helsmuth

The majority of what happens in a fantasy metropolis should be "beneath the surface": whether literally (sewers, catacombs and ruins below the city streets); or metaphorically (secret plots and political machinations). I've mentioned the city of Marchion (in Splintered Peace by David Chart ) before. The megadungeon beneath Mage Hill is mostly implied - it is up to the individual DM to populate that location with specific dungeon levels and denizens. The site of Marchion was settled in the distant past, but no one knows by whom. Sometimes strange artifacts are unearthed by people digging foundations for houses, and many think that Mage Hill isn't a natural feature. However, these inhabitants, whoever they were, were long gone before the first recorded attempts to settle the site. Local folk tales tell of the buried complexes they left behind, but no one knows whether these stories have any substance. Aboveground, most of the mages' towers still stand, ...

The "default setting" of D&D is the context that is implied by the Rules As Written. This doesn't refer to any specific fantasy world, like Greyhawk or Mystara. Rather, it takes the "core rules" as a whole and explores the implications and assumptions inherent in such a system. This article in the D&D wiki is a great example: "D&D represents a period in history that is most closely identifiable with the Iron Age: the landscape is dotted with tribes and aspiring empires, the wilderness is largely unexplored, and powerful individuals and small groups can take over an area without having a big geopolitical hubbub about it." In my opinion, it also closely resembles the Wild West (or rather, its fictional depiction) but with swords and sorcery instead of six-shooters. When adventurers reach "name level" they will tend to migrate to the frontier of civilization to establish their stronghold in unclaimed territory. The discovery o...

Monster Slayer In a society where vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night subsist parasitically on the blood of innocents, hunting such creatures can be a lucrative career. When citizens are faced with a threat far beyond the capability of their local militia to handle, they would willingly pay a hefty ransom to have it taken care of. That is where the professional slayer steps in: an individual familiar with a wide variety of monsters and trained in the effective means of killing them. Hit Die:  D8 Requirements: Alignment:   Any non-evil Base Attack Bonus:   +4 Skill:  8 ranks in Profession (slayer) Psionics:   Must have a power point reserve of at least 1 power point. Special:   Must have the Collector of Stories skill trick Class Skills: Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int),...

Awaken An awakened animal gets 3d6 Intelligence, +1d3 Charisma, and +2 HD. Its type becomes magical beast (augmented animal). An awakened animal can’t serve as an animal companion, familiar, or special mount. A bummer about that last sentence, but anyway this remains a fun spell that nevertheless creates headaches for the DM. The augmented subtype states: A creature with the augmented subtype usually has the traits of its current type, but the features of its original type. An animal has the following features: —d8 Hit Dice. —Base attack bonus equal to 3/4 total Hit Dice (as cleric). —Good Fortitude and Reflex saves (certain animals have different good saves). —Skill points equal to (2 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die. A magical beast possesses the following traits: —Darkvision out to 60 feet and low-light vision. —Proficient with its natural weapons only. —Proficient with no armor. —Magical beasts eat, sleep, and bre...

You look around the dismal hut and jump as you see three ugly faces gawping at you! The room is untidy and contains little more than a straw mattress and a low table. The three creatures, a group of BLACK ELVES, are staring vacantly at you. A heavy, sweet smell hits your nostrils and explains their lethargy. They are puffing at a hookah containing Smoking Weed. One of them gathers himself together enough to talk to you and asks you to join them. What will you do?

Poison Elves (originally posted at the RPG Stack Exchange ) A new player character race for D&D 3.5, modeled after the Poison Elves of Drew Hayes ' comic book series. The diametrical opposite of the Grugach, Poison Elves are the urbanized, hookah-smoking assassins of Elvenkind. Prone to substance abuse and impulsive actions, they are nevertheless very capable survivors. Most Poison Elves are Neutral Evil alignment, and their preferred class is Rogue. They are originally descended from the Qualinesti, but were disaffected with the insular nature of their bretheren. Living in Human cities, they gradually developed into a separate race. Many expect the Poison Elves to breed themselves out of existence by intermarrying with Humans, but it is little known that many of them also have Shadar-Kai parentage. LA+0 These traits are in addition to the high elf traits , except where noted: +2 Dexterity, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma. These adjustments replace the high elf’s ability score adj...

