Managing a Hub Town: Buying Equipment after first level

The second thing players want to do in town is exchange their money for useful stuff. In most games I’ve played in & run, the same problem starts to crop up after the players have had a few successful adventures: what do they do with all their money? The classic solution of buying property property and building a citadel doesn’t appeal to many players. The game needs a money sink.

Based on my thinking, the money sinks in a hub town can essentially be broken down into 5 groups:

Equipment
Services
Nonspecific information / quests / hooks
People.
Property / Business

If you have any ideas which fall outside of these groups, let me know. I want to be as inclusive as possible here.

“Equipment,” which covers nearly all material goods, is obviously the broadest category. I’ve chosen to term it “Equipment,” instead of merely “goods,” because in this post I am only really concerned with what the players will find useful. Could they buy a dining room table and chairs in town if they wanted? Sure. But they probably won’t want to, because it’s a game about exploring dungeons and killing monsters. They’ll want to buy things which help them do that stuff better.

So what qualifies as useful? Obviously standard equipment like swords and armor is part of that list, but that stuff is cheap! Aside from plate mail, I’ve never played in a game where a player couldn’t purchase the standard equipment they needed with their starting money. So, obviously, this will not do as a money sink.

Players need easy access to equipment which costs a lot more than standard equipment. And it needs to be useful enough that they don’t feel like they’re being ripped off when they buy it. And both of those goals need to be achieved without resorting to any god damned magic item stores. *

I can think of two good ways to accomplish this. The first is to create items crafted with extraordinary materials or skill, that confer a small but significant benefit for a high price. For example, a 500sp length of rope which is just as light as normal rope, but is rated to 1000lb. Or a longsword made of extremely light materials, which thus does not require an encumbrance slot.

The second way would be to create fairly powerful items which have extremely limited usage. Like a 300sp smokebomb which, when used, allows the players to escape from combat without any chance of the monsters following them. A healing potion would also be a good example of this kind of thing.

I have an added advantage in Dungeon Moon, because it’s a post apocalypse. I’m allowed to make Standard Equipment much more scare. I’ve been thinking that standard equipment in Dungeon Moon is of extremely poor quality. If purchased at the normal prices, it has a -1 to its effectiveness, and breaks on a critical failure. For x10 price, you can get it with only a -1 penalty and no breaking chance. You’ll need to pay base price x100 to actually get a normal quality item.

*(I should mention that Courtney has one set of super cool solutions to this problem in his Numenhalla campaign, and a completely different set of even cooler solutions to it in his Perdition campaign. Unfortunately I don’t get to talk about those, I think. But I can be inspired by them!)

What's the best way to manage a small hub town?

In game terms, what do players want when they visit a town?

They want to exchange their loot for money, or they want to exchange their money for useful stuff.

These are not the only possibilities, but they are the prime functions of towns in my games. I want to develop a good system for managing towns which will focus on these two points, and make both of them more interesting, without falling into the trap of burdening myself with an impossible amount of upkeep.

More specifically, I’m concerned with the town of Stockton in my Dungeon Moon campaign setting. Ostensibly, Dungeon Moon is the low-magic result of a high-magic apocalypse, where literally everything is scarce, and the areas outside of town are so dangerous that no one but the PCs dares to step outside at all. In practice, no game rules actually support that idea. So these posts will focus on addressing the specific needs of Stockton. However, I’m hoping to come up with something generally applicable enough that I can use it later without too much modification.

With that in mind, I’ll start by addressing the first function of a town: exchanging loot for gold.

When players succeed in getting their loot back to town, the total value of that loot is added to the town’s economy, and the town gains experience from it as a player would. The town uses the same experience track as the fighter, and “levels up” at every third level. So the town will reach level 2 when 4000sp has been recovered by the party, level 3 when 32,000sp has been recovered, level 4 at 256,000sp, etc. For reference, after 9 sessions of Dungeon Moon, this progression would make Stockton almost level 3, which is ’round about where the players are.

