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

Something I’ve been doing a lot of lately is finding monsters, particularly from books people seem to like, and dissecting them to find what I like, what I don’t, and how I cam make monsters which are as good or better. Nifty content for a blog post, save that it would pretty much require me to post someone else’s content. But the other day I had a bright idea. See, the monsters which really elevated my perspective on monster design were those found in James Raggi’s “Better Than Any Man” module. Those are the monsters which really started my mind working, and helped me make the decision to start this project off in earnest. They’re also from a module which is free! So I asked for Raggi’s permission to post the creatures from that book, he gave it, and here we are. I really do recommend you download Better Than Any Man, And if you are so inclined, toss a few bucks at it before you download it. It’s worth more than a lot of other books I’ve shelled out cash for.

And while I’m telling you how to spend your hard earned money, hurry up and fund the LotFP Referee Book IndieGoGo campaign! It’s already fully funded, but by the time this goes up I think there will only be 2 days left. So if you want to be a part of improving the book, your time is limited. I highly recommend it.

Now, lets get on with it:

-The Provider’s Creature-
Armor 17, 6 Hit Dice, Movement 30’, 1 tentacle attack for every mêlée opponent doing 1d10-(number of opponents) damage each, Morale 12.
The Provider’s creature is a ten foot tall thorny tentacle monster that behaves as a magic receptacle. When a Magic-User spell is cast at it (and it must be at it and not just the creature being within the area of an area effect spell), the spell does not leave the caster’s mind, but the creature gains the ability to cast it once a day, effective immediately. This effect is cumulative. The spell does not actually affect the creature.
The Provider has been casting her “Create Food” spell at the creature every day, and so as the adventure begins it can cast the spell ten times per day, thus “feeding” one meal to 300 people every day. It is often all those people eat.

I thought I’d start off with one of the simpler creatures. It’s a slow (human standard is 120′) moving land octopus with barbs and a wicked beak. There are really two interesting things about it.

First is its attack. “1 tentacle attack for every melee opponent doing 1d10-(number of opponents) damage each.” It’s an unusual way to model the creature’s many appendages. If there’s only one person present, the creature can deal massive damage by focusing all of its attention on that one character. But as more people engage it, and it’s forced to divide its attention (and its tentacles) between more targets, it begins to lose effectiveness. If you have a party of 10 people or more, the creature’s base attack becomes effectively useless. That’s not even a very large party! All you’d need are 5 PCs who each brought one mercenary hireling along with them.

I can’t decide if I view this as a flaw or a feature. On the one hand it seems ridiculous that being struck with one of those huge devilish looking barbs isn’t going to hurt at all. On the other hand, it’s an interesting indication that perhaps there’s something wrong with the creature’s mind. It can’t focus on a single target if many are present, and as it divides its focus, it becomes unable to effectively attack at all. It may hit you, but its so distracted, that it just gently bumps you without causing any harm. An effective strategy for defeating the creature is just to surround it with too many targets to focus on, turning it into a harmless fish out of water which can be killed at the player’s leisure.

I think the monster could be improved either by explicitly spelling out the above speculative explanation for its inability to fight too many targets at once, or or by capping the number of melee opponents which can modify its abilities at 5.

The second interesting aspect of The Provider’s Creature is the way it reacts to magic. Conceivably, the creature could have any number of spells already in its repertoire when the players encounter it, though in the case of this particular module it only has numerous iterations of “Create Stuff That Seems to Be Food But Isn’t,” which isn’t much of a threat to the players unless they’re hungry. And I think this actually works a lot better.

If the players encounter the monster, and they have no magic user, or no spells on hand, or just choose not to cast anything, then the fight is fairly straightforward. It’ll be a brutal slugging fest if you don’t have 10 melee combatants to dilute the creature’s damage roll, but there won’t be any deadly tricks to come bite you in the ass. If the magic user DOES get involved, though, the beast suddenly becomes much more threatening.

The challenge of the monster is mutable, depending on player action. I like that a lot.

What is a rumor table?

