tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65541681031661978522024-03-13T13:44:09.460-07:00The Orc Rehabilitation CommissionShiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-56382424003336708412022-10-01T15:04:00.007-07:002022-10-02T05:41:07.315-07:00[GLOG] If Our Life Lacks Brimstone... (Class: Barbarian)<p>A class that eats rules to steal their strength for itself.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Barbarian</h2><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-nRWBHJR-fGb0X9A-p9kvvMSuqonFuJr-AvREj8Rb94R4n3xNiPKHiN320CZjKxuf_AtCIySrsyIu7_hM3eiUKL25y5N6mdXOWhL_sHw2QrrnI28ci9sFahetZrsYroENe_x_1zRQIge3sF5kFvJVrlYxrs-NB-Gd4oBYRuUEOTZLJek72vOc0ms/s1600/dominik-mayer-asset.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-nRWBHJR-fGb0X9A-p9kvvMSuqonFuJr-AvREj8Rb94R4n3xNiPKHiN320CZjKxuf_AtCIySrsyIu7_hM3eiUKL25y5N6mdXOWhL_sHw2QrrnI28ci9sFahetZrsYroENe_x_1zRQIge3sF5kFvJVrlYxrs-NB-Gd4oBYRuUEOTZLJek72vOc0ms/w400-h225/dominik-mayer-asset.jpg" width="400" /></a><br /><i>"Berserker", art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gJ3aLm">Dominik Mayer</a></i><br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting equipment:</b> Two-handed weapon of your choice, fur loincloth, warpaint in the 1d8th colour of the rainbow (black on an 8).<br /><b>Starting skill:</b> None (see below).<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A:</b> BARBARIAN!, Brute Force, Loincloth of Endurance<br /><b>B:</b> Rage<br /><b>C:</b> Eye of the Gods<br /><b>D:</b> Absolute Violence<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: BARBARIAN!</b><br />Erase your lowest ability score. Replace it with a BARBARIAN! score, which starts at 12. Each time you gain a Barbarian template after the first, gain +2 BARBARIAN! and erase your next lowest ability score other than BARBARIAN!.<br />You automatically fail any check against a stat you don't have.<br />You can substitute BARBARIAN! for whatever stat you'd normally use for a check if the task at hand is suitably BARBARIAN! - feats of physical strength and agility, mysterious foreign folklore, highly objectionable cooking, etcetera. (This is why you don't have a starting skill.)<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Brute Force</b><br />You don't suffer non-proficiency penalties in melee. If you can hold it, you can kill with it. Any object you wield as a melee weapon deals 1d8 damage if
you're wielding it in one hand, or 1d12 if you're two-handing it (so
two-hand everything, obviously). Ranged weapons work normally for you, if you absolutely insist.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Loincloth of Endurance</b><br />As long as you wear no armour, you count as having the maximum possible hit points for each die you'd roll, and heal the maximum possible from lunch and a night's rest. If you don armour, like some kind of simpering continental, instead you have the <i>minimum</i> possible hit points. Shields don't count as armour to you and don't increase your Defence, but they count as weapons just like anything else you're holding.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>B: Rage</b><br />Whenever you roll initiative or suffer damage, you can fly into a rage. While raging, you don't roll to hit - you just deal your damage automatically, and the target can make one attack back against you with the same rules (if it survives). You must attack every round if possible while raging, and can't exit your rage until the fight is over or an ally spends a whole round slapping some sense into you.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>C: Eye of the Gods</b><br />Erase your Save value. You Save by flipping a coin. Heads succeeds.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>D: Absolute Violence</b><br />When you roll initiative, you may also roll a single die of your choice and take that much damage, which can't be reduced by any means. If you survive this damage and your roll matches or beats the total number of HD of enemies in the fight, you black out for ten minutes and wake up drenched in the blood of your slaughtered foes. Ask your allies to tell you what happened, but don't expect coherent answers.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-33187119368658763782022-09-16T15:12:00.003-07:002022-09-17T05:00:19.586-07:00[OSR] Drinker-Folk - Bovar and Gnolls<p style="text-align: left;">When the world was young, two tribes sought greatness on the savannah.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The first tribe, the bovar, were born of Father Ox, peaceable yet stout and fell-handed, unmatched by any predator but crowded out by lesser grazers. The second tribe, the gnolls, were born of Mother Hyena, swift and cunning, but mere whelps against Lion and Serpent and Greatworm, the royalty of the plains.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One evening, the hottest of summer, the two tribes descended on the same watering hole. Normally, they would avoid battle, neither tribe thinking itself the other's equal, but their thirst was great and terrible, and all through the night they bit and gored and kicked and clawed one another to a standstill.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But, for all their many differences, the tribes shared the gift of speech and reason, the spark of sapience that eluded their peers. And, so the story goes, Father Ox and Mother Hyena sat down beside the still water, and talked, and found they had much to gain from one another. An accord was found. The bovar would champion the gnolls, protecting them and their kills from the attention of larger predators. And the gnolls would keep the bovar's rivals cowed and pruned, leaving them the best grazing-grounds to themselves.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Of course, ways changed over time, as the twin peoples learned to grow crops and tend livestock, but they never forgot their ancestral alliance. To this day, they are near inseparable. There is no "gnoll society" or "bovar society"; they can only be spoken of as one, as the drinker-folk. For, despite their vastly different diets, drink remains a great unifier, just as it was in the deep fog of prehistory.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Drinker-Folk Society</h2><p style="text-align: left;">The drinker-folk settle near water, building sprawling city-states on lakes and across rivers, and surrounding them with rings of farmland and pasture tended by satellite villages. Their cities are airy and colourful, and smell <i>amazing</i> - to mute the scents of their meals, out of respect for their neighbours, the drinker-folk burn scented candles and incense everywhere they can. One notable quirk of drinker-folk architecture is its aversion to stairs, which are difficult to make equitable for both species - most buildings use ramps or hoists, if they have higher floors at all.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Drinker-folk masons work primarily in stone and ceramics. Wood is valuable and never used for construction, only for tools, alongside bone and tempered obsidian. Metal is a rarity, besides silver and copper currency.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Besides houses and places of business, the hub of drinker-folk society is the moot, a covered plaza that acts as a combination forum, marketplace, and taproom. Drinker-folk eat separately, but they drink together, and in great quantities. Besides water, their beer is legendary, and every moot will have its own house brew.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Drinker-folk government is oligarchic. Each city has two co-rulers, a bovar prince and a gnoll matriarch (these genders only vary in extreme circumstances). They do not maintain standing armies, but all adults train regularly as militia, and a handful of permanent officers organise them ad-hoc into patrols, regiments, or legions as necessary.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Gnolls outnumber bovar roughly two to one. Interspecies friendships and
business partnerships are extremely common. Interspecies relationships
are rare and considered somewhat unusual, though not taboo - there's a
culture clash at play, since bovar are usually monogamous and gnolls are
very much not. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Drinker-folk do have magical traditions, but their mages occupy themselves with farming, brewing, and crafts. Their attempts at combat magic have never proven any more effective than conventional methods.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Most pay some sort of vague reverence to Father Ox and Mother Hyena, their people's supposed progenitors, but they are not an especially pious people and have no organised priesthood.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">As a general rule, drinker-folk are xenophilic, and they have peerless reputations for hospitality. Bovar tend to be sincere and considerate; gnolls aren't above good-natured ribbing and pranks. However, both species respond to any hint of hostility swiftly and decisively, and they're fiercely protective of one another, putting aside personal grudges and disagreements in an instant whenever their kin are threatened.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Crunch</h2><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Leadership</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Stolen from alex on the <a href="https://discord.gg/qVkUHJUTNk">GLOG Discord</a>.</p>Each
group of bovar or gnolls will be led by a sergeant, usually
identifiable by a fancier outfit (a cool hat is mandatory) and nicer weapons. The sergeant has an extra attack per round and gives the whole group +1 Morale. Test Morale when the sergeant dies. The values given in the profiles below do <i>not</i> include this Morale bonus.<br /><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Bovar</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Bovar: HD</b> 3, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 7, <b>Atk</b> by weapon +1 die size, or fist 1d6. <b>Brutal Charge.</b><br />Patrols of 1d3+1, or bands of 2d6, often paired with a similar gnoll unit.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Brutal Charge:</b> Attacks a bovar makes after a solid, unimpeded run-up roll their damage die twice and take the better result.</p><p style="text-align: left;">***<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Arms:</b> Two-handed weapons. Sledgehammers are a particular favourite. Giant crossbows if they have to fight at range.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Oxfolk. 9-10' tall, dark brown hide, cloven hooves. Men are slightly taller and have horns. Loincloths in earth tones, loose tabards for women, huge kite-shield-shaped hide pauldrons and thigh guards bearing pseudo-heraldic designs.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Deep, rumbling voices. At peace, terse but amiable, with a dry sense of humour. At war, stony and usually silent.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Straightforward. Hold defensible positions, or advance slowly and then charge. Somewhat honourable by default, but they sink to the level of their opponents.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Gnolls</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Gnoll: HD</b> 1, <b>AC</b> leather, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 6, <b>Atk</b> by weapon, or bite 1d6. <b>Harrier.</b><br />Packs of 1d6+2, or mobs of 4d6, often paired with a similar bovar unit.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Harrier:</b> A flanking gnoll deals a minimum of 2 damage with attacks that hit, and 1 damage even if they miss. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">***<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Arms:</b> Light hand weapons, often dual-wielding, or shortbows for ranged combat.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Hyenafolk. 5' tall, mottled orange-brown fur, slightly hunchbacked. Women are more solidly built and have more pronounced fur patterns. Primary-colour piecemeal outfits, lots of straps and bone studs. Dyed patches and clan patterns shaved into exposed fur.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Sharp, glottal voices. Gregarious, talkative, and often crude, but respectful unless angered. Noisy in battle, alternating between guttural insults and <i>that cackle</i>.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Ambushes, skirmishes, and psychological warfare. They outflank, surround, and isolate with brutal efficiency. Quick to retreat, but quick to rally, too.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>If you want less threatening gnolls, they might also make a good <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2022/06/osr-visit-from-goon-squad.html">Goon Squad</a>.</i><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">1d6 Sights and Sounds in the Moots of the Drinker-Folk</h2><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>1)</b> A dozen gnoll youths accost and harass patrons at random. They're on a moot crawl, a popular rite of passage, but have run out of money, and promise they'll leave if someone buys them a round.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>2)</b> A flock of giant chickens (stats as dog) have escaped from a nearby butcher's shop and taken over the moot. They're confused, but not aggressive, and everyone steps around and over them and carries on as normal while the frantic butcher tries to recapture them.<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>3)</b> A crowd has gathered around an elderly bovar couple and a pair of gnoll hustlers playing Savannah Morris (2v2, plays like the lovechild of chess and bridge). The bartender has abandoned her post to offer commentary for those at the back.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>4)</b> A few patrons have formed an impromptu jug band - a bovar sings a steady bassline while gnolls jam on items commandeered from a nearby ceramics vendor (who's a little miffed but trying not to cause a scene). Some "musical differences" have started to form between two of the drummers; a fight is not far off.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>5)</b> A crier recites the day's news, including a harrowing, completely inaccurate account of a border conflict not far from the city. Snorts, growls, warning cackles. Nobody is outright calling for war, but everyone is thinking it.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>6)</b> A candlemaker, wreathed in multicoloured vapour, hawks his wares. The smoke of certain candles has narcotic properties, controversial among more conservative drinker-folk; a couple such moralists are trying to argue the toss with the trader, but he's tuning them out.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-30354846619023579412022-08-19T10:15:00.002-07:002022-08-19T10:37:09.725-07:00d66 Oddball Hirelings, Clients, and Classes<p><i>This was initially my submission to a community project that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Enjoy.</i><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">***<br /></p><p>Each entry in the following this comes with the name and description of a (H)ireling, the (A)bility they possess, the (E)quipment they carry, and a (Q)uest they might offer.<br /><br />As hirelings, they each cost twice as much as a standard 1HD guard or warrior, and bring all their listed equipment with them, plus whatever you give or loan them. They are combat-ready, but subject to morale like everyone else.<br /><br />As quest clients, their rewards could include:<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Normal quest reward stuff, like money and money-adjacent items.</li><li>The hireling joining you for free for a fixed term (or for a loot share rather than a salary).</li><li>The hireling teaching you their ability.<br /></li></ul><p>These entries double more generally as modular extra abilities for existing characters. Besides the quest reward option, they could be secret arts learned from lost tomes or bestowed by weird magic, or you could upgrade one into a full playable character by plugging it into the following special one-template GLOG class:</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>Class: Oddball</b><br />There's only one Oddball template. You can take it multiple times, but must make different choices each time.<br /><b>Σ:</b> Choose or roll a random entry on the Oddball Hirelings table. You gain the listed (A)bility, start with the listed (E)quipment if this is your first template, and gain a skill with the same name as the table entry. Then roll on your favourite random skill table for something you picked up to make ends meet, when your main gig wasn't working. Finally, choose a single ability from a thief-type class (a level 1 ability from one of <a href="https://crateredland.blogspot.com/2020/02/thieves-guilds.html">Lexi's Thief Guilds</a>, for example) for a little extra spice.</p><p>Enough preamble. Let's bring on the oddballs.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>***</b></p><p><b>11. Acupressurist</b><br />
<b>H: Ephraim.</b> Shabby and unkempt except for lacy white gloves. Rarely speaks above a whisper.<br /><b>A:</b> His touch attack can harmlessly purge a potion or
toxin from the subject's body, if used within 1 round of ingestion /
exposure.<br /><b>E:</b> Wooden massage rod (as club), finger strengthener, bottle of scented oil.<br /><b>Q:</b> He longs for renown. Help him save the life of someone important, as flashily and publicly as possible.</p>
<p><b>12. Anchoragent</b><br /><b>H: Iulia.</b> Eyes heavy with regrets. Tally marks on her sleeve, won't say what they're for.<br /><b>A:</b> Can lock or unlock a willing or helpless subject's joints individually with a touch.<br /><b>E:</b> Blackjack, jar of mysterious ointment, deed to a parcel of land on the other side of the world.<br /><b>Q:</b> Find and kill her old employer, who's living under a new identity somewhere nearby.</p>
<p><b>13. Ascertainer</b><br /><b>H: Adarine.</b> Robes adorned with geometric diagrams. Makes arcane gestures at empty air. Squints.<br /><b>A:</b> Can measure distances by eye and weights by feel instantly, to the nearest pound or quarter-inch. Counts things at 100x speed.<br /><b>E:</b> Geometry set including sharpened pair of compasses
(as knife), weathered textbook, half a dozen IOU notes from various
students.<br /><b>Q:</b> She was expelled from engineering college on a technicality the day before graduation. Get her the diploma she deserves.</p>
<p><b>14. Bureaumancer</b><br /><b>H: Uhlvard.</b> Lumbering, bespectacled sad sack with a voice you tune out almost reflexively.<br /><b>A:</b> Very weak telekinesis, only works on paper that's
been written on. Detects spelling errors and bureaucratic mistakes with a
glance.<br /><b>E:</b> Dog-shaped novelty paperweight (as club), quill and ink, spinning top, jar of strong coffee.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get him a date. A real one.</p>
<p><b>15. Breathmiser</b><br /><b>H: Rajesh.</b> Shaved head, huge beard. Wears dozens of talismans with the same fish symbol.<br /><b>A:</b> Can hold his breath for up to 30 minutes of physical activity or 2 hours of rest. Double these if he has 10 minutes to prepare.<br /><b>E:</b> Machete, stack of questionable spiritual pamphlets, large empty bucket.<br /><b>Q:</b> His evil twin Hejsar is stealing people's breath by strangling them, and blaming him. Exonerate Rajesh and stop Hejsar.</p>
<p><b>16. Censor-Witch</b><br /><b>H: Zeg.</b> Broad, balding, walrus moustache. Says "actually" and "technically" a lot.<br /><b>A:</b> Chooses a word each morning. When someone within a
mile says the word, he hears it and sees their face and general
surroundings in his mind.<br /><b>E:</b> Improbably heavy rubber stamp (as club), inkpads in black, blue, and red, bolt of silk (for gags) and tiny scissors.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get him a copy of <i>The Desolation of Saint Judith</i>, a recently banned heretical text. You know, for auditing purposes.</p>
<p><b>21. Contra-Chaplain</b><br /><b>H: Sadia.</b> Patchwork robe of religious vestments. Never ends a sentence without swearing.<b><br />A:</b> When she swills water in her mouth and spits it out, it affects the divine exactly as holy water affects the unholy.<br /><b>E:</b> Censer (as club), defaced holy book, bottle of absinthe, bottle of water, 25gp in unconvincing fake coins.<br /><b>Q:</b> Humiliate the church somehow, get arrested by church authorities for it, and escape.</p>
<p><b>22. Devil's Advocate</b><br /><b>H: Xiangye.</b> Tailored suit, tailored smile. One cigar a day. Blames everything on her ex-wife.<br /><b>A:</b> Can identify the exact terms of any supernatural
contract, curse, or similar effect. 2-in-6 chance of finding a useful
loophole.<br /><b>E:</b> Razor-tipped fountain pen (as knife), infernal legal textbook, case of fine cigars.<br /><b>Q:</b> Her case against a local demigod is running out of steam. Find or fabricate some evidence to revitalise it.</p>
<p><b>23. Disjecter</b><br /><b>H: Queens.</b> Tall. Shiny. All angles and edges. Beautiful in a harsh, inhospitable way.<br /><b>A:</b> Knows a 1-minute ritual to cut any object up to human size perfectly in half. She must be able to move and handle the object.<br /><b>E:</b> Sword, thrice-blessed whetstone, protractor, stick of charcoal.<br /><b>Q:</b> Deeply spiritual and humble, she fears her abilities. Find something - anything - she can't cut.</p>
<p><b>24. Dread Poet</b><br /><b>H: Morgan.</b> Too much eyeshadow. High-collared black trenchcoat, regardless of the season.<br /><b>A:</b> Recites the absolute worst slam poetry known to mortalkind. Protracted exposure deals damage equivalent to being on fire.<br /><b>E:</b> Reinforced steel quill (as knife) and ink, poetry notebook, makeup kit, poor-quality charcoal portrait of himself.<br /><b>Q:</b> Trick, bribe, or intimidate someone into booking him for a live show. He wants an audience of at least a thousand.</p>
<p><b>25. Faultsman</b><br /><b>H: Howell.</b> Hirsute. Talks very slowly. Taps random objects "to make sure they're sound".<br /><b>A:</b> Can identify when a machine is broken and what's wrong with it, purely by touch. No special acuity in fixing things.<br /><b>E:</b> Sharpened tuning fork (as knife), spectacles with adjustable lenses, bag of mints.<br /><b>Q:</b> The mints he carries are truly delicious, but out of
production. Find a stash of them to keep him supplied - or, better
still, the recipe.</p>
<p><b>26. Ferrobotanist</b><br /><b>H: Tunde.</b> A big, genial fellow in well-loved overalls. Thinks aloud. Mossy.<br /><b>A:</b> Can heal damaged metal with a 10-minute per
inventory slot ritual, patching it with fibrous metallic growths. Up to 6
slots per day.<br /><b>E:</b> Many-times-repaired sword, gardener's gloves, pouch of high-quality bonemeal.<br /><b>Q:</b> He feuds bitterly with the smiths' guild. Find a problem they can't solve, but he can. Make one, if necessary.</p>
<p><b>31. Flingist</b><br /><b>H: Jethro Southeast "The Beast" Cransley.</b> Tattoos everywhere but his arms. Only answers to his full name, epithet included.<br /><b>A:</b> Can throw arrows as weapons - half damage, but +4 to hit. With at least a minute to prepare, hits automatically.<br /><b>E:</b> Quiver of 20 arrows, spectacles, capelet, collection of impressive but worthless medals.<br /><b>Q:</b> He suspects his archrival Serafine of doping. Expose her, or get Jethro some stronger drugs.</p>
<p><b>32. Handler</b><br /><b>H: Crowe.</b> Goggles, face mask, heavy boots. Terse but polite. Clean freak, where possible.<br /><b>A:</b> The skin from her elbows to her fingertips is impervious to contact hazards.<br /><b>E:</b> Brass knuckles, 3 blocks of lye soap, vial of litmus.<br /><b>Q:</b> Give her a tactile sensation she's never felt before. (She's pretty jaded. Be creative.)</p>
<p><b>33. Hound-Blessed</b><br /><b>H: Afwen.</b> Jowly, with big, doleful eyes. Patchy red skin rash. Sheds.<br /><b>A:</b> Acute, discerning sense of smell. Can track scents like a bloodhound.<br /><b>E:</b> Hand axe, collar and leash, jar of homemade pickling solution.<br /><b>Q:</b> Treat or cure her allergy to herself. It's the only way to clear up that rash.</p>
<p><b>34. Jeermonger</b><br /><b>H: Rex.</b> Clean and well-dressed. Always nursing a black eye or cauliflower ear.<br /><b>A:</b> Knows insults and taunts in every language, even those he hasn't encountered yet - he just gets a feel for them.<br /><b>E:</b> Knife, set of cooking pots, bottle of tequila, makeup kit.<br /><b>Q:</b> He seeks a challenge. Find him a worthy opponent for the roast-off of the century.</p>
<p><b>35. Levermaester</b><br /><b>H: Mabh.</b> Slight and frail-looking, but stronger than you think. Permanent cryptic smirk.<br /><b>A:</b> Counts as two people in matters of pushing, pulling,
and lifting. Up to three people working with her also have their
efforts doubled.<br /><b>E:</b> 4 crowbars, book of log tables, abacus, enormous black clay pipe.<br /><b>Q:</b> Deliver this thank-you note to her mentor, who died twenty years ago.</p>
<p><b>36. Lockstiff</b><br /><b>H: Ash.</b> Hunched and gangly, like a marionette. Constantly asks if you're really, absolutely sure.<br /><b>A:</b> Can render any lock or lock-like object unopenable with a minute's work.<br /><b>E:</b> Knife, lockpicks (which he can't use), thick leather gloves, tinderbox.<br /><b>Q:</b> Find a reliable method for undoing his work - currently, he doesn't know of one.</p>
<p><b>41. Mime-Maker</b><br /><b>H: Helena.</b> "Shirt" is just stripes of overapplied black and white grease paint. Hates reptiles.<br /><b>A:</b> Anything she touches with both palms is completely silent as long as she maintains contact.<br /><b>E:</b> Knife, 2 pots of grease paint, ball gag, umbrella.<br /><b>Q:</b> Persuade her crush, a novice bard, to renounce his ways so that they can be together.</p>
<p><b>42. Moonshiner</b><br /><b>H: Egg.</b> Hunched, paunchy, needle-sharp teeth. Possibly an unusually clean, smart goblin.<br /><b>A:</b> Can turn the fluids from a fresh human-sized corpse
into a bottle's worth of high-proof, worryingly tasty moonshine. Takes 1
hour.<br /><b>E:</b> Broken bottle (as knife), 6 unbroken bottles, jar of pickled bugs, 5' reacher-grabber.<br /><b>Q:</b> Help him replicate the best batch he's ever made, which came from the corpse of a priest.</p>
<p><b>43. Multi-Druid</b><br /><b>H: Barnabas.</b> Shiftiest guy you've ever seen. Jumpy, sleep-deprived, chews paper like gum.<br /><b>A:</b> Transforms at will into two raccoons. They act independently but can't be more than 30' apart. If one dies, both do.<br /><b>E:</b> Shillelagh (as club but fancier), 3 vials of powerful insecticide, preserved dead songbird in paper bag.<br /><b>Q:</b> Stop the city's vermin cull, by any means necessary.</p>
<p><b>44. Muscarist</b><b><br />H: Yalic.</b> Cheerful, sweaty. Carries a buzzing, gauze-topped clay jar like a briefcase.<br /><b>A:</b> Can speak with flies. They can advise on the severity of wounds, the edibility of meat, and other matters of bare flesh.<br /><b>E:</b> Swatter (as club), jar of flies, jar of honey, jar of vinegar, fishing rod.<br /><b>Q:</b> His flies are refusing to work, demanding to be taken to their "new king". Find it and pacify, subjugate, or exterminate it.</p>
<p><b>45. Noise Bard</b><br /><b>H: Cantwell.</b> Portly and jolly. Loud, rhythmic breathing. Tuning forks sewn into his clothes.<br /><b>A:</b> If you can hear him humming, it takes a Save vs. magic, which you can fail on purpose, to hear anything else.<br /><b>E:</b> Sharpened tuning fork (as knife), harmonica, jar of extremely flammable skin moisturizer.<br /><b>Q:</b> His noble lover considers him uncouth and won't be seen with him in public. <i>My Fair Lady</i> him to help him win her heart.</p>
<p><b>46. Pseudowizard</b><br /><b>H: Sunny.</b> Blue-tinted skin. Fidgety. Plays obscure card games against herself in her spare time.<br /><b>A:</b> 1MD. Doesn't know any spells, nor can she learn them. Detects as a 4MD archmage.<br /><b>E:</b> Fancy staff, pointy hat, dictionary relabelled "SPELBOKE", 5 decks of variant playing cards.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get her out from under her crushing student loans.</p>
<p><b>51. Pyrotechnician</b><br /><b>H: Giles.</b> Bleached spiky hair, red-tinted spectacles. Leaning a bit too hard into the "mad scientist" act.<br /><b>A:</b> Can breathe and manipulate gouts of harmless but extremely realistic fire.<br /><b>E:</b> Poker (as club), tub of hair wax, bag of soot, dry-ice smoke bomb.<br /><b>Q:</b> Find a way for him to use real pyromancy, despite his magically inert brain and terrible attention span.</p>
<p><b>52. Refiner</b><br /><b>H: Bootblack.</b> Haggard, gnarled, dressed in rags. Laughs at nothing, doesn't laugh at anything else.<br /><b>A:</b> With constant attention, she can make one outfit at a time look like a conscious, expensive, and dangerous fashion statement.<br /><b>E:</b> Scissors (as knife), full seamstress kit, 3 silver hand mirrors.<br /><b>Q:</b> Her current project needs one last ingredient - a single square yard of wizardskin.</p>
<p><b>53. Serpentine</b><br /><b>H: Slide.</b> Absurdly swollen pecs. Top-heavy. Face looks like it's been ironed flat.<br /><b>A:</b> Can crawl flat on their belly as fast as they can run.<br /><b>E:</b> Knife, safety goggles, mechanical tinderbox, tub of mysterious grease.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get them a pet snake. Something small and lethally venomous, please.</p>
