In the jungles and swamps past the Barrier, forlorn carven monoliths dot the landscape. Engraved with strange runes none now living can understand, explorers who happen across them assume they are the scratchings of degenerate humans or lizardfolk. In fact these stones were carved by the primordial snake-men in the time before humanity. Now they are one of the only traces left of those mysterious beings.
Every snake-man was a born sorceror. Magic was life, it permeated all they did and made. The magic in their standing stones is faint and difficult to reach, but it's still there. All the obelisks stand in empty jungle clearings where no tree obscures the skies. Even so, the constant rain slackens to a gentle mist. Wild animals avoid them - instincts turn them away.
The perfect place to rest.
But when you sleep near an obelisk its old magic can reach you. In your dreams will appear visions of a lost world: great halls and vaults underground, laboratories where the "ancient" races of the world were engineered to be slaves. A millennium of dominion over the earth. Looking down at your hands in this dream, you'd see only the scaly talons of a reptile. Waking up from these dreams leaves a human feeling odd, drained. Uncomfortable in his primate skin. Not sure of his place in the world. [In game terms, a cumulative -1 to attack rolls, saves, morale checks, anything else you like per night of sleeping next to an obelisk]
THE DREAMING DEAD
All undead in Land's End - no matter their diverse origins - are dreamers. They aren't awake, aren't alive, but act as if they were. Sleepwalking from beyond the wall of death they chase the ambitions and whims they once cherished and believe themselves real. The cult Orcus conducting their foul rites of undeath are in a way oneiromancers of a very specific and dreadful kind. Their spells whisper to dead souls, cajoling them into wakefulness just enough to animate their bodies as puppets for the goat-god's will.
The lowly skeleton has no idea it lives a dream of its old existence. It craves food, warmth, treasure, companionship and glory just as in life, but sees these goals through a haze of unreality. It isn't exactly an automaton, it has the same mind it did before dying albeit massively compromised. It can still speak the languages it knew and sometimes recognize familiar faces, but its priorities have shifted. It's so cold, being dead. So tiring. The cravings. The hunger. Food you can never taste, sex you can never have, it's enough to turn dream into nightmare. And who hasn't had a nightmare about choking their best friend to death once or twice...?
Intelligent, 'free-willed' undead like vampires or liches could be likened to lucid dreamers who have learned to change the rules of the world to suit their whims. A vampire can taste the blood of humans and remind itself what living in the waking world was like. The puissant magical fires within a lich's rotting brain keep it warm, a small consolation but more than most get.
THE SLITHERING DEAD
Dying near a snake-man obelisk is a bad idea. Over time, the stored memories of those snake-men worm their way into what's left of the dead brain. Falling into the dream of unlife, they find their bodies totally unsuited to their memories and feelings. Squirming along the ground on brittle bones where they remember supple scales, reaching out to bite with an omnivore's dull teeth instead of venomous fangs.
Memories of snakes, dreaming through the bodies of men. Twice removed from the real world. Less than the sum of their parts.
Through this haze of perception they know only the hunt for food, for prey. The great technology and magic of the snake-man civilization is all closed to them. They wriggle along the ground, a parody of a real snake's movements. Piling on top of each other, clacking their bones together. Hissing through chattering teeth.
I can never get enough monsters. I will do whatever I can to get my greasy hands on any beasts that will throw my players for a loop - if the book is reusable, so much the better! So let's talk about some random monster generators that I have found recently and see how they work.
*****
1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide Appendix D: Random Generation of Creatures from the Lower Planes
by Gary Gygax
The all-time legend, defending champion, can Gary keep his throne with all these nu-old-school upstarts coming after the crown? Let's find out!
I discovered Appendix D in my copy of DMG just recently. I only found a hard copy a few months ago, I've had such a great time absorbing Gary's teachings directly. Stumbling on this section inspired the post you're now reading.
Appendix D consists of a mere two pages (not even. 3 and a half columns) of tables and guidelines for random demons, devils and the like. It starts out like a Monster Manual entry with random rolls built in line by line. Example:
"SIZE: S, M, or L (d8, 1 = S, 2-4 = M, 5-8 = L)"
After a while, this shit can get DENSE. Gary doesn't slow down to explain things. After determining stats, tables follow for appearance, body shape, skin colour, appendages, etc. Some of these tables interact weirdly - like rolling "thin" and "broad" under General Characteristics. Of course Gary also references a certain Dragon magazine article if you want more ideas. Thanks pal, I'll just run out and pick that up...