Of late, I’ve been working harder on tabletop stuff than I think I ever have before. I have a lot to write about. Unfortunately, I can’t share any of it. I’ve been trying to increase the amount of work I do on my monster book each week, since at my present rate I’m progressing too slowly to finish it within the single year that I promised. Of course, I can’t share any of that content, since it’s part of a book, and it’s no fun sharing bits of it before it’s done! I’ve also been working on the Dungeon Moon game, which of course I can’t share because the entire goal of that setting is to run it for other people in the online tabletop community. Spoiling all of its secrets simply won’t do! I already cheated a little bit by posting the toy rowboat on Friday.

It’s been suggested that I ought to write about my processes and challenges with these projects, which seems interesting enough. Lets try that.

One of my goals with this monster book is to make every line of writing count. In reading other monster books (both mainstream and indie) as research, I’ve found the amount of wasted space very frustrating. Perhaps I simply don’t care about the kinds of things which other people care about. That’s entirely possible, I do have a bit of an odd perspective. Regardless, I want every line of writing in here to be a line of writing that I would be happy to pay for. Once you have it in your hands, you can tell me if I’ve succeeded in that.

Before starting on my second drafts, I tried to figure out some unique sections I could include in my monster entries. Information which was useful and interesting, and which most monster manuals don’t have. Among other things, I was linked to a person who suggested “Rumor Tables.”

“That’s a pretty cool idea!” I thought. “A small list of rumors the players might hear, which might send them off in search of this new unknown creature. I like it!” So I’ve been including it. But I’ve written a fair number of second drafts, now, and I’m starting to feel less certain of that decision.

For one thing, I feel as though they’re starting to get repetitive. I find it difficult to write more than one or two for a given monster. I’ve been playing with the style a bit, trying to find the best way to make it work. I think I like rumors best when they’re written in the style of a crazy story related by a yokel. Here are a few examples of rumors I’ve drafted.

Call me crazy all you like, but I swear, I’ve walked that path through the woods a dozen times. And that boulder has never been there before!
An elderly leatherworker has heard tell of a creature whose skin is tougher than stone. He’s getting on in years, and he’d love to create one last masterwork before he retires. If someone were to bring him the skin of such a creature, he’d reward them handsomely…
Something happened in the village just east of here. Everybody is dead, and no one quite knows why. The only person who got out alive was the blind beggar.
Three of farmer Logan’s pigs were slaughtered and eaten last night. It looks to be the work of a wild animal, but the only thing big enough to leave those marks is a bear. And with 3 feet of snow on the ground, you can bet none of those are out and about!
I was talking to this feller the other day, and he just up and walked away from me. “Help, I don’t know where I’m going!” he shouted. “Then stop walking!” I says to him. “I can’t!” he whined. Pft. Can’t stop walking. Dumbest joke I’ve ever heard. Haven’t seen him since, though.
I was doing my business in the bushes out on the road, when a fine looking woman passed through. Strangest thing, she didn’t have no horse or guards, or more than simple clothing. Still she musta been loaded, figuring as she wore diamonds on her face, like spectacles!

Are these really that useful? It’s starting to feel like all I’m doing is imagining a non-fatal encounter with a monster, and then jotting down a way the PCs could learn about that. I’m starting to doubt that this is worth the page space it’s taking up.

Further, I’ve also begun to wonder if I completely misunderstood what was meant by “rumor tables.” I understood it to mean a list of adventure hooks. Perhaps what was actually meant was “A list of rumors about the creature which may or may not be true,” like what Courtney does with his Ecology posts.

Thoughts?

The Maze of One-Way Doors

Not too long ago, I played in a game which contained a maze of one-way doors. From one side they appeared to be normal doors. However, once the players had walked through them and the door was closed, it simply did not exist on the other side. Whether this is the work of marvelous engineering, or simply magic, it’s not important. The important thing is that once the players walk through a door, they cannot walk back out the way they came. They must move forwards.

I liked the idea, and so decided to give it a go myself. I constructed a maze of moderate size. It was primarily made up of empty 10′ x 10′ rooms, but there were a number of puzzle and challenge rooms to add variety, along with a pretty interesting encounter table. I thought it would be a lot of fun to run through, and to my delight, the players did find it and enter the maze.

