where they can feel that way. But we can’t simply hand it to them, any more than we can hand out free experience or treasure. We can try to, but when we hand rewards to our players for free, all we accomplish is diminishing the value those rewards have in our players’ eyes. If being an upright defender of all that is good and true is never difficult, then how can it be interesting?

But there is a danger in constructing this manner of challenge. Far too many GMs approach it as a question of how they can make a paladin fall, rather than asking how they can challenge their player. The example at the start of this post is obviously an extreme case. That GM is not only a bad at running a game, but is a pretty awful person to boot. It’s not an isolated case, though. If you’ve spent any time on gaming forums I imagine you know what I’m talking about. Complaints of game masters who force a paladin character to fall are disturbingly common. Sometimes spells such as Dominate Person are involved. Other times, the paladin is put into a situation where they’re forced to commit an evil act by circumstance. Still other times, a paladin falls for doing something the player didn’t even realize they could fall for—something a strict interpretation of the rules would not indicate they should fall for. Regardless of the exact method involved, all of these cases have the same root cause: a really terrible game master.

So the question becomes, “How do we challenge a paladin’s morals, without crossing the line into shitty game mastering?” And for that, I’ve come up with four possibilities.

Make evil the most obvious option. For any given problem, there are numerous solutions. But there will always be on solution which is most obvious. Someone without imagination might not even be able to think of another solution—but a paladin does not have the luxury of lacking an imagination. When the mind-controlled peasants have the players cornered, the rest of the party may give up and choose to kill the poor dominated folk. But the paladin must stand firm, and notice that the wall is weak enough to smash through, or that the second floor balcony is within jumping distance, or that the gem hanging from the chandelier is glowing the same color as the villager’s eyes.

Make evil the easiest option. Even when non-evil options are apparent, they may not always be easy. When the chaotic neutral bandits surrender, it would be easy to simply slay them, or to bind them and let the wolves have them. But a paladin cannot injure a foe who has yielded, not even indirectly. The paladin must make some manner of accommodation, whether it be taking them all the way back to the last town to face judgment, or placing a Mark of Justice spell on them.

Make evil the recommended option. Most often, the options available to a group of characters are implicit. The GM describes a room filled with monsters, and the players figure out for themselves what their options are. Sometimes, though, the players receive directions from NPCs, or even seek out NPCs to give them advice. If this advice requires an evil act, then it’s up to the paladin either to figure out alternatives on their own, or to find another source of advice. For example, if the destruction of an evil artifact requires it to be submerged in the blood of babies, a paladin might choose to instead seal the artifact away, or to seek another sage who knows an alternative method for destroying the item.

Make evil a Justifiable option. A paladin who is lax in their pursuit of justice may be led astray by small evil deeds with appear to serve the cause of righteousness. If a blackguard infiltrates the party disguised as a paladin, the villain may be able to convince the paladin to commit larger and larger evil deeds, all in the name of the greater good. The trickery is in convincing the paladin that the evil deeds are justifiable, rather than in convincing the paladin that the evil deeds are good.

Of course, there is one final element which is important to keep in mind when GMing: never, under any circumstances, try to force your players to take a certain kind of action. No matter how cool you think it would be. No matter how important it is to your ‘story,’ it is never acceptable for a GM to attempt to force a choice. We control the entire world. The demons and the devils, the celestials and the very gods themselves bend to our whim. The only thing the players control is the choices their own characters make. If you really want to make those choices yourself, then maybe you should be writing fiction, rather than running a game.

On Wednesday I’ll write in greater detail about what a paladin’s oath entails. Let me know in the comments if you can think of any more more good ways to test a paladin’s moral convictions.

Colorful Characters 15: Mahudar Kosopske

The premature child which was left in the desert had no name. When he was born, he was tiny and weak, and could not easily draw breath on his own. The elders of the gnomish clan into which the child was born deemed him unfit to survive the harsh life of a desert nomad. As was their custom, they left the child in the desert to fend for itself, comforting themselves with the thought that if the gods wished the child to live, they would protect him. As they continued on their way, leaving the child behind them, they sang a grim song beseeching the gods protect the child, or grant him a painless entrance into their midst.

No one expected the gods to grant the former.

As it happened, a traveling adventuring party was crossing the desert in search of the entrance to an ancient dungeon. The party’s bard, a half elf named Arhood, heard the child’s cries in the wee hours of the morning, before the group began its daily march. He separated from his band to search for the source of the noise, and stumbled upon the nameless baby at the same time that a dire scorpion found it. The bard was still new to adventuring, and was not yet an experienced swordsman, but he leaped into battle against the scorpion just the same. The battle was brutal. By the time he thrust the broken hilt of his rapier into the scorpion’s belly, Arhood’s delicate half elven frame was covered in cuts and poisoned wounds. It was hours before his companions found him, legs trapped beneath the scorpion’s body, arms protectively around the young gnomish child.

Fortuitously, Arhood traveled with a paladin of Iomedae who was able to cure his wounds, and return him from the brink of death. But the bard’s once fair features were now crisscrossed with puckered scars, and splotches of discoloration from the dire scorpion’s poison. Arhood, a master of the seductive arts, grieved for his lost beauty. But he did not allow it to lessen his concern for the child he had found. He and his companions, hoping to find the child’s family, returned to the village from whence they had set out to inquire if anyone had lost the child. None recognized the child, but the party did learn that it was customary fro many desert nomads to abandon weak children.

An orphanage in the town offered to take the child in, but Arhood would not have it. Even his companions tried to convince him that the orphanage would be better than the life of an adventurer for the child. The bard replied:

“Perhaps it is foolish of me to think I can care for this child, but if we cannot find his family, then let my scars be an oath which binds me to him. I will raise him as my own.” Arhood purchased some milk from a wet nurse, and the party returned their attention to the desert, and the ancient dungeon they had been searching for. They found it, and plundered its depths. Arhood, who had previously preferred to participate more directly in battles, relegated himself to providing support to his compatriots with his magical songs. It took several days for the group to penetrate to the deepest levels of the dungeon, but when they did, Arhood made an amazing discovery: a book detailing the life of a hero who had long been forgotten. The bard penned a number of songs based on what he read of the heroes life, which would later bring him great fame. More importantly, however, he saw a connection between the life of the hero and the life of the child. Both had been forgotten, both had been found by him, and both–he decided–would be named Mahudar Kosopske.

Arhood raised Mahudar on the road, despite everyone’s objection that it was too dangerous. He none the less took the child’s safety seriously. There were a few close calls, but the group was strong, and took cares to protect the child. The entire group took on responsibility for the child’s education. The child’s first lessons of history and mathematics came during periods of rest in torchlit dungeon rooms, hastily barricaded against intruders so the party could get some much needed rest.They soon discovered that despite the young boy’s weak body, he had an almost unbelievably keen mind. He took particularly well to Daryl’s lessons on the nature of magic, and was even managing a few simple cantrips by the time he reached adolescence.

Everyone agreed that the young man should be given an opportunity to study the magical arts in greater detail. Daryl enjoyed her time teaching the boy, but he had his own research to pursue. That, in combination with the task of adventuring, and resting each day to recover his spellcasting energy, left him with precious little time. Certainly not enough time to turn the fledgling caster into a wizard. They consulted with Mahudar, and decided that the best course of action would be to let the boy remain in the town where the party kept its base of operations. There he could attend a wizard’s academy and receive the education his intellect demanded. It was a tearful parting–the group had spent many years living as closely as a family, but all knew that it was for the best.

Mahudar studied there for many years, and excelled amongst his classmates. But he never forgot the adventuring life of his early years. Staying in a single place, not being threatened by monsters daily, seemed entirely alien to him. His classmates often sought him out for tales of life on the road, and he was happy to relive some of his more exciting memories for them, but throughout this entire education he was restless. When Arhood and the other party members would return to town to rest from an adventure, he would stay with them, and inquire as to their exploits, eager even for second-hand adventure. Soon after he gained mastery over the basic tenants of the arcane, Mahudar left the academy, and returned tot he road with Arhood and the rest of the adventuring party.