The section on special attacks and defenses is minimal and requires some work on the DM's part. The two tables are more of a jumping-off point. Actually, that's a good description of the whole appendix. It will give you a sketch of the monster, but you'll have to fill in the blanks to make it coherent. Gary gives us a sea of tables to wade through and STILL we have to decide attacks, damage, and special abilities on our own.
How many rolls? Around 30 give or take. Would I use this in the middle of a session? No way Variety and reusability? It's designed for a specific type of creature, so variety is limited but it's endlessly reusable. Running through this a handful of times could give you a whole new infernal order to go alongside demons/devils/daemons.
SAMPLE MONSTER - "The Bubblegum Owlbear"
Frequency: Rare
No. Appearing: 1
Armour Class: -3
Move: 9"
Hit Dice: 8
% In Lair: 10%
Treasure Type: NONE, haha fuck you!
No. of Attacks: 4
Damage/Attack: 1-8 / by weapon x 3
Special Attacks: 18/00 strength, summoning
Special Defenses: +1 or better weapon to hit, immune to cold, acid
Magic Resistance: -10%
Intelligence: Average
Alignment: CE
Size: M
I rolled: owl head w/ crest or peak, twitching moving visage, tiny human ears, small slitted black eyes, large toothed mouth, bearlike body, thin and narrow, prehensile tail, odour of vomit, pink furred body, spined back, tentacles, one human-nailed hand, one withered & bony hand, insectile feet.
Sheesh. It's a mixed-up demonic TENTACLED PINK OWLBEAR! How much more Gygaxian can you get? This is perfect for an AD&D demon. I'm using these guys in my game - in E6 this could be a unique demon prince! On the downside, imagine the difficulty of describing this mess to the players? I wish I could draw.
Its tentacle-hands and prehensile tail (which I reckon should all look the same) will all carry weapons of various types. With its exceptional strength, it could do an absurd amount of damage in one round. The special ability is summoning, so bubblegum owlbears have a 50% chance to open a Gate which calls either one of their kind (30%) or 1-4 minor demons.
*****
The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and their Modern Simulacra, Tenth Anniversary Edition
by James Edward Raggi IV
from Lamentations of the Flame Princess lotfp.com Buy the PDF here - $9.99, the print edition looks sold out
OKAY, we'll keep tonight's party going with a club banger... the thousand-pound gorilla... the standard by which all others are judged. You know it, you love it: the RECGFCFRPG&TMS!
My copy says 'Third Printing' on it, and no wonder. This thing fucking rules, and it's almost unfair to everyone else having this ringer in the competition.
First of all: the art is fantastic. At the back of the book is a collection of the simple black & white images from the earlier printings, and you can compare page-by-page how they were reinvented in lurid full colour throughout the book. The illustrations give the sense that the artists took a real joy in their work. I imagined a dude at a drafting table rubbing his hands together, cackling to himself as he renders another hapless adventurer's disembowelment.
The tables? Oh yeah, they're really good. Hyper-detailed, Raggi leaves very little up to the DM here, in a good way. The entries are really detailed, and when you have rolled your way through you should have everything from shape, size, special attacks to even battle tactics and motivation. Sometimes the combinations are maddeningly bizarre, which might require some work to reconcile. The motivation throughout is to give your game table something it's never seen before.
At the end, Raggi rounds it off with a few pages of advice on 'Putting It All Together.' You may not agree with every single thing he says here, but I found it informative and useful.
How many rolls? Minimum 6, could be around double that if you use every optional table. Would I use this in the middle of a session? I think I could do it while the PCs were on a smoke break if I got lucky. Variety and reusability? Fucking TONS of both. The tables are weighted so the really exotic things (body shape: dodecahedron) won't come up too often, but there are so many entries in the 'distinctive features' and 'special abilities' tables that you'll never run out of weird combinations.