The players in this group are very good, though, and they were careful in their approach. The party’s fighter entered alone at first. He opened a new door to look through it, and in doing so caused the door he’d come through to close. He returned to where the door had been, and pounded on the wall to let his companions know they should open the door, which they did.

Having discovered the trick, the party decided to leave one party member in each room they passed. So one party member would stay outside, and the remaining two would enter the first room. Then one of them would remain in the first room, while the last party member went into all of the adjacent rooms, and opened all of the doors in there to look inside those rooms. Using this method, they were able to discover a route from the first room, back to the outside of the maze. Since they knew a way out, and thus no longer needed someone outside the maze, they were able to systematically map a large portion of the maze.

The players were clever, and I approve of clever play. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fun. For them or for me. Essentially all I was doing was reading them a long list of room descriptions within their searchable zone, while they took notes. The encounters were entertaining, but the encounters could have happened anywhere. They would have been improved by placing them outside of the maze, because the maze was boring.

Eventually the players gave up and headed off to a different area of the dungeon. And I’m left to wonder: can a maze of one-way doors be done better, or is it simply never going to be fun if your players are cautious and skilled?

Some thoughts on how it might be improved for more highly skilled players:

I had a warning of sorts printed above the door. “To enter is easy. To become lost is easier. To return is failure. To die is worse.” I thought it was cool and thematic, but it’s what put the players on edge in the first place. Without it, they probably all would have entered the first door together. I think, though, that they’d still have landed on the same strategy. Particularly if they ended up on one of the many failed paths which leads back outside of the maze.
There’s no reason to assume that a one-way door would allow sound to pass through it. By soundproofing the maze, I could prevent the characters from requesting a door be opened from the other side. Of course, I can’t stop the players sitting at the table together from talking, and telling them they can’t just seems dickish. Plus, the workaround seems obvious: “Open this door 60 seconds after it closes.”
I like one-way door mazes because they’re a challenging trap which could conceivably be engineered. But if I’m willing to amp up the magic, I could say that each door is a normal, two-way door so long as there are people on both sides of it. Only when everybody has passed through the door will it become a one-way door. And, so long as any door in the room is a two-way door, none of the other doors in the room exist. (So one can only attempt to move forward once everyone has entered the new room and become trapped in it.)

I’d be curious to hear other’s thoughts on one-way-door mazes.

A fun alternative to dying.

No idea come to being in a vacuum. So before I begin, I’d like to point out that Courtney Campbell did something similar to this, which totally influenced my idea. (Though I was mostly inspired by a post by “Medieval Battlefield Medicine” over at Spells and Steel)

There’s a lot of disagreement about what hit points represent, which isn’t a disagreement I care about. Hit points represent whatever a given GM says they represent, and for the purpose of this post, hit points represent something similar to ‘luck.’ When you take a hit in the game, what is actually happening is that the flat of the blade slaps your arm. The warhammer bounces off your shield and rattles you to the bone. The fireball leaves you with the equivalent of a bad sunburn, but nothing worse.

Until you get to zero hit points.

When a character reaches 0 hp, they are still fine. They can fight and act normally without any penalty. But their luck has completely run out. Successful attacks against the character no longer deal damage. Instead, the GM rolls on the following chart. 2d6

Finger destroyed! Randomly determine which.
Hand destroyed! Randomly determine which.
Arm destroyed! Randomly determine which. (Massive Bleed! See 11)
Foot destroyed! Randomly determine which.
Leg destroyed! Randomly determine which. (Massive Bleed! See 11)
Eye destroyed! Randomly determine which.
Head destroyed! You are dead!
Internal bleeding! Debilitated in 1d4 turns, dead 1d6 turns after that. Can be saved with magical healing.
Kidney destroyed! Save v. poison increased by 1d4. (if this one happens twice, you’re dead!)
Lung destroyed! Reduce CON by 1d6 + 2
Massive Bleed! Debilitated in 1d4 t6urns, dead 1d6 after that. Can be saved if the blood can be stopped. (Successful wisdom check required by whoever makes the attempt. Only one attempt per turn per wound.)
Permanent cosmetic damage. (Ear/nose gone, unable to grow hair. Not simple scars.)