The group continued adventuring for a number of years. Mahudar proved himself a valuable asset to the team, and advanced quickly, guided by Daryl. But Mahudar was reckless. His lifetime of experience had accustomed him to the danger, and as a child he’d never had to worry about defending himself. The others always took care of him. Now that he had power of his own, he felt invincible. The others tried to reign him in, and teach him caution, but each successful encounter only left Mahudar more cocky. It was only a matter of time until something dreadful befell him. Which, in this case, took the form of an axe-wielding troll lopping off the young gnome’s leg at the knee. The healing of his companions saved him from bleeding to death, but their magics were insufficient to restore his leg.

Mahudar, sobered by the loss of his leg, took his leave of the party. He traveled several days South East of the party’s stronghold within the city, and constructed a tower for himself where he could retire. Since that time he has devoted himself fully to the study of magic, breaking only to help those who seek him out for aid.

Personality

Mahudar is a cheerful fellow, but he prefers to be left alone these days. Which isn’t to say that he’s unfriendly, merely solitary. You can expect him to put up barriers to prevent people from dealing with him (hiding his tower behind an illusion, forcing those who visit to pass through a number of challenges, etc.) but it’s unlikely any of his tests would harm anyone, and if someone does reach him, he tries to be a courteous host. And he never turns down anyone in need, even if they don’t have the coin to pay him full market value for his spellcasting ability. He may not always help in the way one expects, however.

Tactics

Mahudar is a wizard, and prefers to lean on his spells if he is in danger. His preference is to avoid combat entirely, either by confusing his foes, or escaping from them. If he is trapped and forced to fight, however, he will attempt to confuse his foes, hide from them, and use damaging spells to attack without being noticed.

Thoughts on Use

I use Mahudar in one of my games as a low level quest objective/quest giver. The party needs a magical spell cast (either for themselves, or for another questgiver) and they go to Mahudar. Once Mahudar tests & helps them, he can give them a new quest, such as recovering a magic item for him. He’s a useful fixture for low-level characters to rely on, providing item crafting services, and spellcasting.

Mahudar Kosopske (CR 10)
XP: 9,600
Male Gnome Wizard 11
NG small humanoid
Init +3; Senses Low-Light Vision; Perception +6

Defenses

AC 14, Flat Footed 11, Touch 14 [10 + Dex(3) + Size(1)] (+4 Dodge v. Giants)
SR 19
hp 77 (11d6 +33)
Fort +6 Ref +6 Will +11 (+2 to disbelieve Illusions)

Offense

Speed 10ft (Due to Peg Leg)
Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 11th; Concentration +16; +1 save DC for Illusion spells)
5th– Baleful Polymorph, Polymorph, Cone of Cold
4th– Beast Shape II, Stoneskin, Dimensional Door, Phantasmal Killer
3rd– Gaseous Form, Dispel Magic, Slow, Fireball
2nd– Fox’s Cunning, Alter Self, Alter Self, Invisibility, Shatter
1st– Expeditious Retreat, Hold Portal, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Magic Missile
0 (at will)– Mending, Read Magic, Message, Ray of Frost, Detect magic
Wizard Spells Available Mahudar has good library of spellbooks available to him in his tower, containing any spell from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, level 5 and below. As well as a number of specialty spells which he has researched himself.
School Transmutation
Opposition Schools Necromancy, Divination
Transmuter Abilities
Physical Enhancement (Su)— +3 Bonus to one physical ability score (Str, Con, Dex) Can switch bonus to a different ability score every morning when spells are prepared. Currently applied to: DEXTERITY.
Telekinetic Fist (Sp)— 8/day, may attack a foe within 30 feet with a ranged touch attack. Fist deals 1d4+5 bludgeoning damage.
Change Shape(Sp)–For 11 rounds each day, Mahudar may change his shape as with the beast shape II or elemental body I spells. Rounds do not need to be consecutive.
Gnomish Spell-Like Abilities (Save DC: 14)
1/day–Dancing Lights, Ghost Sound, Prestidigitation, Speak with Animals

Stats

Str 5 (-3) Dex 17 (+3) Con 16 (+3) Int 20 (+5) Wis 18 (+4) Cha 17 (+3)
Base Atk +5; CMB +1; CMD 14
Feats Scribe Scroll, Metamagic: Heighten Spell, Metamagic: Extend Spell, Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Brew Potion, Forge Ring, Metamagic: Widen Spell,
Skills Acrobatics(+6), Bluff (+14), Craft(Bows)(+15), Disguise(+9), Knowledge(Arcana)(+19), Knowledge(Geography)(+13), Knowledge(History)(+14), Knowledge(Planes)(+15), Linguistics(+12), Perception(+6), Ride(+7), Sleight of Hand(+10), Spellcraft(+19), Stealth(+7)
Languages Common, Elven, Gnoll
Gear Robes of Spell Resistance 19, Ring of Friend Shield (Mated with Arhood’s), Figurine of Wondrous Power: Obsidian Steed

Familiar: Kochrin

Tiny Animal
Init +2; Senses low-light vision; Perception +5
AC 19, touch 14, flat footed 17 [10 + Dex(2) + natural(5) + size(2)]
hp 4 (1d8)
Fort +2; Ref +4; Will +1
Speed 30ft, Climb 30ft
Melee bite +4 (1d3 – 4 plus)
Space 2 and 1/2 ft.; Reach 0ft
Str 3 Dex 15 Con 10, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 5
Base Atk +0; CMB +0; CMD 6
Feats Weapon Finesse
Skills Acrobatics +10, Climb +10, Perception +5
Familiar Special Abilities Share Spells, Empathic Link, Deliver Touch Spells, Speak with Master, Speak with animals of its kind,  Improved Evasion

Hex Crawling Encounters


(Order of the Stick courtesy of Richard Berlew)

In Monday’s post on making overland travel more engaging, I discussed how a hex crawl might work in practice. As I noted, the whole concept seems rather dull until you add two elements: survival, and random encounters. I was only able to touch on these concepts briefly in that post, so now I’d like to delve more deeply into the idea of random encounters on a hex map, and how they can work within the context of Pathfinder. I’ll try not to simply repeat Trollsmyth on this issue, since he also covered it in Hex Mapping 17: You’re Everything that a Big Bad Wolf Could Want. Though, while I’m on the subject: if you’ve read my posts and you’re becoming interested in hex maps, read Trollsmyth’s entire series on them. He recently posted part 20, and each post has been thought provoking and informative.

So we’re all at least somewhat familiar with encounter tables, right? They’re not as common as they once were, but sourcebooks are still full of charts to be rolled on, and we’ve all played video game RPGs where walking will suddenly result in a blast of noise and a transition to a battle screen. You’ve probably even had a GM at some point who said they needed to ‘check for random encounters,’ followed by some behind-the-screen dice clattering. But like Vaarsuvius says, these are boring. And it’s true. When the GM “fades to black” anytime the party travels anywhere, random encounters are boring. It’s like being a cardboard duck in a shooting gallery: you’re moving, and you might get hit by something, but you don’t really have much say in it either way. Random encounters only work when the player is in control of their own movement, which in the wilderness, means that random encounters only work when there’s a hex crawl.