SAMPLE MONSTER - "The Lobble"
Armour Class: 17
Move: normal human + 10' (depends on the system you're playing I guess)
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: 1d10+1 x 4
Alignment: C
Size: Huge
Morale: 10
I rolled: base HD 2; bipedal; combination of insect (beetle) and crustacean (lobster); huge size; illusionary features (oozing sores);
So the 'combination' result can really get dangerous. An insect needs six limbs, but a biped stands on two legs so the other four must be arms. Add in a crustacean with claws on the end of every arm and you have four claw attacks. With its huge size, it's going to chop through adventurers in no time. I can imagine to employ its wall-crawling ability, all six limbs cut right into the rock of the dungeon as it scuttles up and down.
Tougher to imagine is the 'illusionary features' ability. This huge beast has oozing slime and pus all over it which is... just an illusion. How? Why? Is it some sort of defense against giant lobble-eating predators? Is it a magical effect or curse of some kind? Will the players ever find out? I have no idea, let's see what happens.
I was just browsing around on RPGnow and came across this. From the same guy who wrote Towers of the Weretoads, a short adventure I saw reviewed at Ten Foot Pole.
This tiny little pdf (only nine pages!) would be a bargain at twice the price. The monster generation is simple. Roll on the Basic Shape table, the Form table, and the Special Ability table. That's it!
These elements combine to create a weird variation on a familiar creature. Basic Shape describes the creature's overall body type, like "man," "octopus" or "elephant." Form changes the substance of the creature, like gold-plated skin or a gaseous body. These entries along with the special abilities are cool and very specific. Because the basic shapes are all things we already know, you won't get a bizarre monstrosity like the RECG. It will be a variation and twist on something you already know.
Being made of simple building blocks means this booklet is easy to mess with or add to as you like. You can pick entries if you want. Need a strange mutant fish? Just roll on the other two tables and there you go. Maybe you want a monster that charms its victims, but y'don't know what it should look like? Where it sacrifices depth and complexity, it makes up for it with lightning speed and ease of use.
How many rolls? Exactly three. Would I use this in the middle of a session? I'd use this baby in the middle of a sentence. Variety and reusability? Both middling. I can envision myself adding new entries in the future to replace abilities or forms I've rolled more than once. There are theoretically 64,000 combinations but you don't actually want to run 40 different monsters with the same special ability, do you?
SAMPLE MONSTER - "The Silt Sneak"
I rolled: Basic Shape: Goblin. Form: Crumbling, craggy, sandy and granular mass, can decompose into pile of grains then reconstitute. Special Ability: Will attempt to steal one target in PC party and spirit them away to some burrow or lair and torture them.
A sand-goblin that loves to steal and torture adventurers? That's bloody cool. Silt sneaks lie around in sand-pile form waiting for passersby, then they reform and attack from behind to pick off a straggler for their wicked sports! Why do they transform like this, is it a curse or a spell ability? Are they goblins who can turn into sand, or sand that's been animated in the shape of goblins?
This gets my mind working on a desert cave dungeon where they can blend into the sand underfoot. Some ankhegs, giant ants and a mummy or two to round things off. I'm into it!!
*****
In conclusion
These three generators are all great for different things. Having ultra-quick-rolling tables is handy as hell for my bad habit of last-minute prep. The denser generators are so detailed and thick with content that I find it hard to imagine exhausting them.
I would use each one of these generators. I find it hard to pick a favourite but I did call this a 'shootout'...
If I could only use one it would have to be the RECG. It sits in a middle ground between the lightning-fast generation of the L1CG and the baroque density of Appendix D. The tables are long and detailed enough that it'll be hard to exhaust them while simple enough in execution that I can roll up another monstrosity relatively quickly. The excellent production values in comparison to a lot of RPG books give it that last push over the top.
*****
Whew! After digging through my books/PDFs looking for more monster generators, I already have more than enough to do another round like this.