Is this goofy and unrealistic? You bet. It makes absolutely no sense for a character to be hit over and over and over in combat, and take no ill effects from it; then, after crossing an arbitrary threshold, suddenly every hit has an ill effect. That’s ridiculous. But here are the reasons why it is awesome:

Increased player survivability over methods where the character is simply dead at 0. I’ve been told that players enjoy surviving.
Makes it likely that characters will end up with missing digits or limbs. Those are cool, and the players will have a good story to tell.
Realistic stuff is lame anyway.

It’s up to individual GMs to determine what game effects this kind of stuff ought to have, but regardless, I suspect players should be given the opportunity to retire their character and roll a new one if they suffer anything too debilitating. A rogue in a wheelchair, or a magic user without any fingers to cast with, would be rather unpleasant to play. That said, a magic user in a wheelchair, or a monk with no fingers, could still be super interesting.

Dungeon Tolls

Courtney runs a game on Saturday mornings called Numenhalla. It’s quite good. Good enough that I drag myself out of bed at 5:40 am on a Saturday to play in it.

Though, I confess, I’ve been late more often than I’ve been on time.

There are many reasons why I love playing in Numenhalla. The fact that Courtney is my bro is high on that list, as is my awestruck reverence for Mad Bill Danger. But more than anything else, I love Numenhalla because it is, by a titanic margin, the most polished & unique game I have ever played in.

Among its many unique traits (though it may only be unique to me, as Numenhalla is my first “Megadungeon”) is that nothing really exists outside of the dungeon. I’ve been told to think of the town outside as a menu screen. Play doesn’t happen there. We can manage our affairs in town, but once we enter the dungeon, we cannot return to town until we’re ready to end the game. It’s a fascinating way to play. Something I wouldn’t mind experimenting with myself someday.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently purchased a fantastic Indie game called Rogue Legacy. It’s a side scrolling action game with gameplay similar to the better among the Castlevania games. There are many facets to it which make it interesting and unique, and I recommend it if you enjoy those types of games. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the game is the way they handle gold.

When you enter the Rogue Legacy dungeon for the first time, you have 0 gold. You fight, and jump, and claw your way through as much of the dungeon as you can, killing monsters and stealing the gold coins they drop. Eventually, inevitably, you die, and the game ends. But then you get to make a new character. This new character is the son or daughter of your previous character, and they’ve inherited all of the gold you gathered in your previous run! They can spend it on gear and upgrades which will be passed down through all the (hundreds) of generations your family is sure to have.

Once this new character has spent all the gold they can, and are ready to enter the dungeon, they are greeted by Charon. He demands a toll of you before he will allow you to enter the dungeon: every unspent coin you have. Once you’ve been reduced back to 0 gold, he will allow you to enter the dungeon. A dungeon which has been completely randomized since your last visit.

I’d be curious to see how this mechanic would work if used in a tabletop game. The party may plunge the depths of the dungeon, gather their treasure, and return to the surface. But they may not hoard their gold! Any gold unspent before returning to the dungeon is taken as a toll. (Or, perhaps more in character, wasted away on booze). Of course, the prices of items in town would need to be adjusted accordingly, but that wouldn’t be hard.

A Use for Bookshelves: Rumor Tables

Bookshelves are one of my favorite pieces of set dressing for dungeons, as my website’s background attests to. They can come in many shapes and sizes, hide secret doors, contain hidden treasure, don’t take up much floor space, and can go just about anywhere without being out of place. Bedrooms can have bookshelves, dining rooms can have bookshelves, dens, and parlors, and even kitchens can have bookshelves. But in game terms, bookshelves have always presented me with one major problem:

What’s on them?

Players often want to search bookshelves thoroughly, looking for something valuable, and I frequently don’t have anything to give them. More than once I’ve had shelves filled with burned or waterlogged or shredded books, just to avoid the player’s inevitable questions about what the books say. Even the most dedicated game master can’t detail the contents of every bookshelf. Even coming up with titles would be a foolish waste of time.

But what, aside from spellbooks, are players really looking for on bookshelves? Useful information. Information such as:

Quest Hooks
Locations of treasure
Hints about defeating monsters
Hints at how magic items they might discover work.
Hints about how to bypass traps.
Clues to help them understand information gained elsewhere.
Secrets they can exploit.
Context for the current area, which may or may not be useful to them.