Self determination (i.e. PLAYER AGENCY) is not all which is required for a random encounter to be compelling. Before leaping into the construction of an encounter table we need to get two misconceptions out of the way. First, it’s essential to realize that random encounters are not random. There is an element of random determination involved, but whoever creates the encounter table controls the probabilities of each encounter type. Not only that: they control what types of encounters are even possible. It’s not as though you’re obligated to pull monsters from the bestiary without rhyme or reason once you decide to build an encounter table. That would be ridiculous. You populate your encounter table with encounters which make sense. If orcs and trolls are fighting for control of the forest, then the encounter table for the forest will be variations on that theme. There can be troll hunters, orc worg riders, 1d4 trolls on patrol, a battle between orcs and trolls, a wounded orc separated from his fellows, the list goes on. Who knows? Maybe the half-assed “trolls vs. orcs” story will pique your player’s interests. Maybe they’ll take it upon themselves to settle the forest feud.

That’s what you want. Trust me: no matter how brilliant you think your game’s overarching plot is, you will never have more fun as a game master than you will when your players start making up their own quests.

The second misconception about random encounters is that all encounters are combat. Apparently the only reason we’re rolling at all is to determine what type of monsters are encountered, and how many of them there are. If possible this idea is even more ludicrous than the first one. There’s so much to encounter in the wilderness! Abandoned buildings, the bones of a long dead adventurer, a lost child, an undelivered letter, a magical fountain the list could go on. Adventure and exploration have a lot more to offer than hostile creatures in need of a good skewering.

The first step in creating an encounter table is to determine what area it covers. Presumably you’ve already got your hex map, so unless your game world is a homogenous lump, you can look at it and see plains, forests, mountains, rivers, deserts, and so forth. Within each of these biomes, a countless number of interesting encounters are potentially hiding, and the manner of those encounters will likely be completely different in one part of the world than they will be in another. While traversing the planes of Gibbledy-Gop, your players might encounter mighty centaurs, but while in the forest of Creepyscaryeek they’re more likely to encounter orcs. And, if your players go south of the river Fishnstuff in the forest of Creepyscaryeek, then they’ll encounter ogres instead, since the orcs are afraid to cross the river. It’s up to you, as GM, to determine how large an area your encounter table will be used for. If you’re working on creating a fully developed world, you may even want to create a second map with color-coded outlines of areas, based on which encounter table that area uses. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even have some areas which were under the effects of two separate encounter tables.

Once you’ve marked your encounter table’s “Area of Influence,” you need to determine what’s going on there. This will inform your decisions later on when it comes time to populate the encounter table. Above I gave an example of a forest where trolls and orcs fighting one another, and that’s as good a place to start as any. But it needs more detail. Let’s say that there’s a number of elven ruins from an ancient forgotten civilization which the two groups are fighting over. Given that trolls are much stronger than orcs, there’s likely going to be many more of the latter than of the former, or else the trolls would have won the ware a long time ago. And, just for kicks, lets say that the orc leader made a deal with a high-ish level wizard who is now supplying the orcs with some basic magical equipment.

At this point we have enough information to start sketching out what the encounter table will look like. There are a number of ways you can set up the chart, using any number of different dice, but I like to keep things simple: 1d20 to determine the type of encounter, and then another 1d20 do determine the specific encounter. This provides enough options that it’s pretty unlikely the players will exhaust all of them within a few hours of gameplay, but so many that it becomes unwieldy to deal with. Of course if you’re working with larger or smaller areas–or longer or shorter amounts of time the players will spend in those areas–it may be prudent to use a more or less complicated chart. If you really wanted, you could roll 1d100 to determine which of 100 charts (each with 100 options of their own) you would roll on. Or you could just roll1d4 to determine which of four different encounter types your players will face. It’s entirely up to you and what you need, but the “1d20 twice” approach provides a nice healthy average, so that’s what I’ll use here.

The first d20 roll, as I mentioned above, will determine the type of encounter, or whether there is an encounter at all. It’s important to make sure that there’s a relatively good chance of the players not encountering anything. Otherwise the hex crawl will slow to…well…a crawl. The players are on an adventure, yes, but they likely also have a goal in mind. Excessive distraction from that goal will annoy them. I like to have about a 50% chance of nothing happening. The nice thing about the d20 is that each number on the die has a 5% chance of being rolled, so if we want to create a 50% chance of nothing happening, we assign the numbers 1 through 10 to “nothing.” And that range can be altered to increase or decrease the probability somewhat, but I would advise not straying too far from the 50% median. Too many random encounters can become frustrating, and a serious drain on the party’s resources. Likewise, too few random encounters makes the hex crawl boring.

50% of the die is left to assign, so lets do combat encounters next. Since the forest is a Trolls Vs. Orcs warzone, combat encounters should be relatively common. 25% seems like a good probability, so we’ll assign numbers 11 through 15 on the d20 to “combat.” Unlike “nothing,” other types of encounters can vary as wildly as you like. The peaceful plains near civilization may only have a 5 or 10% chance of  combat encounters, while a party venturing deep into the territory of an evil empire may face a 30 or 40% combat rate.

With 50% assigned to “nothing,” and 25% assigned to “combat,” that leaves only five numbers left to assign, and there are a plethora of things we could put there. Interesting locations, traps, side quests, treasure, dungeon entrances, as with many things in tabletop RPGs, the limit is your imagination. For this encounter table, I think 16-17 (10%) will be Interesting Locations, 18-19 (10%) will be Special, and 20 (5%) will be Side Quests. And there we go, the first roll on the encounter table is taken care of. Rolling 1d20 will either result in “nothing,” or in one of four different types of interesting encounters. But the type of encounter is only half of the equation. Now we need to populate the second half of the encounter table, where we’ll determine specifics.

Combat: The combat chart should include a variety of different combat encounters. The obvious two are a band of orcs, and a band of trolls, but we can be more creative than that. And, more importantly, since combat encounters have a 25% chance of occurring, we need to be more creative than that. Since players are likely to encounter combat a number of times, we should have maybe 15-20 different possibilities on this table. They can include any number of things. The players could stumble onto a battle already in progress between orcs and trolls, which they could decide to participate in or not. They might encounter orcs riding worgs, or trolls carrying orc prisoners. Normal forest danger, like dire bears,can be on the list as well. Though your players will probably have more fun with the encounters that have a story behind them.

Interesting Locations: We’ve already mentioned that the orcs and the trolls are fighting over some ancient elven ruins, so those should be on this list. If you were so inclined, you could even include a number of different types of elven ruins: homes, government buildings, etc. Perhaps one might hide a dungeon entrance. Other types of interesting locations could include an orc village, a troll village, a reclusive wizard’s tower, an illusory copse of trees that one of the players accidentally walks through, or even just a meadow where the players can refill their water rations.

Special: Special is where you can put all the oddball stuff which doesn’t fit in your other categories. You might include a wounded orc warrior who was left behind by his comrades, or a fellow adventurer who got separated from their party and is now lost. If you are so inclined, you might even give your players a chance to find a treasure chest filled with gold which has been covered with dirt and leaves, or a powerful magic item dropped by some long past adventurer. Finding random treasure should probably be pretty uncommon though, and you may want to require a perception check to notice it.

Side Quests: You may not want to include side quests, but I think you should. First, the main questline is never quite as engaging to the players as we GMs would like to think it is. Providing them with occasional hooks to go off in a different direction lets them know they have alternatives. More importantly, showing that the world has a variety of tasks for them to handle, not all of which are related, helps encourage the players to think of your world as a living, diverse environment. Possible side quests include finding the entrance to a dungeon, finding a dead messenger with an important letter for a nearby king, or finding a village which needs the party’s assistance. And if you’d really like the players to continue on with the main quest before handling the side quest, you can always give them a time limit. E.g. “The world will blow up in 5 days and the dungeon where you can stop it from happening is 4 days away.”