Each time a level is gained, only two things happen. First the referee should roll on a table of “town improvements.” They should roll a number of times equal to the town’s current level. Exactly what this table will include is yet to be determined, but it should be meaningful improvements to the town which will directly affect the second purpose of a town – exchanging money for useful stuff.

Examples of what might be on this table could include:

A trades person of a random type settles in town. The price of goods associated with their trade drops, and quality improves.
The town’s vendor saving throw is improved by 1.
A new type of service person arrives in town, such as a sage or herbalist, and they begin to ply their trade

The second thing which happens when a town levels up is that a new batch of retainers become available. When a town levels up, it is not only a measure of how much wealth has been pumped into the town. It is also a measure of the player’s improving reputation as successful adventurers. As mentioned above, very few people on dungeon moon are willing to leave the towns. But if the players continue to succeed, more people will be willing to follow them.

At the start of play, Stockton has 1d4 – 1 people in it who are willing to hire on as retainers. Each time the town gains a level, 2d8 – [Deaths] people become willing to travel with the PCs. (Deaths include all PC and retainer deaths since the last time the town gained a level).

Another side effect of people being unwilling to leave the safety of Stockton is that there is no trade between it and other towns. The players may, if they choose, clear a path between Stockton and another town. Each time they do this, Stockton begins to trade with the new town, and the players may roll once on the town improvement table. So the players can improve the town in both active, and passive ways, without ever needing to do anything other than adventure.

The best part is that all of this should require very little upkeep from me. After the initial effort of finding / creating some tables to roll on, all I’ve got to do is record the total value of recovered treasure each session (which I do anyway), and make two rolls every 3-5 sessions when the town levels up.

I’m eager to hear some thoughts on this one. Is anyone aware of resources which could help me in this endeavor? Any input on how the above could be improved?

A Single Saving Throw

Increasingly, I’ve noticed that new games being written in the OSR style have only a single saving throw. The GM doesn’t ask you to make “Your save against breath/poison/spells/et al,” because it’s all covered by a single target number. And after seeing this three or four times, and trying it myself once, I’ve begun to wonder what value there is in dividing the saves up in the first place.

Multiple saves are certainly more flavorful and more granular, but what benefits does that bring? Half the time I call for a save, I feel as though the flavorful name of the save has absolutely nothing to do with the thing being saved against. The save versus breath (sometimes called “breath weapon,” or in the ancient texts, as the save versus “Dragon Breath,”) is used to avoid a danger which quickly fills a large space, and typically results in half damage on a successful save. Aside from a dragon’s fiery breath, it might be used to avoid a volley of crossbow bolts set off by a trap, scatter-shot from a cannon, hot oil being dropped from the parapets of a wall, or many dozens of other things. In fact, the majority of things it will be used to save against will not be breath weapons. And don’t even get me started on Paralization, I don’t think I’ve ever had cause to call for that save when its name was actually relevant.

Saves against poison and spells are a little better, but the fact remains that some of the saves are so completely disassociated from their original purpose that their names have become anachronistic. But, perhaps it is important for each class to have some things it is good at saving against, and some things it is bad at saving against. Perhaps granularity is the reason for the system’s longevity. But, if it is, can someone please explain to me the logic which dictates what makes a given class good or bad at saving against something?

Why do wizards have a save of 13 v. poison, but 12 v. paralization? What makes clerics better at avoiding being turned to stone than everybody else? Some of these decisions seem more logical than others, of course. Wands having a lower save than Spells is cool, because it means a magical device will never truly live up to the power of a real caster. But, by and large, these decisions seem arbitrary.

Furthermore, I feel I must mention the amount of bookkeeping involved in having a multitude of saves for each character. When I’m making a new character, I need to record a number of my HP, a number for my AC, and far too many numbers for my saves–which will come into play far less often than the previous two numbers will. And the way they advance is so arbitrary that, for many characters, finding out what your new saves are might be the only reason you ever need to consult the book after creating your character. HP progresses according to your hit dice, AC progresses according to the armor you find, and saves progress a random amount at random levels. When I’m playing a rules-light game, nothing but spells cause me to reach for my books more frequently than saves do.

So I must ask: is there any good reason not to use only a single save for each class?

