Thoughts on the Forgotten Realms Subclasses UA

You may wonder what this is if you read the previous blog post. This is actually the kind of content I want to be able to post. I want to have an opinion, be moved to write about it, and post it. The formalized process and the schedule are the things that work against me, but I’m not going to stop having opinions. The difference is, I’m not going to open up various other subclasses and do a deep analysis to make sure I’m shoring up my points. I may be wrong or off the cuff, and if I am, I hope you let me know.

This discussion first came up on the THAC0 with Advantage Discord, so please, if you haven’t already, consider joining our Patreon, joining our Discord, and listening to the podcast. I’d appreciate it. This is a slightly edited version of my thoughts after being asked about the most recent Unearthed Arcana, looking at the subclasses that might be included in this Fall’s Forgotten Realms releases.

The Subclasses

Bard: College of the Moon. I actually like the College of the Moon. It has a nice mechanical call back to 1e Bards and the Moonshaes, which was very tied to the druidic-themed bards of that era. It kind of steps on the College of Spirits with tying abilities to “stories,” but that’s not that weird for a bard, just not something we’ve seen framed that way outside of the College of Spirits.

Cleric: The Knowledge Domain. This revision doesn’t bother me except for one thing (mechanically), and that’s Unfettered Mind, which means Intelligence checks will be largely pointless for this character after 6th level unless they’re extremely difficult. That feels too early for that kind of ability, and it leans back into that problem of showing that a class or subclass is good by just not having the class need to roll for anything.

Fighter: Purple Dragon Knight. Even if you want to have a fighter subclass that’s a dragon rider, I think you still have some awkwardness with the 7th-level ability because being allowed to use a medium dragon as a mount, even though it’s too small, feels like you’re awkwardly riding something, and to me that feels less cool than feeling like you’re a competent dragon rider riding something that can be ridden. I’m still trying to work out the hesitance to make it large at 7th-level, since the statistics are still keyed to the character, not to an existing stat block. Its not even like it interacts with emanations much, which would be wider with a large creature than a medium one. 15th level before you can picture your character riding a properly sized dragon doesn’t feel good to me.

Paladin: Oath of Noble Genies. Oath of the Noble Genies is a conceptual issue for me, regardless of lore. I think a paladin’s oath is about DOING something for a reason or stopping something for a reason. There are a number of oaths, a lot of them 3rd party, that do what this subclass does, where it doesn’t play with the core fantasy of a paladin. “I have sworn an oath to do genie stuff and oppose non-genie stuff.” I don’t get a strong roleplaying vibe from that.

In fact, one of the big selling points of the 5e paladin is that they are so devoted to doing a thing, championing a CAUSE, that they don’t necessarily have a specific deity, and the gods just kind of say, “yup, that’s a champion of THING, they need these powers.” But this is “I think these genies need to be followed, so I serve them,” which doesn’t feel like a paladin oath to me.

Ranger: Winter Walker. The problem I have with the Winter Walker is that you are a ranger from the scary cold, hunting scary things that live in the cold. And you do extra cold damage. That’ll show those yetis, cold light walkers, and white dragons who’s boss. By that, I mean someone who doesn’t do extra cold damage that those creatures can ignore. Yes, if you take this ranger and adventure in non-cold environments, but it’s a weird disconnect that they’re less effective in their native terrain because of this.

Sorcerer: Spellfire Sorcery. The Spellfire Sorcerer actually does what I would expect from the setting material it’s drawn from. It’s not as powerful as most spellfire wielders have been portrayed, but it does what they do, in a toned-down manner, and when they get higher level, they can start looking more like the raw, elemental channelers of the Weave that they’re supposed to be. I’m kind of cool with that.

Rogue: Scion of the Three. My issue with the Scion of the Three will sound like a setting issue, but it’s almost more of a marketing issue. The italicized text might as well say this subclass exists because Baldur’s Gate III made over a billion dollars. One of the things I saw lauded in various places about the 2024 Player’s Handbook’s character creation process was “ask to see if an evil character is okay.” It feels weird to actively encourage not just nuanced evil characters but someone kind of revels in murder as a player character option.

The Lore Behind the Subclasses

Fighter: Purple Dragon Knight. The Purple Dragon Knights have nothing to do with amythest dragons. It’s very weird that in the designer videos, it seems to bother them that there wasn’t a more direct thematic tie between calling an order of knights “The Knights of the X Dragon” and literally giving them powers based on that dragon type. That makes it feel like the expectation of everything in the setting is that there will be a very obvious game-related reason for every name, without any symbolism or nuance. Is it going to be a problem if the Red Wizards of Thay aren’t all literally red?

I don’t think works as a dragonrider knight as well as it could, but it has nothing to do with Cormyr as a Purple Dragon Knight. It’s taking something intrinsically Cormyrean and trying to say, “Yeah, maybe these were kind of related to Cormyr, but now they’re not associated with a single country and are all about working with amethyst dragons.” That’s even weirder because why are amethyst dragons more likely to bond with a knightly order than other dragon types, other than coopting an existing name?

Gold, Silver, Bronze, Red, and Blue have all been associated with dragon riders and militaries in other settings, but Amethyst dragons are obsessed with multiple realities and collecting obscure knowledge. Other than trying to make the name of the subclass painfully obvious, there is no reason to make this a class associated with the knighthood of Cormyr. If anything, if you REALLY wanted to connect this to the Realms or Baldur’s Gate III, make this a class tied to, but not limited to, Githyanki, and make sure you can use red dragons and maybe a few other types as well, with this subclass. I know they won’t go this route because it’s more obscure, but if you really wanted an order of dragon-riding knights to serve as a basis, Impiltur has traditionally had dragon riders in its history. But Impiltur is even further away from the Sword Coast and less commonly mentioned than Cormyr.

Cleric: Knowledge Domain. It’s minor, but the marketing-driven lore bothers me. In the description of the Knowledge domain, the primary gods associated with Knowledge are mentioned as Asmodeus, Mystra, Savras, and Jergal, and then “less-common divinities” like Deneir, Oghma, and Azuth are mentioned. The introduction is contradicted because Oghma and Gond were mentioned up front, but then the rest of the description walks all of that back.