A few final notes on using an encounter table:

  • How often? Once you’ve got the chart made, determine how often you’re going to roll on it. You could roll once per hex, once per hour spent within the hex, once per day, whatever you want. Personally, I roll each time the party enters a hex, and roll once more during the night when the party is at rest (ignoring any results which are not capable of self-mobility, such as an ancient ruin.)
  • A Gazebo Appears! Encounters should not simply “appear,” as though you’re playing a console RPG from the 90s. Take a moment to figure out how the players encounter whatever it is that you rolled. If it’s a location, do they see it in a valley as they reach the crest of a hill? Can they see it from a distance, or is it obscured by the treeline until they move closer? If it’s a monster, who sees who first? Perhaps you could figure out a simple third roll to determine whether or not the party is surprised. Trollsmyth has an excellent method for determining what a monster is doing when it’s encountered in the same hex mapping post I linked above.
  • Wow, this forest sure has a lot of wizards… Some things ought to be taken off the encounter table once they’ve been encountered once. For example, if your players have already encountered one reclusive wizard’s tower in the forest, you may not want them to find another. In these cases, re-rolling is fine. However, you might also consider that encountering something twice could lead to an interesting story that you never intended. For example, perhaps the wizard’s tower exists in several locations at once, or teleports around the forest at random, or maybe there are two wizards here who don’t like one another very much. All those options could end up being way more fun than simply re-rolling.

Making Travel More Engaging

As of late, I’ve been pondering how I can make travel more interesting for my players. It’s something I’ve always struggled with in my career as a Game Master. Sometimes I’ve tried just fading to black between points of interest, but that’s no good. If the players don’t somehow experience the travel, then there’s no tangible metric for how distant various locations are. And even if that’s not a problem for you (which it should be), it also deprives players of the opportunity to experience the game world outside of towns and plot events. Imagery of adventurers traveling together through a forest or desert fuels our imaginations, we can’t simply gloss over that part of an adventure because it’s difficult to present in an engaging manner! We can, of course, try to give the illusion distance by determining that a certain journey will require X days to complete, but even if you try to spice that up with random encounters, the players will get bored. After an unfortunate extended hiatus, my group is finally going to be able to get back together for a new adventure soon. The one I’m preparing will have a great deal of traveling in it, which has brought this problem to the forefront of my attention.

Of course, utilizing a hex map helps solve many of these problems, which I’ve talked about before. Making the players responsible for choosing each 6-mile step of their journey helps engage them in travel, because progress towards their destination won’t continue without their input. Giving them these choices also increases their player agency, which will always increase their engagement. And, as an added bonus, once you start asking your players to make choices, they’ll start making choices on their own. Before you know it, your players will be directing the course of their own adventure, and that’s when you know that you’re a good game master.

But how does it work?

I mean, when the whole group is actually sitting around the table, and you’ve got your filled-in hex map behind the GM screen, what happens next? How precisely do the players interact with the hex map. How do they know where to go? Does a single player just point to one hex after another until the end of the day? How are you going to describe each hex when the players enter it? These are questions which need to be considered, lest we be caught with our pants down at the table. We’re the GM after all, we need to give the appearance that we’re prepared for anything the players throw at us.

Step one is figuring out how the players are going to keep track of the map as they uncover it. Of course, I have a filled-in hex map which I’ll keep behind the screen, but there’s no reasonable way for me to show it to them without revealing information they have not yet earned. My map, after all, has notes on it indicating the locations of dungeons, treasure, and towns. So the players need a assign one of their number the duties of mapmaker, and that player will need a blank map which they can fill in as they play. A quick google search for “print hex graph” turned up a site which creates hexagonal graph paper for you. I printed off 25 or 30 sheets myself, just to keep on hand. I also have a very nice hexagonal battle mat which was given to me as a Christmas gift by a friend. It’s wet-erase, so I can actually have a nice visual “world environment” for my players as they explore. The only drawback is that the mat needs to be erased at the end of each session, so the players will need to keep a map as well.

As with most party decisions in RPGs, reasonable adults won’t need any GM guidance with respect to making a group decision. In my experience, a party leader most often emerges naturally, and when it doesn’t, players don’t have trouble coming to a consensus on issues like “which direction do we walk.” If getting the party to agree on things like this is a problem for your group, then your problems are outside the scope of this post. Likely outside the scope of anything I will ever write about, because I’m not from the “here’s how to handle your friends…” school of GM advice.

With that out of the way, the second step becomes determining the best way for players to interact with the hex crawl. What is the conversation that takes place between the players and the GM as they move from hex to hex on the way to their destination. For my purposes, in the upcoming game I’ll be running, the players will receive some very basic instructions. The first leg of their journey will first require them to travel in a certain direction until they reach a river, then they’ll need to follow that river until they reach a village. Pretty straightforward. Straightforward enough that it might end up being boring, but I’ll get to that later.

As the players begin to prepare for their journey, the GM should figure out what the slowest party member’s movement speed is. This will be the movement speed for the entire party, unless the faster party members are willing to leave someone behind. If the players are on foot, the slowest will likely be whatever character is a dwarf or halfling. If the players have mounts (which suddenly become a lot more appealing once you’re hex crawling) their speed will significantly increase. Remember also to consider whether the characters are encumbered or not. If you’re like me, you’ve probably never used encumbrance rules before. However, if we’re trying to make travel engaging, then using encumbrance rules gives the players something they’ll need to pay attention to lest their pace be slowed, and that’s too valuable to pass up. If Pathfinder’s encumbrance rules are too complicated for you, I did a mock up of an alternative a few months back which may be more to your liking. I haven’t got around to putting any spit or polish on it, though.

For simplicity’s sake (and also because this is likely what I’ll have in my game) lets say that the party is made up entirely of unencumbered humans, which have a movement speed of 30. According to Pathfinder’s movement rules (found in the Core Rulebook, on pages 170 through 172), this gives the party a daily movement speed of 24 miles. Now, if you like, you can simply say that since each hex is 6 miles, and 24 divided by 6 is 4, that means that a party may travel 4 hexes in a day–and that’s fine. However it fails to take into account that some terrain is more difficult to travel through than others. Fellow blogger Brendan recently wrote a post entitled “Wilderness Movement Costs,” (which itself was based on a post by Delta). In it, he outlines a basic system for tracking a party’s hex crawling movements which I’ve decided to rip off and adapt for Pathfinder/my own purposes.

Movement Points: Convert the number of miles the party may travel in a day into “points.” So, it the party can travel 24 miles in a day, they have 24 “movement points.” This may seem like a ridiculous extra step. However, its function is that it turns the party’s movement budget into an abstraction, rather than a literal unit of distance. This will help players understand the less-than-literal possible uses for movement points.The party can spend movement points on couple different things:

Travel: Travel is the most obvious function. (That is, after all, kinda the whole purpose of this post). The table below shows the cost in movement points for each of the four terrain difficulties. Since the players won’t know if the next hex will put them over their movement cost, it’s up to the GM to warn them when they’re about to do it, and let them know that continuing forward would constitute a forced march, meaning the players would not be able to move as much the following day. Note that traveling on roads actually allows the party to move at a faster speed than the standard rules would allow. This way, roads have an actual in-game purpose much closer to their real life one.

TerrainExamplesMovement CostBecoming Lost
Easyroad 4 No Check
Averageclear, city, grasslands, trail* 6 Survival DC: 10
Moderateforest, hills, desert, badlands 8 Survival DC: 15
Difficultmountains, jungle, swamp 12 Survival DC: 20

*There is no Survival check required to avoid becoming lost when following a well marked trail.

The movement cost happens to be evenly divisible for our band of unencumbered humans, though it may not be for all parties. If a party has some movement points left at the end of the day, but not enough to enter the next hex, give them some extra time to spend on other activities. Remember that in Pathfinder, a “traveling day” is 8 hours. So if you divide their total allotment of daily movement points by 8, you can determine how many movement points are spent during each hour of travel. From there you can easily figure out how much time they gain. For example, if you divide the human’s daily allotment of movement points, 24, by 8, you get 3. That’s 3 miles every hour. So if they have 3 movement points remaining, they have an extra hour to spend on tasks such as crafting, foraging for food, or researching spells.