(As an aside, I should point out that if flavor and granularity are so very important, why not use Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves like D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder? The flavor for these saves is more broadly applicable, and they offer a reasonable amount of granularity with an easy-to-understand logic behind it. )

Edit: Some relevant reading:

Courtney Campbell “On Abstraction”

Brendan S. “Favorable and Unfavorable Saves.”

Sample Initiative

After taking some additional time to ruminate on my three requirements for an initiative system, I decided to take a stab at making an initiative system specifically with those three requirements in mind. Something which maximized excitement, without requiring too much time or attention from the players.

Players roll initiative individually, based on the speed of the weapon they are using. Most weapons, and any character who is not using weapons, roll 1d6 for their initiative. Characters using slow weapons, such as the sword pictured, roll 1d4 for their initiative. While characters using fast weapons, such as rapiers, loaded loaded crossbows, or daggers, roll 1d8 for their initiative. Slow, Average, and Fast weapons align nicely with the great, medium, and small/minor weapons in Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

There are no modifiers to these rolls. However, characters roll their initiative die a number of times equal to their dexterity bonus or penalty (with a minimum of 1 die rolled). If the character has a bonus, they take the best result of the dice they rolled, and drop the rest. If the character has a dexterity penalty, they do the opposite. Using only the worst result.

So a fellow with a -2 dexterity modifier wielding a Zweihänder would roll 2d4, and whichever result was lower would be their initiative. Meanwhile, a fellow with +2 dexterity wielding a dagger would roll 2d8 and take whichever result was higher as their initiative. Characters with initiatives of 1, -1, and 0 would all roll only a single die.

What I Require of Initiative

Recently, Courtney asked if he could experiment on those of us in his Saturday game. I like experiments, so I said yes. So did everybody else. Courtney sent us the rules he was brewing (specific references to which will be light, as I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask Courtney how he feels about having them posted), and we began setting up our characters. The system isn’t run-of-the-mill D&D by a long shot, and I liked a lot of what I saw, particularly the way equipment will be managed. My funds were limited, so I started out with nothing but a big-ass sword, which I noted had a -3 initiative penalty. At the time, it seemed like a fine tradeoff.

I arrived late to the game, so it was already well underway by the time I showed up. Sometimes the French revolution gets exciting, and you forget that you need to wake up at 5:30am the next day in order to get to the D&D game on time. I mostly watched and listened, since I wasn’t fully up to speed on what our goals were. Everything seemed to be going well, and we were soon preparing an ambush for a set of giant cats.

There has already been some discussion of what followed. Suffice to say that the players were confused and frustrated by the initiative system. I, in particular, didn’t like it at all. Once Courtney explained it, I saw how it was–on paper–an elegant and interesting method. Clearly it did not work in practice. Though, with refinement, I think it could be more engaging than other methods. Playtesting will tell in future sessions.

Thinking about it, Initiative is odd. Every rule has permutations between various systems, and house variants besides, but the sheer number of vastly different methods of running initiative, and the effects those have on play, is kind of fascinating. It can be rolled individually for each combat participant, which takes more time, but maintains a clear order of operations. Alternatively it can be rolled for each ‘side’ of the combat (typically players / things players want to be dead), which keeps combat moving at a much faster pace, but might be a bit jumbled, with more confident players inadvertently edging out quieter players. Some people roll initiative only once, as Pathfinder does, which keeps things moving along, particularly when initiative has been complicated in other ways; whilst games like LotFP re-roll the initiative every round, so you’re never sure if your next turn will come before-or after-the thing that’s trying to kill you. Some games apply all manner of modifiers to initiative, while other keep modifiers simple, and still others use no modifiers at all.

And then there are some who run initiative in phases, as proscribed by the AD&D DMG. Spells must be declared at the start, then missile attacks take place, then melee attacks take place, then spells go off. This one consistently confuses me, and various GMs have frequently needed to tell me that I can’t perform an action, because if I’d wanted to do that I needed to declare it during an earlier phase. And then, of course, there are those who don’t use initiative at all. I’ve never tried this myself, but those who have seem perfectly happy with it.

