[Pathfinder] Fun With Templates

In my recent eberron-based games with the Order I played around with the templates available to produce one of the most dangerous and annoying critters they've faced so far. They've managed to deal with them so far when just fighting just one along with some mook backup but in tonight's game I'm going to be throwing about 5 of them at the Order at once. 

The Hounds of Karnath.

Magebred Fiendish Vampiric Worgs (CR 5)

Medium Undead; HD 4d8+12 (30 hp); Speed: 50 feet; AC 26 (+10 natural, +5 dex, +1 dodge); Initiative: +9; Attack: Bite +13 (1d8+12, plus trip plus energy drain); CMB +13 CMD 28 (32 vs trip); SA: Blood Drain, Children of the Night, Create Spawn, Dominate (DC 16), Energy Drain (2 negative levels); Smite Good 1/day SQ: Undead, Change Shape, Gaseous Form, Spider Climb, Fast Healing 5, DR 10/magic and silver, Cold Resistance 10, Electricity Resistance 10, Fire Resistance 5, Turn Resistance +4, SR 10; Saves: Fort +4, Ref+11, Will+4; Str-27, Dex-21, Con--, Int-8, Wis-16, Cha-14

Skills: Perception +22, Stealth +12, Survival +6

Feats: Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Toughness, Run, Skill Focus (perception), Improved Natural Attack 

These were created by the Karnathi government for "internal issues", hunting down traitors, spies and anyone else the government or the church of Vol wanted to make an example of. There would be a night full of howling and the next morning corpses with their hamstrings ripped and their blood drained would be found in the dirt. The emerald claw gotten hold of a pack of them as well and has recently sent them after the Order, so far just one at a time with the support of a few Karnathi skeletons or Zombies but tonight they'll face most of the pack.

Now normally a group of CR 5 monsters, even vampires, would not be that big a deal to a 9th level party like the Order. Especially considering they've defeated a vampire before (and boy is that a story for another time). But unfortunately they've got no cleric or paladin, no silver weaponry and only one character has a weapon that's powerful enough to overcome their DR. That, combined with the Hound's constant tripping, energy draining and healing means that it's been a tough fight for them dealing with just one. Hopefully I'll record everything tonight and you can share experience. 

EDIT: Unfortunately, although there was much panicking when the full pack of Hounds descended on the party, the Hounds of Karnath fell victim to the main weakness of monsters with more Templates than Hit Dice: Their saving throws. Jack, the Order's sorcerer, pulled out a scroll of halt undead and managed to lock 3 of the 5 hounds right out of commission. Two escaped via mist form but the rest were staked.

Even more unfortunately the recording of tonight's session was screwed up. However sometime in the next week or so I'll begin recounting the stories of the current incarnation of the Order of Magnitude to get everyone caught up.

Gallery of Rejection 2

The second entry in the Gallery of Rejection comes from an art contest I entered in the Cracked.com forums a few weeks ago. The contest started with 32 artists, pairing them up in "duels" against one another based on a short "inspiration" phrase. After the art is produced there's a vote to see who continues.

This isn't a proper Gallery of Rejection entry because I actually made it to the third round and I'm thrilled about that. There were a lot of great artists in the competition and a lot of people far worthier than I got eliminated in the early rounds. This is more of an excuse to post the art I created.

In order, the inspirations were: It's Good to Be Back, Secret Places, and Regret. Click the images to see the full size versions.

Looking at the final entry it's pretty obvious why I lost. Well, actually I lost because my opponent did really great work, but clearly the last one is not the top of my game. Had far too much on my plate that weekend including finishing up the latest Beyond Reality update and submitting an entry to Somethingawful's Steve's Next Top Module contest (which I'm sure will be showing up in the Gallery once the results for that contest come through).

I Thought of it First III: GPS gaming

I should mention that I've never owned a GPS device. I don't do much driving and I'm too cheap to get any phone other than what's offered free with my telephone plan. However I recently took a trip to Portland with NJ and a friend who did have a GPS on her smartphone and we got oddly excited over the process of "keep the blue dot going along the purple line!"

So it occurred to me, why not make that a game? Have a GPS system that scores you based on not only how far or how often you drive but how well you drive? You earn points every time you don't miss a turn (complete with little fanfare noises). You could even have bonus points every time you visit a place you haven't been to before or points for going farther from your "home" base. The game could even have achievements that you could unlock for different destinations or creating unusual shapes on the GPS map (say doing a figure 8 through several blocks). 

Bizarre little idea I had but I'm sure it'll exist someday.

Savage World of Athas finale

Phew, this is taking longer than I thought but I'm nearly done now. 