Searching: A six mile hex is huge. A character could spend a week or more in the same hex without discovering everything there is to learn there. Every time they enter a hex, they see only a tiny fraction of what the hex has to offer. By spending one half of the movement points required to enter the hex, they can explore a roughly equivalent fraction of the hex. For example, a character entering a forest hex spends 8 movement points to make a beeline through the hex. If the party would also like to spend 4 more movement points in the hex (for a total of 12) then they can explore a little bit on their way through. They certainly won’t see everything, but they’ll earn themselves a second roll on the encounter table. Maybe they’ll find nothing, maybe they’ll encounter monsters, or maybe they’ll find something worth searching for. See below for more information on encounters.

That covers how the party’s movement through a hex crawl is handled, but how is it entertaining? At this point all we have is a mini game where the players point to a hex, and the GM tells them whether or not they have enough movement left, or whether they need to bed down for the evening. This is a structure, but without putting some meat on that structure, the whole thing ends up being completely monotonous, and players will leave. That’s where the final two elements of engaging travel come into play: survival, and encounters.

Surviving in the wilderness won’t be easy. First off, each party will need to rely on the survival check of one of its members. Each time a hex is entered, that player must make a survival check to avoid getting lost. If the character fails their survival check, then when the party attempts to move on to the next hex, the DM should roll 1d6 to determine which hex the party actually travels to. A roll of one means the party travels to the hex they intended to travel to (though they are still lost). Rolling a 2 indicates that the party travels to the hex one-space clockwise of their intended hex, rolling a 3 indicates they travel to the hex 2 spaces clockwise, etc. The party remains lost until their guide can succeed on a survival check upon entering a new hex. Items such as a compass or a map can help characters improve their survival checks to avoid getting lost. Once a character is an experienced enough traveler, their survival skill will likely rise high enough that becoming lost is no longer an issue.

Players will also need to monitor their rations in order to survive in the wilderness. If you’ve never forced players to keep track of their food supply before, now’s the time to start. Once the players run out of food 4 days into a 10 day journey, you’ll find they’re much more engaged in figuring out how to reach their destination before they die of starvation. Foraging and hunting are always options, but what if they can’t find anything? Will they eat their mounts? Will they eat…each other? That’s the fun! And don’t forget the elements. If the character’s journey takes place during the colder months, they may regret not spending the encumbrance points on those extra blankets when it begins to snow, and they start to freeze to death.

Lastly, there’s encounters. There are all types of encounters your players can have, which you can roll on a random chart. I won’t take the time to come up with a chart here, but I would say the chart should probably be about fifty percent “nothing,” which will allow the players to avoid getting bogged down in every single hex. The other half of the chart should be some combination of combat encounters, and ‘other.’ Other types of encounters can include walking in on a druidic ritual, finding the entrance to a random dungeon, coming upon a village of friendly or neutral wilderness dwellers, discovering a magic well, or any number of things you can come up with on your own. And for those times when combat encounters are rolled, there’s no need for them to be as boring as the standard “monsters appear” nonsense. Whose to say whether the monsters notice the players or not–or whether it’s a few monsters, or an entire village of them! Trollsmyth once posted an excellent chart which GMs could use to determine what monsters were doing when they were encountered. And don’t forget my Spicing Up the Battlemat series of posts to help make these combat encounters more interesting! (I really ought to do another of those. The last one was in December!)

As I’ve said a million times, keeping your players engaged is the number one duty of a game master. And whether want it to or not, travel is likely going to make up a large part of your game. You can either ignore it, or you can try to use it as another opportunity to challenge and entertain your players. After writing this post, I for one feel a lot more confident about running travel for my players in our upcoming game.

Half Price Books Haul

If you have a Half Price Books location near you, you need to go there. Just make sure you have some spare cash, because you’re not going to get out of there without buying a veritable library. Not only is everything fantastically cheap, but they’ve got more variety in their stock than I would have thought possible for a brick-and-mortar book store. They somehow combine a mom & pop bookstore atmosphere, with the square footage & numerous locations of a national chain like Barnes & Noble. I’ve got two locations near me, and both of them have more tabletop gaming material than I could read in a year.

Pictured above are the RPG books I got from my most recent haul. I got a number of other items as well (including a brand new 10-DVD set of Stanley Kubrick’s films for $24 which made my heart flutter), but this is a tabletop RPG blog, so I figure this is what my readers would actually be interested in.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide by Gary Gygax is the biggest find, for me. This is, as I’ve said before, a seminal work in RPGs. This text was so groundbreaking, and remains so relevant even to modern gamers, that WIRED magazine listed it first among their “9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now,” which came out a staggering 32 years after the book was originally released. I’ve been reading a PDF of it recently, which has inspired a number of my recent posts, but there’s nothing quite like having a physical copy. The book has been out of print for decades, though Wizards of the Coast is planning to do a limited reprint. So if you can’t find an original, your chance to possess this wisdom is coming up. Plus it supports the Gygax Memorial Fund!

The Dark Force Rising Sourcebook is for the West End Games Star Wars RPG, which is among my favorite games. Back when this RPG was still in print, new Star Wars novels would often be accompanied by a sourcebook, which took elements from that novel, such as ships, locations, characters, or events, and gave them game-rules. I don’t know if that kind of synergy has ever existed between media & gaming anywhere else, but I like it. And Dark Force Rising still reigns as one of the greatest Star Wars novels ever written, so I’m eager to dive into reading this. Plus there are numerous fantastic illustrations for scenes from the book, which is always fun.

Ever since reading Vecna Reborn, I’ve been really aching to get my hands on some Ravenloft materials. Being a fan of undead, and grimdark settings, it just seems like my kinda thing. I picked up three. Ravenloft: Realm of Terror, which is the basic campaign setting for second edition. Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires, which is a detailed 95 page booklet on–you guessed it–vampires. It seems to be written from an in-game perspective, which should be really fun to read. The Shadow Rift is a massive adventure module, filling almost 160 pages. I’m not sure when I’ll have the opportunity to read & run this, but it looks exciting. And I gotta give some massive props to the artist who passed up on an opportunity to sexualize the female adventurer on the cover. Bravo, Todd Lockwood!

Shadowrun is a game I’ve wanted to play for a long time. Cyberpunk has always intrigued me, and throwing magic in the mix makes for a fun time. Apparently the sourcebook I found is actually 1st edition as well. So the vision of future technology is crazy out of date, which kinda works for me. There’s something charming about a world where we all have cybernetic implants, but computers are still bulky and require wired connections.

The last two books are The Fright at Tristor, and the D&D Player’s Companion: Book One. Fright at Tristor is a 3.5 module. I haven’t had much time to look into it yet, but I’ve become very interested in acquiring Pathfinder compatible modules in recent months. I still prefer to design my own adventures, but running modules now and again has proven educational and fun. The Players Companion is a 1st edition supplement which includes more detailed combat rules, information on strongholds, classes, and new weapons. It should be informative to see how a player supplement was handled in 1984.

Now if I could only find more time to read!

Merciless Monsters 3: Draugr

For the first time in a long while now, I sat down to write today’s post without the foggiest idea of what it was going to be about. It’s Friday, so my choices were narrowed down to either Merciless Monster, a Colorful Character, or a Magical Marvel. Most of the time, when I wake up Friday morning, I start thinking about what I would like to create. While I’m taking care of the mundane tasks which make up our daily lives, I’m also fumbling through the details for the monster, character, or item I’ll be writing about once I can finally sit at my keyboard in the morning. Today I…just didn’t do that. Not quite sure why. By the time I got home I was so exhausted I went straight to bed after dinner. Couldn’t have been later than 7 o’clock. When I awoke at 3 in the morning on Saturday, I sat down to write without the foggiest idea of what I’d be writing about.