<p><b>54. Shoveller</b><br /><b>H: Baldwin.</b> Smells of wood polish. Won't shut up about "the war", but never specifies <i>which</i> war.<br /><b>A:</b> Can do anything with a shovel three times faster than a normal person. In his hands, a shovel counts as a battleaxe.<br /><b>E:</b> Weathered shovel, shiny spare shovel, 30' coil of fuse cord, pet mouse in cage.<br /><b>Q:</b> He buried the last of his war pay in a disused sapper's tunnel somewhere - dig it up and he'll split the loot.</p>
<p><b>55. Slime Host</b><br /><b>H: Leigh.</b> Massive beehive hairdo. Moist. Never more than half awake.<br /><b>A:</b> A pet slime lives in her hair. Its acid is too slow
to be useful in combat, but can dissolve anything that fits inside it
over 24 hours.<br /><b>E:</b> Scissors (as knife), jar of hair wax, bottle of decent wine, 3 acid-stained romance novels.<br /><b>Q:</b> Her slime is about to mitose, and has grown far more aggressive and acidic. Find a safe place to contain it until it spawns.</p>
<p><b>56. Stashkeeper</b><br /><b>H: Winters.</b> Outfit made entirely of pockets. Usually has at least one cut or bruise he hasn't noticed.<br /><b>A:</b> If you need multiples of an item and you're one
short, there's a 5-in-6 chance he has the last one you need stashed on
his person.<br /><b>E:</b> Claw hammer, thurible, prism, skin-scraper, pad of litmus paper.<br /><b>Q:</b> Prove your thrift by getting him an extra copy of each of his starting items - without paying for any of them.</p>
<p><b>61. Steeplejack</b><br /><b>H: Jo Gables.</b> Tiny, taut frame. Hands are a mess of scars and calluses. Attracts pigeons.<br /><b>A:</b> As long as it's physically possible, she never falls, trips, or stumbles unless she means to.<br /><b>E:</b> Climbing pick, 50' coil of rope, pocket watch, 3 carabiner clips.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get her ban from church rooftops rescinded by winning over the local gargoyle population.</p>
<p><b>62. Swallower</b><br /><b>H: Odwin.</b> Tall and skinny. Exceptionally straight back. Pained, scratchy voice.<br /><b>A:</b> Can safely swallow any solid object that fits down his throat, and retrieve it at will with minimal mess.<br /><b>E:</b> Steak knife, 3 bottles of olive oil, hand drill, hand-cranked circular saw.<br /><b>Q:</b> He swallowed a live squid which he can't retrieve. It's biting him from the inside. Kill or placate it without hurting him.</p>
<p><b>63. Thread Whisperer</b><br /><b>H: Tall Saul.</b> 102 years old. Speaks a strange, phlegmy dialect. Sleeps standing up.<br /><b>A:</b> Can hold a piece of rope, string, or cord up to his
ear and sense anything it hears, smells, or feels anywhere along its
length.<br /><b>E:</b> Shears (as knife), 50' ball of string, brass ear-trumpet, brick of adhesive putty.<br /><b>Q:</b> He wants his pension pot, but the bank won't let him have it until he retires, which he refuses to do. Retrieve it.</p>
<p><b>64. Traplomat</b><br /><b>H: Philemon.</b> Thinning hair. Steel jewellery painted gold. Calls everyone "friend".<br /><b>A:</b> Can parley telepathically with traps. They respond well to promises of maintenance, resupply, or interesting victims.<br /><b>E:</b> Pliers (as club), collapsible 15' pole, 30' roll of bondage tape (sticks only to itself), bottle of mechanical grease.<br /><b>Q:</b> Bring him an intact, functional example of an exotic trap he's never seen before. He's lonely.</p>
<p><b>65. Unarchitect</b><br /><b>H: Lexanne.</b> Tiny, grinning ball of anarchy in a piecemeal boilersuit. Hisses like a cat.<br /><b>A:</b> Can discern the weakest point of any structure and whether any given attack or demolition will be enough to break it.<br /><b>E:</b> Sledgehammer, 3 steel spikes, thumb-sized vial of thermite.<br /><b>Q:</b> Get her off the hook for the string of vandalisms she definitely did commit over the past few weeks.</p>
<p><b>66. Witness</b><br /><b>H: False Rebecca.</b> Aquiline features. Stutters. Mismatched eyes - one brown, one grey.<br /><b>A:</b> Closing or covering one of her eyes stores a perfect photographic memory of whatever it was looking at until she opens it.<br /><b>E:</b> Knife, sketchbook and pencil, 2 eyepatches, hand bell.<br /><b>Q:</b> Expose the fraudulent author who's selling her memories as successful fiction. She'd settle for a cut of the profits, though.</p>
Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-38984056170589817902022-08-16T13:40:00.004-07:002022-08-16T13:40:51.857-07:00Final Fantasy XIV and the Joy of Rigidity<p>Final Fantasy XIV is new ground for me in several respects - it's my first MMO, my first Final Fantasy game, and the first time I've ever seen a game character use the word "forsooth" and taken it vaguely seriously. At the time of writing, I have almost finished the main story questline of the game's first expansion, Heavensward, and my playtime clocks in around 140 hours.</p><p>My main class at the moment is Dark Knight, a heavily armoured tank with
a two-handed sword (each class in FFXIV is defined by the type of
weapon it uses). As I levelled up, I unlocked a fixed set of abilities in a fixed order -
some were gained purely through levelling, others through story quests,
but at no point did I choose between sub-paths or assign points to a
skill tree. Even my choice of race didn't really affect my abilities;
there are minor stat differences between the races of Eorzea, but these
differences are small enough that they become irrelevant at higher levels. Steady Night is a hulking, muscular roegadyn, but he could be a diminutive lalafell and nothing would really change about his performance or playstyle.</p><p>Now, this isn't as limiting as it might seem. Remember how classes are defined by the weapons they wield? Well, all I have to do is give Steady Night a gun, and he'll switch class to Machinist, a hard-hitting ranged DPS. This easy class-switch ability is one of FFXIV's most touted features, eliminating the need to create multiple "alt" characters to play as multiple classes (and going hand in hand with race choice having almost no effect on class performance). But, as a Machinist, Steady will have the same linear ability progression as any other Machinist. And every other class works the same way.*</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdB7-eHsltFV6WMu2jFQ_qUnV0eKmJAtyLVpAh1J-sXXk3I6fLdwNXzj4o_8Qvid86-0S1AgwPXOW3Ay_av1i--ZGVDseD7mR0Vqup8yjsS6WDwi_aG4m1hHjUJiFa2HqK3UOEUa-v9yWwneJ7Qrv85Y74mGo2vsHJSCjIFvZy1oWbzbJ1IvsvNv0/s916/unknown-50.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="916" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdB7-eHsltFV6WMu2jFQ_qUnV0eKmJAtyLVpAh1J-sXXk3I6fLdwNXzj4o_8Qvid86-0S1AgwPXOW3Ay_av1i--ZGVDseD7mR0Vqup8yjsS6WDwi_aG4m1hHjUJiFa2HqK3UOEUa-v9yWwneJ7Qrv85Y74mGo2vsHJSCjIFvZy1oWbzbJ1IvsvNv0/s320/unknown-50.png" width="320" /></a><i><br />Crafting and gathering skills in FFXIV are assigned to their own
special noncombat classes. I've also been levelling Steady as a Miner;
it's a great downtime activity to keep my hands busy while I listen to
an audiobook or hang out on Discord with my partner.</i></div><p>I'm not really <i>building</i> a character - it's more like I'm selecting a prebuilt kit off the shelf, and, if I want something different, I pick a whole different kit rather than modifying this one. This is quite rare in MMOs. It's much more common for classes to have multiple specialisation options, and often there are race-specific abilities, extra skills from particular pieces of equipment, or class-agnostic extras unlocked through some means other than levelling. In theory, there are many different ways to build any given class. There's none of that here.<br /></p><p>As an inveterate tinkerer and lifelong fan of "builds" in games, I was expecting to hate this. But I don't. I think I love it, actually.</p><p>From a development standpoint, the most obvious advantage of FFXIV's approach is that it makes balancing a lot easier, and my understanding is that the game is generally considered to have pretty good class balance. There is of course a metagame and a rough hierarchy of power, but every video I've watched on the matter, even those aimed at high-end raiding and similar hardcore content, has stressed that no class is completely non-viable. This stands in stark contrast to games like WoW, where certain specs or entire classes often end up being too strong or unuseably weak for a period of time. In extreme cases, the end result can wind up being basically the same as FFXIV's setup, but with the good builds floating in a sea of trap options.</p><p>But, as a player, I have also found the lack of choices in character building strangely liberating. I don't need to look up guides on optimal buildcraft, or stress over hunting down specific items with the skills I need. I don't feel like I'm missing out by passing up a cool-looking option in favour of a mathematically correct one. I don't have to worry about being booted from a pick-up group for a suboptimal build; if I keep my gear up to date with my current level on its simple, linear scale, my character is properly equipped and ready to roll. And, in a sense, it keeps me honest. If I die in a dungeon or fail a boss fight, I can't blame it on having a bad build - I have to take responsibility myself. (Or blame the healer, but I've been lucky enough to have pretty good healers most of the time. Except that one White Mage the other day who kept pulling. Not sure what his deal was.)</p><p>What I find interesting about FFXIV's approach to class design is that it stands in opposition not only to the wider MMO sphere, but to a trend in games in general. Buildcraft is very much en vogue at the moment, at all levels of game development. At the top end, you have triple-A juggernauts in the mould of Destiny, building themselves around abundant loot and build diversity, to varying degrees of success - the live-service "looter" genre seems to be cursed with terrible launch states, from Anthem to Marvel's Avengers. Indie developers, meanwhile, have seized upon roguelite elements as a kind of secret sauce to brighten up any genre, encouraging players to craft new builds for each run and unlock more options for the next one. And, of course, there's the deckbuilding boom, with collectible card game elements grafted onto everything as developers scramble for a slice of Slay the Spire's pie. Every game seems to ask you to dive into its ocean of options and put together <i>your</i> character, <i>your</i> deck, your arsenal, <i>your</i> experience.</p><p>I thought I wanted this. I've always been drawn to the concept of infinite possibilities, of being able to customise my character just so. My previous game obsession, Warframe, snared me with promises of building my frames and weapons in countless fun, overpowered configurations, wrapped in a kitchen-sink space opera setting with a vast iceberg of lore, and... I mean, I did have fun! Warframe's moment-to-moment gameplay loop is really good! But the currents on that ocean of options dragged me in too many different directions, and I found myself losing focus and drifting away. Granted, there were other things about Warframe that frustrated me, chiefly the state of its grind and economy and a frustrating array of disconnected, underdeveloped subsystems, but I do think choice paralysis was a real factor in my losing interest in it.</p><p>Final Fantasy XIV's gameplay is much less fluid and dynamic than Warframe's. It's an old-world game in many senses - old-world control scheme, old-world combat system, even an old-world pricing model. The pacing is more sedate, and my character's powers far more restrained. Steady Night's basic 1-2-3 attack combo is never going to break the game's balancing wide open through six carefully selected perks. FFXIV calls its classes "jobs", and that actually feels very apposite: I have a job to do, with a clear job description and the right tools to perform it properly. All I have to do is use them right, and within that goal are so many interesting choices - when to move, where to use abilities, how to deal with a boss's special attacks - that I don't think I need any more of them.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Technically, there's one class, Blue Mage, with a <i>lot</i> of choices involved. Its gimmick is that it copies abilities from enemies, so it can pick a subset of skills from a gradually growing spellbook. However, Blue Mages are considered separate from the game's "core" classes, and they're not allowed in standard instances, mostly relegated to their own class-specific content. It's best to think of Blue Mage as an elaborate minigame rather than a proper class.</span><br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-81128538194661959282022-06-29T15:50:00.008-07:002022-06-29T15:59:35.360-07:00Thoughts about Love, Death & Robots, Season 1<p>I watched the first season of <i>Love, Death & Robots</i> end to end in a single day recently. Here are some thoughts about it. (I wouldn't call them anything so grandiose as a <i>review</i>.) Spoilers throughout, and, much like the series itself, this is probably NSFW and carries a content warning for sexual violence (discussed but not depicted). For those unfamiliar, I've included capsule summaries of each episodes in italics.<br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p><b>Three Robots</b><br /><i>Three robots tour a dead human city, which turns out to have been destroyed when humans gave cats sapience and opposable thumbs.</i><br />The three robots' contrasting voices really sell this one - I can see why these characters got a sequel. It's a good season opener, and a strong proof of concept for "anthology series of sci-fi short story adaptations". My main critique is that most of the humour isn't actually funny. I don't mean that as negatively as it probably sounds. The jokes still serve a useful purpose, setting the tone and developing the robots, but they don't induce laughter, which feels like it should count against them.<br />I'm not sure whether my mystification at how horrified the robots are by the concept of teabagging says more about me or the show.<br /></p><p><b>Beyond the Aquila Rift</b><br /><i>A space trucker wakes up from hypersleep to find himself off-course in a far-flung space station, accompanied by an old flame. It all turns out to be an illusion perpetuated by a spider alien that's captured the ship.</i><br />There was <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/love-death-and-robots-review/">a Wired piece</a> about <i>LD&R</i> which described one possible watch order for the first season as "an endless parade of stoic supermen and the women who deceive or escape them". This is, to be frank, a <i>baffling</i> assessment of the series as a whole - as far as I can remember, Beyond the Aquila Rift is the only real example of this happening. But I can see why it got this author's goat, because I got pretty tired of it here. I could see the twist from a mile off, but we actually have multiple layers of "it was all a dream!", and it really fails to play after the first.<br /></p><p><b>Ice Age</b><br /><i>A couple discovers a minature, accelerated civilization in an old freezer.</i><br />This is something I've termed a WIBFUI, or "Wouldn't It Be Fucked Up If" - that is to say, a story where a single outlandish concept is kind of the start and end of it all. WIBFUIs aren't inherently bad but they have to be <i>really</i> compelling to be good, and this one is right on the line. The cutaway to the construction workers making fun of Gail's teeth was a decent one-off gag, but I wanted to see more of that, more perspectives from the freezer's inhabitants; as-is, this feels like an extended tech demo with a loose framing device attached. (I'm told the second season has a lot more episodes like this, which is a prospect I don't love.)<br />I was really expecting Rob getting a faceful of miniature nuclear bomb to come back in some way.</p><p><b>Sonnie's Edge</b><br /><i>A woman pilots a bio-engineered monster in an underground cage match, continuing her undefeated streak. Afterwards, she's seduced by the ringmaster's mistress, who attempts to murder her, but the gladiator's consciousness is actually rooted in her monster following her original body's destruction.</i><br />The visuals here are absolutely top-notch - the colour palette is moody and striking, Khanivore and Turboraptor are fantastically designed, and the fight has weight and spectacle, probably the most of any fight in the season. Good voice acting, too, a nice range of scummy Brits (comfort food for a scummy Brit like me). A strong episode.<br />I was looking forward to this episode, because, unlike any of the others, I've actually read the short story on which it's based (by Peter F. Hamilton, in this case). There's a change I find interesting: in the original, Sonnie's body was destroyed in a car crash and the rape-revenge narrative was completely fabricated, while this version has the rape actually occurring but just not being her "edge". I'm not sure which version I like better.<br /></p><p><b>When the Yogurt Took Over</b><br /><i>Yoghurt becomes sapient and starts directing the course of humanity.</i><br />A fairly bland AI-risk narrative where it's yoghurt instead of AI, because... I don't know, the idea of sapient yoghurt is funny? Broadly inoffensive, for better and worse. Maybe I was thrown by the animation style; it reminded me a little too much of that cursed GrubHub ad which was briefly the Hated Thing of the Week.<br /></p><p><b>The Secret War</b><br /><i>WW2 Russian soldiers hunt demons in Siberia.</i><br />A friend of mine mentioned that this episode felt like lore for some sort of strategy game. I would play that game, but I would probably not watch this episode again. Atmospheric (Siberia looks great) but forgettable, ranking smack dab in the middle of the season's three war stories.<br />I laughed out loud at "Operation Hades". It's so groaningly on-the-nose that it wraps around to being amazing.<br /></p><p><b>Sucker of Souls</b><br /><i>A professor and his hired muscle run away from Dracula in some ruins.</i><br />I spent longer than this episode's runtime trying to think of things to say about it. It's tonally inconsistent, I guess? I thought it would do something more with the weakness to cats? Okay, one committed observation: I did not need to see that happening to Dracula's balls. I don't know if anyone needed to see that, actually.<br /></p><p><b>The Witness</b><br /><i>A woman witnesses the murder of a woman who looks just like her, and is pursued by the killer. She ends up killing him in self-defence, which is, in turn, witnessed by a man who looks just like the man she just killed. Presumably this starts a loop. Whoa! Spooky, right?</i><br />This seems to be a standout episode for a lot of critics, but it left me pretty cold. It's clear that the plot isn't the main attraction here - the visuals are. The lead creative is Alberto Mielgo, who was also the art director for <i>Into the Spider-Verse</i>, a film I have not stopped raving about ever since I saw it. But, compared to <i>Spider-Verse</i>, The Witness falls oddly flat. The occasional comic book sound effects feel token and disjointed, and the environment design mistakes cavernous, empty scale for character.<br />Our lead is a stripper, and, following a scene in a sex club where latex-clad drones caress the murderer, spends the entire second half of the episode with her tits and bush fully out. I actually have a pretty high tolerance for sex and nudity in media, but, even to me, it felt gratuitous here. The story, such as it is, doesn't rely on Zawora being naked or working specifically at a sex club, so I have to assume it's an atmospheric choice, but I don't understand what atmosphere it's trying to convey. It's as though Mielgo understood that cyberpunk is often sexually charged without really understanding why. </p><p><b>Suits</b><br /><i>Farmers in homemade mech suits defend their homes from alien assault.</i><br />This is my favourite episode of the season overall. It's not particularly transgressive or high-concept, just a fun romp about farmers fending off the aliens from <i>Deep Rock Galactic</i> (not actually the same creatures but the resemblance is strong) in some of the best-animated mecha I've seen in a while. There are a couple of wobbles; most notably, there's a weird failure of tension while the three pilots are waiting for an ammo drop, because a) they all have backup weapons and b) the timescales aren't very well established. But it's one blip in an otherwise strong episode that feels more complete than many of the other here. I really enjoy the colourful, slightly choppy animation style - it sets the mood perfectly.<br />Tumblr user femmenietzsche <a href="https://femmenietzsche.tumblr.com/post/190098098799/i-will-watch-any-movie-where-scientists-enter-a">once said</a> they would watch any movie in which scientists entered a Zone. Between Crazy Mel in this episode and VT in <i>Cowboy Bebop</i>, I think I will consume any media in which there's a large, gnarly blue-collar woman in a Used Future.<br /></p><p><b>Good Hunting</b><br /><i>A teenager in China on the brink of industrialisation bonds with the daughter of a shapeshifting spirit his father is trying to kill. Years later, when technology has driven magic from the world and she's been forced into sex work, he builds her a coal-fired shapeshifting robot body to replicate her lost powers, which she uses to kill rapists.</i><br />I don't think we as a society need any more stories about technology driving out magic from the world. I haven't read Ken Liu's original short story and it's possible that the motif works better there, but it's a theme I have little real patience for; technological advancement killing something mystical and special in the fabric of reality is a sentiment to which I just can't relate. Good Hunting already makes salient points about how double-edged technology can be; I'd have been happy with that alone.<br />I'm going to do something I usually try to avoid, and talk about What I Would Have Done Differently. Rework the entire prologue in Liang's teenage years, and cut the supernatural element altogether. We already have coalpunk superscience in the present day; adding spirits into the mix is superfluous, especially when their nature stops mattering for the meat of the story. Yan's a human now, and she and Liang bond in some other way. Maybe Liang's father is still into spirit lore and tells him stories of the Huli jing, and that way the finale is more satisfying, Liang and Yan synthesising their culture with the tools of colonial oppression to suit their own ends, rather than trying to recapture her old form.<br />Question: if the governor can only get off to machines, why was he ever drawn to Yan in her pre-robotic form?<br /></p><p><b>The Dump</b><br /><i>A guy squatting in a dump tells the city inspector trying to evict him the story of how he befriended an amorphous trash monster, which then eats the inspector.</i><br />I don't understand the significance of the dog. Did the trash monster start behaving like the dog when it absorbed it? Why is the dog still independently alive when Pearly dies within minutes of absorption? This probably made more sense in the original.<br />I complained earlier about the nudity in The Witness, but this is the episode in which the euphemistic "Love" in <i>Love, Death & Robots</i> feels the most shoehorned. They're shooting for comic raunchiness this time rather than sensuality, but it's more distracting than funny. Look, the gross guy has his dick out. Look, the other gross guy has a sex doll. Har har?<br /></p><p><b>Shape-Shifters</b><br /><i>Werewolf marines in Afghanistan fight werewolf terrorists.</i><br />A real stinker. The premise of werewolves being discriminated against is already quite hard to take seriously. One of the Taliban werewolves (what a conjunction of words) tears through an entire camp of soldiers on his own - I can't imagine beings with that kind of destructive potential, like their American counterparts, being treated with such sneering disdain by baseline humans. Cringing, resentful respect, maybe, but not open insults, surely.<br />Technically, some events occur in this episode. Werewolf friend killed, werewolf sad. Werewolf tracks terrorist werewolf, except <i>two</i> terrorist werewolves?! Wins anyway, good job, but sad because human not respect werewolf, for some reason. It doesn't even look good; it looks like Call of Duty campaigns will probably look in five years or so, but with worse lighting. Hard pass. Not my least favourite episode, though.<br /> </p><p><b>Fish Night</b><br /><i>Some travelling salesmen break down in the desert. They try to sleep in the car, but wake up to a ghostly prehistoric ocean surrounding them. One of them swims up into the ocean, becoming a ghost, and gets eaten by a ghost shark.</i><br /><i>This</i> is my least favourite episode. An especially abrupt and ill-defined WIBFUI, further hamstrung by shaky dialogue and a weird art style with distractingly hard lines (kind of like <i>Borderlands</i>, if <i>Borderlands</i> was about two boring men having an acid trip in a desert). I can't tell if it's not saying anything or if I'm too dense to understand what it's saying, and I don't like either option.<br /></p><p><b>Helping Hand</b><br /><i>An astronaut gets knocked adrift by space debris, and has to get to safety by ripping off her own arm.</i><br />It's a very abridged <i>127 Hours</i> in space, and it's pretty good. Critics say it has very good sound editing, which is fair praise. That's <i>really</i> not how microgravity manoeuvres work, though; I wouldn't raise this if the episode wasn't shooting decidedly for hard sci-fi.<br />I would have liked to see a more out-there animation style for this one, actually. Something that really plays up the vast apathetic vacuum of space and capitalism.<br /></p><p><b>Alternate Histories</b><br /><i>A montage of six possible alternate history timelines, diverging around Hitler dying in 1908 in various outlandish ways.</i><br />Probably the closest the season comes to straight-up comedy, and it generally hits. Two actual laughs: one eye-rolling chuckle at "Vladimir Putin, first <i>real</i> man on the Moon", and one mortified cackle at the four sex workers' legs forming a swastika around the dying Hitler. The animation is absolutely perfect, like an extremely cursed Kurzgesagt; in fact, the episode as a whole feels oddly Youtube-y, the kind of earnest, high-effort comic short you might find there in the mid-2010s.<br /></p><p><b>Lucky 13</b><br /><i>A military pilot adopts a dropship thought to be unlucky, leading it through a series of successful missions before sacrificing it to save her comrades.</i><br />Our last and best war story. It has the same grating almost-real animation as the other two, but somehow it didn't bother me as much here - maybe because we're in sci-fi land with energy projectiles and dropships, adding a little colour and flair despite the unimaginative rocks-on-rocks environments.<br />For most of the episode, I liked the ambiguity around whether Lucky 13 is self-aware. The shots through its internal cameras are a very smart way of building that question in your head. I'm not sure why, but the delayed self-destruct specifically killed the mystery for me - maybe because Lucky 13 hadn't been established as mechanically temperamental, just unlucky, so "it just malfunctioned and Colby got lucky!" didn't feel like a plausible alternative.<br /></p><p><b>Blindspot</b><br /><i>Four plucky cyborgs are bad enough dudes to rob a convoy and steal a microchip.</i><br />I will admit to a certain vulnerability for media that leans hard and somewhat ironically into 80s attitude. <i>Far Cry: Blood Dragon</i> isn't one of my favourite video games to play, but conceptually it's one of the games for whose existence I'm gladdest. Unsurprising, then, that I enjoyed this. I like that it works as a straight-up example of its genre as well as ribbing it; cut out the gore and the weird innuendo (which felt like it was added when the writer realised he'd forgotten the "Love" in <i>Love, Death & Robots</i>) and I would have eaten this up as a kid.<br />The twist is weak, though. I share the team's incredulity that Rookie didn't know about the brain backups. I saw it coming, and I don't think this episode needed that kind of twist.<br /></p><p><b>Zima Blue</b><br /><i>A journalist interviews a reclusive artist, who is revealed to be an advanced robot originally built as a pool cleaner and upgraded over time. Through his art, he has found the truth of what he wants from existence, and, for his final piece, he deliberately undoes his upgrades and reverts to being a simple pool cleaner.</i><br />This is a beautiful little denouement, which makes it strange that it was originally not the last episode - apparently Netflix reordered them at some point and the original finale was The Secret War, which would surely have been a way worse note to end on. I think they made the right call.<br />The animation is pretty and gets out of its own way; it feels like capital-A Art, where some other episodes (The Witness, Fish Night) feel more like animators flexing tricks they've learned. Zima himself is voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson in probably the standout vocal performance of the season, lending weight and wistful age to a fascinating character. I was surprised to learn that the original short story was from 2005 - somehow it has the air of an older, higher-minded era of sci-fi.