Challenge Ratings and Encounter Level (originally posted at the RPG Stack Exchange ) The Challenge Rating of a monster is a very useful guide for judging the difficulty of an encounter, but it is not an exact science. Experience with your own players will tell you how tough an encounter they can handle, and what kinds of encounters they are best at. When the entire party can gang up on a single monster (even one with multiple attacks) tactics on the battlefield can be less important than when they are outnumbered. However, the more monsters you have, the less certain the estimate of Encounter Level (EL) / "CR Equivalency" becomes. You should also be careful when advancing monsters (adding extra hit dice to increase their CR), as this too can lead to some nasty surprises. I find this online calculator to be very useful for estimating EL, especially when I'm using monsters with a range of different CR's in a single encounter:  http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20e...

Auldhame Gnod Yriah and his army of 1000 orcs had captured a village on the river Brallen, 70 miles downriver from Marchion. They used it as a staging point for raids on neighboring thorps and hamlets, as well as blockading the river and capturing any merchant caravans or ships that came past. Yriah, being a barbarian, is illiterate (as are most of his army). However, the adepts (orc shaman) are not. The village itself has a diameter of 1000ft, so roughly 18 acres (785,398 sq ft) A village has an adult population of 401-900, with 2 adults per acre (43,560 sq ft) of crops 450 acres of arable land (150 acres left fallow + 150 acres of winter wheat), irrigation ditches 14 acres of forest and 18 acres of meadow I created this map using  Campaign Cartographer: City Designer 3 CD-ROM  and exported it to PDF. I installed the printer driver for the HP DesignJet 4500 postscript plotter and defined a custom page size of 1066.80mm wide (the maximum) by 1930.40mm, equival...

Affiliation Contacts Helena d'Mezzo http://minties.deviantart.com/art/Zara-45732245 female half-drow bard 1 / cleric 9 of Oghma Affiliation Score: 28 (superstar) Init +0; Senses : Spot+4, Listen+4, Darkvision 60ft; AL:  TN; Spd : 20ft (run x3) Hp : 48 (1d6+9d8+10) AC : 23 (+9 armor, +3 shield, +1 natural) Atk : ranged +7/+2 (mwk comp shortbow 1d10, 19-20/x3, range incr. 120ft) SA : 5/day - Turn Undead (Su) {turn level 7, turn damage 2d6+9} SQ : immunity to sleep, +2 save vs enchantment, Bardic Knowledge +2, Calm Emotion (Su), Healing Hymn (Sp), Inspire Courage (Su), Inspire Competence (Su) St: 13, Dx: 10, Co: 10, In: 12, Wi: 17, Ch: 14; SV : F+7 /R+6 /W+12 Skills : Bluff+8, Diplomacy+21, Disguise+13, GatherInfo+9, Perform+7, SenseMotive+10 Feats : Versatile Performer (CAdv 112), Negotiator, Wanderer's Diplomacy (PHB2 85), Landlord Languages : Common, Elven, Undercommon, Guild Sign Language (Amazing Chicanery Troupe) Domains : Trickery, Travel Cleric...

An Affiliation for Bards The rules for affiliations can be found in chapter 7 of the Player's Handbook II . Name:   The Amazing Chicanery Troupe Symbol:  A white snake, with red eyes and tongue Motto:  Trickery is mightier than the fist Members:  Lukwind, his cohort and followers Secrets:  Lukwind's identity as a Changeling; Rohit's identity as a Vanara; Helena's identity as a half-Drow Type:  Business Scale:  1 (neighborhood) Capital:  1 Criterion: Affiliation Score Modifier Character level: +1/2 PC’s level Charisma 13 or higher: +1 Bard: +1 Can cast 3rd-level or higher illusion spells: +1 Can cast 3rd-level or higher enchantment spells: +1 5-9 ranks in Perform, Tumble, Sleight of Hand or Gather Information: +1 per skill 10 or more ranks in Perform, Tumble, Sleight of Hand or Gather Information: +2 per skill Extraordinary performance as part of the troupe: +1 per performance Has no...