Each bookshelf should be associated with a small table. The table ought to be sized to the number of books on the bookshelf. So a small row of books atop a fireplace mantle might have only a 4 entry table, while a wall-spanning bookshelf would have a table of 12 entries or greater. I, personally, would use a linear probability table (rolling a single die, resulting in equal probability for all possible results) to keep things simpler on the GM side. However, someone willing to put in a little more work could use a bell curve probability table (rolling multiple dice, so results in the middle are more likely; and high or low results are less likely) to represent that some information would be featured more predominantly in multiple books, while other information would be hard to find.

For every 3 exploration turns (30 minutes) that a single player spends perusing the books, roll on the table and tell them the piece of interesting information which caught their eye. The player may repeat this process as many times as they like, receiving a new roll for each 3 turns spent. But the longer they peruse, the more difficult it is to find new information. Any time the GM rolls a result which has occurred already, the player finds nothing new.

If the player wishes, they can read the entire bookshelf all the way through, gaining all of the information it holds. This requires a number of turns equal to the maximum die result, times 100. So for a 1d12 book shelf, it would take 1200 turns, or roughly 8 and 1/3rd days. A generously short amount of time, if you consider how many books are typically contained on a bookshelf, and how long it takes to read a book.

Additional players working together can shorten the reading time proportionally. While it takes 1 reader 3 turns to get a roll on the table, 3 players could get a roll in 1 turn, etc. And of course, random encounter checks should be rolled normally during any period of reading. Otherwise, the choice to sit still and read is one without risk, and you may as well just hand over a list of rumors for every bookshelf encountered.

As an example, here’s a table for a standing bookshelf in an ancient alchemy lab.

The crushed roots of the White Tulily plant, when added to water, create an effective healing potion. [An unlabeled white flower is growing in the neighboring greenhouse.]
A living stalk of Orcish Ivy, which grows only in the nearby Hills of Doom, is more valuable than a fistfull of diamonds.
While the gemstones growing from its branches are quite tempting, the Demonsprout is a deadly, poisonous plant. To be handled with caution. [A sketch here matches a plant sitting on a nearby table.]
The wizard who formerly owned this lab makes mention of a stash of scrolls kept in a hollow board on one of the benches, “just in case.”
While Essence of Squirrel is generally quite useless, those bathed in it will not be attacked by dire squirrels. Several jars of it are kept handy, as this monster is somewhat common in the area.
“The pit trap installed on the other side of the western door has proven quite useful, having caught 3 thieves in the space of two months!”
The lake outside was once called “Lake Elenekish” [While not terribly useful on its own, the players might learn elsewhere that there is a great treasure at the bottom of Lake Elenekish, with no reference to where that lake might be found.]
Journal Entry detailing how the Alchemist’s ungrateful apprentice stole 3 of his most valuable potions, and fled. The alchemist’s only satisfaction is that she appears to have fled into the den of the deadly Oliniphus. While he dares not try to retrieve the potions, at least his apprentice got what she deserved.

Vendor Saving Throw

The question of “what can my players buy in this town?” is an important one. The availability of equipment creates limits on the player which can force them to make more interesting choices. It can also spur them into traveling abroad, exploring the wider world in search of some place where they can find the things they need.

I’ve used a variety of methods to determine what can and what cannot be found in a given town. And I’ve read many more methods than I have tried using. I’ve never really found anything which worked well for me.

Often times, when my players have discovered a new town, I just wing it. I figure out roughly what kind of town it is, and how big it is, and from there it’s normally pretty obvious what can be bought and what cannot. In a farming village, of course you can find a pitchfork to buy. Sure, there’s probably someone with a sword who wouldn’t mind selling it. No, nobody here can cast healing magic for you.

I can think of no reason why this casual method of determining what is available for sale should not be formally adopted as my “official” method. The only hole are the few items which straddle the line between “obviously,” and “obviously not.” For example, a suit of chainmail armor. It’s possible one of the villagers has a set they’d be willing to part with, but it’s also possible none of them do. The logical thing to do is to roll to see if there’s a such a suit of armor available.