Magic

Here we're going to be going over the different versions of Arcane Backgrounds for Athas: Elementalism, Magic and Psionics. Templars would qualify as well but seeing as they're meant to be NPCs and their power depends on the favor of the sorcerer kings I'm not going to provide PC stats for them. If you feel the need it's easy enough to give them the Miracles AB from the core SW book. But here's all the rest: 

Order of Magnitude Sound!

In preparation for plans to record playtesting for PDQ-Fu I've done some experimental recording with the Order. Although the cheap microphone I purchased for this turned out to be amazingly bad at picking up anything I did find that the tiny, built-in microphone for my mp3 player is actually fairly impressive. 

So, just to share here's a snippet (ran out of memory storage on the player) of our last game session. You'll get to see what I have to put up with. Just a word of warning there's some swearing. This is my first attempt at any audio editing so hopefully I'll learn bit by bit how to make higher quality recordings for the future.

Click here for the madness

Order of Magnitude V: The final chapter

So this should be the final entry. The entire campaign lasted a bit over a year and a half but unfortunately a lot of the exact details were lost due to my faulty memory. However this part is still fairly fresh.

After fleeing the ruins of Shan Fan (and cursing the fact that their plans to steal the Denarians airship came to nothing) the posse heads south along the edge of the Maze, tracking a rumor that one of the coins was lost somewhere in this area. Unfortunately at this point Nicodemus and co. are in hot pursuit. Normally the posse would probably have stood their ground and fought. However, they've found through several tussles with Nicodemus that he's fairly unkillable, seemingly completely invulnerable to even the most lethal headshots or Max's hexes (those who have read the dresden files know why). With this in mind they decide to high tail it away from the Denarians ASAP.

However, the airship is closing in fast and they're running out of supplies in the california deserts. It's at about this time that they run into a band of native americans. They manage to make peaceful contact and with some decent Persuasion rolls from Jethro they are invited back to the tribe's village. It's about this time that the Denarians appear on the horizon. It looks like a horrific battle in the making but then the Indian shaman who leads the village stops it cold. He calls lightning to turn the airship into torch and when Nicodemus and crew arrive on foot he banishes them from the tribe's lands. It's clear to everyone at this point that they have stumbled upon Plot.

So, spending some time to talk to the indians they learn some important things. First that this tribe does possess the coin they're looking for. It's kept at the bottom of a deep well in the center of the village along with several other nasty artifacts of evil. The shaman is bound by a duty to the spirits to guard any sources of wickedness and evil here, never permitting them to leave. In exchange the spirits grant him gobs of power while he remains in the tribe's territory and the rest of the tribe defends him from physical dangers. What's more he's able to fill them in on some information such as the source of Nicodemus's invulnerability (an artifact called the noose of judas he wears around his neck) and where he's headed next (Death Valley). Since he wasn't able to collect the coin here he'll likely just kill one of his own denarian crew and take their coin to complete the set he needs to forge the Crown of Tears (Plot Device...of EVIL!) and gain the combined powers of the 18 denarians he'd forge into the crown. That's not the only bad news though, which brings us to Max...

The Savage World of Athas part 3: Wild Talents

Now, the final step to complete the conversion: Dark Sun's rather unique take on standard magic systems. Before we get to that though let's talk about wild talents. The original setting allowed you to get just about any psionic ability if you were lucky but later versions, due to very valid balance concerns, limit wild talents to minor 0-level effects. Trying to find a happy balance between the original, game-breaking insanity and the bland, minor talents that replaced it I've come up with the following ideas. 

The first thing you've got to do is decide how you want to distribute wild talents among players. Essentially there are three ways to do it.

First, in the spirit of the old school, there's good old random chance. Each character rolls a d20 to determine exactly what their wild talent is. Characters with AB (Psionics) should not roll, instead they receive an additional Power known when they take the AB Edge. Likewise if a character with a Wild Talent takes the Edge then they lose their Talent but start with an additional Power.

1: No Talent: You have no psionic ability. However you do receive the Psionic Resistance Edge for free.

2-3: Psychokinetic Talent

4-5: Pyrokinetic Talent

6-7: Biofeedback Talent

8-9: Healing Talent

10-11: Mindscream Talent

12-13: Psychocognition Talent

14-15: Telepathic Talent

16-17: Psychoportive Talent

18: Exceptional Talent: Roll again, you have a +2 bonus to Spirit rolls to activate your talent. 

19: Broad Talent: Roll twice, you have two talents but suffer a -2 penalty to Spirit rolls to activate the talent.

20: Mad With Power!: Roll three times, you have three talents but every time you activate a talent roll on the Fear table.