Jergal is an obscure deity that many people in the Realms don’t even remember. He has a role in Baldur’s Gate III, but the narrative doesn’t imply that Jergal is a major deity, even in Baldur’s Gate III. It’s very careful to frame him as an obscure god who gave his power to Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul in the distant past. Oghma, Deneir, and Azuth are all much more well-known deities. Yes, people may know who Jergal is from Baldur’s Gate III, but if they were paying attention, they’re probably going to wonder why he’s so well known now all of a sudden.

Paladin: Oath of Noble Genies. There are genies in the history of Calminshan. The genies Calim and Memnon both formed nations in the region and went to war with one another. The region and its cities still bear their names, but they were bound into a gem before Calimnshan was formally founded. Neither genie was particularly well regarded. In the 4e era, Memnon and Calmin were freed, went back to war with one another, installed genasi as leaders in the region, and generally treated the humans of the region pretty badly.

We haven’t seen much of Calimnshan in the 5e era, but we know Calim and Memnon were overthrown and banished back to the elemental chaos/elemental planes. Basically, it was the same broad reboot that the rest of the Realms received, so we just generally know that Calimnshan is being pieced back together, probably in a manner that looks similar to what it looked like in the late 3e era . . . maybe.

That gives us a few issues with having well-known and established paladins with an Oath to serve genies:

• Its unlikely they would be drawing power from all four genie types when there was only a Djinn and an Efreet involved in the region
• Servants of these genies aren’t likely to be working with one another since Calmin and Memnon have constantly been at war with one another
• Servants of both genies would probably be seen as oppressors in this era, given that the genies put genasi in charge and specifically enslaved or oppressed the humans of the region

I know they may not want to play up Djinn and Efreet being in an eternal war—I don’t know—but that doesn’t mean Calmin and Memnon wouldn’t have been at war, establishing separate, competing empires in the region in ancient times. They may not want to play up genasi enslaving humans in the name of the genie lords, but it would be strange to try to change Calim and Memnon from generational villains to revered rulers.

Rogue: Scion of the Three. There is no reason that a rogue that is supernaturally invested in murder would be a “Scion of the Three” and not just a “Scion of Bhaal.” Even if you want to lean into the Baldur’s Gate III storyline, three distinct, contentiously allied faiths were working together. You had a Chosen of Myrkul, a Chosen of Bane, and a Chosen of Bhaal, not a champion of all three. It’s not just design dictated by marketing; it’s design that’s only engaging with the surface level of the game rather than its actual content. 

Ranger: Winter Walker. The Winter Walker ranger leans heavily into being a ranger from a cold land beset by vague cosmic horrors and undead, which is the theme of Rime of the Frost Maiden, but it’s never been a theme of Icewind Dale before that. It’s fine as a theme for that adventure, but it becomes this strange thing where a type of ranger has emerged that caters to a state that has only existed in Icewind Dale for a decade? If this is the new “theme” of Icewind Dale, what does the place look like when you resolve Rime of the Frost Maiden? If you aren’t playing that adventure, is it the default that Auril always imposes eternal winter unless you play through those events? It feels like we’re only going to get this new theme, which was the consequence of Auril being trapped there and causing the eternal winter in recent years.

I understand they want very distinct, easily communicated themes, but those themes feel very thin and very obviously tied to very specific, singular storylines. Icewind Dale does have a theme of having lost places that are difficult to find because of the weather and being the corner of the world where people go to lose themselves. That theme ties into Honor Among Thieves, and Honor Among Thieves even flies in the face of Icewind Dale, which is a horror setting.

Without Auril and the eternal winter, it’s still pretty damn cold most of the time, and we’ve established the following about the region:

• Outcasts and people wanting to start over live in Ten Towns
• The Lord’s Alliance established a prison in the region because it sequesters undesirables far away from most of the Sword Coast, and only daring, charming, movie-worthy heroes would manage to escape
• Because of the remote location, ancient civilizations have ruins there that have gone unexplored, which has been a theme both in Rime of the Frost Maiden and the Icewind Dale video games

It’s also just a wee bit strange that the description of the Winter Walker implies that there may be multiple fallen cities from Netheril in the city, which kind of seems like overkill, given that there weren’t that many Netherese flying cities to begin with.

Broader Lore Thoughts

I understand wanting to have clear themes, but there are clear themes and thin, single-note regions. It seems strange that not only is Icewind Dale being limited to cold/horror themes but also that Cold Walker rangers are so focused on being “Icewind Dale” rangers that an order of rangers with those competencies isn’t framed as having additional origins like Vaasa or the Great Glacier. This is even stranger when you have the opposite problem with the Purple Dragon Knights being taken from specific to Cormyr to being a broader organization across Faerun.

I’m not sure what’s driving these kinds of decisions except to ruthlessly design so that something can only be a single thing. Even then, it’s strange that the single thing for one subclass is “you’re from this one region,” and the single thing for this other subclass is “you can’t be from just one region.”

I’ve said this several times, but I will revisit something I’ve said before, across multiple editions. As much as I love the aspects of the Realms that appeal to me, if you are remaking large parts of the Realms to fit broader D&D concerns, then don’t use the Realms; make a new setting that can hold your new assumptions. If you want to use Baldur’s Gate III to sell books, then you should realize that Baldur’s Gate III had substance because it used the texture that already existed in the setting, not because it redefined large sections of the setting and ignored other aspects.

There is a big difference between “See, Jergal is a thing you recognize from Baldur’s Gate III” and “Jergal has the position he has in the story because of the backstory of Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul, that’s been circulating since at least AD&D 2e products.” I’m not calling for a devotion to extreme minutia. Canon for the sake of canon is bad, and it keeps people from engaging with the setting. However, continuity has to be more than identifying proper nouns for it to have any meaning. It’s not easy to find that middle ground, but that’s why the people in the industry who can do it manage to make their work shine.