I had wanted to continue my Magical Marvels series on the artifact weapons found my my Ascendant Crusade campaign, but the artist who has been illustrating those is asleep, so that’s a no-go. And since I’m still a little tired of the Colorful Characters posts, I decided to write another Merciless Monsters post. But what to write about? If you’re not willing to randomly combine animals together and call it a ‘monster,’ coming up with a fearsome creature on the spot isn’t so easy. I was first inspired by my plushie of Jabba the Hutt to create a Pathfinder version of Hutts which hoarded gold and made Faustian bargains with those who sought their aid. Truth be told I think it’s a really great idea, and I may return to it, but the creature I imagine would be used for role playing encounters, rather than combat encounters, and that’s not what I wanted to write about tonight.

Out of ideas, I gave into my inner-zombie and googled “Undead in Folklore.” Unsurprisingly, wikipedia was the first result, but I opened a number of windows in anticipation of a lengthy search. I started with Wikipedia’s list of “Forms of Undead,” and clicked the first type which I wasn’t already intimately familiar with: the Draugr. At first they didn’t seem particularly interesting, just mummies without the wrappings. I almost clicked away, but continued reading long enough to learn that they could grow in size at will. That’s pretty interesting. I kept reading, and learned even more interesting things. This creature (which, incidentally, was the very first type of undead on that list) is surrounded by superstitions and rituals which I’ve never seen represented elsewhere.

Let this be a lesson to all game masters: Mythology will never let you down.

Particularly the shit that vikings came up with. Those people were fucking crazy.

Draugr

The imposing form of the corpse-blue creature stands before you, emanating a stench of decay which nearly makes you gag. It wears the garb–and the grin–of a fearsome warrior.

Draugr; CR 14; [Undead] [Crypt] [Cool Climate] [Nocturnal]

XP: 38,400
NE Medium Undead
Init +1; Senses Darkvision 60ft, Perception +0

DEFENSE

AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 21 [10 + Dex(1) + Dodge(1) + Ring(1) +Armor(10)]
HP 85 (11d8 + 33)
DR 5/Iron
Regeneration 2 (See “Destruction”)
Fort +9 Ref +4 Will +5;
Immunities Undead Traits

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.
Melee +2 Greatsword +25/+20/+15 (2d6 + 17)

STATISTICS

Str 29 Dex 12 Con — Int 3 Wis 10 Cha 16
Base Attack +11/6/1; CMB +20; CMD 33 (+8 vs. Bull Rush or Trip attempts.)
Feats Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Disruptive, Dodge, Improved Vital Strike, Lunge, Mobility, Spellbreaker, Spring Attack, Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (Greatsword), Weapon Specialization (Greatsword), Whirlwind Attack
Skills Intimidate (+14)
Languages Common
SQ Gaseous Form, Stability, Armor Training 3; Weapon Training (Heavy Blades +2,Light Blades +1)
Gear +1 full plate, +2 Greatsword, Ring of Protection +1

ECOLOGY

Environment They guard their crypt unless disturbed, then they will attack nearby settlements.
Organization Solitary or in groups of up to ten.
Activity Cycle Primarily nocturnal, but do not tire, and can function even in daylight.
Diet None; Natural Enemies None
Treasure Standard

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Gaseous Form(Su) As a standard action, a draugr can assume gaseous form (Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pg. 287) at will. It can remain in this state indefinitely, and has a fly speed of 20 feet with perfect maneuverability.

Swim Through Earth(Su) As a standard action, a draugr may enter into earth or stone at will as though it were water. This state lasts indefinitely, and allows the dragur to travel at a speed of 10 through any surface made of these materials. A draugr may take a grappled creature with him when he uses this ability. This creature will not suffocate, but is considered to be under the effects of a Meld Into Stone spell (Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pg. 312). Non-casters may be unable to escape without assistance.

Enlarge Self(Su) As a standard action, a draugr can enlarge itself at will. This functions as the spell Enlarge Person (Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pg. 277) except the draugr can only cast it on itself, and its duration is indefinite. In addition, a draugr is able to grow up to four times its normal height. A medium creature would become a huge creature, gaining  a -2 penalty to attack rolls and AC, a -6 penalty to Dexterity and a +6 bonus to Strength. The creature also gains a +2 special size modifier to combat maneuver checks and defense due to its increased size, and has a reach of 15ft. A draugr’s speed also doubles while in this form. One of the draugr’s preferred methods of slaying its victims is to crush or devour them while increased in size.

CREATING A DRAUGR

Brutish Draugr lose nearly all their intelligence when they become undead, though they retain enough to be sentient and aware. They are also creatures of immense strength. When a draugr is created, its Intelligence is reduced to 3, and its Strength is raised by an amount equal to the amount its Intelligence was lowered. So if a creature has 10 STR and 10 INT, then upon becoming a draugr its INT becomes 3, and the STR becomes 17.

Forceful Presence Upon become a draugr, a creature gains 6 Charisma.

Weapon Resistance Draugr gain Damage Reduction 1/Iron for every 2 HD

Overweight Draugr are unnaturally heavy, and gain a +8 bonus to their Combat Maneuver Defense when resisting a bull rush or trip attempt.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Background Draugr are crypt guardians, not unlike their distant undead cousins mummies. They rise to protect their tombs (or the tombs of powerful leaders they were interred with), from graver robbers and thieves who would defile them, and pilfer their riches. They are sometimes created intentionally,using simple burial rituals which are known to a number of warrior peoples. Most often, however, draugr simply rise from the corpses of those whose wealth was gained through violence and bloodshed. Warriors who valued gold more than they valued the lives of others.

Draugr are intelligent, though barely so. Most draugr know only two things for sure: they must protect their tomb, and they hate the living. Draugr are painfully jealous, and take great delight in killing. If they cannot have life, then why should anybody else? Often times after they encounter a living creature who has entered their tomb, they will become so enraged that killing only once is not enough. They will dare to leave their crypt for a few hours every night for a few days, searching for more living creatures to kill. If anything is actually taken from their tomb, then the draugr may not stop venturing out at night until it is slain.

Occasionally when a draugr kills someone, they will drag the body back to their crypt. The next night, that body will also rise as a draugr, and work with the first to protect the crypt. Some scholars speculate that the draugr who do this are slowly becoming more intelligent, and realize that additional draugr will allow them to spend more time away from their own crypt, killing the living.

Appearance Draugr are bloated and ugly. Their skin is a blue-black color, and they have a pungent stench of decay about them.

Emanations of Evil Animals which feed near a draugr’s tomb often become dire animals. They will attack anyone who approaches, and obey any command given them by the draugr.

Progression Sometimes, usually after a draugr has left its crypt and slain a number of interlopers, it begins to regain some of its Intelligence–though none of its memories. These draugr become even more intensely jealous of the living, and often become more concerned with tormenting them than they do with protecting their tomb. They also gain a number of powerful magical abilities, allowing them to enter dreams, spread magical diseases and plagues, bestow curses, control the weather, change their form to that of an animal, or even see the future. On occasion, extremely powerful draugr have been known to prevent the sun from shining anywhere within miles of their tombs. The goal of these draugr becomes to drive all living beings mad, so that they cannot enjoy the life which the creature so envies.

Destruction Destroying a draugr is difficult. Even when its damage reduction can be overcome, the creature’s bones knit back together of their own volition. Wounds will close, and even severed limbs may reattach themselves. Even a draugr reduced to 0 HP is not destroyed, as most undead creatures are. The only way to truly destroy a draugr is to cut off its head, incinerate it, and scatter the ashes into a sea or river. If this is not done within 6 days, the draugr will regenerate within two weeks.