Until then, go roll up some brand new
SLAVES
TO
DARKNESSSSSS
I was thinking about Warhammer the other day, and reading some of my old books. I had forgotten for a while how fuckingpureit really is, despite cutting my teeth on 40k for years back in the day. (My space marines were consistently mangled by my pal Dave's chaos army). Games Workshop was tapping into something really special way back in those early days. Is there any point in doing the Lovecraft Mythos, or classic AD&D demon lords, or the absurd profusion of extra-dimensional beings in Paizo's Book of The Damned (which I do like...), when we have the mainlines to our collective unconscious called Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch? Just a thought. CULTISTS OF TSATHOGGUAthe demon toad-god, AKA The Hungry One, Zothaqquah
No. Appearing: 1-6 Alignment: C Move: 120’ (40’) Armour Class: 16 Hit Dice: 2 Attacks: 1 Damage: by weapon (whip or club) Save: D Morale: 10 Hoard Class: I Experience: 38
Tsathoggua is a hungry god. Its clergy cast living offerings into the slimy feeding-pits at their temples in the hidden and dark places beyond the Barrier. For those who aren't eaten, another fate is in store: TRANSFORMATION Seeking to prove their faith, postulants to the cult of the demon toad will modify their bodies to resemble a frog's: they cut their mouths wider "chelsea grin" style, or have their thumbs broken and reset sideways to bend the same direction as the other fingers. Some graft skin-webbing between their fingers, or immerse themselves in brightly-coloured dyes to remove their humanity. Filing the teeth down flat and even hideous eye surgeries are not unknown. Through these modifications they become closer to the Hungry One and his ascended servants, the tsathar or toad-men. For initiation into full membership in the cult, they cast themselves into the slime pit that forms the center of every temple of Tsathoggua. These pits could be as simple as a humble cauldron for a minor shrine or the size of foul swimming pool of corruption in the case of a major power center. Repeated immersions in this primordial mixture renders humanoid flesh down to a soft, spongy material resembling moss or algae. Veteran cultists can be recognized by their pale green, yellow or blue skin and bleary indistinct features - their humanity has been slowly washed away. They don't become slime creatures (we'll save that for another NAMELESS CULT edition), but rather a strange plant-slime-toad hybrid being. This bodily transformation has several effects other than the cosmetic. Cultists' moss-bodies are spongy and absorb blows easily, thus their high natural AC (they don't usually wear armour).
(Player characters without the cult's blessing who get immersed in the slime pit should at the very least take HP damage, if not be dissolved utterly. Tsathoggua is hungry!!!)
SPIRIT ANIMALS
A transformed cultist's moss-body cannot contain an intelligent humanoid's mind or spirit.
Instead, they carry their souls in small animals (reptile, bird or rodent) that live inside their bodies. This spirit-animal IS the cultist in a real sense, their 'body' is like a giant moss-suit controlled from within. This animal can leave the cultist's body to send a message, spy on foes or do any other task its form will allow. While the animal is outside, a cultist's body has only zombie-like intelligence and will continue with whatever task it was last doing when the spirit-animal departed.
If a cultist is killed, his spirit-animal will crawl out of the corpse's mouth in 1d6 rounds. It makes all haste to the temple where it will immerse itself in the slime-pool and grow a new body. This is the equivalent of a Raise Dead or similar spell, the new body is an exact duplicate of the last one.
If the spirit-animal is killed while on a trip outside the cultist's body, it remains alive but near-mindless. It continues with the last thing it was doing before its spirit left, or will follow simple orders given by a cultist of higher rank, a tsathar, or any other frog- or toadlike being.
These unfortunates are used as shock-troops and cheap labour since they don't complain. Without the animating force of a mind or soul, they don't feel pain and cannot recover hit points or heal in any way. You'll encounter many that are missing fingers or even limbs, getting shoved out in front en masse by the cult to mob their opponents and bring them down with sheer numbers. Another vicious 'recruitment tactic' is to immerse hapless villagers in the slime-pool, and then reach down their throats and pull out their spirit-animals...
***** ACHTUNG! PATHFINDER SECTION *****
Since Tsathoggua's cult also exists in Land's End (not all the Nameless Cults do) I have to come up with PF stats for them. I have sworn not to compose a single one of those infernal stat blocks. Luckily the Tomb of Abysthor has tsathar already! Their stats will work fine for all the transformed cultists, pretty sure they are 2 HD anyway. Postulants can just have basic stats based on race/class, nothing fancy.
So I was collecting some experience rules from around the internet, and came across this classic on Jeff's Gameblog!
Since Land's End is all about striking out alone (with your friends) into the wilderness, I've decided to adopt and expand upon this awesome eXPloration idea. My version gives out more experience but the benefits should slow down as the PCs gain levels. (It makes more difference to the whippersnappers when they spot cool new things.)