#BaldurSGateIII #dnd #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #ForgottenRealms #gaming #RoleplayingGames #rpg #rpgs #TabletopRoleplayingGames #ttrpgs #UnearthedArcana

Tales of the Valiant, Roll20, and Shard Tabletop

You may or may not have heard that Roll20 had determined that they aren’t going to develop a character sheet for Tales of the Valiant. This may not seem like a big deal, but that means they aren’t going to support Tales of the Valiant in their character builder, and they aren’t going to create the new stat blocks to show up in a character sheet for the new monster stat blocks.

Effectively, nothing fully Tales of the Valiant will be coming to the platform. Yes, this would be disappointing if you want to use Roll20, but can’t you just adapt? First, if you’re like me, you’ve got seven products you backed on Kickstarter with Roll20 add-ons.

Now, that may sound back, but one of those Kickstarters is still in the process of being produced, so that’s only five products behind. All of that is pretty aggravating. But there are a few mitigating factors, which don’t have anything to do with Roll20.

Mitigating Factor Number 1

Shard Tabletop and KoboldPress offer a subscription service for access to Kobold Press’ library on the VTT. For someone like me, who is extremely invested in the Roll20 version of these products, this is a major thing, as we’ll get to in a moment.

• Kobold Press: Player’s Subscription
• Kobold Press” Game Master Subscription

Mitigating Factor Number 2

Kobold Press is allowing people to reassign their VTT options, translate their VTT add-ons to store credit or request a refund. None of this is Kobold Press’s fault, so please don’t take any of this frustration as being directed at them.

Roll20 and Implementations

It feels to me like Roll20 announced this quietly on their Discord, and then left it to Kobold Press to break the news to everyone, which sucks since Kobold Press wasn’t the entity that dropped the ball.

Roll20 has been slowly dropping the ball on many “near 5e” conversions over the last few years. They’ve failed to set up a separate compendium and specialized character sheet for Esper Genesis. They’ve failed to implement a sheet for multiple Essence20 games (G.I. Joe, Transformers) properly.They also wholly fumbled the rollout of the Everyday Heroes line of products. Yes, I know; in the meantime, the owner of that particular product line has set fire to as much goodwill as they could . . . however . . . that has nothing to do with the fact that Roll20 couldn’t deliver.

Roll20 recently announced their plans for Demiplane integration, which includes sharing content for some companies across what you own on Demiplane and what you own on Roll20, as well as creating a “crosswalk” that will allow users to use the character sheet from Demiplane on Roll20.

Demiplane’s character builder was designed to be more modular and agile when dealing with implementing various game elements. One of the games they’ve mentioned trying to work this crosswalk with is Marvel Multiverse RPG.

That’s good because the Demiplane version of the character sheet for Marvel Multiverse RPG is much better than the Roll20 version. The character builder is miles ahead, because it’s hard to understand why you have to make decisions on the Roll20 sheet, and it’s harder to modify existing sheets.

I say all of this not because I’m not highly annoyed at Roll20, but because I want to be fair and point out that they have a lot of irons in the fire. All that said, anything 5e adjacent would be sacrificed on the altar of getting the 2024 character sheet to work.

Personal Axes to Grind

It’s not the first time I’ve had something I backed get either nuked or delayed for multiple years because it was more important to chase big money than to fulfill a promise by an RPG-related company, and I guess that’s “normal” in capitalism, but its never fun to know you aren’t the priority.

Especially when you did spend a not insignificant amount of money on a project that may not make the company as much money as another project, but still cost you the same amount regardless of their return on investment. But I’m letting a wee bit of my annoyance at another situation to bleed in.

The last thing I wanted to touch on is my current investment. A few years back, I looked at Shard Tabletop, and even though I didn’t do a deep dive until recently, even back then, I was convinced a dedicated 5e SRD site was much better for running the game than an “everything” site.

Decision Points

From the time I looked at it then, to now, Shard has only gotten better at implementing how 5e games should run. I don’t expect that they will work for everyone, but for how my brain works and for how I play and run games, I’m much happier with how Shard works.

However, when I was ramping up to move my games online, one of the considerations I had to make was how all the material I wanted to use would interact. Despite liking the interface on Shard better, I opted for Roll20, because I couldn’t get official WotC material on Shard.

I could get more of my 5e 3rd party material to work natively with WotC D&D material, so I felt like, ultimately, I wanted to go with the less ideal interface for greater flexibility. So, even though I was tempted to go with Shard for my Kobold Press purchases, I didn’t.

My current campaign is a 2014 5e game set in Kobold Press’s Midgard setting, where most of the players have options from extended 3e WotC products, so it’s not like I haven’t benefited from having all of that working together on one site.

But, if Tales of the Valiant, despite being similar and compatible, is going to be a system that is only fully supported on another site, I want access to everything I can currently use with 5e. Thankfully, the Shard Tabletop Kobold Press subscription allows this.

On Digital “Ownership”

I would much rather “own” everything I “own” on the site where I use the material. I can’t count on Kobold Press or Shard infinitely offering the subscription model, and once it’s gone, that’s a lot of material that I don’t have access to anymore.

Insert [the risk of any particular digital platform closing and you loosing access to things you’ve purchased], I know, I know. But a subscription being discontinued feels like a more immediate concern than an entire site disappearing. The thing that crystallized my frustration at this situation was putting everything from Kobold Press that I own in Roll20 into a spreadsheet and seeing what it would cost me actually to own all of that material on Shard. That comes to almost $900. Ouch.

I know it’s a risk you take in the modern era, with so much content that exists “virtually” or as a service. I’m happy that Shard Tabletop and Kobold Press do offer the subscriptions they offer, so I can run games on the site with all of the things I’m used to using.

But wow, do I wish I could go back to me a few years ago, starting to ramp up my online game materials and tell past me, “no, you can’t keep everything on one platform, so you may as well go with the platform you enjoy using rather than the one with more options.”