Here is what I propose: every town has a saving throw which is rolled when it’s not clear to the GM whether an item would be available or not. For 80% of what the players might ask for, the answer should be obvious based on the size, wealth, and function of the community. For anything else, 1d20 is rolled against the town’s saving throw. A roll equal to or higher than the target number means the item is available, less than the target number means none are.

The target number would get smaller, the larger a town becomes. An outpost or camp with 5-15 people in it would have a target number of 20. A small farming village where everyone knows everybody else might be 17. A town with a thousand or so people in it might be as low as 14. A major metropolis could get down to 9 or 10.

I’m going to start using this method in one of my campaigns, and see how it works out.

You Don't Need to Roll a Character to Start Playing

This evening I attended a social gathering. My sister has just turned 14, and I had dinner with her and the rest of our family. It proceeded as family gatherings often do, which is to say that it wasn’t an experience I’d share on a gaming blog. Late in the evening, though, my sister commented that she’d like to join me in playing D&D someday.

“Want to play now?” I asked.

By happenstance, I had a set of 7 dice with me, and I always try to keep pens and paper handy regardless of where I am. I had everything I needed to run a game, and it was a perfect opportunity to try out an experiment I’ve been wanting to attempt for awhile. The experiment is simple: using whatever tools are on hand at the time, introduce a group of new players to gaming by making up a game on the spot.

The three siblings sitting nearest to me were all interested, so I wrote out the six basic stats on three pieces of paper. I told them all to roll 3d6 for their stats, in order, to roll 2d8 for their HP, and to write down one thing their character was good at. From there I figured everything could be handled by d20 checks against their stats, until I encountered a situation where they needed something deeper.

The process proved to be a little awkward. Not because any of my players had difficulty understanding my instructions, but because we only had a single six sider to share, and three people each needed to roll it 18 times. It wasn’t a quick process, and unfortunately the players weren’t even able to explore the first room of the dungeon before the rest of the dinner party agreed that it was time to leave.

I was disappointed. I could see their eyes lighting up as they just barely started to engage with the game world. My experiment was succeeding, I was creating fun out of nothing but experience-tempered improvisation. I didn’t have much to ruminate on, but I was at least encouraged that it was worth trying this again.

It wasn’t until the drive home that I realized I had wasted a lot of the game’s time. I asked the players to roll stats, and it took a good 8 minutes to get everybody’s rolling taken care of. And in the small amount we played, we never actually used those stats. It’s not hard to imagine that we could have gone 15 minutes or an hour, or even several hours without actually needing every single character to use every single one of their ability scores.

Instead, what I could have done is simply given each of them a piece of paper, and told them to write down one thing they were good at. Once that was done, I could have just started the damn game.

If in the first room there was a large rock, and one of the players wanted to lift it, then I could have told them to roll 3d6, record that as their strength, then roll a d20 against that strength score. The stats still exist, they just exist in a state of quantum flux until they are actualized by rolling a check.

Something I’ll try next time for sure.

Pathfinder Class Analysis 15: Oracle

Core Concept: Sitting down to write my assessment of the core concept for the Oracle begs the question: what is a class’ core concept?

If we refer to the narrative concept of a caster who must suffer a hindrance in order to access their powers, then I quite like the core concept for the oracle. Likewise if the core concept is a caster who unwillingly has magical powers thrust upon her by the gods. These are things I like.

If, however, the core concept refers to the class’s mechanics, then the oracle is perhaps the most vapid class I have assessed thus far. Not necessarily because any of its mechanics are bad, but because none of them are unique or inventive. The oracle is a hodge-podge class, assembled from mechanics left over from other classes.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the oracle is a bad class, or that it was a poor addition to the game. It does, however, mean that I don’t have much to talk about. Forgive me if this ends up being short because of that.

Spells: The oracle is a sorcerer who casts divine spells. There’s really not much more to say about it. Oracles learn and cast spells exactly as sorcerers do, but they draw from the cleric spell list instead of the wizard spell list. They even copied the artwork concept of a scantily clad woman. (Joy).