REFERENCE

Player Agency in the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon

I have a pretty odd hobby for a person my age. During the summer months, I spend every weekend in my car, driving through residential neighborhoods, looking for garage sale signs. I’ve always found Garage Sales to be somewhat romantic. There’s not much technique to searching for them, you just wander about, taking turns at random, following your gut and the signs which may or may not lead you to something you’re looking for. You catch a glimpse of sheet-garbed card tables down the road, and you pull in to take a look. You scan the tables, mentally screening out all of the junk to look for a treasure. You don’t really know what form the treasure will take. Maybe it’s an old book, or an NES cartridge, or a piece of kitchenware you’ve been lacking, or a pile of empty binders in good condition. Then there’s the barter. We have so few opportunities to barter in American culture. It’s something of a lost skill among our people.

This past summer I found a number of remarkable things. Useful things, like a bed frame, and a bike; items which could have easily cost me ten times more had I bought them new. Other finds weren’t so much useful as they were amusing. This latter type is how I classify the 4-disc DVD set of the 1983 Dungeons and Dragons cartoon ostensibly co-produced by Gary Gygax himself. At the time I was only really familiar with the show from screen captures posted on /tg/. Friends who grew up in the early 80s had told me they remembered it fondly, but everyone seemed to agree that the show was pretty bad. $2 to satisfy my curiosity seemed like a good deal.

I wasn’t exactly eager to dive into this show, particularly not after watching the first few episodes. But after 7 months, I’ve finally seen each of the show’s 27 episodes. And let me just say this: nothing gives me more hope that I can succeed as a writer than knowing someone actually got paid for writing this drek. Where can I even begin in picking it apart? The dialog is so stilted and canned that innocuous conversations sent me into laughing fits. Sometimes it seemed as though characters are simply reciting cliches to one another, since the lines they were reading didn’t form any substantive back-and-forth. And while a lack of proper continuity might be expected from a children’s show in the 80s, it was none the less painful to experience.When there’s an entire episode about the characters unleashing a cataclysmic force of evil, I expect more follow-through than “it got bored and left.”

And that doesn’t even take into account how legitimately offensive the show is. There’s only one non-white character, a black girl named Diana. When the Dungeon Master assigns all of the kids their classes in the show’s opening, he makes her the acrobat, and as we learn later in the show, she’s a world-class athlete. But that’s not even what really bothers me. Making the black character an athlete is a little stereotyped perhaps, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s overtly racist–even if Acrobat seems to have been specifically created as a class just for her character. What is overtly racist is what she’s wearing. Lets get this straight. All the characters show up in this world wearing adventuring gear. The ranger gets a green jerkin, the cavalier gets armor, the wizard gets a robe, the thief gets an admittedly sexualized skirt-and-leggings getup…and the black chick gets a fur bikini? Am I the only one seeing this? I get that this was the 80s, but I have a hard time believing nobody was upset about this. I suppose we can at least be thankful that she’s not a sexist caricature of a teenaged girl like Sheila, the only other female character in the show.

Honestly, the show is so bad that I’ve thought about doing a series of episode-by-episode mockery posts in the style of my Traipsing Through the Timmverse blog. But this isn’t a television review site, it’s a tabletop RPG site. So lets talk about this show from the perspective of a tabletop gamer. If possible, looking at the show through that lens only makes it worse.

I now find it ironic that when I first wrote about player agency, I used a picture of the Dungeon Master character from this cartoon. I cannot now think of any worse example of a GM who promotes player agency. Nor even a worse example of a GM who is vaguely competent. Even if we are not meant to take the kids as the “players,” or Dungeon Master as the literal DM, he simply does a shit job of facilitating the kid’s adventures. He is overtly controlling, and steps in to give the kids directions any time they don’t have a clear goal to pursue. And half the time he doesn’t even let them accomplish the goal, but rather lets them get within sight of the goal, so he can step in and impress them with his ability to solve their problems.

It was actually my ladyfriend Morrie who noticed this phenomena first. As we watched the show together, it became a running joke to point out instances of terrible game mastering. Such as the time the characters come up with an elaborate plan to defeat a horrible monster called Demodragon. Their plan ends up being completely ineffectual, but it doesn’t matter, because earlier in the episode Dungeon Master had put a wreath of “Dragonsbane” around one of the character’s necks whilst in disguise. The dracocidal herb takes care of the monster, nullifying any value the kids’ actions may have had. Then there’s the episode where Dungeon Master is captured by the villain, which causes the players to go looking for him. When they find him, Dungeon Master frees himself, and defeats the villains handily, because the whole thing was just a ridiculous test. There is episode after episode after episode of this shit.

And then there’s the riddles, or whatever they are. As if Dungeon Master descending from on high to deliver every quest wasn’t bad enough, he always leaves the kids with some ridiculous nonsense phrase. The “riddles,” (if you can call them that) are supposed to help the kids figure out what to do when they inevitably end up in a tough situation. Because telling them what to do, and often doing it for them, just isn’t good enough for Dungeon Master. He needs to be able to take credit even for the problems the players overcome on their own. Half the time they don’t figure the riddle out until pure happenstance has already caused the riddle to resolve itself anyway, which isn’t surprising. The riddles are so abstract and convoluted that the only way the characters could possibly figure them out is by being characters who are written by the same writers who wrote the riddles in the first place. If I’m ever so unclear in my communication with my players, I hope they have the decency to punch me in the face.

The essential problem is that things happen *TO* the players, rather than *BECAUSE* of the players. This is the cardinal sin of neglecting player agency. Let there be no ambiguity on this point: Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and most tabletop RPGs are games, not mediums for storytelling. The game is what puts the ‘G’ in RPG–literally. The stories which are created can be amazing, yes, but they do not flow in a single direction from behind the GM screen. The game’s story is an incidental element, created by a group of people who have real control over their actions and their destinies. And it is because of that control which the players have that the stories created when we play tabletop RPGs are so compelling. They are not carefully constructed narratives. Unnecessary scenes or characters aren’t edited out because they fail to support a predetermined climax. And those things which might be considered useless in a constructed narrative often build to a compelling climax all their own.

There is one episode, titled “The Dragon’s Graveyard,” where we get to see a small glimpse of Player Agency. As the episode opens, the players are just about to go through a portal which will take them home, only to have the portal blocked for some reason by the villain, Venger. This is a pretty common scene, but normally it’s at the end of the episode. As the players are sulking about how they’ll never get home, they start to get riled up. They’re tired of constantly having the path home snatched out from under them. On cue, Dungeon Master shows up, offers them some half-assed sympathy, the immediately starts outlining what their next quest will be. Something about the Duke of Dread. Hank, the ranger and party leader, cuts him off. He tells Dungeon Master that they are tired of his bullshit, and they’re done letting him treat them like toy soldiers. They’re going to find the monster which can kill Venger, and they’re going to convince that monster to kill Venger, and then they’re going to go home, end of story. And how does Dungeon Master respond to his players finally taking control of their characters’ destinies? He starts acting like a little passive-aggressive asshole. An act he keeps up until the end of the episode when the players decide not to hurt Venger, and to leave the magical weapons they’ve found behind.

I honestly weep for the players of any game master who got involved in the hobby because of this show. Most eleven year old GMs are bad enough without having been inspired by the single worst example of a game master in the history of gaming. I have a hard time believing that Gary Gygax was actually involved in this project. More likely, he simply received a co-producer vanity credit because his name was so heavily associated with the Dungeons and Dragons brand at the time. I cannot imagine him actually endorsing the Player/Dungeon Master relationship shown in this cartoon. Even if you consider that the kids and Dungeon Master were not intended as literal representations of players and DMs, it’s simply a poor representation of the product.

When will we learn that Dungeons & Dragons will never translate favorably into a linear narrative? How many terrible shows and movies must fans suffer through before the madness ends!?