It occurs to me that my ideal initiative system serves three functions, in descending order of importance:

It does not require me to think too much. I want to focus on what my next action is, not when the rules allow me to take said action.
It is fast. If the forward momentum of the game has to pause to figure out who is going next, then it is taking too long.
It adds some amount of excitement to combat, beyond merely establishing turn order. If points 1 and 2 were all we cared about, why not move in descending order of dexterity?

The most basic system I first encountered when I started playing OSR style games is a good example of an initiative system which fills all of these criteria. Roll 1d6 for each side of combat, rerolling each turn. It requires zero thinking on my part, takes perhaps 10 seconds to resolve, and keeps everyone on their toes because you never know if the bad guys will get two turns in a row. That doesn’t mean the system is perfect. Points 1 and 2 are more or less pass/fail requirements. If a method fails either of them, then it’s junk and needs to be improved. Point 3 has a lot of room for creativity, though.

The goal of brewing a good initiative system is to maximize the excitement it adds to combat, without failing the other two tests.

Dissecting Monsters: The Defiler's Creature from “Better Than Any Man”

=The Defiler’s Creature=
Armor 17, 3 Hit Dice, Movement 180’ ground 240’ leap, 1 bite attack doing 1 Hit Point of damage per depth level plus swallows whole, Morale 12.
The Defiler’s creature is the size of a pit bull dog and hops along on its two legs. It can only attack with its lower mouth (its barbed tail is a sexual organ which it will not use in this dimension, while its upper mouth merely recites Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Spanish). On a successful hit, the creature will do 1 Hit Point of damage and swallow its opponent whole, no matter the size difference between them.
Inside the creature, a swallowed victim will find an identical creature with the same starting stats. This creature will do 2 Hit Points of damage on a hit and swallow the victim whole, which will result in facing another creature inside which will do 3 Hit Points of damage on a hit and swallow the victim whole, and so on and so on.
Killing a creature after being swallowed causes a character to be vomited up to the next higher level to face a new creature doing one less Hit Point of damage per hit (unless vomited back into the real world, in which case the original creature will be the opponent). The creature has infinite stomachs, so multiple characters swallowed by the creature will face their own individual “creature trees.”
If the original creature in the real world is killed, the creature indeed dies, but all of its internal organs vaporize, killing all who were still within it.

The most notable thing about the Deflier’s creature is how funny it is. The mouth that recites Chaucer in Spanish, and the scary barbed tail which is completely useless as anything other than a sexual organ are both pretty funny. Although from a play perspective, they’re unlikely to come up, so they’re mostly intended to amuse the reader / GM, rather than the players. (Though I suppose the GM should mention that one of the mouths is constantly speaking, and if any character speaks Spanish, that could make for a pretty amusing revelation). A pit-bull sized creature swallowing humans whole is also pretty funny, and also serves as a useful misdirection. If the players have encountered any of the other monsters from this module, they’ll know to expect some kind of treachery. But they’re unlikely to expect quite what they get.

Really, this creature is quite easy to defeat. It has good movement speed and could easily escape from the players, but with a morale of 12 that’s unlikely to occur unless the creature’s mistress recalls it. Its AC is on the high end, but is hardly un-hittable, and with a measly hit dice of 3 it won’t survive more than a few solid attacks. The strength of it lies in its ability to divide the players.

On any successful hit, a PC is separated from her fellows. If the creature is in single combat against a mid level fighter, that’s no problem. The fighter’s HP pool, armor class, and ability to hit consistently will make short work of the creature. But if the fighter’s party is nearby, the creature’s 240′ leap ensures that no one can easily escape from it. Less martially oriented characters have much less chance against the lower iterations of the creature, and the encounter against this otherwise simple enemy could quickly turn ugly. Divide et impera.