#5eSRD #BlackFlagReferenceDocument #Demiplane #dnd #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #gaming #KoboldPress #Roll20 #rpg #rpgs #ShardTabletop #TalesOfTheValiant #ttrpg #ttrpgs #VTTs

Some Kind of Monster (Type)

With some of the discussion on monster types and what sapient beings can and cannot understand the thought processes of other creatures, I am starting to feel like creature type is the new alignment and that some of the issues with older D&D content haven’t been addressed so much as shifted to another part of the game’s narrative.

This is a collection of my thoughts on the process. Rather than stating an absolute, I wanted to discuss how likely different mindsets might clash and where those perspectives might align and find common ground. 

I don’t think any fantasy world needs to have creatures that are always villains. If you have a fantasy world where mortal conflict will be a theme, you don’t need a block of things that are always hostile and always justifiably opposed. You need to have specific creatures opposing your heroes, who have motivations that may or may not allow them to compromise before they fight to the death.

On that note . . .

Associated Magic Sources

Associated magic sources aren’t meant to limit what creatures of that type can use. These are the sources of magic most tied to the creature’s existence and place in the multiverse. Giants are tied to the divine and the primordial, but individual giants can study and use arcane magic. Dragons are tied to the arcane and the primordial, but some dragons serve gods and wield divine magic. This is more about supernatural positioning than access.

Aberrations

Associated Magic Sources Arcane

Aberrations are creatures that should not exist in the multiverse. Their existence warps and overwrites the laws of the multiverse with those of an incompatible universe. Even aberrations that aren’t traditionally hostile naturally warp and twist reality around them. The more aberrations want to establish themselves in this reality, the more they destabilize what is and what can be expected.

This may not always make them antagonists, but it does mean that to them, the Far Realm is more “real” than this universe. To some of them, that means this universe is a mistake or a source of material to mine for greater efforts on the Far Realm or possibly even universes that can’t be perceived by anyone on “this side” of the Far Realm. 

Beast

Associated Magic Sources Primordial

In some ways, beasts are the opposite of aberrations. They arise from the natural world and respond to the most common natural laws. In many ways, they belong more in the Prime Material world than species influenced by creatures from the Elemental and Outer Planes. Beasts have a collective spirit. When they are communicated with, the collective spirit speaks through the context of the beast present for the communication.

Various faiths have different views on whether having this collective spirit means that harm to animals should always be avoided, but because of this collective spirit, it’s hard to argue that large-scale harm to a species is a moral evil because the more of those creatures that experience harm or cruelty, the more the individual, collective spirit is harmed. Some aspects of these collective spirits take on singular purposes, which may cause them to divide from the collective spirit and become fey or elementals.

Celestial

Associated Magic Sources Divine

Celestials are beings that are partially created from cosmic philosophy. Their physical form is only the package holding their drives and the connection to their greater purpose. Regardless of the celestial’s disposition, they frame almost everything as being about doing the “right” thing. Because they are connected to the greater philosophies of the multiverse, it is difficult for a Celestial to frame any situation in a way that doesn’t begin with “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”

Celestials that begin to understand the perspective of mortals become increasingly more physical beings as more of their “philosophical” energy begins to solidify. In many ways, Celestials don’t fall because they become evil but because they have started to reach critical mass between balancing the mortal and eternal perspectives.

Construct

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Primordial, Divine

In many ways, “Construct” is an incomplete explanation of a creature that focuses on the literal form of a creature. At its most basic level, constructs are beings that animate physical matter to interact with the world, which should not naturally be animate. There are many means of providing this motive force, from reassigning souls from other types of creatures, binding elemental spirits, tapping into collective spirits of the multiverse, or lending a “copy” of part of the creator’s soul to the construct.

Because souls are technically infinite, loaning part of the creator’s soul to a construct may sometimes cause that soul spark to grow into it’s own soul, but the exact way that partial souls reach the point of becoming actual souls is beyond the understanding of most beings. In many ways, the body the construct uses is either not its body, it’s a prepared vessel being “driven” by a motive force, or its body was not its own, but at some point, the motive force of the construct becomes intertwined with the external, in this case, their body.

Dragon

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Primordial

Dragons are intrinsically magical creatures. They can often be too large or too small to exist according to the physical laws of the multiverse and can accomplish things they should not be able to do, such as generating elemental force or being able to fly despite their massive forms. Unlike aberrations, this doesn’t mean that dragons aren’t meant to exist in this universe, but rather, they are a creature that exists at the juncture of expressions of raw magic, the pinnacle form of beasts, and elemental energies.

Because they are tied to arcane and primal forces, dragons often understand magic intrinsically, and even dragons that lean more bestial tend to sense magic on a level that other creatures do not. Being infused with magic and elemental power means that dragons, even smaller, “lesser” dragons like drakes, live much longer than their physical forms would seem to support. In some ways, dragons are similar to beasts; it is not that the dragons share a collective spirit, but that a dragon is not wholly contained in one physical space and is in some ways connected to various versions of themselves across reality. Because of this, and they are so long-lived, they rarely ponder matters of the soul and tend to view gods as troublesome older siblings rather than a source of awe or reverence, though some dragons serve deities. 

Elemental

Associated Magic Sources Primordial

Like Celestials and Fiends, elementals are partially composed of a “concept” as part of their physical bodies. Unlike Celestials or Fiends, philosophy is rarely part of the concept. Instead, they are paragons of building blocks of Primordial magic used to build the physical aspects of the multiverse. Elementals often have a difficult time understanding mortal concepts, being bound to their element and not understanding so much as existing, but because they aren’t composed of philosophical energies, any concept that doesn’t challenge their understanding of the continued existence of the elemental force they embody, they can learn the perspective of other creatures.

Genies are especially well-versed in understanding the perspective of mortal beings and tend to be naturally social, seeking out interaction with other sapient beings. The most significant limitation to understanding and empathy when dealing with genies is that it is challenging to address any situation where the elemental to which they are aligned might be fettered or destroyed. An Efreeti could be good friends with a party of human adventurers, but they will always have a difficult time understanding why they would lessen the intensity of flames in their domain for the benefit of their friends because thinking of their element tends to reframe their perspective in an almost defensive space.