</p><p><b>Top 3:</b> Suits, Zima Blue, Sonnie's Edge<br /><b>Bottom 3:</b> Fish Night, Shape-Shifters, Beyond the Aquila Rift<br /><b>Anodyne 3 (after Yahtzee Croshaw):</b> Sucker of Souls, When the Yogurt Took Over, The Secret War</p><p>Disagree with me violently in the comments.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-9982893526903446972022-06-11T07:16:00.013-07:002022-06-11T09:08:12.520-07:00[OSR] Ogres, Four Ways<p></p><p>Between zero and four of the following accounts are true.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rsG8ToEmTltLTKQMI1CZpsj_95N005Q4tS8rurcQn56ZUZaBX2Te8ZWVaWYCvDBObTZ1Baw0-47dBSpf0C3H6qmp5si_vmkE7vjofuXo_0GLnv3xM1uLwzlXuY7wjg_heqg6aa9JzQv4R_2SlZKSz5JelPuot1Dwvbwa7tjUGFaweEieNZ5wFQw/s1200/179.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_rsG8ToEmTltLTKQMI1CZpsj_95N005Q4tS8rurcQn56ZUZaBX2Te8ZWVaWYCvDBObTZ1Baw0-47dBSpf0C3H6qmp5si_vmkE7vjofuXo_0GLnv3xM1uLwzlXuY7wjg_heqg6aa9JzQv4R_2SlZKSz5JelPuot1Dwvbwa7tjUGFaweEieNZ5wFQw/s320/179.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><i>"Gruul Spellbreaker", art by Zoltan Boros</i><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Monastic Ogres</h2><p style="text-align: left;">In a realm long lost to time, there once lived an acharya. The warrior-students of his monastery were competent and respected, but they never found excellence as their peers did. At every monksmoot, the acharya would stand and watch his warriors strive, falter, and fall. For years he sought a cure, some secret technique or stylistic heresy that would bring victory. One night, beneath a blood moon, he fell to his knees and cried out to Jasvinder, the hero-god of competition and triumph, for aid. And Jasvinder, finding mortal need in his words, answered.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The warrior-students, They decreed, would be blessed with the strength of many, their fists imbued with shattering power unmatched by any monastic champion or wandering guru. But Jasvinder's blessing came with a stark warning: the monks must show humility and good sportsmanship in whatever success they might find.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Some theologians argue that Jasvinder had high hopes for Their chosen acolytes. Others contend that They, like any hero-god, had perfect knowledge of Their domain and knew full well that the warriors, unused to such victories and desperate for recognition, would fail. Either way, fail they did, and Jasvinder's punishment was instant.</p><p style="text-align: left;">With every cruel boast and every thoughtless jeer, the warriors found their bodies twisting, muscles bulging grotesquely to reflect the brutishness within. The <i>hoh garr</i>, the Swollen Ones, became the scourges of tournaments across the realm, and the asharya could only watch as his trusted students spiralled deeper into monstrousness in pursuit of conquest. The monasteries of old are long gone now, but the <i>hoh garr </i>bred true, and their descendants have followed the same path of glory through callous violence ever since.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Thus were born the ogres.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">***<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ogre: HD</b> 4, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 10, <b>Atk</b> punch 1d6/1d6.<br /><b>Guru:</b> <b>HD</b> 6, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 10, <b>Atk</b> punch 1d6/1d6. Has a <b>secret technique</b>.<br />Roaming bands of 1d6 ogres, or 3d6 in a hideout or makeshift "monastery". For each roll of 5+, one ogre is a guru.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>1d6 Secret Techniques</b><br /><b>1)</b> Walk up walls and on ceilings. Must end movement on a flat surface.<br /><b>2)</b> Project attacks out to a 15' range.<br /><b>3)</b> Catch arrows, negating ranged attacks unless distracted.<br /><b>4)</b> 1/round, touch or punch acts as a targeted <i>dispel magic</i>.<br /><b>5)</b> Precognitive. No-sell one attack or hostile spell per fight, after damage / Save rolls.<br /><b>6)</b> Free auto-hit 1d4 bite attack with the first successful punch each round.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Oversized humans (8-9' tall) wrapped in layers of sinew and simple sackcloth robes. Lots of visible blood vessels, especially on their limbs. They never smile.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Both arrogant and extremely insecure. Hypercompetitive with each other, and desperate to prove themselves against anything else. Diplomacy is tricky, as they've forgotten how to converse without trash-talking.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Disciplined, even mildly honourable, until they start losing, at which point all dirty tricks are on the table. In theory, they fight to incapacitation or surrender, but they get carried away easily.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Rain Ogres</h2><p style="text-align: left;">In a realm long lost to time, there once lived a sage. Her field of expertise was the bold new frontier of vapourcraft, clouds of millions of tiny motes of matter directed as one. These new vapours had found use in construction and warfare, helping the Sophocracy conquer her neighbours, but her ambitions were directed inward. If these tiny miracles could change the world, could they not change the body too - and perhaps even improve upon it?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Hundreds of volunteers were called down into the sage's sanctum as she tested and iterated. Few emerged intact, their lives and souls burnt as fuel for the engines of creation. But, at last, she captured the basic recipe for life in a swarm of dust particles, and infused them with the energies they would need to manifest that recipe. She named this living, glittering dust the Rain of Creation.</p><p style="text-align: left;">From a tiny sample of human flesh and an ample supply of lesser tissues, the Rain of Creation could spin whole new beings, made in the image of humanity but, as the sage saw it, improved. They towered over their progenitors, and their strength and stamina were vastly improved. But the sage had committed accidental blasphemy, for the Rain had corrupted the organ the Sophocrats held most sacred: the brain. The "rainfolk" could think, learn, and remember like humans, but their creative power was all but destroyed. They could not innovate.</p><p style="text-align: left;">For her crimes, the sage was driven into exile and her project dismantled. A few of her children escaped the subsequent purge, taking with them samples of the Rain of Creation and enough notes and schematics to give them a measure of control. They became the first Rainherds, and little by little they spawned enough of their kind to pass their knowledge on and sustain their population.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Thus were born the ogres.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ogre: HD</b> 4, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 8, <b>Atk</b> bludgeon 1d10. <b>Unstable</b>.<br /><b>Rainherd: HD</b> 6, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 8, <b>Atk</b> staff 1d8 or <b>Raincraft</b>. <b>Unstable</b>.<br />Roaming bands of 1d6 ogres, or clades of 2d6+2. One ogre in each clade is always a rainherd.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Unstable:</b> Without the constant passive attention of the Rain of Creation, an ogre cannot heal naturally and loses 1d6 hit points per day.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Raincraft:</b> Instead of attacking, a Rainherd can use their command staff to direct the Rain of Creation with a range of 60'. They can direct it to deal 1d6 automatic damage to a living creature, heal a living creature for 1d6 hit points, or do a simple manual task with the efficiency of one normal human. Damage dealt by the Rain bypasses most forms of damage resistance. The swarm will repeat the task on the Rainherd's initiative count until it's directed otherwise. It falls dormant immediately if the Rainherd falls unconscious or loses possession of the staff, or if the staff is broken.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Towering (9-10' tall), bulky, hairless humanoids, dressed in loose, concealing clothes. Blue-purple skin shot through with shining silver circuit-board patterns.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Wooden and joyless, like washed-up actors. Their desires - food and security, mostly - rule them, but they pursue them only because they always have. Some clades can negotiate; others have never thought of it, though they could be convinced.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Ogres don't hesitate to fight, but don't seem to enjoy it very much. They can't develop novel strategies, so they stick with simple, proven winners - they flank wherever possible, and are surprisingly stealthy.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Curse-Pyre Ogres</h2><p style="text-align: left;">In a realm long lost to time, there once lived a revolutionary. He had been a humble priest once, before the coup; now he was an outlaw, watching from the shadows as his former parish sweltered under the witches' yoke. Their grip was tenuous, and he knew a counter-revolution was inevitable, but how many might die in the meantime? He could wait no longer.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The revolutionary was a skilled occultist, and his tomes of holy lore had survived the witches' raids, hidden in a false chamber-pot. He rallied his flock in the abandoned mine outside town, shielding them from flying patrols, and, night after night, they hatched plans and made preparations. On the feast day of <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/04/glog-apocryphal.html">St Eliodoro</a>, the people of Ogrov gathered one final time in the ruined chapel, and, when they emerged to face the sheriff, the power of angels coursed through them.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The farmers and fishers of Ogrov had become mage-bane shock troops, bodies bulging and overflowing with holy strength. The sheriff and her deputies flung every curse in their arsenal, but the spells exploded into sacred flame before they could find their marks. The peasants' advance was not slowed, and they cut the officers down where they stood. The Battle of Ogrov had only one casualty for the rebels: the revolutionary himself, the seed of their liberation, slain by a panicked shot from the sheriff's crossbow. In his memory, his faithful comrades produced thousands of pamphlets and scattered them to the winds, and, the following St Eliodoro's Day, villages across the realm raised their own companies of "Rited".</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Restoration is now little more than a historical curiosity, and the Rite of Ogrov is outlawed in civilised lands. Still, every so often, an Ogrov Pamphlet will find its way into the hands of some fundamentalist sect or heretical noble, and a fresh band of zealots will rise in the countryside, usually turned to far darker, earthlier ends than freedom and justice. The Rite is costly and permanent, but, spelled out as it is in the Pamphlet, it's not <i>difficult</i>.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Thus were born the ogres.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ogre: HD</b> 4, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 10, <b>Atk</b> torch-mace 1d10 (sets target on fire on a 1). Takes half damage from fire. <b>Curse-Pyre</b>.<br />Roaming squads of 1d3+2 ogres, or platoons of 3d3+6 plus a human leader (usually a priest or elite soldier).</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Curse-Pyre:</b> Whenever an ogre is hit by a magical attack or fails a Save against a harmful spell, the effect is negated, and a burst of holy fire deals 1d8 damage to everything within 5', including the ogre (whose fire resistance applies normally).<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>The Rite of Ogrov:</b> At dawn on St Eliodoro's Day (early summer), gather up to 30 people on consecrated ground and have them burn their worldly possessions, including clothes, in a huge central pyre, while a priest (who is not affected) chants the Psalm of Renewing Flame. The pyre must burn continuously from sunrise to sunset. At dusk, each subject is transformed into an ogre, then takes 4d8 damage, which may kill them.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Huge, burly humans (8-9' tall) in religious garb or rags, or occasionally naked and tattooed with holy sigils. Skin appears stretched and strained, as though overfilled. Eyes flicker with painful white light.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Their past selves, after several years' cult indoctrination. Sinners are to be shunned and despised, everyone else is disposable at best. Single-minded, but smart enough for the mental gymnastics needed to justify extreme violence against almost anyone.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Direct, brutal assault against sinners, fear and suppression against anyone else in their way. Dusk is their favourite time to attack, lighting up the night sky with the fires they start.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Floral Ogres</h2><p style="text-align: left;">In a realm long lost to time, there was once a gardener. She worked on a noble's estate, and was well-liked by the other servants for her wit and kindness. And she liked them back, for the most part, even the ones she killed. The disappearances vexed the staff, certainly, and she was always there to comfort them after a loss, but inevitably the duchess would hire a replacement, and marvel at how beautifully her garden grew.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One year, a trader from a distant land sold the gardener seeds for a new breed of flower, a magnificent rose with petals of deep crimson. The seeds were from the land of the fae, the trader explained, and would grow tall and strong no matter the weather. The gardener put little stock in the story, and simply planted the seeds, fertilising them, as she usually did, with her own specially enriched compost.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But the land of the fae is a land of extremes. Just as it can bring forth extraordinary beauty, so too can it beget extraordinary cruelty and ugliness. Touched by the souls of the gardener's victims, the seeds turned sour in the earth and grew like weeds, spreading across the garden, collecting the fear and resentment of the dozen other bodies she'd scattered across the beds.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The gardener vanished one day in the winter, and was mourned by all. As they noticed the other disappearances stopping, the staff buried their suspicions, just as they had buried their questions about the gaping hole they'd found in the flowerbed, the bloodstains on the pathway, and the unearthly howls some of them had heard that night. By the time a new gardener was hired, the original was sinking into the earth miles away, feeding the progeny of the awful thing she had created.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Thus were born the ogres. <br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ogre: HD</b> 4, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 9, <b>Atk</b> thorny slam 1d10. <b>Thorns</b>.<br /><b>Ogre Hulk: HD</b> 8, <b>AC</b> chain, <b>Mv</b> normal, <b>Mr</b> 9, <b>Atk</b> tree trunk 2d8. <b>Thorns</b>.<br />Roaming mobs of 1d4 ogres, or groves of 3d4. For each roll of 4, one ogre is a hulk.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Thorns:</b> A melee attack that misses an ogre by 1-3 deals that much damage to the attacker.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Look:</b> Looming (10-11' tall) human-shaped tangles of plant matter, dark green and bark-brown, with clusters of crimson petals scattered at random like open wounds. No visible eyes, just a gaping, thorny maw.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Manner:</b> Utter avenging hatred of humanity, punctuated only by schadenfreude. They howl in voices made of half a dozen dissonant screams, but can't speak intelligibly. They won't harm merchants.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Tactics:</b> Ogres fight like serial killers, always attacking from hiding and isolating targets as soon as they can. They will usually drag off sufficiently weakened targets rather than killing them outright.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-65507165236236606022022-06-06T13:47:00.007-07:002022-06-06T14:00:45.383-07:00[OSR] A Visit from the Goon Squad<p>Discussion on Discord recently alighted on the topic of low-HD minion types, and, more specifically, campy cinematic goons, inspired by Power Rangers and its endless supply of thematically diverse grunts. I've also been reading through the draft docs for Skerples' Monster Overhaul, and one of the things that's really impressed me about it is how many bits of inspiration it offers for repurposing and reskinning one statblock with minor variations.<br /></p><p>Between those two things, I felt like writing up some goons. I'll be borrowing a couple of tricks (read: shamelessly nabbing stuff) from <a href="https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2015/07/hd-1-ac-leather-sword-1d6.html">this Goblin Punch post</a>.</p><p>(The title is from Jennifer Egan's novel of the same name, which I highly recommend).<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiun8WbiyPPL1MpI-FuIchdJqFffyHTjCg94WeuS4VTwx_0lcwrzn-H0W-AQAFdESFaTq4XhDjSpLGkZkpnuvBeg2oRxAzha98CNzrencLE6wCMUK8xD9I6z8QbIn1oKwQpBEcj3UvPzHJGzl5R--R08F2WA_9QkD_534ZJ2WLdYPeP9VQgecbO8pg/s1200/EarwigSquad_1200x.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="895" data-original-width="1200" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiun8WbiyPPL1MpI-FuIchdJqFffyHTjCg94WeuS4VTwx_0lcwrzn-H0W-AQAFdESFaTq4XhDjSpLGkZkpnuvBeg2oRxAzha98CNzrencLE6wCMUK8xD9I6z8QbIn1oKwQpBEcj3UvPzHJGzl5R--R08F2WA_9QkD_534ZJ2WLdYPeP9VQgecbO8pg/s320/EarwigSquad_1200x.png" width="320" /></a><br /><i>"Earwig Squad", art by Warren Mahy</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><span><a name='more'></a></span><h2 style="text-align: left;">Goon Squads<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">Goons are flunkies, dogsbodies, and fodder. They spend at least as much time on their aesthetics and general Vibes as they do on combat training. They make good bandits, cultists, low-rent mercenaries, and faceless grunts for the local warlord, wizard, etcetera. Goons are seldom if ever encountered alone; instead, their fundamental unit of organisation is the Goon Squad.</p><p style="text-align: left;">A Goon Squad always has <b>armour</b> as leather, <b>moves</b> at normal speed, and <b>attacks</b> for 1d8 damage with some sort of weapon. It has <b>2-5 HD</b> depending on size (1d4+1 if you like randomness), but <b>fights, Saves, and is otherwise treated as though it had 1 HD</b>. Morale, tactics, and general aesthetics are determined by the squad's <b>gimmick</b> (see below).<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">A Goon Squad has one member per HD. Goons normally get in each other's way too much for this to be worth any extra attacks. Single target Save-or-out-of-action effects instead take out a single goon automatically (no Save), for 8 points of damage to the Squad. Area attacks deal double damage to Goon Squads.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">If any of a Goon Squad's HD roll a natural 8, the squad includes an <b>elite</b>. A squad with an elite has an <b>extra attack per round</b> as long as it has 9 or more hp, and a <b>special ability</b> as determined by its gimmick.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">1d6 Goon Squad Gimmicks</h2><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">1) Dancing Dead<br /></h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 7.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Sickles, scythes, and shovels (slashing or blunt damage).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Skintight black leathers and corpse paint.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> Dancing like marionettes, twisting and leering.</li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Appear from hiding and try to scare foes into submission with their creepiness and weight of numbers, surrounding them if possible. They'll never attack without showing their faces first, though.</li><li><b>Elites:</b> Dancing Dead elites are called <b>Undertakers</b>, and are extremely low-grade necromancers. Once per fight, in addition to attacking, an Undertaker can summon a skeletal hand to attempt to disarm or trip an enemy within 30'; if the attempt fails, the ability is not expended.</li></ul><p> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">2) Bugsnackers</h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 6.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Giant bugs on sticks, tied, glued, or skewered (piercing or poison damage).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Soil-stained wretches, rags concealing a range of interesting skin conditions.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> Jittery, unfocused, easily angered.</li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Jump the enemy from a height advantage, if possible, screaming and jabbing, and hope the initial charge breaks them. If it doesn't, withdraw, rinse, and repeat.</li><li><b>Special:</b> Bugsnackers are excellent climbers.</li><li><b>Elites:</b> Bugsnacker elites are called <b>Glittermoths</b>, and have vestigial moth wings that shed allergenic pollen. Adjacent living enemies must Save at the start of their turn or waste it coughing and spluttering; you get advantage on each Save after your first exposure.</li></ul><p> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">3) Pyremongers<br /></h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 8.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Flaming torches (fire damage).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Spare orange robes, stupid flaming headdresses.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> No inside voices, no internal censors, and no sense of irony.<br /></li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Proclaim superiority, ignite something valuable, then wade in and raise hell. Defence is for the weak.</li><li><b>Elites:</b> Pyremonger elites are called <b>Firestarters</b>. Twice per fight, in addition to attacking, a Firestarter can throw a Molotov to ignite something flammable within 30'. Living targets can Save to dodge.</li></ul><p> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">4) Aluminiards</h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 7.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Shock prods (electric damage, can be set to nonlethal).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Tinfoil spacesuits, misshapen glass bubble helmets.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> A very nervous person's impression of a cold, emotionless killing machine.</li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Stall and trash talk for as long as possible - they'd rather not fight if it can be avoided. Lash out wildly if provoked or, heaven forbid, laughed at.</li><li><b>Special:</b> Aluminiards take 50% extra damage from electricity. <br /></li><li><b>Elites:</b> Aluminiard elites are called <b>Fulminiards</b>. A Fulminiard's first successful attack per fight delivers a powerful stunning shock - Save or be paralyzed for 1d3 rounds.</li></ul><p> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">5) Red Dandies<br /></h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 5.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Rapiers (piercing damage).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Doublets, hose, and tricorne hats, in various red-and-black patterns.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> Boastful, swaggering. They flounder if they have to do anything but boast and swagger.</li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Taunt enemies into making the first move, if possible. They like to move fights around, prizing pretty or dramatic locations over tactically advantageous ones.</li><li><b>Special:</b> Red Dandies ignore difficult terrain. <br /></li><li><b>Elites:</b> Red Dandy elites are called <b>Seigneurs</b>. Whenever a melee attack against a squad containing a Seigneur misses, the Seigneur may attempt a free disarm or trip against the attacker.</li></ul><p> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">6) Horned Legion</h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Morale:</b> 8.</li><li><b>Weapons:</b> Pitchforks and swords (piercing or slashing damage).</li><li><b>Look:</b> Demon cosplay - devil-horn helmets, red-dyed leather scales.</li><li><b>Manner:</b> The kind of "evil" that cares less about callous self-interest than about the abstract concept of "being evil".</li><li><b>Tactics:</b> Trick, undermine, and backstab. They love to separate enemies and pick on lone targets. They abhor straight fights, even if they seem winnable.<br /></li><li><b>Elites:</b> Horned Legion elites are called <b>Cambions</b>, and eschew helmets in favour of real grafted-on horns, often with gnarly scars. A Cambion can use their turn to sacrifice a regular Legionnaire (1d8 damage to the squad) to summon 1d3+1 HD of lesser demons, which will obey orders for a while but may turn on the Legion if they start losing. </li></ul><p> </p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-70228363891083312942022-06-06T11:40:00.004-07:002022-06-06T11:40:37.410-07:00[Fluff] Quarter-Hour of Writing Challenge: Laws and Customs<p>A challenge by <a href="https://attnam.blogspot.com/2022/06/challenge-quarter-hour-of-writing.html">Library of Attnam</a>, discovered via <a href="https://attnam.blogspot.com/2022/06/challenge-quarter-hour-of-writing.html">Archons March On</a>.</p><p>This post is brought to you by PG Tips tea. <i>PG Tips: It's What They Had At The Shop.</i><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOiuoe9bEwrBgkdIXOdCD8ZmM8zwKpkqR9IT0zHga6tPYcOwVAZYL050mjFxex97lJw3gMmrSHy9i95buSZ3wvzHVNksvhoiWVCLqiJeE32PeGgIO2782fcCFjCa4Z0Pmnv6r1Ls7nogFf6O1LkT3ssNSoUpwM1rYjjHWedk0zSOUhmS4ZHJHBvU/s620/6f04fca6012a1554a9c519e101002538.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="620" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOiuoe9bEwrBgkdIXOdCD8ZmM8zwKpkqR9IT0zHga6tPYcOwVAZYL050mjFxex97lJw3gMmrSHy9i95buSZ3wvzHVNksvhoiWVCLqiJeE32PeGgIO2782fcCFjCa4Z0Pmnv6r1Ls7nogFf6O1LkT3ssNSoUpwM1rYjjHWedk0zSOUhmS4ZHJHBvU/s320/6f04fca6012a1554a9c519e101002538.jpg" width="320" /><br /></a><i>"Azor's Elocutors", art by Johannes Voss</i><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>I used to make custom <i>Magic: the Gathering</i> cards. (I still do occasionally.) If you hung around in that community for long enough, you would start to spot recurring themes, convergent ideas. One that proved especially persistent was the idea of a "law" mechanic, where cards would say some variation of<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">It is against the law to [x].</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;">Whenever an opponent breaks the law, [y].</p><p>I understand why this idea was popular: it was thematically resonant, and writing that reads as fluid plain English but still has a meaning in <i>Magic</i>-ese makes you feel extremely clever. (I don't mean this in a derisive sense - I know this thrill because I've felt it first-hand.)</p><p>In the execution, though, this mechanic usually failed. Because both law and punishment were variable, you tended to end up with a set of cards with too many moving parts that stacked too well with themselves, clumping together into a homogeneous mass of "it is against the law for your opponent to play <i>Magic</i>, and the punishment is five unrelated wads of value".</p><p>But then, isn't that somehow thematically appropriate? Isn't that the nature of any sufficiently old system of laws, countless separate engines chained together by centuries of precedent and argumentation? At its extreme, such a system is a black box to anyone not initiated.</p><p>Imagine a ruined city governed by an ancient, cobweb-encrusted judge-engine, its many perils firing confusingly but consistently in response to certain stimuli. The trick to plundering the dungeon's treasures and escaping intact is to reconstruct the byzantine system of laws and diktats the engine follows - rules often learned painfully, as in the card game Mao. Perhaps there are many such sites, and an order of archaeologist-lawyer-thieves devoted to studying and unpicking the law.</p><p>They would surely pay handsomely for ancient legal codices and court transcripts, though retrieving such things <i>intact</i> could prove gruelling.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-20632578464081656582022-06-02T06:32:00.009-07:002022-06-21T09:39:41.727-07:00[GLOG] Dead Century, a GLOG (Unfinished Stream of Consciousness Edition)<p style="text-align: left;">Dead Century is a setting I've been mucking about with for a long while. It's set 50 years after a magical zombie apocalypse called the Spasm, in the ruins of a world fought over by squabbling arch-necromancers, with a few pockets of human resistance flying under the radar, beneath notice compared to the grand schemes of the dead. I guess I'd call it "grimbright" - shit's bad, but there's hope for change, and the human spirit has persisted.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I've wanted to make a GLOG out of Dead Century for ages. Today, as we "celebrate" 70 years of the corpse-queen's impotent reign over this wretched isle, it felt appropriate to try and hammer some of it into shape, neatness be damned. So, in the hope of breaking my creative block and maybe harnessing the momentum to do some more work on OLOG, here are the beginnings of a system, I guess. Concrit very welcome. Here's a pretty picture; there's naught but rules under the cut.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTFzfeudeUMa3BKIiB0H8oKk6hDlH6KZ-SmO6pfGfkY8RxdrIHxM8dwBUYDj1WLWqSZC1NrNqAM84sCM3vHqkemmrkndz8qa8VgoIMNcWKvvhpOUSGP240rumC7KfbbHdyYTSUBIt1bg4bRgEfVmeVNADIDs57zj7xyZR0-EP1lJ6GoRCnpMvo0w/s1280/mtg___crowded_crypt_by_jthreat_derluov-fullview.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1280" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTFzfeudeUMa3BKIiB0H8oKk6hDlH6KZ-SmO6pfGfkY8RxdrIHxM8dwBUYDj1WLWqSZC1NrNqAM84sCM3vHqkemmrkndz8qa8VgoIMNcWKvvhpOUSGP240rumC7KfbbHdyYTSUBIt1bg4bRgEfVmeVNADIDs57zj7xyZR0-EP1lJ6GoRCnpMvo0w/w400-h313/mtg___crowded_crypt_by_jthreat_derluov-fullview.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"Crowded Crypt", art by <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/jthreat/art/MTG-Crowded-Crypt-892895647">Jarel Threat</a></i><br /></div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Roll 3d3 three times in order for your <b>Fortitude</b>, <b>Reflex</b>, and <b>Will</b>. You may swap two scores.</li><li>Your <b>Prowess</b> starts at 11.</li><li>Your <b>Luck</b> equals 33 minus the sum of your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.</li><li>Choose a <b>class</b> and gain its Template A. (Classes to come.)<br /></li><li>Record your <b>skills</b>, <b>equipment</b>, and <b>Defence</b>.<br /></li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">Stats and Saves<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">The Save is the only type of roll in Dead Century. Whenever you do something for which both success and failure are both plausible and interesting (combat is always interesting), or whenever you try to resist a hazard, roll a d20 and compare it to the relevant stat. Roll equal or under to succeed.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Save vs. <b>Fortitude</b> for matters of strength and endurance.</li><li>Save vs. <b>Reflex</b> for matters of speed, agility, and evasion.</li><li>Save vs. <b>Will</b> for matters of mental strength and raw determination, and for anything not clearly covered by Fortitude or Reflex.<br /></li><li>You may Save vs. <b>Prowess</b>, instead of whichever stat would normally apply, if you have proficiency in the task at hand.</li><li>You may <i>always</i> choose to Save vs. <b>Luck</b>, regardless of which stat would normally apply. Each time you Save vs. Luck and succeed, reduce your Luck by 1 permanently.</li></ul><p>If bonuses or penalties apply to a Save, apply them to the stat being tested, not the roll.</p><p>If you have active opposition to a task outside combat, both competitors Save, and the better margin of success / failure wins. PCs always win ties.<br /></p><p>You have one more stat, <b>Defence</b>. It defaults to 0 and doesn't scale with level, but can be increased by class abilities and armour.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Skills</h2>Like