Dissecting Monsters: The Watcher's First Creature from "Better Than Any Man"

=The Watcher’s First Creature=
Armor 12, 6 Hit Dice, Movement 30’ fly, no attacks, Morale 12.
This is a tendril-growing eyeball imprisoned in an electrified gelatinous shell in the shape of a seven foot cube. And it flies.
The cubic creature can read the thoughts and memories of anything it looks at, including knowing what inanimate objects have done and what has been done to them. It is not able to communicate with humans however, so when it learns something that The Watcher (or anyone else) should know, it has no choice but to mime its message… difficult when one’s body is an eyeball surrounded by a mass of flailing tendrils and encased in a large cube.
As one might expect by the lightning constantly striking across its insides, hitting the cube with a metal mêlée weapon is a bad idea. However much damage is inflicted on the creature, the attacker also takes that much in electrical damage (save versus Magic for half damage).
When struck, the creature also shoots a tendril out at the attacker (which plugs the hole in the shell, preventing caustic liquid from escaping). The attacker must save versus Paralyzation or the tendril wraps around both the weapon used to attack and the arm(s) holding the weapon. This will not only immobilize the arm(s) and prevent the attacker from making any more attacks, it will also prevent the character from moving away. Anyone entangled in the tendrils like so will also be affected if the creature is attacked and discharges electricity.
The tendril itself is Armor 17 (and metallic, so striking it causes a discharge), 1 Hit Die.
Those attacking the creature with missile weapons will also have tendrils grab them, but the tendrils grow thicker with distance; add 1 Hit Die per 20’ distance of the attacker.
The creature will let its tendrils loose only when those entangled have dropped their weapons, have surrendered, and there are allies waiting to take the prisoner into custody.
If the creature is destroyed, it will explode doing 6d8 damage in a 10’ radius, 5d8 damage out to 20’, 4d8 to 30’, etc. Save versus Breath Weapon for half damage.

Something I really love about Raggi’s publications is the way he skillfully integrates a sort of nonsensical silliness into everything. Sometimes it’s overt, as it is with Twinkly in “Fuck for Satan,” or as it is with The Defiler’s creature, which I’ll get to soon. Here it’s a little more subtle, with a creature who can know everything about anything it looks at, but is completely incapable of sharing that information reliably. I can just imagine how frantic it would look trying to get someone’s attention. “These aren’t just random tentacle wigglings, I’m trying to tell you something!” I would have a lot of fun explaining weird tentacle motions, and watching my players try to decipher their meaning. I may need to come up with a reason for a similar creature to appear in one of my games as an ally of the players, just so I can have that opportunity.
In combat, this is perhaps one of the more straightforward beasts described in this series. “Hit it until it is dead” is a perfectly viable strategy. And while there are roadblocks which prevent that task from being easy, none of them are liable to overwhelm the players immediately. Players foolish enough to use metal weapons will take damage equal to that they inflict, but unless they’re low level they’ll probably survive this once. And even then, it’s the consequence of a mistake, and they receive a saving throw. So that’s quite generous.
The entangling attack the creature has similarly tame. It restricts the players actions, which could lead to the player being harmed by others, but is not in itself directly harmful. It would be a small matter to stop, destroy the tentacle, and retreat. Interestingly, the tentacles are much more challenging for those who attack from range, which is a great trick. It turns the tables on what is often assumed to be a ‘safe’ strategy.
The explosion when the creature dies is somewhat problematic for me. It’s also the only real threat this creature poses. It functions like a trap. One which can easily be deadly, and the player receives no sufficient warning of. Add to that the fact that the players are incentiveized by the mechanics discussed above to move into melee range where the damage they take will be greater. Note also, however, that every single way in which this creature causes damage is reactive. If the players leave it entirely alone, then at the very worst it is a spy who cannot effectively communicate with its master. Bearing that in mind, it could be argued that the PCs deserve whatever fate they bring upon themselves.
None the less, I think it’s important to describe the creature’s appearance and actions in a way which hints at the potential danger of destroying it. It’s (essentially) a glass cube filled with acid.* When that glass is cracked, and a tentacle shoots out to plug the hole, I would say something to the effect of: “One of the tentacles inside the cube moves impossibly fast, shooting out to plug the hole and grab at you. But it’s not fast enough to stop a squirt of green liquid from leaving a smoking black mark on the ground.”
*At least, this is how I read it. The initial description makes it sound as though the gelatin which surrounds the creature is of a single consistency: a gel. Later, though, it’s stated that the outer shell needs to be plugged by tentacles to prevent “caustic liquid” from escaping.