Fey

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Primordial

Fey share some traits with Celestials, Fiends, and Elementals in that there is a powerful aspect of their being that is as much conceptual as it is physical. However, one important thing to remember when making this comparison is that the Fey’s primary drive is to Experience. In many ways, they are the opposite of the Celestials or Fiends in that abstract philosophy is difficult for them, but choosing a mode of existence and learning what it is to experience reality in that context is their way of engaging with the concepts they embody.

The convoluted agreements common to many Fey are an aspect of their adherence to a particular vector of existence. If they agree to something, everyone has to agree that their perspective is the perspective through which the fey are experiencing reality. They often have a difficult time grasping the fragility of life because even death is an experience, but it is a great annoyance if that death has nothing to do with what they currently want to experience. Fey are masters of engaging topics in a complex, but almost wholly surface level, perspective.

Because the Fey primarily exists to experience, it’s hard for them to change their conceptual space in the multiverse in the way a Celestial that becomes “too mortal” might. It’s possible for a fey to completely shift what kind of fey it is, depending on shifting the perspective through which it will experience it. Some Fey become so embroiled in experiencing the world via mortal perspectives that they drift away from being fully fey, which is the case with many elves, gnomes, and goblins.

Fiend

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Divine

Fiends are conceptual beings similar to Celestials. Celestials are conceptual beings drawn to actively completing goals and preserving, while Fiends are driven to change and erode. That broad directive can be changed greatly based on what other cosmic forces coalesce to create the fiend group. Being aligned with law, Devils are drawn to using the law to wear away at souls bound for other planes of existence and to maintain the existence of law while undermining the purpose of laws. Demons are drawn to work toward entropy maliciously, ensuring there is less of the multiverse today than yesterday while ironically living in one of the most infinitely sprawling planes of existence. Daemons are drawn to promote perpetual strife, which some manifest in their work as mercenaries in an eternal cosmic war.

Celestials believe there is always something more significant to work towards, which means they can be dramatically affected by adopting a mortal understanding of the multiverse. Friends don’t often “fall” in this manner because their nature is much more naturally nihilistic. It’s challenging to feel as if your perspective on the multiverse has changed by seeing things like mortal beings do because, ultimately, nothing matters except performing your function in proving some aspect of the established universe needs to be perverted. That doesn’t rule out that Fiends can begin a radical transformation away from their largely philosophical makeup. However, this may be more likely to come from learning the perspectives of other conceptual beings rather than via empathy for a mortal perspective.

Giant

Associated Magic Sources Primordial, Divine

In some way, most sapient beings are the children of the gods, either directly or indirectly. Giants are among the more “directly” descended creatures. The gods have manifested their glory in the giants, which causes them to be impossibly large creatures compared to other beings. In some ways, the gods that still favor their giant children don’t have a purpose for them in the multiverse, so much as they retain a fondness for a species that is no longer primary in the multiverse.

Being mortal beings that manifest some of the glory of their divine ancestors, giants often have access to magical abilities that they manifest naturally. It’s not uncommon for giants to shift the landscape around them by simply existing in that area, both from their sheer size and the manifestation of divine glory that shines through them. This is also why giants often live in more remote locations because some of their divine progenitors don’t want them to shift the modern world subtly, so they entreat them to live in remote or liminal spaces and, like the gods themselves, are expected to “visit” the world of small folk, but not be of that world. 

Humanoid

Associated Magic Sources Primordial, Divine, Arcane

In many ways, humanoids are similar to animals in that they are very much creatures of the collection of things that come together to make the Prime Material plane. Humanoids have a finite lifespan, and the collective life force, which manifests as a collective spirit for beasts, is more differentiated for humanoids, forming what many religions and philosophies detail as a soul. There is still enough mystery in the universe that some philosophers point out that many petitioners in the outer planes lose their singular memories. They use this as evidence that humanoids may have a collective spirit more likely to remain in its contextual “mask” but just as likely to fade into the collective once the collective spirit is no longer connected to the physical.

Because humanoids are adapted to living a life in a world that balances a world of elemental and primordial forces, and they have the mental faculties to search for the arcane and ponder the divine, it is not uncommon to find Humanoids that have made contact with these magical forces and the heralds of those forces, drawing some of those forces into their still mortal form but transforming it from its original manifestation. Humanoids, as beings of the Prime Material plane, are also the “destination” of many creatures that lose their connection to the rest of its kind, such as Celestials or Fey, and species that exist on the border of those types.

Monstrosity

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Divine

Monstrosities are creatures composed of other creatures that can exist and function in the natural world but are supernaturally changed to allow an amalgam of disparate beings to function in the same body. Some definitions of Monstrosities are easily applied because they are amalgams of beasts with other creature types. Other “monstrosities” are barely differentiated from humanoids, being humanoids infused with a higher degree of magic in their natural existence. Many monstrosities ride the edge of beasts or humanoids, and some sages decry that this creature designation isn’t an actual creature type as it is a category made to hold creatures that live on the edges of other creature types.

Ooze

Associated Magic Sources Primordial

Oozes can appear to have traits similar to other creatures. For example, the slow decay of some fungi mirrors the way Oozes perpetuate their existence. Oozes, however, are a throwback to the primordial origins of the multiverse. They are the charged particles of proto-matter that were left over when various parts of the multiverse were finalized. Some new ooze types have developed over time that seem to challenge this origin, but other experts have conjectured that those “new” forms of ooze represent mortal beings using magic that causes matter to resonate with its primordial form. 

Plant

Associated Magic Sources Primordial

The designation of “plant” can be misleading, as fungi are also organized in this category, mainly because fungus lives in a similar space relative to other living things. For those that study the almost unknowable energies of the universe, plants seem to exist in a manner that is less possessed of a collective spirit, the way beasts (and maybe humanoids) have, but are more a form of life that interacts with other life, both physically taking material and converting it to facilitate continued existence, and generate low-level life force energies to infuse the living beings around them. This life force is a powerful means of maintaining life on the planes where plants are present. Still, there are dangerous explorations into converting that life force into broader supernatural energies, which removes that life force from the pool of life force available to maintain the natural cycle of existence.