XP For Exploration
First time you enter a hex (50 xp)
Discover a 'major' hex location (100 xp * average challenge rating of the area)
Discover a 'minor' hex location (50 xp)
This is 'normal' experience, divided among the PCs just like treasure or monsters. In addition, I picked out a few major locations that are more significant. Reaching one of these gives EACH PC the stated xp bonus. I am considering awarding these once per player as well: your character discovers it for the first time when you do.
For most of these, you can assume the caveat "... and live to tell about it."
Discover another human civilization (1000 xp)
Enter the Tower of Brass (650 xp)
Enter the pillar tombs (500 xp)
Enter the palace of Izizktharad (500 xp)
Reach the summit of Deathfrost Mountain (300 xp)
See the Pit of Bones (200 xp)
Enter the lizardmen's Pyramid of Silence (150 xp)
See the lost city of the elves (100 xp)
XP For Treasure
This is easy. Using the silver standard, 1 sp = 1 xp.
SOME experience awarded for goods and treasure looted and sold off. Selling your old weapon after you buy a new one shouldn't net any experience. Beheading some orcs and selling off their chainmail should, I think. In general once you make use of it, you aren't getting any cash = xp out of it.
NO experience awarded for magic items. They are rare enough and should be their own reward. There isn't anybody around who will buy them from you anyway.
True bastard that I am, I am awarding loot & starting wealth based on a silver standard, but all items have the listed cost IN GOLD PIECES in the Pathfinder Core Rules - ie. PCs have 1/10th the buying power they should according to RAW. This way they can scoop up huge sacks of money but they're still broke and hungry for the first several levels.
XP For Monsters / Conclusion
Experience is awarded as normal for monsters, based on their Challenge Rating. You might think between exploration, treasure and monsters there is way too much experience flying around to have a reasonable game. Two techniques exist for dealing with this:
Firstly, Pathfinder gives three XP charts: fast, medium, and slow. Obviously I'll be using the slow advancement chart, so PCs need 3000 xp to reach 2nd level and a total of 35,000 to reach 6th, as opposed to the 'medium' 2,000 and 23,000 respectively. So this should make up for the multifarious ways a character can grow.
The other option I'm considering is some kind of attenuated XP reward for low-CR monsters. Gary describes this in the 1e DMG, although the wording is a bit obtuse. I think for our purposes, he is suggesting I modify experience awards by a ratio of enemy Hit Dice (CR for Pathfinder purposes) to average party level. (eg: an equal number of orcs vs 1st-level PCs is a 1:1 ratio. The same group of orcs vs second-level PCs is a 1:2 ratio, and defeating them should net half the normal experience.)
This seems a bit harsh and there are other factors to consider - CR is calibrated for a 4-person party and I only have three players. CR is also calibrated for wealth and magic items by level: that's completely out of whack given my vicious economic system outlined above and a low-magic setting. I won't institute this change unless it looks like the PCs are rocketing up through levels with the current system.
*****
(I have more posts this year by September than any other year by far. How many can I do before the end of the year? Think I can make it to 100?)
Now play this when the PCs dig their greasy mitts into that next treasure-sack!!!
Firstly, let's all admire the new banner at the top of the page, which I... assembled... all by myself on my computer! The actual artwork is by the inimitable Todd Lockwood. ***** CAST OF CHARACTERS: Vuk Thuul - half-elf serpent oracle 1 Leliana Vess - sylph witch 1 Nahash - lizardman barbarian 1 ***** It's still raining in the hilly jungles beyond the Barrier. Last session, the PCs had just agreed to go fight the 'pinks' to the south on behalf of the goblins, who wanted their territory back. Not really trusting any of the sawn-off bastards, the party slept outside the goblin fort and headed south in the morning towards the goblins' old inn. Sgt. Horgh did give them a short-term mercenary contract to sign, which (as it turned out) wasn't much help when they got jumped in the jungle later that day!
Out of the shrubbery came a yellow goblin chugging grain alcohol from a flask, and a sinister black goblin wearing the lumpy ill-fitting skin of its last human victim. Leliana scrambled for the contract to show the goblins they were on the same side, but she took too long! These gobs weren't as lucky as before, and missed Nahash completely. The lizardman skewered the gross and troublesome black goblin with his war-spear and when Leliana hexed the yellow goblin to sleep, the fight was over.