most GLOG variants, skills are binary - you either have a skill or you
don't. If you have a skill, you are proficient in tasks related to it,
meaning you can Save vs. Prowess for those tasks instead of whichever
stat would normally apply. Skills also let you do simple tasks related
to your skill automatically; if failing at a task would make you look
incompetent at the skill, you can do it without a Save. Skills never
apply directly to combat or to resisting harm.<p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Pain</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Most types of bodily harm are represented as one or more points of Pain. Most attacks and hazards inflict one point of Pain if they hit; some might inflict more.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Whenever you suffer a point of Pain, choose something from the list below to wager...<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>An <b>advantage</b> you hold in combat - high ground, a flanking position, a barricade, etcetera.</li><li>A point of <b>Grit</b> or <b>Ward</b> (see below).</li><li>Your <b>life</b>.</li></ul><p>... then Save vs. an appropriate stat (usually Fortitude for physical harm, but
area-of-effect attacks target Reflex and direct mental assaults target Will, and as usual you can always substitute Luck). If you fail, you lose your wager.</p><p>Some particularly grievous sources of Pain have a <b>Severity</b> rating, which penalises Saves against them by that number.<br /></p><p>Some kinds of attack might limit what you can wager. High ground is no use against psychic attacks, for example.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Grit and Ward</h2><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Grit</b> represents a character's fighting spirit, defensive skill, and ability to avoid serious harm and shrug off lesser injuries. You start with zero maximum points of Grit. If you have maximum Grit, you can recover it by resting (see "Maintenance and Recovery", below).<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ward</b> is similar to Grit, but supernatural in nature. It can resist many things that Grit can't, but doesn't usually come back on its own.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Combat</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Group initiative. PCs and their allies go first, unless surprised or outmanoeuvred.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">You can take two substantial actions in a round from the following list. You can't usually take the same action twice.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Move about 30'.<br /></li><li>Attack.</li><li>Stunt. <br /></li><li>Ready up to one item and/or stow up to one readied item.</li><li>Something else. <br /></li></ul><div><p>To <b>attack</b>, Save vs. an appropriate stat - if you're proficient in combat this will be Prowess, otherwise it's Fortitude for melee and Reflex for ranged. This Save is penalised by the target's Defence stat. If you succeed, you hit and the target suffers Pain; otherwise, you miss.</p><p>To <b>stunt</b>, declare what you're trying to do (knock down an opponent, trip them, disarm them, etcetera), then Save vs. an appropriate stat, usually Fortitude or Reflex. (Being proficient in combat will not make you proficient in manoeuvres by default, though you may be proficient in some types of manoeuvre through other means. Skills never apply.) This Save is penalised by the target's maximum Grit, as more seasoned fighters are wiser to such dirty tricks. If you succeed, you pull it off; otherwise, you fail, and likely put yourself in a worse position.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Encumbrance</h2><p style="text-align: left;">You have a number of item slots equal to 4 plus your Fortitude. Bigger items may take up more slots; smaller ones like rations and waterskins can stack three to a slot, but only items of the same kind can stack. Only the top third of your inventory, rounded down, is accessible quickly (i.e. with an action in combat); the rest takes substantial time to sift through.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Maintenance and Recovery</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Humans need the following three things to live reasonably well each day:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A skinful of potable water. </li><li>Two meals.<br /></li><li>Eight hours' sleep (which need not be consecutive) somewhere non-hostile.</li></ul><p>At the start of each day, check how many of the above conditions are met, and to what extent.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>All three fully met:</b> You lose a point of Exhaustion if you have any. Otherwise, you regain a point of Grit, up to your maximum.<br /></li><li><b>One or two fully met, the others half-met:</b> Not ideal, but you can get by like this.</li><li><b>All half-met:</b> You gain a point of Exhaustion if you don't already have one.</li><li><b>At least one not met:</b> You gain a point of Exhaustion for each unmet need.</li></ul><p>Your current exhaustion applies as a penalty to all Saves. There are special penalties for going three days with the same need completely unmet:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Sleep:</b> Save vs. Will or pass out for 24 hours.</li><li><b>Food:</b> Save vs. Fortitude or die.<br /></li><li><b>Water:</b> Save vs. Fortitude, then die anyway.</li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">Experience and Levels</h2><p style="text-align: left;">1 XP for each player per significant accomplishment, maybe more for something truly impressive. Some examples:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Defeat a specific, powerful undead threat.</li><li>Put a permanent end to a problem plaguing a community.</li><li>Recover a significant body of knowledge or critical piece of infrastructure from before the Spasm.</li><li>Complete some quest of great personal import to one of the PCs (everyone gets this, not just the character whose problem it is).</li><li>Become rich.</li><li>If you're already rich, become fabulously so.</li><li>Found a lasting community or institution and protect it from inevitable threats.</li></ul><p>To gain a level, spend XP equal to twice your current level. Gain +1 Prowess, +1 to your choice of Fortitude, Reflex, or Will, and the next sequential template in a class of your choice (A>B>C>D), with all attendant benefits.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Monsters, NPCs, and Conversions<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">Monsters and NPCs only have four stats, besides their attacks:<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Prowess</b>, used exactly as PCs use it. For conversions, 9+HD.</li><li><b>Body</b>, which substitutes for Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. For conversions, 4+HD.</li><li><b>Defence</b>, again just like PCs. For conversions, AC-10 for ascending AC, or 10-AC for descending AC.</li><li><b>Grit</b>. For conversions, HD/2, rounded down. Elementals, spirits, and similar nonconcrete beings may have natural Ward instead.<br /></li></ul><p>Each attack is described in terms of its Severity and the number of points of Pain it inflicts. A basic "0x1" attack, for example, inflicts one point of Pain with Severity 0 (no modifier to the Save).</p><p>For conversions, attacks deal a number of Pain points equal to the number of dice rolled. Severity should be 2 for d10s and 4 for d12s, otherwise 0. A 3d6 fireball becomes a 0x3 attack; a 2d12 thunderbolt becomes a 4x2.</p><p>Use a regular Prowess save for morale checks, perhaps with a bonus for especially disciplined or fanatical foes or a penalty for cowardly ones.<br /></p><p>Example statblocks:<b><br />Gretchling</b> - Prw 10, Bdy 5, Def 0 (unarmoured), Grit 0, Atk knife 0x1.<br /><b>Owlbear</b> - Prw 14, Bdy 9, Def 4 (thick hide), Grit 2, Atk claw 0x1 / claw 0x1 / bite 4x1.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Still Not Present Yet</h2><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Classes.<br /></li><li>Currency and equipment.<br /></li><li>A bestiary.</li><li>Exploration procedures. <br /></li><li>Proper setting information.</li><li>Worldbuilding tools / adventure hooks.</li><li>Community management procedures?</li></ul></div></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-30037878721026426662022-01-14T09:38:00.003-08:002022-01-14T09:38:40.476-08:00[GLOG?] Pain<p>I've been doing a lot of design by subtraction recently. OLOG's main mechanical trick is that it does away with variable ability scores - there are still some calculated stats like Defence and Save values, but instead of Strength, Intelligence, Tastiness etc., you have <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/07/olog-by-sheer-virtue-virtues-v3.html">Virtues</a>.</p><p>What else can I tear apart and rework? I put most of this together on my lunch break. (This isn't going into OLOG, I just wanted to get the thoughts down.) <br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Pain</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Hit points are gone. Damage rolls are gone. Replace them with <b>Pain</b>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Pain is real, tangible harm, like getting hit with a weapon, fireball, or death curse. Lesser injuries might hurt or inconvenience you, but are not classed as Pain.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Creatures have a pain <b>threshold</b> (T). 1 is puny, 5 is hardy. Most humans have an innate Threshold of 3.<br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>When you suffer Pain, roll a d6. If it exceeds your Threshold, you die. <br /></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRErHRc8HQuIXPjuRoyc-oZfTmsVyX-Uw_ODECWP9VmCFFqRBPC80M4zt9KTpNVs20Nu-7116u_cZa4hRQXnVOH4EBAG4-Djri7tzMI7EZKFYu13ouariwXofrNiefKN1W5RfpJI3vctR9yQhGDTv0mDPpOzMOqkitfuqaLw96RF_8W7sziXOe_SA=s2500" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1836" data-original-width="2500" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRErHRc8HQuIXPjuRoyc-oZfTmsVyX-Uw_ODECWP9VmCFFqRBPC80M4zt9KTpNVs20Nu-7116u_cZa4hRQXnVOH4EBAG4-Djri7tzMI7EZKFYu13ouariwXofrNiefKN1W5RfpJI3vctR9yQhGDTv0mDPpOzMOqkitfuqaLw96RF_8W7sziXOe_SA=w400-h294" width="400" /></a><br /><i>art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3qlYJY">Dominik Mayer</a></i> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p>If you'd rather not risk death every time you get hit, you big dirty coward, there are ways to protect yourself.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Wards</h3><p style="text-align: left;">A Ward is something that can save you from Pain - think of it as sacrificial armour, something you can wager instead of your life. Here are a few things that serve as Wards:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A sturdy shield (an item).</li><li>A blessing of health (a buff).</li><li>A barricade to hide behind (an environmental element).</li><li>Your personal grit (a character ability).<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">Whenever you suffer Pain, you may invoke a Ward to change the stakes of the die roll. Instead of wagering your life, you wager the integrity of the Ward, and roll against its threshold rather than your own. If the d6 breaks the threshold, the blow is still absorbed, but the Ward is disabled and can't be used again, though it may recharge if some condition is met.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The shield breaks. It can probably be repaired.</li><li>The blessing wears off. It won't come back unless your party's priest casts it again.</li><li>The barricade cracks and crumbles. You could rebuild it, but you'd be starting from scratch.</li><li>Fatigue and stress set in and dull your grit, but you'll get it back as soon as you have a minute to rest.</li></ul><p>Most Wards are not universal - there will be some sources of Pain against which they can't be invoked.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The shield won't help you against area attacks, or threats you don't see coming.</li><li>The blessing only wards you against mundane harm - magical attacks bypass it.</li><li>The barricade naturally only works against things coming from the other side of it. <br /></li><li>Grit is a special case. We'll say this one <i>is</i> universal. </li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Other Considerations<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;">Attack rolls and Defence are still assumed to be a thing.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Without variable damage dice, we need a new way to handle weapon power. Particularly powerful weapons could be represented in a few ways - powerful attacks could have a penetration value that reduces the threshold of physical Wards invoked against them. With this in mind, Wards could well have thresholds higher than 5. These Wards never fail under normal conditions - you'll need a penetrative weapon to break them.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Especially nasty attacks, like dragon breath and killing curses, could potentially cause multiple rolls' worth of Pain, either to single targets or spread out across a group. You can't use the same Ward more than once against the same attack. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm still not sure how to handle body armour. It could be a simple Defence buff, but that feels against the spirit of the system. It could be its own Ward, but having a whole suit of armour fall apart to a single decisive hit feels silly; I considered armour having a degrading threshold (it gets worse as you take more hits) but that's a bit too fiddly for my tastes. My current, provisional ruling is that armour increases your <i>personal</i> threshold, but is subject to being partially or fully ignored by penetrating weapons - maybe it's like</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Unarmoured: T3</li><li>Leather: T4</li><li>Chain: T5 - you can get through with a non-penetrating weapon, but it's going to be tricky<br /></li><li>Plate: T6 - penetrating weapons <i>needed</i> to do any harm<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">Nonlethal attacks work the same as lethal ones, but the failure condition is "you're unconscious" or similar rather than "you die". <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Instead of dealing extra damage, critical hits bypass almost all Wards.</p><p style="text-align: left;">You might also be able to attack some Wards directly if you want them
gone. If successful, this forces a roll against that Ward, rather than
the target getting to choose.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Pain in Action<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">The anti-priest Arlene, hastening home to her safehouse, feels her heart sink as hoofbeats echo behind her. An errant Stag-Knight is tailing her, no doubt seeking the bounty on her head.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Arlene has:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Personal T4</b>, including a +1 bonus for her leathers.</li><li><b>Grit (T2)</b>, as she's not really a fighter.</li></ul><p>The Stag-Knight has:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Personal T5</b>, including a +2 bonus for his chainmail.</li><li><b>Grit (T4)</b>, he's an experienced warrior.<br /></li><li>A <b>shield (T3)</b>.</li></ul><p>As a straight fight, this isn't looking good for Arlene; her magic is almost spent, and she doesn't have a weapon powerful enough to be of use against chainmail. She'll need to be smart to have a chance of survival.</p><p>Arlene turns on her heel and draws her bow, taking a potshot at the approaching Stag-Knight. The arrow finds its mark, so now the Stag-Knight faces Pain. He chooses to invoke his shield, rolls a d6, and gets a 3, not enough to break his shield's threshold of 3. The arrow buries itself deep in the wooden board, but the shield holds </p><p>The Stag-Knight dismounts as he reaches Arlene and draws his sword, ready to cut down the infidel before him. His swing connects, so now it's Arlene's turn to face Pain. She invokes her meagre grit, figuring she'll need as many extra chances against this foe as she can get, and rolls a 3, enough to break her grit threshold. She ducks beneath his hopeful high swing, but it's close.</p><p>With her grit disabled, Arlene has no Wards left, and any blows that land on her now will be potentially deadly. She drops her bow and makes a show of drawing a blade of her own, teeth gritted in desperation. The Stag-Knight watches her sword arm with fierce focus, and doesn't catch the subtle swell of violet-edged darkness coiling around her other hand.</p><p>She slams her left hand into the Stag-Knight's flank. <i>Castigate</i> is a potent curse, inflicting two separate Pains. The Stag-Knight wasn't expecting this attack, so he can't invoke his shield again; he invokes his grit against one Pain, but can't use the same Ward twice against a single attack, so he has no choice but to suffer the other directly to his body.</p><p>He resolves the first Pain against his grit, and rolls a successful 2, but it doesn't matter. The second, resolved against his body, rolls an unlucky 6. The sweet, calculated words of Him Below flow through the Stag-Knight's body like molten iron, and he collapses, steaming, to the ground.</p><p>Arlene catches her breath and retrieves her bow. Having had a moment to recover, her grit recharges - should she get into another fight, she'll be able to use it again. But no amount of grit can protect her from her patron. The <i>castigate</i> that felled the Stag-Knight used more of His power than she's earned, and the accountants Beneath never sleep.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">But Why, Though?</h2><p style="text-align: left;">It makes combat scarier, and gives me interesting dials to turn, to make characters tougher in different ways. Heavy armour, hard-won fighting experience, and magical protection can all impact a character's toughness, and they can do so in different ways (increased personal threshold, increased grit, and a whole separate Ward, respectively).</p><p style="text-align: left;">It is also badly in need of refinement and testing, but getting the ideas out early can't hurt!<br /></p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-48587102909133828242022-01-07T13:52:00.000-08:002022-01-07T13:52:20.157-08:00[OSR General] AI-Generated Monsters<p>Reddit user Deep_Fold trained an AI on D&D monsters and produced <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/ry9ozh/art_i_trained_an_ai_on_the_dd_monsters_and_asked/">some fun images</a>. <a href="https://whosemeasure.blogspot.com/">Phlox</a> challenged some of the gretchlings that coalesce and fester on his Discord server to put stats to them. This is me doing that.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Chlorophore</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjL3ztJoZx7XAjNHk6JqTpVbX2RBBLAYfckJNmC9yofFIG5KvxX7IwUZtT0DabwcZWmfmvum_WrG8xESnr31VcOdqay98cSckpSVYw4iXCK9o_bCYe5o8t29vB9v0P9FTIMMqbNiUdoNs9ei3rudjt2j8gbiFBFogPQUAyV6YyA5j5XGmbDwfrq1mw=s255" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="255" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjL3ztJoZx7XAjNHk6JqTpVbX2RBBLAYfckJNmC9yofFIG5KvxX7IwUZtT0DabwcZWmfmvum_WrG8xESnr31VcOdqay98cSckpSVYw4iXCK9o_bCYe5o8t29vB9v0P9FTIMMqbNiUdoNs9ei3rudjt2j8gbiFBFogPQUAyV6YyA5j5XGmbDwfrq1mw" width="255" /> </a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Solitary, nocturnal jungle ambush predator. Sometimes attempts to disguise itself as a leaf, but, since it's the size of a horse, this doesn't work. Fortunately, it has other means of stealth.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 4<br /><b>AC:</b> as chain<br /><b>Move:</b> normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 6<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> stupid dog, practiced but predictable<br /><b>Speech:</b> wet reptilian grunting<br /><b>Damage:</b> tendril 1d8 / tendril 1d8 (odd rolls are acid damage, even rolls are bludgeoning); or blinding flash (see below)<br /><b># Enc.:</b> solitary</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Light-Snuffing Aura:</b> Mundane light sources within 30' of the chlorophore are snuffed. Natural or magical sources are suppressed. The chlorophore can turn this aura on and off at will.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Blinding Flash:</b> Used instead of an attack. The chlorophore releases stored light in a hot bright wave. Everyone in a 60' radius must Save or be blinded. If you fail two consecutive Saves, it's permanent. The chlorophore must snuff five torches or lanterns, or spend a day sleeping in direct sunlight, to recharge this ability.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If harvested within an hour of death while charged, a chlorophore's light glands can be used as flash grenades, or sold for 10gp apiece to a sufficiently sketchy alchemist.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Tragedian</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpAzzFqhG_DwNh2mjcevR38XcqoAUBNsoU33k8FwpNKue-qsvELYz4hdiHRc4q9NOqxYVE_9LDL5f1j1GsT1AcPSBlINxoFTZBTkh1mZTNa0T39g4OqyvknK3gBTFgi9LSy_zx3LvXXywQLO93tvoNpANdIeS6nXXoV4jNep9dYE4gZu5_vDms77s=s256" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="256" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpAzzFqhG_DwNh2mjcevR38XcqoAUBNsoU33k8FwpNKue-qsvELYz4hdiHRc4q9NOqxYVE_9LDL5f1j1GsT1AcPSBlINxoFTZBTkh1mZTNa0T39g4OqyvknK3gBTFgi9LSy_zx3LvXXywQLO93tvoNpANdIeS6nXXoV4jNep9dYE4gZu5_vDms77s" width="256" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Wise librarians know it's bad luck to shelve too many sad stories, especially true ones, in close proximity. Only the very wisest librarians know why. Tragedians are creatures of ink and sorrow, crawling off the page to drown the world in misery and melodrama.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 1<br /><b>AC:</b> as leather<br /><b>Move:</b> normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 10<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> florid and articulate but wholly irrational<br /><b>Speech:</b> half-coherent babbling about various horrible things (use <a href="https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2018/03/1d200-negative-depressing-dangerous.html">this post</a> for inspiration)<br /><b>Damage:</b> draining touch 1d6-3 plus misery (see below)<br /><b># Enc.:</b> moan of 1d4+2 or lamentation of 2d6<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Misery:</b> If a tragedian's draining touch rolls net 0 damage or less, it instead inflicts 1 point of misery. If the target already has 5 or more points, instead it's 1d3 Wisdom damage.<br /> Apply your current misery as a penalty to all d20 rolls. Whenever you fail a roll that you would have succeeded on if not for your misery, Save or spend the next round doing nothing but wailing, sobbing, and lamenting your failures.<br />Receiving a vigorous pep-talk in a safe place from someone with no misery, which takes at least a minute, removes all your misery.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Tragedian bodies contain about a pint each of useable ink. Writing with tragedian ink is said to improve your command of language.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Shard Puppet<br /></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhufpC-GANQZ-iMcX2tqO6rupIvdWbLAnpa8Iwurqx7_48GF9ujKK48THJlld4Ytu8IRa0r2goSRVC77FdJA1EjTGHCK_EzRiCaSzlkh3U2t3wdRACyY9n6C74kwpVeHjgRR9iKKxffDLbIvk4GVEnJiiAkcteLlUMKYuk5G_fy4GZxO48E9H1IoSs=s255" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="255" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhufpC-GANQZ-iMcX2tqO6rupIvdWbLAnpa8Iwurqx7_48GF9ujKK48THJlld4Ytu8IRa0r2goSRVC77FdJA1EjTGHCK_EzRiCaSzlkh3U2t3wdRACyY9n6C74kwpVeHjgRR9iKKxffDLbIvk4GVEnJiiAkcteLlUMKYuk5G_fy4GZxO48E9H1IoSs" width="255" /></a></div><p>An undead hybrid creature made from cursed permafrost and the blood of a hypothermia victim. Cold Artists use shard puppets as guards and enforcers. The wicked fever they can bestow is often considered a fate worse than death; they do not hand it out wantonly, but won't hesitate to make examples if their masters' edicts are disrespected.</p><p><b>HD:</b> 8<br /><b>AC:</b> as chain; half damage from slashing and piercing weapons<br /><b>Move:</b> normal, fly normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 9<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> mostly obedient servants, but just enough initiative to keep you guessing<br /><b>Speech:</b> low telepathic growl<br /><b>Damage:</b> claw 1d8 / claw 1d8; or blood feed (special, see below)<br /><b># Enc:</b> solitary or troop of 1d3+3</p><p><b>Edge Fever:</b> Anyone who ingests shard puppet blood contracts edge fever. Whenever you critically fail a melee attack roll against a shard puppet, Save; if you fail, some of its blood got in your mouth, and you now have edge fever. A shard puppet can also use its attack action against a restrained target to force-feed them blood, in which case they also get a Save.<br />Edge fever's symptoms are a slightly raised temperature, mild lethargy, and automatically failing all Saves. Swallowing a lump of hot coal (1d6 damage) suppresses edge fever for a week, but there's no known mundane cure. It's part disease, part curse, so curing it with magic is tricky too. If a reliable, replicable antidote for edge fever were found, its value would be incalculable, but it would doubtless draw the attention and hostility of the Cold Artists.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Antaviran Inquirer<br /></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ_8mMD4vGbEGaiXQUbVoek6fpBqbSRiHLreU566_PyEoZQNSnTJJYnAY_leXkCRRKpo12F1NXm9dGi8DI-75jn7mUAEtui01RQUI-nK2T9ww-6sRG3qRcHMEvt53fU5B9N2sQnyKdv7XKgNfG0nUsZGJtYjRsoJulMX_Wkt06aER1ar0OArD5_dQ=s255" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="255" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ_8mMD4vGbEGaiXQUbVoek6fpBqbSRiHLreU566_PyEoZQNSnTJJYnAY_leXkCRRKpo12F1NXm9dGi8DI-75jn7mUAEtui01RQUI-nK2T9ww-6sRG3qRcHMEvt53fU5B9N2sQnyKdv7XKgNfG0nUsZGJtYjRsoJulMX_Wkt06aER1ar0OArD5_dQ" width="255" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">Antaviran Inquirers are extradimensional grad students completing the final trial of the Debate and Diplomacy Department. They must satisfy their voracious appetites with local sapient beings for the duration of their study / exile, but must also grant any victim a chance to make an argument for why they shouldn't be eaten.