Because most plants tend not to be animate or moderately animate, actual plants that exhibit sapience create a conundrum for sages and naturalists since those sapient beings don’t seem to emerge from a collective spirit, and most plants are not receptacles of souls. One leading theory is that many sapient plants live at the intersection of Fey and the mortal world, where Fey become more obsessed with broader life cycles rather than pondering a mortal existence. 

Undead

Associated Magic Sources Arcane, Divine

The undead is a confusing designation among other creature designations. It is fairly easy to make a case for their existence, similar to aberrations in that they should not exist. Mortal beings should live, die, and have whatever life force, collective spirit, or soul connected to them drift off to the natural flow of energies in the multiverse. The undead hold back part of that life energy from being able to recombine and participate in the natural cycle. 

This means that the undead sometimes presents the most significant moral quandaries of all creature types. Undead trapped in torment by a curse are wholly given to being predatory creatures or are fragmentary malignant souls and are almost universally held as things that should be erased from existence. The point of divergence is on whether animate undead without sapience are truly the same kind of cursed creature as other forms of undead and if undead that enter a conditional existence willingly with acceptable conditions to those around them are truly an abomination that needs to be removed from existence.

#DD #dnd #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #fantasy #FantasyRPG #fiction #MonsterManual #Roleplaying #rpg #TabletopRPG

Worlds Beyond Number Witch Playtest version 3.1

This isn’t very revolutionary because I’ve already taken a look at the Witch, but I wanted to touch base on the updates because I’m really interested in this project. If my thoughts aligned with some of the revisions, I might even start to take my ability to analyze these things more seriously again.

Worlds Beyond Number Witch Playtest version 3.1

Concept Design: Erika Ishii, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Brandes Stoddard, Mazey Veselak
Design: Dan Dillon, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Hannah Rose, Brandes Stoddard, Mazey Veselak
Playtester in Chief: Erika Ishii
Layout: Ruby Lavin
Illustrators: Corey Brickley, Tucker
Donovan, Jack Jones, Lorena Lammer, Taylor Moore

Page Count, Layout, and Format

• Pages: 20
• Layout: Two-Column
• Format: Full Color, Accompanying Art
• Content Breakdown: Introduction and Witch Class—6 pages, Witch Spell Lists—3 pages, Covens (Subclasses)—4 pages, New Spells—6 pages

Disclaimer

Review Copy: No
Played: No
Run: No
Played Similar Content: Yes
Run Similar Content: Yes

Diving In

A lot of what I’m going to be doing is looking at the changelog and discussing my previous look at this class. After I touch on those, I’ll pull some thoughts together.

Class Foundations

The witch gets upgraded from a d6 casting class to a d8 casting class. The class does feel like it’s living in a similar space to classes like the druid. Most of their spells aren’t major areas of effect since their magic is more personal, so without wider “controller” abilities, it’s probably a good idea for them to be able to soak up a little more damage. To go along with this, they also get to wear light armor, should the mood strike them.

The concept of curse spells remains but means something different, and a separate list of them is provided later in the document.

Tier 1 Abilities

There is a fallback means of creating a token if you fail your Wisdom check when you make one by spending a spell slot. Kudos for standardizing the class to adopt 2024 conventions without adopting the idea that it just pops into existence when you “craft” something.

Last time around, I mentioned that Erika immediately took an animal for a familiar that wasn’t on the familiar list, so it’s kind of amusing to me that the document now includes a fox, and a few other animals that weren’t there before, and gives examples of existing animals to swap in for those that don’t have stats. The witch also has badgers, goats, and scorpions on the potential familiar list. So, if you really want, this can now be a VVitch class.

If you follow The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One actual play, I think you’ve seen some of the in-play developments that added the following familiar abilities—they have more hit points, but not so much that they’re combat ready, they can talk now, so they can communicate with more than just the witch; the familiar can’t concentrate for the witch now, except when the witch fails a concentration check, and then the familiar “catches” the concentration before it drops. I don’t know that I would have thought about that, but now that I read it, I kind of like the idea that by making this more of a thing that the familiar steps in and helps with, it makes the familiar feel more like a helper than when they can just do it. Sometimes, a slightly less open class feature can help the class express what it does better.

Retributive curses don’t interact with the curse spell list any longer. Now, there is a list of curse effects the witch can choose from when their ability to use a Retributive Curse is triggered. I was a fan of Retributive Curses, not only because curses are part of the identity they are establishing for this class, but because when the witch was squishier, it was a way for them to potentially survive something getting in their face in combat. Seeing the Retributive Curse as a class feature instead of spells, I realize I like this much better. It makes the curses feel more like they “belong” to the witch, rather than the witch having the ability to use spells differently in some situations.

I mentioned in the previous version that the Tier 1 abilities didn’t give a witch player much to play with in more traditional dungeon crawling or combat situations until 3rd level. Standardizing 3rd level as the level where subclases start bumped Retributive Curses down to 2nd level, which feels right now that they made this change.

Tier 2 Abilities

Talismans are moved to 5th level, and they have a “homing beacon” effect, which I like. I also like that witches can now shut down a talisman and recover their spell slot as an action instead of after 10 minutes. It does feel more in line with how other classes function. I don’t imagine you’ll need to yank a spell back from someone who suddenly becomes hostile, but I can see getting down to your last resources and needing that little bit of power back at a critical moment.

Willful Sanctum is the reworking of the Willful Walls ability, which previously didn’t come into play until higher level. Instead of jumping straight to the higher level functions, Willful Sanctum lets the witch set up a sanctum if they spend 8 hours after they’ve taken a long rest in a location, which feels more like an “adventuring” feature. If you know you’ll be adventuring in a location, the witch can help you set up a “base camp.” The Willful Sanctum ability now grants certain spells without the witch needing to prepare those spells, and the spells increase over time. I think the main thing that still makes this feel less like an “adventuring” feature is that it doesn’t gain the ability to grant Private Sanctum until it is at least 7 days old. I feel like it would be more functional if the sequence was more like this:

• Long Rest
• 8 hours to set up Sanctum
• Return to Sanctum
• Long Rest
• Sanctum gains bonus abilities currently reserved for 7 days

Improved Retribution gives the witch more options for her Retirbutive Curses, which I like. Since this is replacing the ability to cast spells, it’s nice to see higher-level choices that can help keep the curses as relevant as higher-level spells would be.