I suppose the one distinction is that oracles must choose whether they prefer “cure” or “inflict” spells, and they will always automatically learn every spell of the type they chose. This is in addition to the spells they gain on the “spells known” table. And while players do have the option to choose “inflict” spells, I think the purpose of this mechanic is to make healing magic more accessible–which isn’t something I’m fond of.

Don’t get me wrong, when my character gets knocked down to 1 hp, it’s good to have a magical healer around. But I prefer magical healing to be a boon, not a necessity.

Mystery: If the oracle is a divine sorcerer, mysteries are divine bloodlines. Mechanically, I cannot think of a single other thing to say about them. They are literally identical in form.

In terms of fluff, I will say that mysteries are a pretty cool idea.

Oracle’s Curse: This is probably the most interesting part of the Oracle; the flaw which they must live with in exchange for their power. It builds on ancient beliefs about magic–primal ones which seem somehow more true to the human experience. Though the curse doesn’t affect the character anywhere near as much as the mystery does, the benefits from the curse are still quite useful.

I’d prefer if the curses were a little harsher, to force the player to deal with a greater challenge. I also think these would be fun to randomize, though I understand that would be problematic for most players. (Wussies!)

Orsions: Perhaps I ought to simply omit Orsions and Cantrips from these analyses, since I always say the same thing, but I will again direct you to my cleric analysis for my thoughts on these.

Revelation / Final Revelation: These are similar to bloodline powers, and unique to each of the mysteries. To analyze each individually would go well beyond the scope of this post, and probably force it beyond ten thousand words. There are some pretty good ones, and a few bad ones. Blorp.

All in all, a solid class, but not a lot to write about.

Pathfinder Class Analysis 14: Inquisitor

Core Concept: It occurred to me as I was laying out this post that I’ve never actually taken a serious look at the inquisitor before. Other classes, like the Cavalier, the Witch, or the Alchemist at least caught my fancy enough that I read over their abilities briefly when I picked up the Advanced Player’s Guide. The Inquisitor, though? Not so much.

While my initial impression was that Inquisitors are meant to be a dark and gritty paladin, it’s a little more complicated than that. They’re much closer to cleric-rogues, with an emphasis on the cleric part. Inquisitors are who the church sends when paladins are too goody-goody to get the job done. It has a certain appeal, though like the cavalier, the inquisitor’s goals seem awfully specific for a random adventurer.

None the less, I think I like them significantly more than I like the cavalier. Though that may just be my bias towards rogue characters.

Also, I’d like to take a moment to point out the ridiculous boobage on the iconic inquisitor. It looks pretty damn stupid. Fortunately, if she goes all “Spanish Inquisition” on us, we know right where to stab her.

Spells: With spells through level 6, the Inquisitor is among the most magically invested classes outside of the primary casters. That seems a little powerful for a character with such significant physical combat ability, but I haven’t seen one played before, so I won’t make presumptions about the class’s balance.

I will say that I’ve always wanted to see a caster like this. One with spells up to 6th level or so, who rounds out their magical weakness with other cool abilities.

Domain: Since the Inquisitor doesn’t get any domain spells as the cleric class does, Inquisitor domains function more like a Sorcerer‘s Bloodlines. And while I’m not a fan of clerical domains, my primary issue with them is that they require too much of a day-to-day time investment from the player. With only a single domain, and without bonus spells, I actually think domains work pretty well for the inquisitor.

Judgement / Second Judgement / Third Judgement: I’m not terribly fond of abilities which function only in combat. There’s a certain verisimilitude to the judgement abilities, since they are god-given strength to mete out justice. But that’s the slippery slope to 4th editionism!

Aside from the “only in combat” aspect, I quite like judgements. A consistent buff which can be switched out for another in the set as a swift action is a solid mechanic which keeps things fairly simple, but can also give the inquisitor lots of options for how to approach battle. I also like how iterative levels of the judgement do not add new potential buffs, but instead allow the inquisitor to call upon multiple buffs at once. If keeps an already complicated mechanic from getting entirely out of hand.