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 6<br /><b>AC:</b> as plate<br /><b>Move:</b> levitate (1-3' above ground) normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 7<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> theoretically sharp, practically hazy<br /><b>Speech:</b> "well, actually"<br /><b>Damage:</b> 1d3 claw / 1d3 claw or swallow (see below)<br /><b># Enc.:</b> solitary or pair<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Swallow:</b> When an Antaviran Inquirer hits with a claw attack, it latches onto the target with that claw. A character can forfeit their move or attack for the round and attempt a Strength or Dexterity check to unlatch a claw.<br />An Inquirer can replace one of its attacks against a character latched with both claws with a swallow. No attack roll - the Inquirer splits open down the middle and the target must Save or be encased within. 1d8 acid damage per round as long as the Inquirer lives. It's possible to pry the case open with a crowbar, or persuade the Inquirer to release the target voluntarily.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Inquirers won't eat anyone who can present a compelling moral, philosophical, or logical case for why <i>they specifically</i> shouldn't be eaten - general arguments against eating sapient beings do not apply. Feel free to roleplay this, or use opposed Intelligence checks (roll 1d6+11 for the Inquirer's Int).<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-6444414605759739172022-01-06T14:43:00.002-08:002022-01-06T15:11:04.321-08:00[OLOG] Combat and Pressure<p><i>Special thanks to <a href="https://iolbs.blogspot.com/">If Our Lives Be Short</a> for inspiring me to get this written up properly.</i></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Initiative</h2><p style="text-align: left;">PCs roll for initiative (d20+level, possibly modified by Virtues). NPCs have static initiative values and don't roll. Initiative counts last for the whole fight unless someone does something to change them.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Actions and Pressure<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">Under normal circumstances, you get two actions per turn. You cannot usually take the same action twice.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you are within reach of a creature that wishes you ill, you are <b>under pressure</b>. While under pressure, when you take an action, your turn ends afterwards unless you announce as you take the action (and before making relevant rolls) that you're <b>pressing on</b>.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">When you press on, you suffer automatic damage. The die you roll for pressure damage is equal to half of the largest damage die among creatures threatening you - if one of them has multiple attacks, only take the largest. This roll has a minimum result equal to the <i>number</i> of creatures threatening you, which can exceed the normal maximum roll. Flat bonuses to damage rolls don't apply to pressure unless otherwise stated.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Some examples:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Threatened by two orcs with 1d8 swords: You take 1d4 damage, minimum 2.</li><li>Threatened by a badlands superpredator with a 1d10 bite and two 1d6 claws: You take 1d5 damage.</li><li>Threatened by eight humans with 1d6 knives: You take 8 damage. You probably should not let this happen.</li></ul><p>If it matters, pressure damage happens simultaneously with the the action that triggered it.<br /></p><p>Some actions have one of the following tags, which affect how they interact with this system.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Extended actions</b> consume both your actions for the turn. If you're under pressure, you <i>must</i> press on to use an extended action.</li><li><b>Free actions</b> don't consume an action and do not trigger pressure.<br /></li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">List of Combat Actions</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Not exhaustive.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Move.</b> Combat distances in OLOG are mostly abstracted - one move action is enough to move you about 30ft, or one distance band towards or away from a group of enemies.<br /></li><li><b>Attack.</b> Most characters get only one attack per action, but some combat-focused classes can make more, usually with a condition attached. If you get multiple attacks per action, you can break them up with your other action if you like - so you can, for example, make one attack and then move before making your second.</li><li><b>Defend yourself.</b> +2 to AC until your next turn, or +4 if you're holding a shield.<br /></li><li><b>Cast a spell.</b> Extended action.<br /></li><li><b>Retrieve an item from your pack,</b> or switch one you're holding with one in your pack. This is a free action for the topmost item in your inventory, and an extended action for one in the bottom half of your inventory.</li><li><b>Strategise.</b> Adjust your initiative count by 1d6 in the direction of your choice. Takes effect next round.<br /></li></ul>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-39734976736139268642021-12-27T12:02:00.002-08:002022-10-04T13:45:45.346-07:00[OLOG] The Orc Armoury<p style="text-align: left;">Lore TBA, but basically orcs have different weapons from humans, especially melee weapons, and they tend to be rather specialised. Bones are orc currency (not actual bones, domino-shaped coins with holes in them, often braided together on strings for convenience). 1 bone = 1sp for conversion purposes.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Fortes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Most weapons have a forte (F:) listed. If the condition for a
weapon's forte is met, roll a d12 in addition to the normal damage die
and take whichever result is higher.</p>
<h2 id="lesser-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Lesser Weapons</h2><p id="lesser-weapons" style="text-align: left;">1d6 damage, 1 slot. Require one hand.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Improvised weapons</b> are considered lesser weapons, but do not have a forte, and may require more than one hand depending on their nature.</li><li><b>Unarmed attacks</b> count as lesser weapons with no forte, and can't deal damage to an alert, steady opponent - you'll need to stun them, knock them down, or catch them unawares to get that damage in. Consider a manoeuvre instead. (More on those in a future post.)<br /></li></ul><p id="lesser-weapons" style="text-align: left;">There's only one lesser weapon you can actually buy. A decent knife costs 5 bones; paying more will get you a prettier one.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Knife</b> - Orcish knives are usually big, heavy, and utilitarian. Not balanced for throwing.<i><br />F: Your target is not expecting combat or malice.</i>
</li></ul><h2 id="one-handed-weapons" style="text-align: left;">One-Handed Weapons</h2><p id="one-handed-weapons" style="text-align: left;">1d8 damage, 1 slot. Require your dominant hand (you can effectively carry a shield or lesser weapon in your off-hand, or leave it free for other purposes). 50 bones each.<br /></p>
<ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Arc-Sword</b> - A scimitar with most of its weight concentrated towards the sharply curved centre of the blade.<br /><i>F: You moved into engagement with the target this round.</i></li><li><b>Boarding Axe</b> - A favourite of marines - an axe with a sturdy spike set into the back of the shaft.<br /><i>F: Your target is not on stable footing.</i></li><li><b>Butchermaul</b> - A wicked axe-mace, with multiple blades and crushing heads to hew, hack, and rend.<br /><i>F: Your target has a bestial body plan.</i></li><li><b>Cull-Knife</b> - This huge triangular knife has serrated edges and a reinforced, needle-sharp tip.<br /><i>F: You are not under pressure.</i></li><li><b>Mace</b> - Any one of dozens of variations on the theme of "injurious weight on a stick".<b><br /></b><i>F: Your target is unarmed.</i><br /></li><li><b>Shredding Axe</b> - This axe has serrated teeth at its head, spread in multiple directions like barbed wire.<br /><i>F: Your target is at half hit points or less.</i></li><li><b>Squaresword</b> - A thick, heavy sword with a hard right angle at the tip and a well-honed chopping edge.<br /><i>F: Your target has an orcoid body plan.</i></li><li><b>Straightsword</b> - This sturdy broadsword demonstrates refinement or arrogance, depending on who you ask.<br /><i>F: Your target is not engaged with anyone but you.</i></li><li><b>Strife Axe</b> - Ubiquitous in any orc military, this simple axe has a distinctive, slightly forked head.<br /><i>F: Your target is wielding a manufactured melee weapon.</i></li><li><b>Wedge Hammer</b> - The head of this short warhammer is set with a wedge to concentrate its crushing strength.<br /><i>F: Your target is significantly smaller than you.</i></li></ol>
<h2 id="two-handed-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Two-Handed Weapons</h2><p id="two-handed-weapons" style="text-align: left;">1d10 damage, 2 slots. Require both hands. 100 bones each.<br /></p>
<ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Coroner's Coil</b> - A length of razor-edged chain between two handles, like a deadly skipping rope.<br /><i>F: Your target is animate but not alive.</i></li><li><b>Felling Spike</b> - A spear with its head bent at a slight angle; some models have hooked heads.<br /><i>F: Your target is mounted.</i></li><li><b>Harvest Sword</b> - Traditionally, this greatsword has seven teeth placed asymmetrically along its twin edges.<br /><i>F: Your target has 2HD or less.<br /></i></li><li><b>Hawk's Talon</b> - Many variants exist of this hooked fork - the Hawk's Talon has three tines and a ripping spike.<br /><i>F: You are flanking your target.</i><b><i></i><br /></b></li><li><b>Meat Hammer</b> - This hammer's broad, spiked head is too heavy to swing in any direction but down.<br /><i>F: Your target's movement is restricted.</i></li><li><b>Scour-Axe</b> - Three narrow heads top the shaft of this poleaxe, ideal for punching through hide or metal.<br /><i>F: Your target is wearing manufactured armour.</i></li><li><b>Skewer</b> - This barbed harpoon has a weighted head and twisting blades running along its front third.<br /><i>F: Your target is at least twice your size.</i></li><li><b>Soulcatcher</b> - A hooked claw on a stick, reputed to be able to drag the soul right out of one's body.<br /><i>F: Your target has cast a spell or used a magical ability this combat.</i></li><li><b>Wailer</b> - Takes its name from the awful whistling noise of air passing through the heavy, ventilated axehead.<br /><i>F: Your target is not combat-trained.</i><br /></li><li><b>War Sun</b> - This polearm's vicious circular blade is spun by a clever system of weights when the weapon is swung.<br /><i>F: Your target is unarmoured.</i></li></ol>
<h2 id="ranged-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Ranged Weapons</h2><p id="ranged-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Orcs tend to view ranged combat as unglamorous but necessary - fighting at range isn't craven or dishonourable, but it's strictly a skill where melee combat can sometimes be an art.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Sling</b> - 1d6 damage, 1 slot. Requires both hands to load, but only your dominant hand to fire. 20' effective range, -2 to hit for each 20' or part thereof beyond that. 10 bones.<br />Sling stones are functionally free. They stack up to 10 per slot.<br /><i>F: Your target is within 10'.</i><br /></li><li><b>Bow</b> - 1d8 damage, 1 slot. Requires both hands. 30' effective range, -2 to hit for each 30' or part thereof beyond that. 50 bones.<br />Arrows cost 1 bone for a bundle of 5, and can stack up to 20 per slot.<br /><i>F: Your target doesn't know where you are.</i><br /></li><li><b>Crossbow</b> - 1d10 damage, 1 slot. Usually requires both hands, but can be fired (not loaded) with only your dominant hand at a -2 penalty. 30' effective range, -2 to hit for each 30' or part thereof beyond that. Takes an action to reload. 125 bones.<br />Quarrels cost 2 bones for a bundle of 5, and can stack up to 10 per slot.<br /><i>F: You haven't moved for at least 1 round.</i></li><li><b>Clicker Crossbow</b> - 1d10 damage, 1 slot. Usually requires both hands, but can be fired (not loaded) with only
your dominant hand at a -2 penalty. 30' effective range, -2 to hit for
each 30' or part thereof beyond that. Carries a clip of 5 quarrels, no need to reload between them, but takes 3 consecutive actions to change clips. 200 bones.<br />Quarrels cost 3 bones for a clip of 5, and can stack up to 10 (2 clips) per slot.<br /><i>F: You fired the clicker at the same target last round.</i><br /></li><li><b>Javelin</b> - 1d10 damage, stacks up to 3 per slot. Requires your dominant hand to throw. 20' effective range, -2 to hit for each 20' or part thereof beyond that. 10 bones for a bundle of three.<br /><i>F: This is your first attack this combat against this target.</i><br /></li></ul><h2 id="ranged-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Armour</h2><p id="ranged-weapons" style="text-align: left;">Heavy armour is a rarity out in the badlands. Every layer of plate you strap on is one more bundle of supplies you can't carry. Still, some warriors want more protection than agility and luck alone can provide.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Hide Armour</b> - 2 slots, +2 Defence. 50 bones.</li><li><b>Plated Coat</b> - 1 slot, +2 Defence, stacks with hide armour. 100 bones.</li><li><b>War-Plate</b> - 3 slots, +6 Defence. While wearing war-plate, each level of fatigue occupies 2 slots. At least 500 bones, and many settlements don't have the necessary tools to make it.</li><li><b>Shield</b> - 1 slot. Occupies one hand. No Defence bonus normally, but doubles the bonus you get from taking an action to defend yourself. A readied shield also counts as a lesser weapon (with no forte). 50 bones.</li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">"Less armour, more weapons" is the order of the day. <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/08/olog-thems-fightin-orcs-marine-and.html">The OLOG Marine</a> has abilities that incentivise switching weapons and having a diversity thereof, so I think it's important that different weapons have different qualities.</p><p style="text-align: left;">This post was heavily inspired by <a href="https://www.bastionland.com/2021/03/primeval-bastionland-iron.html">this one</a> from Chris McDowall. I especially liked the idea of weapons saying something about their wielders - an enemy orc with a straightsword should hopefully give off a very different impression from one with a hawk's talon.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I still can't make up my mind about how to treat non-orcish weapons. My instinct is to have a table of which orc weapons they map to, but that feels clunky. Maybe I go all-out and write unique fortes for them, too; that gives you an interesting extra incentive to loot human, elf, goblin, and demon foes.<br /></p>
Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-4698253904669543752021-11-23T13:28:00.006-08:002021-11-24T05:46:35.281-08:00[GLOG] Wizard School: Practical Necromancer<p style="text-align: left;">A GLOG Wizard School based on my <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/11/fluff-alternative-take-on-necromancy.html">fluff post about low-status working necromancers</a>. Use with your wizard class of choice - I favour <a href="https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/07/osr-class-wizards.html">this one</a>.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting Equipment:</b> spellbook, cheap pen you got for free at some careers event 1d10 years ago, guild membership card, sewing kit, flask of embalming fluid.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Perk</h3><p style="text-align: left;">You can sacrifice a drudge you control within 30' to reroll a mishap roll with a -1 modifier. If this new roll is 0 or less, the mishap is negated. You can keep doing this if you have more drudges to sacrifice, and the modifier is cumulative.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Drawback</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Your skin is desaturated and papery and you smell a bit wrong. This doesn't penalise stealth, but you are very obviously a necromancer and will be treated as such, with disdain, apathy, or, worst of all, pity.<br />Also, when you die, your body will reanimate instantly (as <i>raise drudge</i>) and march by the most direct route possible to the nearest Necromancers' Guild chapterhouse for processing.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Cantrips</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>1)</b> With a touch, set a timer in a willing creature's body which causes their skeleton to vibrate, harmlessly but noticeably, when the time elapses. Can be set for up to 24 hours, in increments of 1 minute.<b><br />2)</b> With a touch, lock a willing creature's limb or digit in position from a chosen joint, impervious to pain, fatigue, and muscle strain, until they release it with a command word.<b><br />3)</b> Your breath repels ordinary vermin up to the size of a mouse.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Mishaps</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>1-3)</b> Same as the "generic" mishaps for your system of choice.<br /><b>4)</b> Become undead for 1d6 hours.<br /><b>5)</b> Reroll your Constitution on 2d6+1. Lasts 1d6 hours, then Save; permanent if you fail.<br /><b>6)</b> Drudges ignore your commands for the next 24 hours. <br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Dooms</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>1)</b> Your metabolism twists painfully. Halve the effect of all healing you receive, mundane or magical.<br /><b>2)</b> Your senses deaden and your muscles grow cold and stiff. Disadvantage on initiative rolls and on anything that demands reflexes or reaction speed.<br /><b>3)</b> Your deadman's switch misfires and attempts to reanimate you, but, since you're still (just about) alive, it only takes your body. You remain alive as you march off to the chapterhouse, though hunger and exposure will probably kill you before you get there.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Spells</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>0) Raise Drudge</b><br /><b>R:</b> 15', <b>T:</b> [dice] roughly humanoid corpses, <b>D:</b> 0<br /><b>This is always your first starting spell, even if you'd normally roll for your spells.</b> Determine your other spells normally.<br />This spell takes 10 minutes to cast.<br />You reanimate the target corpses as drudges (see below for stats), specialised undead built for manual labour. Drudges stay under your control indefinitely and obey your spoken commands absolutely, and you always know their positions relative to you. You can destroy a controlled drudge at will with a command word. Drudges are also destroyed if you travel more than [max MD] miles away from them.<br />Whenever you cast a spell with a range listed as 0, you may choose a drudge within 60' to count as the caster.<br />You can't usually control more drudges than you have maximum MD; you can use this spell to reanimate them beyond that limit, but the MD you use stay invested permanently, one per target, until the drudge is destroyed. Creatures that temporarily count as drudges due to other spells don't count towards this limit.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>1) Vigour Mortis</b><br /><b>R:</b> 30', <b>T:</b> any number of drudges you control, <b>D:</b> [highest] hours<br />For the duration, the targets work [dice]+1 times as fast as they ordinarily would on simple manual labour tasks - digging, chopping wood, laying bricks, and so on.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>2) Necrophone</b><br /><b>R:</b> touch, <b>T:</b> one drudge you control, <b>D:</b> [highest] hours<br />The target becomes a conduit to the spirit realm. You can speak messages into it to relay them to the ether, allowing you to communicate with spirits, ghosts, and most forms of undead regardless of linguistic or metaphysical barriers. They can talk back to you and the target translates in a gnarly, rasping monotone.<br />Two drudges enchanted with Necrophone can be used to relay messages to each other like CB radios, with no maximum range besides your maximum control range for your drudges.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>3) Sweep</b><br /><b>R:</b> 0, <b>T:</b> [dice]x20' radius area around caster, <b>D:</b> 0<br />All loose, lightweight debris in the area is drawn to the caster like a magnet - dust, leaves, papers, anything a gust of wind could blow away. This doesn't harm the caster, even if the debris normally would. The debris remains stuck in place until peeled or swept off.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>4) Hazard Protocol</b><br /><b>R:</b> 30', <b>T:</b> up to [dice] contiguous 5' cubes, <b>D:</b> [sum]x10 minutes<br />Everything in the targeted area becomes temporarily safe to handle. All chemical, biological, and radiation hazards are neutralised, though physical damage and magical threats are unaffected. Creatures with special attacks that would be neutralised may Save to resist.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>5) Detonate Drudge</b><br /><b>R:</b> 60', <b>T:</b> one drudge you control, <b>D:</b> 0<br />At the start of each following round, roll 1d3. On a 1, the target explodes with percussive force, destroying it and dealing [sum] blunt-force damage in a [dice]x5' radius. This explosion doesn't start fires.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>6) Fumigate</b><br /><b>R:</b> 0, <b>T:</b> [dice]x10' radius area around caster, <b>D:</b> 0<br />A cloud of toxic gas billows from the caster. Each living creature within range up to the size of a large rat takes [sum] damage, dissipating into smoke if killed this way. Exceptional or magical creatures can Save vs. poison for half damage. Living creatures bigger than a rat take [highest] damage and always get a Save.<br />This spell's area of effect is doubled if used in an enclosed space.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>7) Necroinfusion</b><br /><b>R:</b> touch, <b>T:</b> one willing creature, <b>D:</b> [dice]x10 minutes<br />The target temporarily, partially necrotises. They get +4 to Save against metabolic hazards like poison and disease, and are affected as both a living creature and an undead, whichever is better for them. They also count as a drudge under your control, as though raised with <i>raise drudge</i>, for the purposes of targeting them with spells and casting your spells through them.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>8) Rot Minerals</b><br /><b>R:</b> 0, <b>T:</b> [dice]x5' cone originating from source, <b>D:</b> [sum] minutes<br />When you cast this spell, choose stone, metal, or vegetable matter. Within the target area, the chosen material decays and takes on the consistency of very stale porridge - it holds its shape, but interfering with it will quickly collapse it into lumpy sludge. Precious metals and lead are unaffected.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>9) Subvert Undead</b><br /><b>R:</b> 60', <b>T:</b> one undead, <b>D:</b> special<br />You attempt to seize control of the target. Compare your [sum] to the target's HD. If you match or beat it, the target falls temporarily under your control, and is treated as a drudge for the purposes of targeting it with spells and casting spells through it. The duration depends on the margin by which you won:<br /><i>[sum] >= HD:</i> [dice] rounds, during which the target is stunned and immobile.<br /><i>[sum] >= 2xHD:</i> [dice] rounds.<br /><i>[sum] >= 3xHD:</i> [dice] minutes.<br /><i>[sum] >= 4xHD:</i> [dice] hours.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>10) Scourskin</b><br /><b>R:</b> 0, <b>T:</b> self, <b>D:</b> [sum] minutes<br />The caster's skin becomes powerfully alkaline and solvent. It can burn markings into almost any material, neutralise adhesives, and inflict [dice]d3 damage with a touch, or [dice]d6 against oozes and similar acid-based creatures. The caster is also immune to acid for the duration.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>11) Render</b><br /><b>R:</b> 30', <b>T:</b> any number of living and/or undead creatures and/or corpses, <b>D:</b> 0<br />Over the next 10 minutes, up to [sum] HD of the chosen creatures, lowest HD first, and all chosen corpes, are rendered helpless, ground and compressed together into a single homogeneous lump of meat, gristle, and bone dust. This is usually fatal. Creatures may Save to escape at intervals based on their HD; on a successful Save, they emerge having taken 1d6 damage for each prior failed Save, which may kill them regardless.<br /><i>HD < [dice]/2:</i> No save.<br /><i>HD < [dice]:</i> On cast.<br /><i>HD >= [dice]:</i> On cast and 5 minutes later.<br /><i>HD >= 2x[dice]:</i> On cast and 4 and 8 minutes later.<br /><i>HD >= 3x[dice]:</i> On cast and 3, 6, and 9 minutes later.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>12) Graveyard Shift</b><br /><b>R:</b> 120', <b>T:</b> roughly humanoid corpses, <b>D:</b> [dice] hours<br />You must invest at least 2 [dice] to cast this spell. It takes 10 minutes to cast.<br />As <i>raise drudge</i>, but affects up to [sum] corpses within range. They last only for the duration and don't count towards your limit.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Monster: Drudge</h2><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 1<br /><b>Defence:</b> as leather<br /><b>Move:</b> normal, half normal underwater (can't swim, can walk along the bottom)<br /><b>Morale:</b> immune<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> programatically precise but only as good as its instructions<br /><b>Speech:</b> none, understands creator's language<br /><b>Damage:</b> 1d6 punch, only when specifically ordered, can only attack every other round, can't use weapons<br /><b>Special:</b> effective Str 18 for lifting, carrying, and other menial feats of strength; perfect internal clock, accurate to the second</p><p style="text-align: left;">A damaged drudge can be repaired to full hit points with 10 minutes' work. When destroyed, a drudge collapses into fine grey dust, and can't be re-reanimated.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-55932250205689158942021-11-20T15:52:00.003-08:002021-11-20T15:53:42.841-08:00[Fluff] An Alternative Take on Necromancy<p>Messing with the dead is a common and pervasive cultural taboo, so it's little wonder that necromancers get such a bad rap in fantasy fiction. Honestly, though, I've always felt that defining necromancy as Evil Magic and declaring its practitioners Evil by association is a little unsatisfying.</p><p>So here is an alternative take on why necromancy has such a rough reputation, one which I hope presents some interesting questions and story opportunities, and is a little friendlier to player character necromancers to boot.</p><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiMWgDBe6LGPE9jzQHETHACabqLudw7BW4nfzPLsSNZDQ9jVjONHNLJEQ--fSdzqUV5rdaSEFFxfRQQ9M1K3_DIWFz6dM-mfd6_F_vhacIpoCEWUM0H8yH-YMo7vjHMKHSfdLX9UFU8PwBREWE25agg12By_3NkAXM4aMt0yF0oi9ekNbv9xQQnuGs=s361" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="361" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiMWgDBe6LGPE9jzQHETHACabqLudw7BW4nfzPLsSNZDQ9jVjONHNLJEQ--fSdzqUV5rdaSEFFxfRQQ9M1K3_DIWFz6dM-mfd6_F_vhacIpoCEWUM0H8yH-YMo7vjHMKHSfdLX9UFU8PwBREWE25agg12By_3NkAXM4aMt0yF0oi9ekNbv9xQQnuGs=s320" width="320" /></a><i><br />"Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia", art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/indus">Yongjae Choi</a></i></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Viewpoint <br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;">Most people, and especially wizards of other disciplines, look down on necromancy not because it's evil, but because it's considered <i>low-status</i>. There are four main reasons for this.<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>1) It's gross.</b> Even a fresh, intact corpse is not a pleasant thing to work with - it's uncanny-valley fuel, full of smells and fluids to which the living have justifiably negative responses - and it only gets worse from there. Preservative fluids and incense help, but the end result is still far from pleasant. Necromancers also tend to look a bit weird, thanks to a combination of dirty, lightless work environments and exposure to the same chemicals that make their creations palatable.<b> </b></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>2) It's perceived as low-skilled.</b> This is a misconception, fuelled by the fact that necromancy is a relatively safe school. Getting good at it takes years of training and practice, but it's not prone to dramatic mishaps - botching a reanimation generally just leads to some light thaumic blowback, which is easily managed with protective trinkets, rather than an explosion or rift in reality. If your life's not at stake, thinks the non-mage, then what's the big deal?