Tier 3 Abilities

Hallowed Sanctum attaches Word of Recall to the Willful Sanctum, which is a great spell to tie into this. Very happy with that idea. Like the previous version of the witch, most of this tier is about expanding what the witch got at lower levels, including higher-level spells for tokens and another set of curse effects for Retributive Curses.

Tier 4 Abilities

Shifting Sanctum expands your sanctum to allow you to use Imprisonment and Demiplane. Like Word of Recall, I love these as spells tied to your ability to supernaturally make a space set aside for your use. It sounds like a big deal to have access to these spells, but also, we’re talking about 18th level now.

Epic Boon is basically standardizing the class to 2024 standards. There aren’t any new Epic Boons included, but I wasn’t expecting that. I’m also still processing how much it really grabs me to have something like this at 19th level, but that’s not an issue with this class.

True Craft got reworded, but it looks like I already understood it to do what it does now, and I’m not sure I can crawl back into my brain to see why I may not have seen why it needed to be reworded.

Covens

Most of the changes with the Coven of the Heart are relatively minor tweaks. Curse upon the Heartless is a little more effective from 10th level on. Overflowing Heart got bumped back to (Wisdom Bonus) a number of times instead of (Wisdom Bonus + Proficiency Bonus). I don’t know if the ability needs to be reduced, but I can see where it also makes sense to bump something slightly more complicated than most features. If the witch is doing what I’ve seen most players doing, they’ll be able to use this 4 times by tier 2 and 5 times by tier 3, at the least.

Coven of the Claw

The Coven of the Claw got more extensive reworking. That was the class that I felt was doing a little more work for adventuring witches than the other subclasses. Curse of the Claw has unique effects tied to it that also act as a mark. If you want to picture me cursing about how Hunter’s Mark should be a class feature of Ranger instead of making a core concept of the class for multiple editions into a spell that isn’t even exclusive to them, you can insert that here.

Instead of getting access to medium armor, Coven of the Claw witches now get a feature that grants them a Wisdom bonus to their armor class in light armor. I think it’s an interesting aspect of the Coven to not make medium armor use the key to any Coven. They lost their ability to use Wisdom for attack and damage rolls, which was one of the big things pushing this one ahead of the other Covens, and it also cuts down on the temptation to have a Monk/Witch for optimization purposes. But fear not, the Coven of the Claw does still get access to claws that they can use their spell attack to attack with, which is probably better as a constrained ability rather than a wide open one.

The Fierce Familiar, which used to be a subclass feature, is now a spell that any witch (or Druid or Ranger) can use. The Coven of the Claw gets to have the spell always prepared, and they can flavor it to transform their familiar into a battle beast. I think that’s a fun twist. It’s nice that other witches can still decide to unleash a vicious beastie if they aren’t Coven of the Claw. The higher level abilities aren’t as tied to setting up the Coven of the Claw witch to enter a cycle of destruction with the Fierce Familiar. 

Red Frenzy doesn’t let the witch throw a cantrip into their attack routine, which seems like a good idea for something flavored as a “frenzy,” and it reframes the Coven of the Claw as “the animal fury witch” and not the “combat witch.” Steady Will got reworked and rolled into On the Hunt, which feels like it fits a little more thematically with “animal powers and hunting” than “too stubborn to be frightened or stunned.” It’s now a subset of other options the Coven of the Claw can pick with this ability. Still, instead of that, they could choose invisibility powers, an attack used as a reaction to being attacked, or increased damage on damage-dealing spells. I like that it has the limit of not working on Undead or Constructs because they aren’t really something one would naturally hunt as an animal.

Coven of the Green

Coven of the Green removed Thorn Whip from available cantrips, and I’m a little sad. I wonder if that was to help differentiate a Coven of the Green witch from a druid, even though they still get Druidcraft as a cantrip. Like the other curse effects, their Curse of the Grasping Green is now a unique subclass feature. Veil of the Green takes advantage of the “new” concept of Emanations to add a list of hindering effects to impose on opponents. I like the Wild Gifts feature, but this ability is interesting to look at in light of 2024 just adding a spell that pops out potions. I like Long Rest > Prepare Spells (Harvest Potions) > use before 24 hours passes as the sequence for this.

Like Fierce Familiar, the Coven of the Green Witch has its “long-term sleep” ability converted to a spell, and I like that since it opens it up for other witches to use as well. My assessment last time around was that Coven of the Green was a little light on the practical adventuring abilities (okay, dungeon crawling), and this feels like it’s retooled features to still feel “green,” but not quite as passive?

Coven of the Wicked

The description of this Coven has been reworked. While there is still some guidance on using this as a Coven for “fallen” witches, it is written more as a Coven that a player might intentionally choose to play when they get their subclass. I wonder if that would mean Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent didn’t take her subclass yet until after . . . that event.

Curse of Cruelty gets renamed and flavored to Curse of Spite, which I like if you’re letting people pick this as their anti-hero archetype instead of as the “fallen to evil” Coven. Loathsome Gift has been reworked a bit to make it less open-ended. Curse-Token can renew on a short or long rest.

A lot of changes to the Coven is quantifying abilities to make sure they’re clearer, but Twisted by Cruelty removes resistance to Poison and Necrotic damage. I will say that even if you want to use this as your “anti-hero” class, by the time you reach this level, you have full-on villain coding. Not many heroic people live in a location surrounded by miles of dead plants that your aura has caused. It mentions the physical changes that overtake witches of the Coven of the Wicked, which has me wondering if “impossible sharp cheekbones” is one of those changes.

Final Thoughts

I liked the previous version of the class, but I think The Coven of the Green is a better adventuring option than it was before. I feel better about the Coven of the Claw. I like that many of the abilities aren’t radically changed, but they do feel more “D&D” because of how they describe their effects, but in a way that doesn’t feel efficient to the point of storytelling sterility.