The second option is to give everyone a single Wild Talent of their choice (only for results from 2-17).

Finally, the more sane option is to make a Background Edge: Wild Talent (no prerequisites) which grants either a Talent of the player's choice or a roll on the table.

So, how do wild talents work? Essentially when you want to activate a Wild Talent you spend a Benny and make a Spirit roll. A normal failure results in no effect. the results of snake eyes, a success or a raise are detailed below. You can always choose to take the results of a lesser success if it is preferred. If the roll is failed then you can keep the Benny (this doesn't count if you spend another benny to reroll and suceed, and if you reroll and fail then you don't get back the extra benny spent).


Psychokinetic Talent:

• Snake Eyes: Small objects are ripped up and hurled about wildly and randomly. You and everyone within 2" takes 1d6 damage. 
• Success: You may hurl an object or opponent. Treat this as the Telekinesis power except that you may only make a single attack or move your opponent only once and you add twice the number of dice to your Spirit as normal for damage (Spirit +2d6 to slam someone into a wall for instance).
• Raise: You may choose a single unattended object of 20 pounds or less within 10" and cause it to detonate explosively. This inflicts 2d10 damage in a Small Burst Template around the object. Objects made of particularly soft material (fruit for instance) are harmless when detonated and anything harder than stone cannot be detonated.  Each additional raise lets you detonate an additional object.

Pyrokinetic Talent:

• Snake Eyes: You catch on fire. 
• Success: A character of your choice within 10" catches on fire. If you choose spend an action to concentrate then the opponent must beat your opposed Spirit roll to attempt to douse the flame. 
• Raise: You may enlarge and animate any single existing fire source within 10" as a Fire Elemental. The elemental exists only as long as you spend an action to concentrate each round. This is not an actual elemental (it's merely psionically animated fire) so magic specifically designed to affect elemental or extraplanar creatures will fail. Each additional raise increases the elemental's Size by +1 and Strength by a die type. 

 Biofeedback Talent

• Snake Eyes: Your skin and body deforms horribly. You suffer a point of Fatigue and -2 Charisma. These effects recover in 1d6 hours. 
• Success: Your armor increases by +1 and you ignore all wound penalties for 6 rounds.
• Raise: Your Strength, Vigor, and Agility increases by one die type and you gain the Hardy ability. This effect lasts for 3 rounds. Each additional raise increases the duration by 3 rounds. 

Healing Talent:

• Snake Eyes: Blood spurts from any existing wounds. You take 1d6 damage per Wound level you're suffering from. 
• Success: You may make a natural Healing roll immediately. 
• Raise: You gain Fast Regeneration for 2 rounds. Each additional raise increases the duration by 1 round. 

 Mindscream Talent

• Snake Eyes: You are Shaken for 1d4 rounds. 
• Success: A single target within 10" must make a Spirit roll at -2 or be Shaken for 1d4 rounds. Mindless or unliving targets are immune. 
• Raise: Place a large burst template centered on yourself. Everyone within the template (other than you) suffers 2d6 damage from your mental scream. This damage ignores armor, cover, and any other physical barriers. Each additional raise increases the damage by 1d6.

Hypercognition Talent

• Snake Eyes: You suffer a -4 penalty to any Smarts rolls or skills linked to Smarts for 10 minutes. 
• Success: Your Smarts increases by one die type and the world seems to slow down, you may draw an additional card for initiative. This lasts for 6 rounds
• Raise: Your Smarts and Spirit increases by one die type and you may take an additional action without suffering a multi-action penalty. This lasts 3 rounds but each raise increases the duration by 3 rounds.

Telepathic Talent

•  Snake Eyes: You are overwhelmed by the unintelligible thoughts and feelings of others. You suffer a -1 penalty to all trait rolls for each intelligent creature within 10" of you.
• Success: You may scan an intelligent beings surface thoughts, allowing you to determine if it's lying and you may make an opposed Spirit roll to learn specific facts close to the surface. This lasts so long as you can concentrate and the victim remains within 2".
• Raise: You can delve deeply into a victim's thoughts. The target must be within 2" and may make an opposed Spirit roll to resist your probing. You may ask up to 3 questions (each requiring an opposed roll) which the GM must answer based on the target's knowledge. Each additional raise grants an additional 2 questions.

Psychoportive Talent

• Snake Eyes: Your body flickers in and out of reality briefly and you become Shaken.
• Success: You may teleport yourself up to 10" 
• Raise: You may teleport an object or creature within 20" up to 10" from their original location. Living targets receive an opposed Spirit roll to resist the effect. Each additional Raise allows you to teleport an additional target.