Dissecting Monsters: The Watcher's Second Creature from "Better Than Any Man"

-The Watcher’s Second Creature-
Armor immaterial, 10 Hit Dice, Movement 180’ fly, 1 tumor attack (see below), Morale 12.
The creature attacks by willing a tumor to grow in a target within 100’, and it accomplishes this with a normal to-hit roll. Targets which are hit grow a tumor of some size. Roll 1d4 to determine this tumor’s “size factor.” This is the amount of encumbrance points the tumor adds to the target and the chances in 6 that, when the character is successfully attacked, the attack hits the tumor.
If a tumor is hit, the character takes normal damage from the attack plus the same damage again as the trauma causes the tumor to release toxins into the character’s body. (This will happen every time the character is damaged by an area effect attack as well.) Then the
victim must make a saving throw versus Poison, or suffer 1d4 more points of damage.
Keep track of the damage the character suffers due to those failed Poison saves. When the amount cumulatively suffered by that specific type of damage (even if some is healed along the way) equals the character’s maximum Hit Points, the character is taken over by the tumor and transforms into a living mass of cancer. Game over.
The victim’s tumors have eyes all over them in the same manner that the creature itself does. The creature can see out of the eyes on its victims’ tumors.
A tumor can be reduced in size each time a healing spell of any type is specifically cast on the tumor—for each 6 that comes up on the die rolls for the healing spell, the tumor shrinks one size. Such applications of the healing do only affect the tumor and do not heal damage. If a character is exposed to radiation, a saving throw versus Poison will also shrink a tumor one size. Time may also change the size of a tumor. Every month the character should save versus Poison. If the save is successful, the tumor shrinks a size, if the roll is less than half of what would have been needed, the tumor grows one size. When the tumor is at size factor zero, it is gone permanently.
The creature does not technically exist by any measure other than “I can see it!” and so it may sense and move through solid objects as if they were not there. Physical objects pass through it and existing on six dimensions simultaneously (none of them this one except as a mirage) it is even immune to all magic.
The creature is itself harmed by magical attacks made against the tumors of its victims, including physical attacks made with magic weapons. These attacks do damage to both the victim and the creature.
This beast is almost more of a force of nature than it is a monster. Encountering it is like encountering an avalanche or an erupting volcano. The most sound strategy is to flee from it. If you try to fight something like that, you end up buried in snow, melted to slag, or in this case, riddled with cancer.
James Raggi, “Better Than Any Man,” Pg. 20

The Defender’s second creature isn’t quite as invulnerable as it might seem at first. Like other monsters from this series, there is an obscure trick which allows it to be defeated easily if the trick is discovered. Unlike the other creatures, that trick is really the only way to kill the thing. Nothing else will work. In most cases, I would say that’s poor monster design. A game of “guess what the GM is thinking,” which is never fun.

However, there are a few mitigating factors here. First, the creature has no real attacks. It can create tumors, and the tumors are dangerous, but they’re more of a long term danger. The players have as much time as they need to think about the tumors, and what to do with them. The only time the tumors actually put the character’s life in danger is when the character is the subject of attack. And if the character is being attacked, then their life is in danger anyway. The cancer is more of an imposed vulnerability than it is an attack.

Second, the creature’s completely immaterial nature (literally nothing in this world seems to exist for it) should make it very quickly obvious to any competent group of players that they need to retreat. When the players are informed that their weapons pass through it as though it were an illusion–as do their spells, magic items, and other methods of attack–then if they don’t retreat to reassess the situation, they’re being foolish. Likely some member of their party will be cancerous by this point, but as stated above, the cancer isn’t really that dangerous unless the group decides to ignore it entirely.

And once the players do flee from this beast, the fact that the eye-covered cancerous growths look very much like a corporeal version of the creature they just fled from seems to me a very good indication that they should stab it.