Planescape: Torment Retrospective  by Kieron Gillen (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) More lengthy, academic analysis of the game: Carr, Dianne (2003) Genre and Affect in Silent Hill  and Planescape Torment Game Studies 3 (1) ISSN:1604-7982 The PC game has been re-released  on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. However, you'll probably need to install the fixpack   to run it successfully on XP or Vista. Planescape: Torment has been released on GOG.com It is their second most-requested game title. GemRB Game Engine open source re-implementation of BioWare's Infinity engine, 1998-2002 http://sourceforge.net/projects/gemrb/files/ http://www.moddb.com/mods/gemrb-the-infinity-engine-clone http://linux.prinas.si/gemrb/doku.php http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=91 Pages of Pain Troy Denning's book

D&D em português do Brasil No próximo sábado, eu vou jogar Masmorras e Dragões com meus amigos. Nós rolamos os dados e contamos histórias. Eles descem para o subsolo, mas não dragões já. Depois, nós fizemos um churrasco de canguru e bebemos cervejas. Mas talvez demais ... está tudo bem, porque eu não dirijo. Eu viajo de trem para a Costa Dourada. Where in the world is Gutboy Barrelhouse? Je ne détruis pas le bugbear

Opposed Haggling Rolls My simple rules for bargaining in D20, and why you shouldn't use them: player rolls either Bluff or Diplomacy (or Charisma check) opposed by the merchant's Profession or Sense Motive (or Wisdom) If the player is buying, subtract the first roll from the second and add to 100%. That is the adjustment to the final price (for example, player rolls 44 and merchant rolls 18, so the player pays 18-44+100 = 74% of the standard PHB price) If the player is selling, subtract the second roll from the first and add to 50% (eg. 44 - 18 + 50 = 76% of standard price) As you can see from the above example, the player could potentially buy an item and then sell it back to the merchant for a 2% profit. However, I make the player roll 1d4+1 for the number of hours that it takes to find a buyer or a seller (a Gather Information check with DC 10 + 1 per 1000gp value). So they need to decide whether to take the standard price (or 50% if selling an item), or to spend...

Rules Light, it sure ain’t In case you're wondering what  these OSR gamers are on about, this is the contents of my game bag: netbook  and power supply dice pens, pencils, dry-erase markers, calculator, notepaper and graph paper rulebooks: DMG , Rules Compendium , PHB2 ,  Ultimate Toolbox (Aeg) , Common Ground I monsters: MM1 , MM2 , MM3 , MM4 , MM5  & Fiend Folio (usually only 3 of the above, tailored to the encounters that I have planned) game module of the moment (in this case, Splintered Peace ) as well as relevant issues of Dungeon Magazine for any side-adventures I have prepared portfolio of player handouts: maps, pictures of monsters and NPC's that they might encounter 15.4kg (34lbs) on the bathroom scales - too much for carry-on baggage, that's for sure. Enough to stress the rear suspension of my mate's ute , not to mention the risk of a dislocated shoulder or slipped disc! But that isn't even the full story. I rely on my players to ...

A Crisis of Population Density A static, hereditary aristocracy seems illogical in a world where adventurers accumulate wealth and power in epic proportions. My aim is to describe a setting that is much more an extrapolation of the D&D rules, rather than an emulation of a pseudo-Medieval, low fantasy setting. Which is not to say that Helsmuth and Eastrealm do not contain pseudo-Medieval elements and an aristocratic class. However, that is not the driving force of civilization. Instead, the basic building block is the adventurer who achieves "name level" and establishes a stronghold. This harks back to 1st edition AD&D, which is part of why I like it, but is still just as relevant in 3rd edition (particularly with the Landlord Feat as described in the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook , and the Leadership feat as described in the DMG ). Many sourcebooks such as A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe and Dungeon Masters Guide 2 are founded on the...