These sessions consisted of my players being pretty methodical and not taking too many chances. When they reached the goblins' lost inn, they waged a gradual guerrilla war against the 'pinks': neanderthals in wolf pelts who kept failing their perception rolls at inopportune moments. The heavy rain hampered visibility and made stealth easy.
They snuck into the inn and started stealthily killing neanderthals, but one ran away when he saw Vuk Thuul's summoned steam-beetle and so the heroes started throwing furniture up against the doors and windows to brace for the inevitable counterattack. While waiting for more to show up, Nahash and Leliana explored the basement and discovered several inverted mounds of earth on the ceiling. Each had a set of glowing, fluorescent green and blue tendrils reaching out, waving through the air like seaweed. A glance at the two dead neanderthals on the floor confirmed it: poison! Reaching either of basement doors would bring the adventurers too close to these tendrils for comfort.
They tried to destroy one with a molotov cocktail and only succeeded in waking it up. Crawling out of the mound and up the stairs after them, a fluorescent six-armed reptile-creature with a frond of rippling tendrils for a head, squeaking out strange questions: "Is this real? Is it a dream? Where am I?" Almost panicking, they lured it out into the common room where Nahash squashed it with his sledgehammer. Phew! I was afraid somebody would get stung into the Blue Sleepand very probably die. After that they changed tactics. Cutting up the dead neanderthals, they threw chunks of meat under the other mounds, which distracted the sleeping Anemone Men long enough to slip past. As it turned out, they were guarding the goblins' treasure hoard! Chests of silver and gold, a strange sword of bone, a pack of carved ivory plates, a whole room of bizarre objects and curios. A few of these items were carried by some old Land's End PCs, and I think one of my players at least recognized this. Why they are still here in possession of the local goblins is a mystery, but the players may never find out because they decided to grab up every single thing. Their plan is to bury it all, go back to the goblin fort and get paid, then dig it up and bring the hoard back to town. What will the goblins do when they get back to their inn and find it stripped of valuables? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out. I was worried there would be too much cooperation in this game!
These two sessions actually took a while. My guys really took their time here, playing very carefully, expecting a brutal siege by the neanderthals. Right now, they think they're getting away with murder. They haven't even seen what's down the well!
***** Anyway, next time your PCs are in a small basement with a brand-new terrifying monster with a poisonous sting...
Reading Paizo's Book of the Damned and mining it for ideas has been many things: interesting and fun, mildly disappointing that they didn't do OGL-versions of all the classic demon lords, and sometimes... a long and hard slog.
Why is there a demon lord of every goddamned thing? Do we really need special entries for:
divs? (what the deuce IS a div anyway?)
scorpions?
traps?
apes?
locusts?
werewolves?
ghouls?
giants?
hags?
aberrations?
trolls?
gargoyles?
troglodytes?
vampires?
This is a just really fucking bloated. I can't exactly put my finger on why this bothers me so much - perhaps an example will serve.
Playing Skyrim: Dawnguard a while back, Serana (the vampire NPC) tells you about how she became undead. Apparently a terrible ritual in the name of the daedra lord Molag Bal transformed her whole family into vampires thousands of years ago. This was cool, because nobody ever told me "Molag Bal's domain of influence includes: vampires." He is described as the lord of enslavement and brutality which makes sense, but isn't blindingly obvious. It was surprising and told me something new about the world.
This should be scarier
Conversely, imagine finding a castle of vampires in Pathfinder. What terrible demon master do they revere?? Well duh, it's Zura. You knew that already. The vampires have a vampiric master who wants to do vampire-type stuff.
Why even bother? We've learned nothing new about them. It would be exactly the same if Zura didn't even exist.
I want to see intelligent monsters signing up with Arioch or Moander or Demogorgon or even good old Orcus, whatever! Not their "designated infernal union rep." Spare me.
Inspired by this, let's collect all the hacks, chops, floggings and punches I've delivered to the otherwise bloated body of Pathfinder. ***** SKILLS:
Some skills are useful, plenty are garbage. I cut maybe 1/3 of the skills and simplified others. Basically I'm following the example set by Hack and Slash and Papers & Pencils.
I cut PF's base skill points awarded by class in half. There are fewer skills to spend points on, so characters should have commensurately less points to spend.
ELIMINATE:
Appraise: What a waste of time.
Disable Device: Have you MET me??
Disguise, Intimidate, Bluff: Rolling to avoid the fun.