One thing I’d be curious to know is how much of the treatment information the players ought to be able to find in their world. If the cleric says “I want to try to cure this cancer, how do I do that?” should the GM tell them that casting healing spells directly on the tumor might have some effect, or is that something the players need to decipher for themselves? Personally, I’d tell my players that sort of thing, but I wonder if that is what was intended.

This is easily my favorite monster from the module.

Dissecting Monsters: The Defender's Creature from "Better Than Any Man"

Lets go!

–The Defender’s Creature–
See the description for statistics. Morale 12.
While the creature appears as a brain resting in a tentacle-laden pod, it is actually an adaptive creature which drains the abilities of those around it in order to have any abilities of its own.
This draining of abilities is applicable to whoever and whatever is near (within 100’) and takes them for itself and its master. The character or creature with the best Armor rating loses it and both the creature and The Defender instead have it. The character or creature with the weapon doing the most damage loses it and the creature and The Defender instead have it each. The character or creature with the fastest movement becomes unable to move and the creature and The Defender instead have that movement capability. The character or creature with the most Hit Points loses them (being reduced to 1d6 Hit Points), and the creature and The Defender instead have them as their Hit Points each.
Special abilities or attacks are likewise absorbed. Any character or creature with Magic-User spell capabilities loses them, and the creature and Defender instead have the spell capabilities between them. Cleric spell ability is not absorbed.
Once an “absorbed” character or creature moves out of the 100’ range of this ability, they regain their abilities and the creature and Defender lose them (although spells cast by The Defender, or the creature, are still expended).

My first impression of The Defender’s Creature was that it was a pain in the ass. So much bookkeeping! Everybody announce the amount of damage your weapon does. Uh oh, two people have weapons which deal the same damage? Um, do either weapons have tie-breaking special abilities? What about speed? Everyone is playing a human with 120′ speed, so I guess we randomly determine someone to be stuck, yeah?

Buuuuuuut despite some minor frustrations at the start of this combat, the effect it has on battle is (I think) a very interesting one. If the PCs attack this creature, they lose all of their best abilities, quite literally. Abilities which likely formed the basis for any typical attack strategy. The beefy fighter who normally charges in to protect the casters suddenly has less HP and less armor than the party’s magic user. And the party’s magic user, lacking her spells, is reduced to attacking with sticks and stones.

If this comes as a surprise to the party, their immediate response should probably be to retreat. Unfortunately, one of their number (either the fastest, or just a random person if they all have the same move speed) cannot move under their own power. The party is forced either to abandon their companion, or attempt to carry her while under assault by two creatures wailing on them with the fighter’s badass magic sword.

Just now I notice that, interestingly, the creature’s description doesn’t say that this effect only occurs when it is attacking. It merely says that it draws abilities from everyone within 100′. Within the context of the module, the creatures obey their masters perfectly (thus why all of them have morale 12), and it is entirely possible for the players to encounter their masters (known as “The Seven”) on friendly terms. So, when the party arrive to have a friendly discussion with The Defender, the magic user loses her spells, and the fighter’s HP and armor class drop. That’s a curious detail–a warning to let the players know that engaging this creature is dangerous.

Also interesting that, like The Provider’s creature, there’s a very simple, hidden way to kill this creature with ease: make sure there’s no one within 100′ of it. The description is explicit. It drains the abilities of those around it “in order to have any abilities of its own.” A generous interpretation of this would leave the best completely vulnerable. Unable to move or fight or avoid attacks. As I read it, though, the monster wouldn’t even have HP if there was no one at all within 100′.

The moment it is alone, it dies. I like that.

Dissecting Monsters: The Mother's Creature from "Better Than Any Man"

You may have noticed I didn’t post anything last week. That is because I was dead. Or at least close to it. I did very little with my time aside from trying to take breaths between coughing fits. I did manage to work in some “holding my head in the vain hope that it stops pounding,” but that isn’t exactly blog-worthy, you know?

But now I’m only mostly dead, and that’s well enough to get back to work.