Of Forgotten Lore and Ancient Sourcebooks

Huh…for some reason, I find it somewhat intimidating to actually sit down and type up a post on the new site. Which might have something to do with breaking 100 hits in a single day for the very first time, largely thanks to a link from Hack & Slash. Hello new readers! Hope you’re enjoying yourselves.

I’m Pathfinder player and a Paizo fan. I think that much has been made pretty clear on this site. I am also a firm believer in being open about criticism. Criticism drives improvement. If we don’t criticize the things we love, then any changes made to what we love will be based on the criticisms of someone else. Besides, no one who is genuinely interested in creating something they can be proud of ever shies away from good criticism. On the contrary, it’s a highly sought upon treasure. When I ask someone to critique my writing ninety-nine people out of every hundred will tell me it’s “great.”

I know it’s not great. I want it to be great. That’s why I asked you to tell me why it’s not great.

Last week, I criticized modern game developers for failing to include any time management in their games. A criticism which ended up going on so long that it spawned a follow up post that same week. In the past, I’ve also criticized modern game designers for the lack of information on hex mapping. These are just two amongst a sea of criticisms I have for Pathfinder and the various modern iterations of Dungeons and Dragons. The common thread which connects these two criticisms, though, is that both of them used to be part of the game, but were dropped for no cogent reason I can discern.

 Unfortunately, there are numerous game elements like this. Mechanisms which have, for whatever reason, fallen out of use. I’m sure it always sounded like a good idea at the time, and that’s okay! Elegance of design is important, so if a game’s developers thought they were streamlining gameplay by dropping superfluous systems, then good on them. But in many cases it seems to me as though they were wrong, and ought to start reversing their mistakes. I’ve already written on the topic of time management and hex maps, here are a few other gameplay mechanics which RPG designers used in the old days, and which modern RPG designers really ought to be talking about.

Combat Facing

Have I mentioned I like rogues? Because I like rogues. I play so many rogues, that the one time I didn’t play a rogue, I had to multiclass into rogue, because my GM was conditioned to fill his adventures with opportunities for sneaking and lockpicking. I’m trying to branch out into other classes, but rogues will always have a very special place in my heart.

Part of the reason I love rogues as much as I do is their reliance on a large variety of skills, most of which are not well suited to combat. At least not face-to-face, even-steven, Combat As Sport style combat. Rogues function best when you’re not quite sure what they’re doing. If they just ran behind a tree, you don’t know if they’re trying to lure you into a trap, retrieve a hidden weapon, disappear into the bushes, climb the tree so they can leap down on you from above, or something entirely different which you haven’t even considered. Any class can play this way, but it is a rogue’s specialty. And it’s a play style which is severely hampered by D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder’s “360 degree field of vision.”

Characters in these modern incarnations of tabletop RPGs are not considered to be “facing” in any particular direction. They are always looking all around them at all times. No matter where you’re standing relative to a character, you are in that character’s full view, unless there is something between you. The idea was to simplify combat, which seems rather silly, since D&D 3rd edition added a number of largely superfluous rules.

In fairness, combat facing has not been completely neglected, but an optional rule in a supplemental book is not good enough. This should be part of the core combat system, no question.

Wizards Learning Spells at Random

A couple months ago, I wrote a post about an alternative to the current methods by which Wizards learn spells in Pathfinder. I’ll freely admit it’s not one of my better posts, but give me a break. I was severely sleep deprived and wrote the whole damned thing in a rush before work. My hope was that by removing the Wizard’s ability to automatically learn two new spells upon leveling up (and placing a larger emphasis on other methods for learning spells) we could partially overcome the vast power gap between casters and non-casters which has plagued this generation of games. I still think it’s a solid idea, but shortly after posting it, -C of Hack and Slash informed me that balance was less of an issue in older editions because Wizards didn’t get to select which spells they would learn, but rather, learned new spells at random each level.

I hold to my initial reaction upon learning this: that it doesn’t make any sense, but it sounds incredibly awesome. On the one hand, it seems silly to me that a Wizard would ever not be aware of what he or she was studying. Wizards (or “Magic Users” in the more traditional terminology) are scholars, they learn magic through something akin to the scientific method: observe, hypothesize, experiment, theorize. So if a spell which a wizard has mastered is a “Magical Theory,” shouldn’t they figure out which spells they’re working on in the “observation” or “experimentation” stages?

That having been said, there’s an undeniable charm to the idea. Being thrown a completely random grab-bag of spells, and then being forced to figure out how to use them most efficiently, sounds fun to me. I doubt future incarnations of Pathfinder will revert back to randomly determining spells. Nor do I think they should. But it’s certainly something which we should be talking about. Maybe as a house rule, or perhaps something which we could use for the sorcerer, to further differentiate it from the Wizard.

Incidentally, there’s an entire post about this issue over on Hack & Slash.

Monster Activity Cycles & Diets

These are extremely minor, which makes it all the more strange that I even need to talk about them. In old editions of Dungeons and Dragons, each monster had both an “Activity Cycle,” and a “Diet” listed in their stat block. The purpose of these is pretty simple. The activity cycle let GMs know when a creature was active. If it was nocturnal, the GM knew not to have it attack during the day, if it had an activity cycle of “any,” then the GM knew it didn’t matter, and so on. In most fantasy books or films, night is a particularly dangerous time when particularly vile monsters are on the prowl, so it makes good sense for GMs to be aware of when monsters can be active.  The diet of a monster is, of course, what they eat. Also useful, since herbivores are unlikely to try and eat adventurers, yet may still pose dangers for other reasons.

I wouldn’t say that either of these rank high enough on the “usefulness” scale to qualify Pathfinder as severely flawed for lacking them. However, I can see no reason not to include them. If the choice is between knowing when my players are in danger from trolls, and knowing which feats a typical troll has, then I would much rather know the activity cycle.

Experience Points based on Gold Pieces

Now, personally, I’m a fan of my Simple XP system. It has improved my game by an immeasurable degree. But if we’re going to be using large experience point rewards, why not use the original system wherein 1 gold piece granted a character 1 experience point? I’ve never personally played with this system, nor have I researched it in great detail, but on the surface it seems simple and logical. If experience points are a measure of the useful experience your character has gained, then why do we only really receive it for defeating monsters? If the goal of adventuring is to find treasure, then we should reward equally all methods of acquiring that treasure. The group who cleverly sneaks around a monster, or convinces a less intelligent monster to give them the treasure freely, deserves just as much credit as the group who kicks down the door and stabs everything around them until there’s nothing left between them the shiny shiny gold.

More Supplements for Game Masters

Looking over the various first edition Dungeons and Dragons stuff I’ve got, I notice that very little of it is aimed towards players, most of it is aimed towards GMs. Whereas when I look at my extensive collection of D&D 3rd edition and Pathfinder books, I notice that most of them are geared primarily towards players.

It makes good business sense, really. For every GM, there are what? An average of three players? Four? More? There are more potential customers for a player’s handbook than there are for a dungeon master’s guide. I’m sure the shift in priorities has made a lot of money for the developers of these games, and that’s cool with me. I would never ask a company to focus on a less-profitable demographic simply because it is my preference. Though I would question whether or not it is a more profitable demographic. In my experience, Players own the core rules, and mooch off the GM for everything else.

But even if it is more profitable to market to players, I’d like to see more books for Game Masters out there. Pathfinder has taken a step in the right direction with their excellent Game Mastery Guide, which is easily my favorite Pathfinder supplement thus far. I’d like to see them take it further with a Game Domination Guide, then perhaps a Game Supremacy Guide.

Remember this, Paizo: the collective of Game Masters are 100 times more effective than any marketing department. We’re the ones who find new players, and draw them in. The better we are at running games, the happier our players will be, and the more likely that they’ll purchase your products.

Are there any other oldschool game mechanics you’d like modern game developers to be learning from? Let me know in the comments! If nothing else, I can better educate myself.