<b> </b></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>3) Its uses are prosaic.</b> Undead workers have a number of practical applications, especially in fields deemed too tedious or unpleasant for humans - they've seen use in logistics, sanitation, and warfare, and there have even been experiments in using groups of programmed undead as primitive calculators. But the image a necromancer leading a squad of zombies through a blocked sewer isn't exactly romantic or inspiring.<br /></p><div><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>4) Memento mori.</b> The average resident of $fantasy_setting is likely more familiar with death than, say, me, but her awareness of mortality does little to dispel the anxieties surrounding it. Necromancers, by their very existence, remind her that one day she will die, and what she is in death will be largely unaffected by what she was in life. Her corpse will be worth no more than the dirt-caked zombie cleaning out that flooded storm drain across the street.</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjURm-ZyCQyMjM4XNcu8fZ_BJVXG38pNgvDOwV_i1fJBBBmPZ9RytrkvcfYh4mypq3GekmQZZhLZ8YmKAeeG7kteYqZv-HLCnGKjr1_C16kbbsNEMiTWFY3mM_1idVHhe4FEMmvErG1cRHIqBStKjTzCVkXFeRWU22R8cq7azSwBx9IkCLicdgtDC8=s1089" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="1089" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjURm-ZyCQyMjM4XNcu8fZ_BJVXG38pNgvDOwV_i1fJBBBmPZ9RytrkvcfYh4mypq3GekmQZZhLZ8YmKAeeG7kteYqZv-HLCnGKjr1_C16kbbsNEMiTWFY3mM_1idVHhe4FEMmvErG1cRHIqBStKjTzCVkXFeRWU22R8cq7azSwBx9IkCLicdgtDC8=s320" width="320" /></a><i><br />"Sibsig Muckdraggers", art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/zack_stella">Zack Stella</a></i><br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Consequences</h2><p style="text-align: left;">So what does this all, like, mean?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Well, necromancers under this paradigm have a better time than their counterparts in other settings, but they are very much second-class citizens among mages. You still go to college to learn necromancy, but it's more like a trade school than a research university, keeping costs to a minimum and kept afloat by guild dues and reluctantly-granted government subsidies. Actual tuition fees are low; novice necromancers pay for their education partly through aiding more experienced necros as apprentices, and partly by signing away their reanimation rights to the guild, ensuring one more body for the stockpile when the time comes.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">About those subsidies - necros have compensated for not being popular or glamorous by making themselves <i>necessary</i>. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were the first profession to pull together something resembling a modern trade union, complete with internal elections, collective bargaining, and a demand for recognition by managers and the government. In a world where undead labour is a relatively known quantity, few would object to sewer cleaning or rubbish collection being made "dead work", only to be performed by a sanctioned guild necromancer.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Corpses are a vital currency. The community probably produces more than the guild needs, but ensuring a steady flow is a priority. More egalitarian regimes might institute a "corpse lottery", where every fresh cadaver has a random chance to be selected for transfer to the guild stockpile. Elsewhere, it could be class-based - handing over a newly-dead loved one to the necros might not be an appealing prospect, but it's cheaper than a burial.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Socially, it's not easy being a necromancer. They're not quite pariahs - most people recognise the good they do for society - but those same "most people" would hesitate to strike up a conversation with a necro, let alone sit down for a drink with one. It doesn't help that their desaturated, sickly complexions make them obvious even in plain clothes. This distance from the general public does inspire a strong sense of solidarity among necromancers.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Obviously, in smaller settlements, things are different. If your village has a necromancer, he's probably self-taught, or maybe he's doing it as a mandatory placement to pay for his training (think Joel in <i>Northern Exposure</i>, for the two people reading this who've also seen <i>Northern Exposure</i>). He'll have a much harder time getting on with the locals, who might view him the same way they view the village wise woman, someone to be ostracised and distrusted except when his skills become necessary. In the absence of a peer group or guild regulations to follow, these "wild" necros are prone to eccentricities and odd personal endeavours. If your world still needs a source of more conventionally villainous necromancers, a makeshift workshop at the edge of a tiny, suspicious hamlet is a pretty good place to lose the plot and get high on your own power.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">1d6 Reasons the Necromancers are On Strike <br /></h2><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>1)</b> We do vital work to keep society running that nobody else is willing or able to do, and it's about time our pay reflected that.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>2)</b> The Conjurers' Guild may claim that their summoned servitors are more effective than undead, but we believe they're dangerously unreliable, and they present a clear threat to jobs we've performed tirelessly for generations.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>3)</b> Despite our fervent objections, management seems intent on mandating the use of the new corpse preservative dianimide. "Improved odour" or otherwise, we are deeply concerned by reports of dianimide-induced sickness from overseas; if we cannot work safely, we will not work at all.</p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>4)</b> The <i>Broken Backbone</i> may not be your idea of a good night out, but it's the only tavern in the city where necromancers aren't turned away at the door. We want a guarantee from the mayor that it won't be demolished in his efforts to "redevelop" the district.<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>5)</b> The local priesthood continues to condemn us as "unclean" and "heretical", in violation of the compromise we agreed upon last year. Let's see who's unclean when refuse piles up in the streets and the sewers stop flowing...<br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: left;"><b>6)</b> Wealthy families are using a legal loophole to buy their way out of the corpse lottery. All are equal in death, and these selfish acts show disrespect both for us and for the wider community.<br /></p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-67679144875141754382021-09-06T13:56:00.002-07:002021-09-06T14:05:11.202-07:00[GLOG] The Bardtillerist<p>In eras past, in the distant heights, the mountain kingdoms declared war on heaven. Keen to weaponise their strong bardic tradition, the people of the heights sought new instruments of war. Drums and bugles were all very well for rallying troops and cowing mortal foes, but they needed something more, something that could drown out a choir of angels and reduce a thrice-blessed bulwark to rubble with a single note.</p><p>Thus, the Ur-Horn. Thus, the venerable order of bardtillerists.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirMDBps70Rj4weHRgde4KRDca4W2wuaq4qJDarOTOEDnk7bar9aGB3969lqes0IasQ9fAxq8WbVx3YdfZsCiIgDmlKV9f8qb_M8A9v4DQqROaye8EEGSRtWEsylbtAGr440_aE1qPOGbc/s1000/k25.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="1000" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirMDBps70Rj4weHRgde4KRDca4W2wuaq4qJDarOTOEDnk7bar9aGB3969lqes0IasQ9fAxq8WbVx3YdfZsCiIgDmlKV9f8qb_M8A9v4DQqROaye8EEGSRtWEsylbtAGr440_aE1qPOGbc/w400-h284/k25.png" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Art by the talented and handsome <a href="https://k25ff.tumblr.com/post/661599623615545344/the-carefully-treated-warhorns-of-the-cacophanian">K25fF</a> - thank you!</i><br /></div><div><p>You and your trusty cohorn are alumni of the Warchestral Academy, trained in the care and operation of a Contradivine Ur-Horn. Despite aggressive funding in recent years, the modern public sees bardtillery as quaint and archaic, and your promised places in the army vanished the moment you graduated. At least they let you keep the horn. They were probably too scared to take it off you.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Bardtillerist</h2><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting equipment:</b> Matching fancy uniforms, three daggers, a tuning fork, a huge shabby binder half-filled with yellowing sheet music, and, of course, an Ur-Horn.<br /><b>Starting skill:</b> Music Theory, plus roll 1d6 for your cohorn's skill - 1) Binge Drinking, 2) Herbalism, 3) Slam Poetry, 4) Card Games (legitimate), 5) Card Games (cheating), 6) Military History.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A:</b> Ur-Hornist, Cohorn, +1BD, +1 random Harmony, +1 Harmony of your choice<br /><b>B:</b> Sundering Resonance, +1BD, +2 random Harmonies<br /><b>C:</b> Torrent of Sound, +1BD, +1HD for your cohorn<br /><b>D:</b> Unison, +1BD, +2 Harmonies of your choice</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Ur-Hornist</b><br />Your Ur-Horn is 12' long, made from heavily treated wood and various enchanted metals (it detects as magical), and extremely heavy. The Ur-Horn takes up a total of 12 inventory slots, but the burden can be spread among up to four people moving together. It is indestructible by anything short of direct divine intervention. It's also irreplaceable, so don't lose it. Deploying the Ur-Horn for combat or stowing it takes one full round, shortened to one action if your cohorn also takes an action to help; it cannot be moved while deployed, but can pivot around its mouth.<br />The Ur-Horn demands impeccable breath control. You have a stock of Breath Dice, or BD, which are d6s, representing your reserves of stamina and lung strength. Depleted Breath Dice are restored after a night's rest.<br />When you spend a round doing nothing but aiming and blowing your deployed Ur-Horn, you can invest any number of your BD, rolling them. If you roll a 5 or more on a BD, it's depleted after use. If any two BD results match, <i>all</i> rolled BD are depleted after use.<br />The base effect of the Ur-Horn deals [sum] sonic damage in a 5x[dice]' radius sphere centred within 300' and line of sight, with a Save for half. This can be altered by Harmonies.<br />You can also use the Ur-Horn to play deafeningly loud music of decent quality. This doesn't cost any BD, and is audible up to 10 miles away per Bardtillerist template you possess, terrain permitting.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Cohorn</b><br />You are accompanied by a cohorn, a lower-ranking
bard who is nonetheless a skilled sonic engineer in their own right and vital to many of your abilities.
Name and briefly describe them. They are a generic 1HD hireling, of the
same race as you, with no equipment save what you give them. Your cohorn
costs no upkeep and doesn't count towards your hireling limit. They
trust you with their life - they need never check morale if they can see
or hear you, but automatically fail morale checks if not. Cohorns
always follow the same rules for death and dismemberment as PCs.<br />When you play your horn, your cohorn can spend the round assisting you by checking ranges and frequencies, adjusting the Ur-Horn's valves and enchantments, and offering moral support. When they do, before rolling BD, choose and apply one Harmony they know to the usage.<br />If
you lose your cohorn, you can replace them only by spending time on a
mountaintop, doing nothing but eating, resting, and blowing your
Ur-Horn; one will answer your call in 1d3+4 days.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>B: Sundering Resonance</b><br />You can now use your Ur-Horn out of combat to deal massive damage to stationary, inanimate objects, vibrating them into packed but easily workable dust. Invest your BD at the start, blow for ten uninterrupted minutes, then roll the dice and pulverise [sum]+[dice] contiguous cubic feet of material (doubled for wood, halved for most metals, impossible for lead or enchanted material).</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>C: Torrent of Sound</b><br />When you blow the Ur-Horn after blowing it the previous round, gain +1 to each BD roll. This is cumulative as long as you keep blowing.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>D: Unison</b><br />You can now apply a Harmony to your own use of the Ur-Horn, in addition to the Harmony your cohorn may contribute. The two Harmonies must be different.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Bardtillerist Harmonies</h3><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b><b>Breath Control.</b></b> You may choose to reduce one rolled BD value by 3 after rolling, to a minimum of 1, possibly avoiding a 5+ or a double.<b> <br /></b></li><li><b>Solo.</b> Only affects a single target, but damage is doubled.<b> <br /></b></li><li><b>Belter.</b> Affects a 10x[dice]' long, 10x[dice]' wide cone emanating from the Ur-Horn.<br /></li><li><b>Bypass.</b> Choose one mundane material, like wood, stone, or copper; the effect passes through that material as though it wasn't there. You must still have some way of finding your target, like a spotter or a really big mirror.</li><li><b>Disrupting.</b> Doesn't affect living creatures, but undead, constructs, and angels Save with disadvantage.<br /></li><li><b>Earthshaker.</b> Grounded targets who fail their Save are knocked prone.<br /></li><li><b>Skybane.</b> Flying targets who fail their Save are pulled 20x[dice]' downwards, taking fall damage as usual if they hit the ground.</li><li><b>Coruscating.</b> Damage dealt is fire instead of sonic, and can set flammable objects alight.</li><li><b>Muffle.</b> Damage dealt is nonlethal. Enemies reduced to 0hp are rendered unconscious and will wake up in an hour with 1hp.</li><li><b>Fiend's Interval.</b> Instead of damage, targets take a -[dice] penalty to morale checks for [sum] minutes.</li><li><b>Rending.</b> Instead of damage, targets take a -[dice] penalty to AC for [sum] minutes, to a minimum of their unarmoured AC.</li><li><b>Prelude.</b> Instead of damage, targets take a -2x[dice] penalty to their saves against your Ur-Horn for [sum] minutes.<br /></li></ol><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">What if a military weapons team had an alphorn instead of a machine gun?<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The Bardtillerist's toolkit is perhaps more robust than a standard wizard's, only losing dice on a 5+ or a mishap and suffering no other penalties for mishaps. My hope is that they pay for this in awkwardness. The Ur-Horn takes time to set up and tear down, you're very limited in what you can do with it, and you need the help of a fragile, difficult-to-replace ally to get the most out of it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One night's work. Probably needs refining, but I absolutely had to get this written down the moment the idea struck. </p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-21172695581224029572021-08-05T13:14:00.004-07:002021-08-05T13:14:42.680-07:00[OLOG] Them's Fightin' Orcs - the Marine and the Wrestler<p>Wrote two more classes, two of the three fighter splats: the Marine and the Wrestler.</p><p>Italics are for things that are explained in the rules doc outside the class itself.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">OLOG Class: Marine</h2><p style="text-align: left;">All orcs can fight at least a little, but your training in the art of combat is a cut above the rest - you're a marine, a hardy, versatile protector of the waterways. Your beat is local, and you know your own few hundred miles of canal network like the back of your hand, but you've left it all behind to venture north to the High Badlands. There are threats to the world up there far greater than any pirate cartel.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Marine Virtues</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><i>(More on virtues <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/07/olog-by-sheer-virtue-virtues-v3.html">here</a>.)</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">If your first class template is Marine A, you begin play with one of these
virtues at random (roll 1d3). If you have Marine templates, you may
choose these virtues as aspirations.</p><p><b>1) Marine’s Cunning</b><br /> <b>Active:</b> Invoke to reroll an Attack with a different weapon from the last one you Attacked with.<br /> <b>Passive:</b> +1 Initiative.</p><p><b>2) Marine’s Steadiness</b><br /> <b>Active:</b> Invoke to reroll a Save against any effect that would move you against your will.<br /> <b>Passive:</b> +2 hit points.</p><p><b>3) Marine’s Vigour</b><br /> <b>Active:</b> Invoke to reroll a Check based on physical exertion.<br /> <b>Passive:</b> +1 inventory slot; this slot can’t hold items, only fatigue and other abstract baggage.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Marine Abilities</h3><p class="western">
<b>Starting equipment:</b> Spear (reach weapon), boarding axe (hand
weapon), crossbow with 20 bolts, hide armour, 50’ coil of rope,
vial of wakewater <i>(basically smelling salts)</i>, flask of canal rum (old military recipe, tastes atrocious, smells even worse).</p>
<p class="western"><b>A:</b> Focus, Arsenal<br />
<b>B:</b> The Best Defence<br />
<b>C:</b>
Combined Arms, Hot Streak<br />
<b>D:</b> Implacable</p>
<p class="western"><b>Focus</b><br />
You have an extra attribute
called Focus, which starts at 6 and can’t go below 6. At the end of
each combat round, increase it by 1 if you missed with an Attack that
round, and decrease it by 1 if you didn’t make any attacks that
round.<br />
Whenever you make an Attack roll and the natural result
is less than your Focus, increase it to that number before applying
modifiers.</p>
<p class="western"><b>Arsenal</b><br />
Once per combat round, you may
swap an item you’re holding with an item in one of your quickdraw
slots as a free action unaffected by pressure. <i>(Pressure is OLOG's replacement for attacks of opportunity - basically, if you're within melee range of an opponent, any action that's not pressure-exempt consumes your entire turn unless you're willing to eat some automatic damage.)</i><br /></p>
<p class="western"><b>The Best Defence</b><br />
Each time you make a
melee Attack, you take 1 less damage from melee Attacks until your
next combat turn. The same is true for ranged Attacks.</p>
<p class="western"><b>Combined Arms</b><br />
You may make an extra
Attack per round, which must use a different type of weapon from your
first Attack. Unarmed strikes, shield slams, and manoeuvres each
count as one type of weapon.</p>
<p class="western"><b>Hot Streak</b><br />
Each time you score a
knockout blow, increase your Focus by 1 immediately.</p>
<p class="western"><b>Implacable</b><br />
You may accept a point of
<a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/08/olog-medic-class-and-strain-limited.html">strain</a> to succeed on any one Save or ignore any one source of damage.
You must make the decision before rolling. Once you’ve used this
ability, you can’t use it again until you eat lunch or get a
night’s rest.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">OLOG Class: Wrestler</h2><p style="text-align: left;">You cut your teeth in the crucible of combat sports. Orcish wrestling, brutal though it may be, is never fought to the death, but, to be a really good faker, you need to know how to kill and maim for real. You might have retired in honour, disgrace, or obscurity, but the roar of the crowd never really left your ears, and now you stand ready to paint your knuckles with demon blood.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Wrestler Virtues</h3><p style="text-align: left;">If your first class template is Wrestler A, you begin play with one of these
virtues at random (roll 1d3). If you have Wrestler templates, you may
choose these virtues as aspirations.</p><p class="western">
<b>1) Wrestler’s Grit</b><br />
<b>Active:</b> Invoke to reroll a
damage roll against you that would otherwise cause a Severe
Injury.<br />
<b>Passive:</b> +2 Fortitude Save.</p>
<p class="western"><b>2) Wrestler’s Passion</b><br />
<b>Active:</b>
Invoke to reroll a Save during combat against any effect that would
force you to stop fighting (paralysis, unconsciousness,
compulsions).<br />
<b>Passive:</b> +2 Will Save.</p>
<p class="western"><b>3) Wrestler's Pluck</b><br />
<b>Active:</b>
Invoke to reroll an unarmed Attack or manoeuvre Attack against an enemy with more
HD than you have levels.<br />
<b>Passive:</b> +2 Reflex Save.</p><h3 class="western" style="text-align: left;">Wrestler Abilities</h3><p class="western">
<b>Starting equipment:</b> Custom mask (describe it, +1 to Defence
and all Saves while worn), 3 vials of gutroot <i>(a potent but taxing stimulant)</i>.<br /></p><p><b>A:</b> Brawl, Thick Hide<br /> <b>B:</b> Hearty<br /> <b>C:</b> Beatdown, Kayfabe<br /> <b>D:</b> Showstopper</p><p><b>Brawl</b><br /> If you have at least one hand free and are not overencumbered, you may make an additional Attack per round, which must be either an unarmed strike or a manoeuvre. Your unarmed attacks deal 1d6 damage if you have advantage, or the usual 1d4 otherwise.</p><p><b>Thick Hide</b><br /> You gain +2 Defence when unarmoured (your mask does not count as armour). You’re immune to contact hazards unless they’re in contact with you for at least one full round – you could touch a demon’s burning-hot skin with bare knuckles with no ill effects, for instance.</p><p><b>Hearty</b><br /> You may ignore the first point of strain you suffer each day. If you open a fight with a war cry at the top of your lungs, you may ignore the first 1d4 points of damage you suffer that fight.</p><p><b>Beatdown</b><br /> You gain another extra Attack per round, with the same conditions as Brawl.</p><p><b>Kayfabe</b><br /> When you gain this ability, choose Knight or Beast. You gain +2 to all Saves as long as you follow the listed code; if you break it, you lose the bonus permanently. Your allies need not follow your code. When you level up, you may atone and regain a lost bonus, or you may turn, switching to the other code.<br /> <b>Knight:</b> Always accept offers of parley or surrender before combat. Honour your word.<br /> <b>Beast:</b> Never leave a foe alive if you’ve fought them and you have the opportunity to kill them. Never offer parley, though you may accept it if it’s offered to you.</p><p><b>Showstopper</b><br /> If you hit a single living enemy with three unarmed strikes and/or manoeuvres in the same round, you may incapacitate the target instantly with a flashy, overblown series of moves, no Save allowed. If you’re a Knight, you may choose to knock them out for 1d6 hours or kill them; if you’re a Beast, you kill them. This always triggers a Morale check for any allies of the target that are subject to Morale.</p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-79582012493257464422021-08-02T11:44:00.004-07:002021-08-02T12:33:52.861-07:00[OLOG] Medic Class and Strain-Limited Healing<p>Orcs don't really do magical healing - their thaumobiology makes them unsuited to the kind of magical precision it takes, and many look upon it disdainfully as the domain of the gods. Instead, they study mundane medicine, one of a few scientific fields in which they're actually more advanced than humans. Thus, OLOG needs a new framework for healing; inspired by the System Strain mechanic in <i>Worlds Without Number</i>, here is my take, and a Medic class to go with it.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">OLOG: Health, Healing, and Injury</h2><p style="text-align: left;">First things first: fiction-wise, hit points are not "don't get hit" points, as they are in some other games. They may represent glancing blows, flesh wounds, bruising, mental stress, or all manner of things, but, in OLOG, if you lose hit points, you got hurt. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">An orc character begins play with 1d6+4 base hit points, plus possible small modifiers from virtues - even a relatively inexperienced orc can take a hit or two. Each even-numbered level adds an additional 1d6 base hit points; each odd-numbered level allows the character to reroll all their hit dice, reapply modifiers, and keep the new result if it's better. Base hit points can't usually go above 20.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As per usual for GLOG, if you suffer damage that takes you into negative hit points, roll for death and dismemberment. (The DnD table for OLOG will probably be pretty standard, so I'm not including one here.) <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Here are some ways to heal.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Lunch</b> - Takes 1 hour. May benefit once per day, requires a ration. Heals 1d3+1 hit points and refreshes a virtue. Does not cause strain.<br /></li><li><b>Night's Rest</b> - Takes 8 hours. May benefit once per day, requires a ration. Heals 1d3+1 hit points, refreshes all virtues, and clears one point of strain. Does not cause strain.</li><li><b>First Aid</b> - Takes 10 minutes. May benefit once within the hour after a battle in which you took damage (or an out-of-combat injury), requires medical supplies (1sp each, stack to 3). Heals 1d4 hit points, 1d4-1 if you're applying it to yourself. On a natural 3-4, the supplies are expended.</li><li><b>Herbal Cocktail</b> - 1 action, purchasable at any orc settlement for 2sp. Heals 1d8-1 hit points. If this isn't your first herbal cocktail of the day, Fortitude Save or suffer nausea (-2 to all d20 rolls for an hour).</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Strain <br /></h3><p>Each time a character receives healing from a source other than lunch or resting, they take one point of strain immediately afterwards, even if they healed for 0 hit points. They take an additional point of strain if the healing they received would take them above their base hit points - if you have 6 hit points remaining vs 8 base, for example, healing any more than 2 hit points will induce extra strain.</p><p>A character's current strain is applied as a penalty to each further instance of healing they receive, besides lunch and resting. For instance, if you have two points of strain, a potion that would normally heal 1d6+2 hit points instead heals just 1d6. This can reduce the healing total to zero, or even to a negative number, draining hit points instead of restoring them as the character's overtaxed system rebels against the treatment - the character still takes strain regardless.<br /></p><p>Strain dissipates slowly and naturally, one point per night's rest. There are ways of mitigating how much strain a character suffers, but very few ways of clearing it once it's there.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Surgery</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Long-term injuries, of the kind inflicted by Death and Dismemberment, can sometimes be healed or mitigated through surgery. Orc surgery is a risky but relatively effective process.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Surgery requires a trained surgeon (1d6x5gp per operation if you're hiring one), a clean, quiet place to operate, surgical tools, anaesthetic, and 1d6 units of medical supplies. The surgeon chooses one of the subject's long-term injuries and conducts an operation that takes 1d3 hours. At the end of that time, the surgeon makes a Check, and the subject makes a Fortitude Save penalised by their current strain. What happens next depends on the results of those two rolls.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If the Check succeeds, the injury is cured. If it fails, the injury isn't cured, and any subsequent surgery attempts on the same one suffer a cumulative -4 penalty to both rolls.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The subject takes 2d4 points of strain regardless of the result of the Save, but, if the Save fails, one of these points is permanent, and will never dissipate.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Further circumstantial notes on surgery:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Surgery by an untrained person</b> is incredibly dangerous, imposing disadvantage on both rolls.</li><li><b>Surgery without proper anaesthetic</b> requires the subject to be strapped down, imposes disadvantage on the Save, and causes an extra 1d4 points of strain. A heavy dose of alcohol may be good for morale, but provides no actual benefit.</li><li><b>Amputation</b> is very reliable - half price if you're hiring a surgeon, and automatic success on the Check. Basic wood-and-ceramic prosthetics cost 1gp each, but aren't fully functional: prosthetic legs impose -2 Movement, and prosthetic arms don't have functional hands, though they do come with a screw-fit harness that can hold a weapon (at -2 to Attack), shield, torch, or similar. Advanced prosthetics with no such penalties are known, but cost at least 100gp and are not widely available.</li><li><b>Removing demonic mutations</b> isn't usually possible without magical aid.