The judgement ability is actually surprisingly similar to something I’ve been working on for awhile. On the one hand it’s a little frustrating to find out I’ve been preempted, since this is an idea I came up with before the Advanced Player’s Guide came out. On the other hand, it’s encouraging to know that the professionals at Paizo apparently like my ideas enough to come up with them themselves.

Monster Lore: In years of playing, I don’t know that a player has ever made a knowledge check to identify the weakness of a monster. This may be more a result of the way I run the game than the way my players play it, but regardless, I’m not really impressed by an ability which allows you to add your wisdom score to such a minor edge case.

I’d call this filler, but it’s a level 1 ability, so it’s one among a half dozen other abilities.

Orsions: The feelings I expressed for Orsions when discussion the cleric class essentially hold true here.

Stern Gaze: Despite my general distaste for the skills system–and in particular the Intimidate and Sense Motive skills–I none the less think this ability is entirely appropriate. The character is an inquisitor, that they would receive a significant bonus to extracting information and discerning lies is to be expected.

I might try to represent it differently mechanically, but the spirit of the ability is solid.

Cunning Initiative: I’m not certain why the inquisitor warrants a bonus to initiative. As far as I can see, they don’t have any abilities which are contingent upon acting first. If anything, it seems as though this should be a rogue ability.

The mechanic is simple enough. I just don’t see how it relates to the inquisitor.

Detect Alignment: A very standard ability for this type of class, which doesn’t really need to be discussed. Though, interestingly, the type of action required is not listed here. I would probably rule it to be a standard action, though it’d be interesting if it were a free action.

Track: I’ve no objection to the inquisitor having this ability, so my commentary on this would be identical to the one I posted in the ranger class’ analysis.

Solo Tactics: I find it interesting that so far, every martial class from the Advanced Player’s Guide (Cavalier and Inquisitor) have an ability which makes Teamwork feats work better. I would also point out that teamwork feats were introduced in the Advanced Player’s Guide.

It’s almost as if they agreed with me that teamwork feats are a terrible idea, and intentionally designed their new classes so as to avoid some of the issues I pointed out in my cavalier analysis. Namely, that any feat which requires multiple people to have the feat in order to work means that one person not being able to show up for a session, or leaving the group entirely, can severely gimp another player.

Teamwork Feat: I’m not a huge fan of bonus feats, blah blah blah, filler abilities, whatever. You’ve heard it all before, and it’s becoming super repetitive through these class analyses.

I have something new to bitch about here, though, because apparently the inquisitor can change her most recent teamwork feat a number of times per day equal to her wisdom modifier. What the fuck? As if there wasn’t already enough fiddling over feats, now alternating between any feat on the teamwork list is an ability? That would be insufferably frustrating at the table.

Bane / Greater Bane: I like this. It’s a very simple mechanic which has a lot of flavor and a large impact on the game. I could even see myself using a similar mechanic.

Discern Lies: I like this for the same reason I like “Stern Gaze” above. Though personally I think it would be cooler if the inquisitor gradually became completely immune to lies, save those which were magically warded against her somehow.

Stalwart: The D&D 3.5 Hexblade had this ability, though it was called “Mettle.” I always thought it was a little overpowered when compared to its inverse, “evasion,” which is omnipresent among the core classes. But the inquisitor has to wait until level 11 to get it, so I suppose it’s alright for it to be more powerful.

Exploit Weakness: I like the idea of critical hits which have an extra oomf to them. However, these improvements are extremely situational, to the point that the ability would be easy to forget when it’s actually relevant. It really only affects monsters who have damage reduction, regeneration, or who have a vulnerability to a type of energy which the inquisitor is using to attack them. Granted, all of those things are fairly common against high level monsters. But they’re not common enough that I think I would be able to remember “oh hey, since this creature is an ice demon and I’m attacking it with fire, my critical hit gets +1 point of damage per die rolled!”

Slayer: I really like judgement, but this just seems to make it complicated. Out of the 3 judgements the inquisitor can use simultaneously at this point, one of those can be used as if it were 5 levels higher, and that judgement cannot be switched out like the other judgements can.

It’s possible that I’m just a super stickler for simplicity, but that seems convoluted me.

True Judgement: I don’t personally find save-or-die capstone abilities to be interesting. But it kinda works for the inquisitor!