-The Mother’s Creature-
Armor 14, 5 Hit Dice, Movement 30’, 1 limb attack doing really weird things (see below), Morale 12.
This creature appears as a human torso with arms in various stages of bone coverage poking out of it in all directions. It even walks on a pair of its hands. It has a head, stuck sideways on an exposed spine. Its limbs, not being attached to its torso by a firm skeleton, can attack targets up to 50’ away. On a successful hit, it does no damage, but instead attaches a new human arm to the character in a random location.
If the creature is damaged and it successfully attacks, it will instead take the arms of the persons it targets, one arm at a time. This does 1d8 Hit Points of damage to the victim, who must then save versus Paralyzation or go into shock. Adding the arm into its collection will restore 1d8 Hit Points to the creature.
The new limb is instantly wired into the character’s nervous and circulatory systems and is for all intents and purposes a new permanent limb. The character will not know how to control it, however, and it will flail and thrash around as familiar thought patterns, conscious and unconscious, now lead to unpredictable results. In response, familiar body parts will operate less effectively as the body attempts to compensate. The character will suffer a 1 point Dexterity modifier penalty for each limb added. The modifier can be restored at a rate of one point per week as the character learns to use his new limb(s).Note that current equipment can be destroyed by the attachment of a new arm. An arm being stuck into a character’s chest or back will destroy armor worn, for instance. On the plus side, extra arms means that a character can have more equipment to hand, carry an extra shield, or even wield a weapon—once they are under control, that is.

First off, the appearance of this creature cannot be undersold. If you’re flipping through the pages of the book, glancing this piece will make you stop. Even writing this now I find my eyes drawn away from my screen to the book sitting open on my desk. This monster scares me. It’s a rare and glorious thing. Most monsters, including The Provider’s Creature, look the way I’d expect a monster to look. Even if their appearance is entirely unique, they follow some unwritten formula for creating a monstrous creature. But this fucker looks like he comes from some forgotten childhood nightmare. Something you can never quite piece together in your mind, but which unsettles you none the less.

Mechanically, there’s really only one interesting thing about this creature, but that thing is complex and requires a lot of dissection.

First, this creature has no basic attack. No bite, or claw, or even the ambiguous “slam” attack. It has only its own special ability. And while this may not be appropriate for every monster, it seems to me an underutilized idea. If a monster can do some strange crazy thing to its victims, focus in on that. Many creatures we hear about in stories prefer to kill in their own special way, and won’t resort to biting and kicking.

Second, the creature only deals damage when it’s wounded. It can certainly attack aggressively, and cause serious inconvenience for those it targets. But aside from a temporary dexterity penalty and some potentially damaged equipment, the Mother’s Creature causes no harm until it itself is harmed. This gives the players a curious way to defeat it: don’t fight it. Once they start fighting it, the bastard can start immobilizing party members and causing serious damage. It’s a kind of hidden trick which the players might figure out which makes the creature pretty non-threatening. I like the idea that while a monster can be defeated using traditional methods, there’s also a much simpler method which requires very little effort, but may be difficult to figure out.

Third, while having an extra arm growing out of your knee is sure to make people wary of you; will cost you a lot of silver in equipment repairs; and temporarily gives you a penalty to your dexterity; it’s ultimately beneficial. People are wary of adventurers already, more silver can always be plundered, and if your character survives a few days the dexterity penalty will go away. After that, you’ve got a kickass third arm which can hold a second shield to protect your lower half, or wield a sword to make your opponents wish they could protect THEIR lower halves. The idea that an encounter with a monster could leave you better off for having suffered its attentions is enticing.

Fourth and finally, this creature is just as likely to leave you alive and armless as it is to kill you. At higher levels, it’s actually more likely to leave you alive an armless than it is to kill you. I like that. I’ve become very fond of high mortality play in the last few years, but there’s no reason every monster needs to be a life or death encounter. Some could be encounters like this one where a character may end up useless (and therefore functionally dead). Others may have a worst-case outcome of a character being severely impaired, but still playable. And, occasionally, there’s no reason a monster couldn’t simply be a theme park ride. A very scary experience which, in truth, has very little chance of causing any harm.