<br /></li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">OLOG Class: Medic</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Medic Virtues</h3><p style="text-align: left;">More on virtues <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/07/olog-by-sheer-virtue-virtues-v3.html">here</a>. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">If your first class template is Medic, you begin play with one of these virtues at random (roll 1d3). If you have Medic templates, you may choose these virtues as aspirations.</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Medic's Acumen<br /></b>Active: Invoke to reroll a surgery Check, or a Check to identify or diagnose a disease, poison, or similar malady.<br />Passive: +2 Initiative.<b><br /></b></li><li><b>Medic's Resourcefulness</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a healing die roll for any healing you personally administer.<br />Passive: +1/2 inventory slot.</li><li><b>Medic's Tenacity</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll an Attack against a target that's threatening a downed or vulnerable ally.<br />Passive: +2 hit points.<br /></li></ol><h3 style="text-align: left;">Class Abilities</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting equipment:</b> Dagger, crossbow with 10 bolts, medic satchel (holds 6 units of medical supplies in 1 slot, starts full), surgical tools, flask of ether, flask of medical alcohol, flask of vodka.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A:</b> Patch Up, Surgeon<br /><b>B:</b> Gentle Hands<br /><b>C:</b> Anatomist, Bedside Manner<br /><b>D:</b> Second Opinion<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Patch Up</b><br />When you apply first aid, you only expend medical supplies on a natural roll of 4. You can perform first aid on yourself without penalty.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Surgeon</b><br />Step down the damage die of any weapon you wield, but increase its critical hit range by one point. Also, you are considered trained in surgery.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>B: Gentle Hands</b><br />Whenever you roll a natural 1 while conducting first aid, it doesn't induce strain, and you may immediately conduct first aid again on the same subject.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>C: Anatomist</b><br />If you have advantage on an Attack for any reason, your damage dice explode. (If you roll the maximum on a die, keep that result and roll again, adding to the total until you don't roll the maximum.)<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>C: Bedside Manner</b><br />If you spend 10 minutes tending someone's wounds and talking to them before they bed down for a night's rest, they heal 1 extra hit point from resting and may ignore the first point of strain they suffer the following day. You can do this for up to six people per night; you can't do it to yourself.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>D: Second Opinion<br /></b>If you can reach an ally within a minute of them failing a Save of any type and spend a round tending to them, they may make another Save of the same type. On a success, the effects of the initial failed Save are undone as though it had been successful - damage taken is retroactively halved or negated, compulsions are lifted (though any actions taken in the meantime aren't reversed), mutations dissipate, dead characters are revived, and so on. This induces two points of strain, one of which is permanent if the subject was revived from death.<br />Once you've used this ability, you can't use it again until you eat lunch or get a night's rest.<br /><b></b></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">OLOG characters are, in absolute terms, tougher than those of some other hacks, but injury stays with them longer, and the constant accumulation of bruises, scratches, and patch-up jobs can take a heavy toll. The standard game loop implies long expeditions thick with potentially dangerous encounters, on which adequate supplies are a real concern and characters will take a serious beating.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'm walking a difficult line with the Medic. There is a very real risk, in any game with any sort of healer class, that it will become all but mandatory to have one in the party. I'm hoping there are enough ways to heal with items that a canny party doesn't strictly need a Medic, without making them completely obsolete.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Incidentally, if you're wondering where the Medic's starting skills are, those aren't a thing in OLOG. Your class counts as a skill in itself, and you get a random background at character creation, but these don't give you any numerical bonuses, they just let you do things that people with your class and background should be able to do.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-36667328669307512222021-07-31T12:09:00.004-07:002021-07-31T12:29:36.766-07:00[OLOG] By Sheer Virtue (Virtues v3)<p><i>"Discourse on virtue, and they pass by in droves."<br />- Diogenes, 3rd century BC</i></p><p><i>"I think I need to rework this system again. Let me tell you all about it!"<br />- Orc Rehab, 2021</i></p><p>I've made two previous attempts at a virtue system <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/04/olog-orc-virtues.html">here</a> and <a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/04/olog-virtue-signalling.html">here</a>. Both have their merits, but I don't think either is what I'm after for OLOG. Just to recap, OLOG is an orc-focused GLOGhack which doesn't have ability scores. Here's a third attempt.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Orc Laws of Glory: Virtues, Version 3<br /></h2><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAihcUoUrvuuZYi4R0mBjhOiUCb1FauglyD-5vBRO5uJOzlhAues-aTs-mUZrBmrKk3Pn98SgIYun8Ggx5Lc7wc6CPDJAUkaURcIOOqxgSafKSjVntg_mynrpGdh7KfFqW-el6BnjQDc/s2048/oleg-polujanow-.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1565" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAihcUoUrvuuZYi4R0mBjhOiUCb1FauglyD-5vBRO5uJOzlhAues-aTs-mUZrBmrKk3Pn98SgIYun8Ggx5Lc7wc6CPDJAUkaURcIOOqxgSafKSjVntg_mynrpGdh7KfFqW-el6BnjQDc/w306-h400/oleg-polujanow-.jpg" width="306" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A9nblz">Oleg Poluyanov</a></i><br /></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">An orc character is defined by personal <b>virtues</b>, the positive qualities they seek to embody and display in life. A character starts with three virtues, and may gain more as they grow in experience and wisdom.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Each virtue has two components, <b>passive</b> and <b>active</b>. A virtue's passive benefit takes the form of a permanent increase to one of the character's numerical stats. An active benefit allows the virtue to be <b>invoked </b>to reroll a specific kind of roll (including, in some cases, rolls made by others). You can invoke a virtue after seeing the initial die roll, but must take the new roll even if it's worse for you. You can never invoke more than one virtue on the same roll.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Once a virtue has been invoked, it is <b>tapped</b> and can't be invoked again until it's refreshed. Its passive benefit still applies. There are three basic ways to refresh a virtue.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Eating lunch refreshes one tapped virtue.</li><li>Rolling a natural 1 on any d20 roll - and letting the 1 stand - refreshes one tapped virtue. (OLOG has no critical fumbles, so a natural 1 always fails but isn't any worse than a normal failure.)<br /></li><li>A night's rest with a proper meal refreshes <i>all</i> tapped virtues.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Sample Virtues</h3><p style="text-align: left;">There will be a whole table of these eventually, with subsections for the traditional virtues of each of the five major orc clans. For now, here are a few proof-of-concept examples.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Acuity<br /></b>Active: Invoke to reroll a damage roll when you have a height advantage or the element of surprise.<br />Passive: +1 Ranged Attack.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Audacity</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll an Attack against an enemy at least twice as big as you.<br />Passive: +1 Melee Attack.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Courage</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a Save vs. fear, or have an ally within earshot reroll one.<br />Passive: +2 Will.*</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Fervour</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a melee Attack if you've taken damage since your last turn.<br />Passive: +1 Melee Attack.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Grace</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a Check involving full-body coordination or balance.<br />Passive: +2 Reflex.*<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Ingenuity</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a Check involving precise tool use.<br />Passive: +1/2 inventory slot. (This can hold one of any item that's normally stackable.)</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Resilience</b><br />Active: Invoke to have an opponent reroll an Attack against you if you've taken physical damage since your last turn.<br />Passive: +2 Fortitude.*</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Swiftness</b><br />Active: Invoke to reroll a Check to do something against the clock.<br />Passive: +2 Movement.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>* OLOG uses the three 3e save types because, for all 3e's sins, I think it's a pretty good classification. Sorry.</i></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Gaining and Replacing Virtues<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;">My current framework has OLOG characters starting with three virtues:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>one rolled randomly on a master virtue table (d66),</li><li>one rolled randomly on a specific subset of the virtue table, depending on their ancestry,</li><li>and one rolled randomly from a small unique group (d3) determined by their class.</li></ul><p>You start with a fourth, empty virtue slot, and gain a fifth slot when you reach level 5 (the first level at which you don't gain a template).<br /></p><p>At character creation, you also choose an <b>aspiration</b>, a virtue you would like to embody more than you currently do. You do not actually have this virtue yet, and gain none of its benefits. Once per day, when you succeed on a roll that would have allowed you to invoke your aspiration, without invoking any virtues you already have, you can make a mark against your aspiration.</p><p>For virtues that affect enemies' rolls, like Resilience, this is triggered when an enemy fails such a roll against you. For virtues that affect non-d20 rolls, like Acuity, a roll counts as a success if it's strictly better than average (4+ on a d6, 8+ on 2d6, etcetera).<br /></p><p>When you've made three such marks, you gain the aspiration as a new virtue; if you have no free slots, you gain the new virtue only if you forfeit an existing one. You can choose a new aspiration whenever you fulfil your current one or gain a level.</p><p><i><b>Example:</b> Izec is a Crowbar, a cunning, resourceful ruffian with an arsenal of tricks, but she longs to be better at the technical side of her vocation. Izec's aspiration is Ingenuity. The first time each day Izec succeeds on a Check involving precise tool use - the type of roll she'd be able to invoke Ingenuity on - she makes a mark next to her aspiration. When she gains her third mark, she gains the virtue of Ingenuity.</i><br /></p><p>You are allowed to choose a virtue you already have as an aspiration, and can have multiple instances of the same virtue if you're willing to spend the slots on them. The passive bonuses stack, and each one is invoked and tapped separately. If you want a character with five instances of Swiftness, faster than the eye can follow but no better than average at anything else, feel free to work towards it.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Many OSR games have an implicit or explicit theme of learning to live with the hand fate deals you, building on it through class choices and smart decisions. If we take this as the default human mindset, then the default orc mindset is more about looking at the hand fate just dealt you, grabbing fate by the lapels, and applying violence and/or shouting until it gives you something that fits better.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The assumed campaign frame in OLOG is kind of an extended rite of passage. There's a demon invasion up in the high badlands, and it's caused all sorts of second- and third-order problems. The Clansmoot has organised a response, and sent out a call to all orcs everywhere to come forth and prove themselves in the crucible of crisis. It's the perfect place to find out who you really are, decide you don't like that person, and kill them, that you may be reborn. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">I don't want this process to be easy. The aspiration system is meant to incentivise taking specific kinds of risk in pursuit of an ideal, and I want there to be tension between that and survival instincts. OLOG characters are a bit hardier than characters in many other GLOGhacks, but not by a massive amount; wrong moves can still see them dead. If there weren't real risks involved in chasing your dreams, there wouldn't be much Glory in the Orc Laws of Glory.</p><p><span class="authorOrTitle"></span></p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-82706671790868810922021-07-28T13:54:00.003-07:002021-07-28T13:54:34.136-07:00[Skyhack] Dwarves (In My Wall)<p><i>My principal inspiration for Skyhack dwarves is the following <a href="https://www.thatsockcomic.com/">Flork of Cows</a> comic.</i><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBkL2pW4dmWx6dSC6f3Z6YtqqffKoswHS-FCJGyzgFLKe_kKMbve0C-LBma2oQu5XphllO4rCpamjcKMmI8WQP52kodnH9UEzxpkOQlHL_9r1m0nzr-3nA-f6fjM4jVsGk4hyphenhyphenWzqbMt8/s898/dwarves+in+my+wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="336" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYBkL2pW4dmWx6dSC6f3Z6YtqqffKoswHS-FCJGyzgFLKe_kKMbve0C-LBma2oQu5XphllO4rCpamjcKMmI8WQP52kodnH9UEzxpkOQlHL_9r1m0nzr-3nA-f6fjM4jVsGk4hyphenhyphenWzqbMt8/w240-h640/dwarves+in+my+wall.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p>Veyl's <i>Complete and Accurate Taxonomy</i> classifies dwarves as a type of earth elemental. In Alacrity Sower's <i>Earthen Menagerie</i>, they are listed as distant cousins of humans. Udsoe and Udsoe's controversial <i>Beings of the Deep Sky</i> sorts them alongside moles and hedgehogs, with a few mealy-mouthed notes about a possible familial link to orcs. None of these classifications are correct in themselves, but the truth likely lurks somewhere between them.</p><p>Dwarves are stubborn, industrious, probably-sapient creatures, easily recognised by their stature, their stony, slightly iridescent complexions, and their huge wiry beards. Nothing makes a dwarf happier than transforming an untamed swathe of underground into a structurally sound, geometrically pleasing network of chambers, tunnels, and shafts. They would probably be confused if you asked them about the purpose of these structures, but this is immaterial, because you can't ask them - communicating with dwarves is notoriously difficult. They understand beings other than dwarves as confusing, dangerous moving parts of the landscape, which respond semi-predictably to shouting and/or violence, and not as discrete beings in their own right. Dwarves are not inherently violent, but they are very, very bad at de-escalation.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Dwarf</h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 1+1<br /><b>AC:</b> as chain<br /><b>Move:</b> normal, burrow half normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 9<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> like a very smart child who's just discovered coffee<br /><b>Speech:</b> Transrunic<br /><b>Damage:</b> by weapon<br /><b>Special:</b> ignores any instance of exactly 1 damage; telepathic feedback (see below)<br /><b># Enc.:</b> solitary, gang of 2d3, or front of 2d4 gangs<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Most dwarven weapons are repurposed mining equipment - simple pickaxes, hammers, and shovels. There's a 25% chance that a gang will have one member carrying a refraction drill, a gemstone-powered beam weapon. Firing a refraction drill takes two whole combat turns for both the operator and an adjacent assistant<span></span>. The beam deals 2d8 damage to everything in a 30' line, doubled against inanimate objects. Save for half. Non-dwarves can't operate refraction drills, but the small gemstones that power them are worth 2d3gp apiece.</p><p style="text-align: left;">All dwarves wear hard hats. These hats are made from base metals, and serve as both protection and good-luck charms. Dwarven hard hats can be disarmed like weapons. A hatless dwarf has armour as leather and disadvantage on all d20 rolls. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Any creature that attempts telepathic contact with a dwarf, or otherwise
attempts to affect its mind directly with magic or similar powers,
fails in the endeavour and is stunned for 1 round, no Save. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarves speak Transrunic, a dense atonal torrent of syllables with no resemblance to any other known language. Non-dwarves can't learn Transrunic, and many report a strong feeling of nameless discomfort upon hearing or reading it; prolonged exposure can cause headaches and panic attacks. Almost any being that knows a language can recognise the basic sentiments of many dwarf exclamations, which usually amount to "stay back" or "get out of our way".</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">What's He Building?</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarves build, and they build big, far bigger than they actually need. A gang of dwarves, left to their own devices, will readily hollow out whole islands and create sprawling city-scale networks of tunnels without ever moving their beds and possessions out of the first two or three chambers they dug.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarven architecture is semi-functional. If you moved in enough dwarf-sized folk to occupy a whole dwarf network, it would fit their living needs (with the possible exception of food), but they would find it a confusing existence. Design decisions might seem arbitrary, pointless, or actively hostile.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">My recommended process for mapping a dwarven tunnel network is to take a dungeon layout generator, analogue or digital, and use it as rigidly as possible. Do not sand off rough edges, do not tweak connections or room placements that don't make sense, and <i>never</i> reroll dice. If something doesn't fit, <i>make it fit</i>. For a little extra flavour, pepper the results with a few extra bits of weirdness (Google "architecture fails" for inspiration), and scale the whole thing down about 25% to match dwarven proportions.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Over time, a front of dwarves may develop its own distinctive architectural style. Roll 1d4+2 to determine a front's lucky number - they will incorporate this number and its multiples into their buildings as much as possible.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Dwarf Society</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarves are staunchly collectivist. They have no personal names, no
discernible leaders or hierarchies, and it's unclear whether they even
understand themselves as individuals or parts of a greater whole. The basic unit of dwarven society is the front, a collection of about twenty dwarves working towards a single architectural project. Fronts fluctuate in numbers as dwarves die and are born, but one that gets too large will often form a splinter group, a single gang of dwarves splitting off to build a ramshackle skyboat (which rarely survives its maiden landing) and strike the earth on a new isle.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarf reproduction is poorly understood, but seems to be linked to the living mineral flakes that fall like dandruff from their beards. These flakes seem to clump together and grow into new adult dwarves, complete with basic understanding of masonry, the Transrunic language, and how to make a dwarven hard hat from whatever metals are available. A newly minted dwarf seeks out its peers, finds a hammer, fashions a hat, and gets to work without ever needing direct instruction.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Dwarves are not aggressive folk. They live to build, and violence is destructive, not to mention unpleasant and dangerous. However, their linguistic mores and penchant for digging and building under established settlements lead to a lot of misunderstandings, and they will not hesitate to remove a troublesome obstruction by force if shouting fails. (Concerted Transrunic shouting is surprisingly effective.)</p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-46090242718911026642021-07-26T15:42:00.006-07:002021-07-28T13:46:46.765-07:00[Skyhack] Spore Elves<p><i>Skyhack is the current name for an extremely work-in-progress skyworld setting I've been working on, heavily inspired by Aaron A. Reed's <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/328583/Skycrawl">Skycrawl</a>.</i></p><p>The elves of [Skyhack Setting] all struggle with the same deeply
inconvenient truth: left unchecked, they will outlive everything that
matters to them. Their primary differences manifest in how they deal
with this truth. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Everything rots. At least, in the spore elves' eyes, everything should. They have embraced an imagined role as caretakers of the sky, venturing forth from their ever-growing, ever-collapsing fungal strongholds to seed decay and bring low what stands high. As part of embracing the cycle of death and rebirth that seems to come naturally to the other peoples of the skies, spore elves add themselves to it. A healthy elf can live for millennia, but spore elves rarely last longer than two centuries, as they warp, scourge, and ultimately destroy their bodies with carefully cultivated fungal infections.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Spore Elf<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 2<br /><b>AC:</b> as leather<br /><b>Move:</b> normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 10<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> human-level, but twisted by weird zeal and fungal narcotics<br /><b>Speech:</b> Txaa (Elvish), illiterate<br /><b>Damage:</b> by weapon<br /><b>Special:</b> all weapons deal +1 poison damage; clade special ability<br /><b># Enc.:</b> mob of 1d3+1, or crew of 2d6+2 plus a Monitor (as above with 1d3+2 HD) and 1d4-2 Cousins<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">Spore elves favour close combat, usually with edged weapons. Curved, barbed, and serrated blades are common - treat these as swords with +1 critical range. They carry shortbows but rarely use them unless forced, preferring to close the distance.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One in three regular spore elves carries a puffball bomb, a one-shot thrown splash weapon that deals 3d4 poison damage in a 5' radius. Save negates. Spore elves are <i>not</i> immune to these bombs, but have no qualms about getting caught in their own explosions.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Spore elves breathe very loudly, and are thus usually incapable of stealth.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Like all elves, spore elves are hermaphroditic.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Spore Elf Cousin<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;"><b>HD:</b> 6<br /><b>AC:</b> as leather<br /><b>Move:</b> normal, climb normal<br /><b>Morale:</b> 12<br /><b>Intelligence:</b> sub-sapient, flashes of humanlike cunning<br /><b>Speech:</b> incoherent grunts and squeals, understands Txaa<br /><b>Damage:</b> 1d8 slam / 1d8 slam<br /><b>Special:</b> heals 1d3 hp each time it takes weapon damage, except critical hits; enhanced clade special ability<br /><b># Enc.:</b> solitary, pair, or part of a spore elf crew</p><p style="text-align: left;">Midway through a spore elf's second century, the compound stress of all their fungal infections begins to take its toll. Most retire to waste away in relative quiet, but a handful relinquish their bodies fully to the fungal colonies nesting within. Monitors know secret rites that let them direct the growth of these hybrids, and the results are Cousins, fearful monstrosities treated more like living weapons than valued peers.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Spore Elf Clade Generator</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">1d8: Primary Colour</h3><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Violet, brightening in heat.</li><li>Bone, etched with rippling patterns.</li><li>Blue-green, patchy like bread mould.</li><li>Sepia, darker at the edges.</li><li>Crimson, with white dots.</li><li>Dark green, flecked with beige.</li><li>Yellow-brown, oily and shiny.</li><li>Clear, showing bare flesh beneath.</li></ol><h3 style="text-align: left;">1d10: Breathing Tells<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;">Spore elves' fungal infestations tend to give their breathing a distinctive sound.</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Rusty wind chimes.</li><li>Broken plumbing.</li><li>Stone scraping on stone.</li><li>Metallic keening.</li><li>Bubble-wrap popping.</li><li>Wooden creaking.</li><li>Arpeggiated whistling.</li><li>Low, regular thuds.</li><li>Subsonic humming.</li><li>Babbling whispers.</li></ol><h3 style="text-align: left;">1d12: Clade Special Abilities</h3><p style="text-align: left;">All spore elves of a clade will have this ability. Spore elves are always immune to the harmful effects of their own special abilities. (<b>C:</b>) indicates the enhanced version Cousins get.</p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Choking spores.</b> When injured, adjacent creatures suffer -2 to all attacks and checks for 1d4 rounds (<b>C:</b> 2d4 rounds). Doesn't stack. Save negates.</li><li><b>Scalding hot skin.</b> Touch attack (instead of a weapon) deals 1d6 fire damage, ignores armour, and can melt metal with prolonged contact, though it's too damp to start fires. (<b>C:</b> Add the fire damage to the Cousin's standard slam attacks.)</li><li><b>Fungal miasma.</b> Mundane ranged attacks have a 50% (<b>C:</b> 75%) miss chance against the elf.</li><li><b>Caustic spit attack.</b> 10' range, 1d6 acid damage. Useable once every 5 rounds (<b>C:</b> once every 2 rounds) in addition to normal attacks.</li><li><b>Thaumic disruption.</b> Spells cast within 10' of the elf have a 25% (<b>C:</b> 50%) miscast chance, though the spell still goes off.</li><li><b>Camouflage.</b> The elf is functionally invisible if it's been standing still for at least 5 rounds. The sound will still give them away within 10'. (<b>C:</b> Completely silent, too.)</li><li><b>Puppeteer.</b> After killing a humanoid enemy, the elf can spend its whole next turn breathing fungal life into the deceased, raising it as a zombie loyal to the clade. On average, a group of elves with this ability will be encountered with one zombie per four elves already in service. (<b>C:</b> Kills rise automatically on the Cousin's next turn, no extra action needed.)</li><li><b>Paralytic moan.</b> Once per day, 20' radius, inflicts paralysis for 1d4 rounds. Save negates. (<b>C:</b> 40' radius.)</li><li><b>Regeneration.</b> 1hp per round. Cold damage suppresses it for 1 hour. (<b>C:</b> Instead of this, adaptive healing improves to 1d6 per weapon attack.)</li><li><b>Ripper spores.</b> Melee damage caused by the elf won't heal naturally for 1 day (<b>C:</b> 3 days).</li><li><b>Biomancy.</b> The elf may forfeit its normal attack to control mundane plants and fungi within 60', attacking through them. They deal club-equivalent or knife-equivalent damage depending on their size and shape. (<b>C:</b> Up to three biomancy attacks per round.)</li><li><b>Death blossom.</b> Dies instantly at 0hp, exploding in a 10' (<b>C:</b> 20') radius. 1d4 Intelligence damage. Save negates.</li></ol><h2 style="text-align: left;">Spore Elf Society</h2><p style="text-align: left;">Spore
elves divide themselves into independent colonies called clades. Each
clade consists of 1d4+3 crews of spore elves, plus roughly half as many
noncombatants as there are warriors. Noncombatants are mostly children and
those too wracked by their infestations to fight, and they spend most of
their time tending fungal crops and mutagenic cultures, though warriors will pitch in with these tasks too when they're not marauding. Nominally,
leadership usually belongs to the eldest Monitor, but, in practice, most
clades are anarchistic. Crews often end up being
semi-autonomous, developing their own subcultures and sometimes even
their own heraldry.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The
clade makes its home in a sprawling village-sized bastion, spliced
together from sky detritus and caked in mycelium and weird fungal glue.