Sense Motive: Look into my eye and figure it out.
Escape Artist: There is already a sleight of hand skill!
Fly: Casting the Fly spell isn't enough...?
MODIFY:
Diplomacy: Now a passive skill called “Sociable.” I use the reaction rules from Labyrinth Lord, and the CHA modifiers listed there. You can't spend points in this except to offset CHA penalties, up to +0.
Linguistics: Doesn't teach you a brand-new language with each point. If you want to learn a new language, find somebody to teach it to you. Make a roll to understand bits & pieces of languages related to ones you know. Spend points on it as normal.
Profession: Maximum 1 point at 1st level. This is your background (villager, woodsman, carpenter, etc). Could be useful for general questions relating to that background, but maybe take knowledge or crafting skills if you want to do more useful things.
Perception: Passive skill. I'll roll it for you (do you see people sneaking up on you?). Discover things in the world by poking around and asking questions.
Spellcraft: Many magic items’ general purpose is identifiable by a character of the relevant class after 10 minutes of examination. In Epic 6 this hinges on the item's caster level - if it's above CL 6, it's beyond mortal beings, more or less an artifact. These will require research, questing, consulting sages, etc. to identify.
The other functions of the skill we can keep for now - recognising spells as they're cast, crafting magic items and the like.
Swim:
-1 or less: can’t swim
0: can avoid drowning, paddle along with help
+1 or more: fine swimmer
Climb:
-1 or less: climb at ¼ speed with help (friends and gear)
0: climb at ¼ speed OR climb at ½ speed with help
+1 or more: climb at ½ speed
Armour check penalties still apply. Can spend extra points to offset penalties, but no mechanical effect beyond +1. LEAVE AS IS: Acrobatics, Craft, Handle Animal, Heal, Perform, Ride, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Use Magic Device: Nothing wrong with these as far as I can tell. Knowledge: Has utility in my setting for dealing with strange monsters beyond the Barrier. Maybe you read something in an old book about this little green guy you just met? Survival: Huge in a wilderness hexcrawl that's totally uncharted by civilization! The PCs need this to find food and water and avoid getting hopelessly lost.
*****
FEATS: Cutting out feats altogether for a more 'old-school' feel runs counter to the entire point of Epic 6. I will be approaching this ad-hoc, and deleting feats that seem pointless or dumb case-by-case. Some 'epic feats' need to be added later if/when the PCs reach 6th level. Item creation may get its own post, I am going to make it a more involved process: magic items should be rare and hard to find, doubly hard to make yourself. Selecting the feat is only the first of many steps. ENCUMBRANCE: Why mess with it? You can carry one significant item per point of strength. The sum of all your miscellaneous stuff counts as one significant item (subject to eyeballing if you have lots of stuff). medium armour counts as two items, heavy armour counts as three, same goes for shields. Example: A totally average fighter with 10 STR can wear plate mail [3], a tower shield [3], a sword [1], and bring a bag with some food and stuff [1] without being encumbered [8/10]. If he wanted to carry a lot of treasure out of the dungeon he might have to leave his shield or downgrade his armour. As it is, he should probably content himself with bringing a spare weapon or two!
This seems pretty fair to me, and reminds me a bit of Dark Souls. When your inventory system is simple enough, you can actually MAKE DECISIONS about what to bring, because the units are small enough to think about. EXPERIENCE: Multiple ways to gain XP: exploration, treasure and defeating monsters. COMBAT: Simplified and streamlined where possible. Attacks of Opportunity are minimised except in specific cases (a wizard getting hit while he tries to cast). This is one place I haven't dug too deep, mainly because my players don't know the rules that well. I just run combats the way I'm used to doing, and it seems to work out alright. As they gain levels and things get a bit more complex, this will require more attention. MONSTERS: I flat-out fucking refuse to write up brand new monster stats for this game. I have shit to do. This isn't really tough since the Tome of Horrors and other books abound, except that nobody has written up Pathfinder stats for Fire on the Velvet Horizon. I have yet to reach a solution for this. I suppose I must poach and reskin stats from existing monsters as I see fit. ***** I'll add more to this as I come up with it or find cool links. Eventually PF will be easier to use, less annoying and make more sense, but retain the absurd variety of options that makes it so much fun. In the meantime: DIE.