Spore elf bastions tend to be brittle, but assaulting one is a hellish
task thanks to its labyrinthine layout and profusion of noxious traps.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Spore
elf crews conduct their expeditions aboard polypore sloops,
oddly beautiful half-living craft propelled by violent spore jets. A
typical clade will have access to half as many sloops as it has crews,
rounded up. <i>There may be rules for these in a future post, once I've worked out what aero-naval combat looks like in this setting.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Spore elves are spiritual, exalting the cyclical nature of death above all else, but they seldom follow gods. The half-lucid "wisdoms" that sometimes arise among their ailing elderly are the closest things they have to a priesthood.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Whatever
their ideological pretences, spore elves are raiders,
often indistinguishable tactically from common
pirates. They target anything they've identified as outliving its
natural life, but, being elves, they have a rather warped view of how
long anything "should" live. Visibly battered ships and settlements in
decline or stagnation tend to be their favourite targets. (The fact that
these tend to be easier fights is not lost on them.) Once a crew has purged or driven out the population and torn down the structures, the spore elves will seed the area, and particularly the corpses of ally and enemy alike, with a carpet of fast-growing fungi, ensuring a flourishing new ecosystem in the wreckage of the old one.</p><p> </p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-60205641604714429752021-07-10T14:04:00.003-07:002021-07-10T14:04:51.672-07:00[GLOG] Jousteian Demiclasses<p>Recently, some passing acquaintances and fairweather allies of mine on Discord pointed me towards the works of Canadian artist <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/jouste/gallery">jouste</a> (to whom I credit all the visual art in this post). Someone joked about a GLOGhack where this portfolio was the class list. Here's what I've come up with in response.<br /></p><p>Each of these classes is inspired by one of jouste's pieces. They're just like regular GLOG classes, except that you can only enter them at first level, you don't have a race / species / ancestry if you take one, they come with special dietary requirements, and they only have A and B templates. Fill out your other template slots with other classes.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Epistolemure<br /></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/dedilf2-7eb3dd3d-a699-4827-8532-b2b315b4a696.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGVkaWxmMi03ZWIzZGQzZC1hNjk5LTQ4MjctODUzMi1iMmIzMTViNGE2OTYucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.bgb3K5Yp2FCix3tVs4_Q0zcVdx0EshxgWft7o3m2Fqs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="800" height="257" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/dedilf2-7eb3dd3d-a699-4827-8532-b2b315b4a696.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGVkaWxmMi03ZWIzZGQzZC1hNjk5LTQ4MjctODUzMi1iMmIzMTViNGE2OTYucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.bgb3K5Yp2FCix3tVs4_Q0zcVdx0EshxgWft7o3m2Fqs" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting skill:</b> 1d3 - 1) Bureaucracy, 2) Calligraphy, 3) Debating.<br /><b>Starting equipment:</b> Knife, fountain pen, signet ring (draw your sigil), blank 100-page notebook, indefinite supply of black ink, up to 1oz per day of molten wax secreted from your chest cavity (1d8th colour of the rainbow, black on an 8).<br /><b>Diet:</b> Ten sheets of ordinary letter-sized paper equal one ration. High-quality paper counts double. Spellbook pages count quintuple, but are dangerous (Save or gain a random mutation). You don't need to drink.<br /><b>A:</b> +1 Stealth. You can't wear armour, but your hardened skin and agility count as Leather that doesn't encumber you. As an action, fold yourself up into a flat form with the size, weight, and general appearance of a letter, or unfold yourself to full size. Equipment doesn't transform with you. In letter form, you can't see, speak, or move under your own power, and are indistinguishable from a letter unless someone tries to open you or sets you on fire, at which point you instantly revert to normal.<br /><b>B:</b> +1 Stealth. You can write (but not necessarily read, speak, or understand) any language you know about. You may allow yourself to be opened, and know how to write on yourself such that the message will appear in the opened letter. If you ingest a dose of poison as you transform, it doesn't affect you as long as you stay in letter form, and, if anyone reads you, you transfer that dose to them in full, losing the poison yourself and forcing them to Save against it.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Fueldrake</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de8n3yd-da933b52-c096-4134-b49b-e475e67e1adc.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGU4bjN5ZC1kYTkzM2I1Mi1jMDk2LTQxMzQtYjQ5Yi1lNDc1ZTY3ZTFhZGMucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.7H44gFbYeBv9U1YjuthJPOtuxbmT02ucE9UnVw9eWNw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="800" height="257" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de8n3yd-da933b52-c096-4134-b49b-e475e67e1adc.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGU4bjN5ZC1kYTkzM2I1Mi1jMDk2LTQxMzQtYjQ5Yi1lNDc1ZTY3ZTFhZGMucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.7H44gFbYeBv9U1YjuthJPOtuxbmT02ucE9UnVw9eWNw" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting skill:</b> 1d3 - 1) Arsonist, 2) Mechanic, 3) Stage Technician.<br /><b>Starting equipment:</b> Wrench, tinderbox, lizard leathers (armour as leather), two jerry cans. Each can holds up to 30 pints of liquid and consumes one inventory slot per 6 pints or part thereof. One contains 1d6+3 pints of lamp oil, the other 1d6+3 pints of [1d6 - 1) vegetable slurry, 2) glue, 3) acid, 4) magenta paint, 5) blood, 6) cheap, horrible sake].<br /><b>Diet:</b> One pint of lamp oil equals one ration. You can substitute any flammable liquid that would give you the same amount of burn in a lantern - no solids. You don't need to drink anything else.<br /><b>A:</b> +2 Movement. You can speak with fuel. Most fuel isn't terribly bright and its memory is limited to a day, but it's enthusiastic and overconfident to a near-suicidal degree.<br /><b>B:</b> +2 Movement. You are telekinetic, with strength and speed equal to your own and reach as far as you can perceive, but it only works on things that are currently on fire.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Crystopian<br /></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de113w2-e2037a44-6172-4608-8471-32cc5096b8bc.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGUxMTN3Mi1lMjAzN2E0NC02MTcyLTQ2MDgtODQ3MS0zMmNjNTA5NmI4YmMucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.xTq_J0HnkMGeXVFgTlicZ2VKkmo-Fe6bBQIArt3VuSA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="800" height="257" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de113w2-e2037a44-6172-4608-8471-32cc5096b8bc.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2NzliMmY2LTRkN2EtNDc0ZC1iYjA5LWNmODQ3MTNhM2NmNFwvZGUxMTN3Mi1lMjAzN2E0NC02MTcyLTQ2MDgtODQ3MS0zMmNjNTA5NmI4YmMucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.xTq_J0HnkMGeXVFgTlicZ2VKkmo-Fe6bBQIArt3VuSA" width="400" /></a></div><p><b>Starting skill:</b> 1d3 - 1) Hazardous Materials, 2) Mad Science Power Source, 3) Particle Physicist.<br /><b>Starting equipment:</b> Unstable raygun (range as bow, 1d3 or 2d3 damage, 3s explode, each explosion deals 1 damage to you), two metal legs, one metal arm.<br /><b>Diet:</b> Spending an hour in direct sunlight or consuming an ounce of radioactive material counts as one ration. You don't need to drink - in fact, you <i>can't</i> drink.<br /><b>A:</b> +2 Defence, -2 hp. You're immune to ionizing radiation. You can't wear armour, but your crystalline body and scavenged metal limbs count as Chain. You can replace any limb with 10 minutes' work and a suitable replacement, or spend 10 minutes to re-engineer an arm into a leg (but not vice-versa). Anything metallic, articulated, and roughly the size of a human limb works as a leg, but arms need some sort of manipulator. You can have up to three limbs in any combination at any given time. Each leg beyond the second grants +2 Movement. One leg halves Movement. You can't move at all with no legs.<br /><b>B:</b> +2 Defence, -2 hp. You can now support up to five limbs at a time. While you have at least three arms, you gain an extra attack per round, but you must make it with a different limb from your first.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Class: Rogue Ultrabenthic Tendril</h2><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de1iest-4f893d80-d631-4afe-ba8c-044ea0cf8b5e.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_823,q_80,strp/manenemy_of_the_portholes_by_jouste_de1iest-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODIzIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMjY3OWIyZjYtNGQ3YS00NzRkLWJiMDktY2Y4NDcxM2EzY2Y0XC9kZTFpZXN0LTRmODkzZDgwLWQ2MzEtNGFmZS1iYThjLTA0NGVhMGNmOGI1ZS5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.ZsdurXPsRYfRkJatnxoCEL_kftoAzNrak-zJ0bHzvQQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="800" height="257" src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2679b2f6-4d7a-474d-bb09-cf84713a3cf4/de1iest-4f893d80-d631-4afe-ba8c-044ea0cf8b5e.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_823,q_80,strp/manenemy_of_the_portholes_by_jouste_de1iest-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODIzIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMjY3OWIyZjYtNGQ3YS00NzRkLWJiMDktY2Y4NDcxM2EzY2Y0XC9kZTFpZXN0LTRmODkzZDgwLWQ2MzEtNGFmZS1iYThjLTA0NGVhMGNmOGI1ZS5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.ZsdurXPsRYfRkJatnxoCEL_kftoAzNrak-zJ0bHzvQQ" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Starting skill:</b> 1d3 - 1) Angler, 2) Longshoreman, 3) Pirate.<br /><b>Starting equipment:</b> Rusty hook on a chain (as flail), sealeather jacket (armour as leather), 1lb bag of salt, symbiotic starfish companion, 3 jars of dead plankton in brine (1 ration each, to you), vial of sapient water from the Ultrabenthic Flowmind (telepathic, hates you).<br /><b>Diet:</b> You drink saltwater as much as a human drinks fresh water, and you can only eat creatures that live in it. You can drink fresh water and other liquids, but they don't sate your thirst. (For reference, half an ounce of salt turns one pint of fresh water into saltwater.)<br /><b>A:</b> You sink in water, and can breathe underwater indefinitely. You gain an extra attack per round with your stinging tentacles, useable only at very close range. On a hit, the target Saves vs. paralysis and becomes unable to breathe, vocalise, or use breath-based abilities for 3 rounds on a failed save or 1 round on a success. This duration stacks with itself, and a creature thus affected for 10 consecutive rounds dies. All ordinary sea life is mortally terrified of you.<br /><b>B:</b> If you hit with a tentacle attack, you can make another one immediately. You can speak telepathically with any creature that breathes, but will always come across as aggressive and hateful, whatever your actual sentiment.</p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-48969077698338992382021-05-08T15:01:00.004-07:002021-05-08T15:02:46.617-07:00[GLOG] The Hound of the HIGHEST<p>Evil smells bad. Everyone knows this - from putrid corpse-scent to the heady reek of pestilence (which is, of course, spread by corrupted air), the works of Him Below leave a foul miasma on the world that offends the senses and disquiets the soul.</p><p>What some don't realise is that it's not merely the products of wickedness that leave clues in the air. Sin itself has a smell. The five Mortal Transgressions each leave their own distinctive marks upon the air, too subtle and insidious for the untrained nose. With practice, though, they are all too easy to sniff out.</p><p>The Hounds of the HIGHEST are a loosely-knit holy order separate from the three great churches. Their senses of smell are finely attuned to the evils of the world, and, to hone it, they must spend time bathing themselves in that same wickedness, thus their high attrition rate for new recruits and their terrible reputation among more conventional clergy. Still, those who can brave the Transgressions and come out with their faith intact are investigators without compare. Tannists, Venerables, and Absancts alike spurn the Hounds in public, but every bishop worth her salt knows when to call for their aid.</p><p>Some grow tired of serving the churches, though, and decide their talents would be better used elsewhere, in the dark, forgotten places of the world.</p><p>These are their stories.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Demi-Class: Hound of the HIGHEST</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Kawl2y" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWREOb9PRcPUQHihnjeajOTCHGXFHwvx10NLC6wV5xJvvc4O9rq7uKrVp7gwFX66tNgl2X3ceSijmE42q33pSZA7pPFppMBMzp6q-deUvHV-WB8_2fCUJ63v6MayvWsjt9bR9tnwOY0uE/w300-h400/Eleonora+Marza.jpg" width="300" /><br />art by Eleonora Marza</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p><b>Starting equipment:</b> Plain steel censer (as flail) with 2d4 phials of holy incense (burn for an hour each), notebook, pencil, <i>Edicts of the Heights</i> (Wodelyn translation, heavily defaced), pewter badge with bloodhound sigil.<br /><b>Starting skill:</b> Roll 1d3 - 1) Apothecary, 2) Hunter, 3) Perfumier.</p><p>For each Hound of the HIGHEST template you possess, you gain +1 Initiative as long as you have a functional sense of smell and your enemies have a scent, however slight.<br /></p></div><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A:</b> Heaven Scent, Lingering Stink<br /><b>B:</b> Whiff of Suspicion, Burn Out the Stench<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Several of the Hound's abilities rely on smell. These abilities are not magic and can't be dispelled or blocked by antimagic effects, but they can be foiled by strong mundane smells like perfume or dung. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Heaven Scent</b><br />You have a nose for the five Mortal Transgressions: Violence, Theft, Witchcraft, Oathbreaking, and Sedition. You can detect people and things associated with them, known as Transgressive Objects, by smell alone. By spending one round within arm's reach of such a thing - you needn't take any particular action - you detect the scent and learn which of the five Transgressions is most applicable and whether the subject is a Transgressor (one who's committed a Transgression), a Product (a direct result of a Transgression), or an Accessory (something associated with the commission of a Transgression). Victims have no particular scent unless they also fall into another category.</p><ul><li><b>Violence:</b> Weapons are Accessories, corpses and major long-term wounds are Products.</li><li><b>Theft:</b> Stolen goods are Accessories, and anything stolen goods have been directly traded for is a Product.</li><li><b>Witchcraft:</b>
Magic (not priestcraft) used in unsanctioned or wicked ways. Spellbooks
and other paraphernalia are Accessories, summoned creatures and ongoing
magical effects are Products.</li><li><b>Oathbreaking or Sedition:</b> Use your best judgement - these are too wide for a full list.<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">You can trace scents up to a week old, and discern when they're more than a day old.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>A: Lingering Stink</b><br /> Even successful Hounds have a hard time getting through training without falling into a few bad habits. When you gain this ability, roll 1d6 for a bad habit - 1) binge drinking, 2) narcotics, 3) gambling, 4) meaningless sex, 5) petty theft, 6) brawling. If you've indulged your bad habit in the last week, for no reason other than feeling the buzz, you gain a +2 bonus to all saves and heal 1 extra hit point with lunch. If you haven't, invert these bonuses.<br />This habit also gives you a constant miasma of low-level vice. It doesn't interfere with your abilities, but it does mask any greater Transgressions you might have committed, such that other Hounds and similarly trained people can never detect them.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>B: Whiff of Suspicion</b><br />You can now trace scents up to a month old, and discern when they're more than a week old.<br />You can spend a round adjacent to a Transgressive Object to commit it to memory. Note down its nature and Transgression, such as "Darius the blacksmith - Witchcraft" or "the Eleventh Legion's lost pay chest - Theft". When you smell something connected to the same acts of Transgression, you will recognise the link; you'll know, for example, that Darius' familiar is linked to him (beyond simply being an Accessory to Witchcraft), or that the bandit camp on the Caul Road is associated with that stolen pay. You can retain only three memories at a time this way, and may drop them at any time.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>B: Burn Out the Stench</b><br />You gain an extra attack per round which you can only use against creatures you've identified as Transgressors or Accessories.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">The inspiration for this class comes from all over the place, but the trigger was an episode of <i>Leverage</i>, of all things, the one where they fake a miracle to save a church from being shut down. There's a minor plot point about the Vatican sending investigators to verify the miracle as legit, and the second thing this made me think of was whether it'd be cool to play one of those guys. (The first thing was the Monty Python "Church Police" skit.) The first version of this class was based around being able to discern whether magic was real or fake, but I realised pretty quickly that it would be very limiting, and had a think about what else church investigators might do. The other inspiration point was the running theme in many GLOG denominations of wizards being able to taste magic. What if priests had a similar sense, one more aligned with their identity? What if they could smell sin?<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The Hound of the HIGHEST was originally going to be a full class, but my attempts to extend it to C and D templates felt like a stretch somehow, like I was overextending an already pretty limited idea. That said, I think I like it as a half-class. I figure the Hounds probably aren't close-knit enough to have all that much consistency between them, and we should have more half-classes regardless, since ease and simplicity of multiclassing is one of the GLOG's biggest strengths. Fill out your other two levels with some sort of thief if you want to stress the "holy scoundrel" angle, a different flavour of priest for some actual miracles, or a fighter class for a scent-based Punisher type.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I really need to write up more about the assumed theology behind my classes at some point.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-73103367298274741612021-04-24T07:32:00.002-07:002021-04-24T07:34:36.223-07:00[OLOG] Virtue Signalling<p><a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/04/olog-orc-virtues.html">Last time on</a><a href="https://orc-rehab.blogspot.com/2021/04/olog-orc-virtues.html"> Orc Rehab</a>, I wrote about virtues. This time, I'm taking another swing.</p><p>After some discussions on Discord, I realised that, while I still think a system with virtues as its only core stats has legs, my first attempt hewed perhaps too close to the old ability score structure. If each character has just a few virtues from a list of many, the system needs to be built with that in mind rather than trying to make it resemble the ability scores of old.</p><p>So, no more numbers. Here's take two.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Orc Laws of Glory: Virtues (and Basic Mechanics)<br /></h2><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg661VGa7Chyphenhyphenvq5_lHPV0BjiSAzP-P5buUmBEqBTd5UEVuHTNH_YFqRcOLUYsManWUkSCyCkR5iisFajZzocJU5HiW1aPLlW1U-yei5gTVDwvh-FNUnJ5_TxN4qIY2R9JMZ_6mVH-y7bfw/s1920/fehler.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1357" data-original-width="1920" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg661VGa7Chyphenhyphenvq5_lHPV0BjiSAzP-P5buUmBEqBTd5UEVuHTNH_YFqRcOLUYsManWUkSCyCkR5iisFajZzocJU5HiW1aPLlW1U-yei5gTVDwvh-FNUnJ5_TxN4qIY2R9JMZ_6mVH-y7bfw/w400-h283/fehler.jpg" width="400" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QrRolx">art by Elena Barbieri</a></i></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">There are more orc virtues than may be counted. A virtue is defined as follows:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A name, which is a single noun.</li><li>A type, which is either (A)ttack, (S)ave, or (C)heck.</li><li>A short phrase detailing when the virtue is <i>primary</i>.</li></ul><p>Some examples of virtues:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Daring (A): Attack an enemy larger than you.</li><li>Acuity (A): Attack from a height advantage or with surprise. <br /></li><li>Self-Will (S): Save against the works of the gods.<br /></li><li>Diligence (C): Check to complete a task whose main challenge is duration or tedium.<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">Virtues are binary. You either have a virtue or you don't. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">A virtue grants a stackable +1 bonus to all rolls of its type. Each (A) virtue grants +1 to Attacks, each (S) virtue +1 to Saves, and each (C) virtue +1 to Checks.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>An <b>Attack</b> is a roll to directly affect or defeat an enemy in a conflict - hitting them with a weapon counts, as do most "combat manoeuvres", but a chess match and a foot race wil also call for Attacks.</li><li>A <b>Save</b> is a roll to avoid or mitigate the effects of a hazard.</li><li>Any other type of action roll (i.e. not damage rolls or rolls on random tables) is a <b>Check</b>.</li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">This will lead to some virtues providing boosts to types of roll that seem odd, like Finesse in a chess match or Diligence while trying to defuse a bomb. This is fine. Orcs interpret their virtues broadly. <br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">When an orc attempts a roll for which they have a primary virtue of the right type, they may also add their level. This bonus <i>doesn't</i> stack. The primary criteria of virtues should be interpreted quite broadly.
Daring might apply in social combat, for example, to attacks against a
more famous enemy, and Self-Will should apply to saves against the
special attacks of divine beings like angels.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Example:</b> Izec is a level 2 orc with the four example virtues listed above. Passively, she gets +2 to Attacks, +1 to Saves, and +1 to Checks. If she makes an attack against a larger enemy, or with height advantage or surprise, she gets an additional +2 bonus thanks to her level, for a total attack bonus of +4. If she attacks a larger enemy <i>and</i> has a height advantage, her attack bonus is still only +4 - she doesn't get to add her level twice.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Failings</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Failings are simply virtues inverted. Any virtue may also be a failing, in which case it is a quality in which an orc is notably lacking. Finesse as a failing, for example, would mean a clumsy, bumbling orc.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Failings do not impose a penalty. Rather, if an orc attempts a task for which their Failing is primary, they can't claim any numerical bonuses on their roll. Neither the general bonus from type nor any specific bonus from primary virtues applies, and any class-based bonus also doesn't work.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Example:</b> Yaruv, like Izec, is a level 2 orc with the virtues of Daring and Acuity, but he also has the failing of Vigour (A), whose primary criterion is "Attack for the first time in a conflict". Yaruv encounters an ogre in the badlands and charges it. Normally, Yaruv's attack bonus would be +4 - +2 from his two (A) virtues, and +2 because he's attacking a larger enemy, which is the primary criterion for Daring. However, because he has Vigour as a failing, these bonuses are cancelled, and his first attack against the ogre is made at a +0 bonus.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Design Notes</h2><p style="text-align: left;">The details of my still-hypothetical-but-slowly-becoming-more-concrete orc-focused GLOG hack are starting to come together.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The part of my previous post I was least happy with was the fairly constrained virtue list. The whole point of orcish virtues, from a worldbuilding angle, is that they're a huge, wildly diverse set of tools by which orcs define themselves. Having too many virtues in the old system, though, would have been a mess and risked too much overlap and fuzziness about when to use one virtue versus another. I think this version is a bit more defined, a bit more lightweight, and feels more specialised rather than aping ability scores purely for tradition's sake.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">One thing notably absent from this post is how you choose virtues and failings, and how you gain them as you advance. I think I'd like it to be a bit more structured than completely random rolling, maybe even a light lifepath character generation system a la <i>Beyond the Wall</i>. In terms of advancement, I don't want characters to pick up too many virtues - their power already increases through the scaling primary bonus. Gaining new virtues might well require swapping out old ones.</p><p style="text-align: left;">How do we feel about this compared to the first post? I'm curious to find out what people prefer.<br /></p>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6554168103166197852.post-84679951295096793322021-04-20T16:13:00.001-07:002021-04-24T07:34:47.832-07:00[OLOG] Orc Virtues<p>A glance at my URL will tell you this, but, just so we're abundantly clear, I love orcs.</p><p>For a good couple of years now, I've been building up a cumulative concept in my head of what an orc is in my home setting. This post isn't going to be about that - I'll save it for another time - but, to summarise, orcs are masters of engineering, stubbornly atheistic, and struggling to reconcile a millennia-old clan structure with the rise of realpolitik.</p><p>I've been toying with the idea of a GLOGhack (take a shot) that focuses on orcs. I don't know much about it yet - level of crunch, what the classes will look like, whether there'll be classes at all, etcetera - but one thing I do know is that it'd give me an opportunity to play with stats a little.</p><p>Orcs define themselves by virtues, various personal qualities they strive for and aspire to. There's a near-infinite variation in the virtues to which one might swear allegiance, but orcs are realists. They acknowledge that pursuing <i>all</i> virtue is overambitious at best, counterproductive at worst. Instead, most orcs will choose personal portfolios of virtues to uphold and pursue. The degree to which this is a formal part of society varies - some clans and enclaves hold elaborate ceremonies where young orcs swear to uphold their chosen virtues, while for others virtues are a quiet, personal matter and interrogating someone else's is considered rude.</p><p>This idea of choosing just a few strengths to focus on struck me as an interesting approach for a game. What if characters varied not just in the values of their stats, but in which stats they did and didn't possess, right from the outset?</p><p>So, here are the beginnings of a framework for just that.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYh5KO0AafnoN-MAlgKGSxipDHT9GahkuUNhaAwvTqR2EtQ96vJhWGyFL3YTzpQqtXVRpT2gzXy8pyS9G-rEayFLoVI_6wha-k-KYchYa2nbQN6txoqMsfQ8yzz9f5HW2zVSCCZzO-G9E/s2000/Billy+Christian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1521" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYh5KO0AafnoN-MAlgKGSxipDHT9GahkuUNhaAwvTqR2EtQ96vJhWGyFL3YTzpQqtXVRpT2gzXy8pyS9G-rEayFLoVI_6wha-k-KYchYa2nbQN6txoqMsfQ8yzz9f5HW2zVSCCZzO-G9E/s320/Billy+Christian.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>art by <a href="https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0X4y2y">Billy Christian</a></i><br /></div><div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Orc Laws of Glory: <strike>Ability</strike> Virtue Scores</h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Character Generation<br /></h3><p style="text-align: left;">There are ten potential <b>virtues</b>. Here is a <i>very</i> rough table. Many of these have both physical and mental / emotional components. There is overlap - that's kind of the point.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">1d10 Orcish Virtues<br /></h4><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>ACU, Acumen - practical intelligence, manual dexterity and fine-motor skills<br /></li><li>DIL, Diligence - caution, perception, concentration<br /></li><li>FOR, Fortitude - toughness both physical and mental<br /></li><li>GRA, Grace - agility, full-body coordination<br /></li><li>MIG, Might - physical brawn and leverage, not just how strong you are but how you use it<br /></li><li>PAS, Passion - inner fire, drive, raw charisma<br /></li><li>PRE, Presence - "passive" social skills, poise, and general impact<br /></li><li>RES, Resolve - emotional and psychic endurance, commitment, willpower<br /></li><li>SAG, Sagacity - abstract intelligence, learning, memory<br /></li><li>WIT, Wit - quick thinking, "active" social skills<br /></li></ol><p style="text-align: left;">To generate a new orc, start by rolling five times on the virtue table, noting each result as it comes, including duplicates. </p><p style="text-align: left;">For each unique virtue, roll 3d6, plus an additional d6 for each copy of it you have beyond the first, and take the three highest results. Sum those dice and check the sum against the following table for your <b>virtue modifier</b>.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>3-5: -3<br /></li><li>6-7: -2</li><li>8-10: -1<br /></li><li>11-13: +1<br /></li><li>14-16: +2</li><li>17-18: +3</li></ul><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">Erase one virtue of your choice. (This is mandatory.) You're done.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Let's roll up an example character now to demonstrate. We'll give her a good, traditional orc name, like Izec. I roll 6d10 on the table and get Acumen, Grace, Passion, Wit, and Wit again. For each of Acumen, Grace, and Passion, I roll 3d6, and get 8, 11, and 9, respectively. For Wit, I instead roll 4d6 and keep the three highest, and get 14. Then I must choose a virtue to erase - I decide to cut Passion.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Izec's final virtue modifiers are ACU -1, GRA +1, WIT +2 - she's quick of body and mind, but bad at applying her considerable intellect in a structured, practical way. She <i>does not have</i> any of the other virtues on the list. They're just not things that stick out about her.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">If your total negative modifiers exceed your total positive modifiers, you may reroll your character.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Virtues in Play</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Almost everything in the OLOG that's tied to your stats gives you a choice of two or more virtues to use. Here's how it works.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you don't have either listed virtue, you don't apply a modifier.<br /></li><li>If you have one of the listed virtues, you <i>must</i> use its virtue modifier.</li><li>If you have more than one listed virtue, use the best modifier.<br /></li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">Derived stats, like attack bonuses and save values, each have prescribed sets of virtues that can apply to them. For other types of check, it's probably best to adjudicate on the fly whether or not a particular virtue is applicable (though ideally it should be consistent - thinking about keeping lists of where you've used a virtue in the past, might be too much bookkeeping).<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">For raw stat checks, each virtue has a derived virtue value of 10 plus twice its modifier - this is the equivalent of a raw ability score in other systems. If you make a virtue check with no applicable virtues, the target defaults to 10.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is all very unformed and early-stage at the moment, and could definitely use refinement, but I think there's potential. More to come, probably.<br /></p></div>Shiftyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01051125700998075194noreply@blogger.com2