I really like the new effects for the Retributive Curse. I’m a big fan of these abilities being rolled into unique witch abilities, and I like the ones they have introduced. There aren’t any functions for Curse Spells in the core class, and only a few things trigger with them in the subclasses. I don’t think I would be sad to see the subcategory of Curse Spells just go away. If that’s not in the cards, I think the core class needs to interact with them and the subclasses.

I started putting together a witch character for playtest purposes on Roll20. Now, I think I will work on setting up the class progression in Shard so I can offer it to players who may want to take it for a spin in games where I’m using Shard Tabletop as the venue.

If you want to help support the blog, please consider following the affiliate links below—thanks! (Heads up, some of these links have some graphic content)

• Forbidden Knowledge
• The Blasphemies of Bor Bwalsch

#5eSRD #ActualPlay #ActualPlayPodcast #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #DungeonsDragons5e #FantasyRoleplaying #magic #TabletopRoleplaying #TheWizardTheWitchAndTheWildOne #Witch #WorldsBeyondNumber

What Makes an Artificer?

A while back, I picked apart what Rangers were in pop culture and games and how all of that congealed in my head to create my core concept of what I wanted in a Ranger character class. Now that WotC has released their first post-2024 Player’s Handbook Unearthed Arcana with the playtest version of the Artificer, and reading some thoughts people have had about what an Artificer is, I wanted to do something similar to what I did with the Ranger.

A History of Crafting in D&D

Spellcasters were often assumed to be able to make magic items. Powerful wizards, clerics, and druids were assumed to be able to infuse items with magic via spells over time to create permanent magic items. The details vary across editions, but it’s essentially a secondary “downtime” thing that primary casters can do.

Dragon Magazine and White Dwarf also had a history of creating NPC classes, classes that could fill niches in a campaign setting. One of those niches was often people who were not primary spellcasters but had the skill to produce magic items. At least five NPC alchemist classes were published in the magazine over the years. Dragon Magazine also had a smith class, that allowed for “innovations” but didn’t explicitly allow them to make magic items, as well as publishing articles on dwarven crafters.

White Dwarf was a little more notable when trying to draw a direct line to the later artificer because the magazine published the War Smith class in White Dwarf #28 and the Artificer in issue #68. The War Smith was a fighter subclass with some magical ability and could create magic weapons and armor. The Artificer was primarily a spellcaster who could make magical devices. The War Smith was created by Roger E. Moore, a TSR and Dragon Magazine mainstay, and the Artificer was created by David Marsh. I can’t speak to the family of anyone on the design team for Eberron in 3rd edition with that class to see if it influenced the name of the class that eventually entered the game officially. 

Individual settings in the game referred to dedicated magic item crafters, for example:

• Dwarven master smiths in the Forgotten Realms and other settings
• Weaponsmiths in Dragonlance forging, well, Dragonlances
• The Vremyonni tradition in Rashemen of male magic users who crafted items for the Witches

Muddying the Waters

A few concepts started to overlap around the edges of the concept of crafting. Dragonlance may have introduced Theros Ironfeld, but it also introduced Tinker Gnomes. It would have been easy to leave Tinker Gnomes as narrative elements, but Dragonlance Adventures for AD&D introduced the Tinker class, which could only be taken by gnomes. It was notable as a complicated class that used all of that complexity to intentionally produce items that almost always failed, sometimes in ways detrimental to the rest of the party, but could, with rolls that made it look easy to roll a character that qualified to be a paladin, produce useful effects, some of which could mimic magical effects. However, they were ostensibly produced entirely through scientific means.

Third Edition and Later

Third edition is where we get the first version of the D&D Artificer. The Artificer then was very much tied to Eberron. Eberron is a setting where low-level magic is common and is used in predictable and repeatable ways. Magewrights, talented in working magic to produce certain magic items repeatedly, are a fixture of the world, but Artificers are the pinnacle of this profession. They can reliably replicate magic items, but they have an intrinsic talent that allows them to temporarily bind that magic to items even when they don’t take the time to make those modifications permanent. They’re spellcasters, but because the magic they learn is about enhancing items, many are “support” spells. 

This version of the class is really only concerned about making sense of the story of the setting. It’s not worried about being a broad fantasy archetype; it’s helping to make sense of a setting conceit. When the class is translated into D&D 4e, with its more evident class roles, the Artificer is given the same role as Bards and Clerics, but instead of using inspirational words or prayers, they use items. Fourth edition is less concerned with granular crafting rules, but “off-screen” Artificers are the reason Eberron has consistent magic items available.

While it was pretty easy to use Artificers outside of Eberron in 4e, the game at that time had a lot of thematic classes that just needed to tell the story of “Role + Power Source” and wasn’t as concerned with “fantasy archetype.” I’m not saying that D&D 5e only has classes that can be traced directly to fantasy archetypes; however, D&D 5e has fewer classes, and the way it’s set up, specialized stories are usually told with subclasses, pushing more of the “archetype” to the broader explanation of what the class is. The Artificer also shifted from being a setting-specific class in Eberron: Rising from the Last War to a broad D&D concept in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. That means the class can’t have the same purpose in every setting because not every setting has broadly available quality-of-life magic items that are mass-produced. In some ways, even in Eberron, Artificers shift from being the pinnacle of the magewright craft to people who learn to do what magewrights do as part of everything else they learn.

Modern Voices

I wanted to touch on some of the modern take on Artificers before I dive into what the class could be from an archetypical standpoint. Some people have identified the class as a “magical MacGuyver,” meaning they can use magic to produce the tools they need. WotC has expressly tied the Artificer to Tinker Gnomes. That means they also become the default for engineers in a fantasy world that uses machines to produce supernatural effects that they may not even fully recognize as supernatural effects.

The common threads in these narratives end up being “someone that plays with magical inventions to produce effects.” The implication starts to feel like they know many random magical things they can string together into effects, often expressed as items they can create. That implies that they are people who learn how lots of “pieces” of magic work.

Compared to existing classes, this puts them in a similar conceptual space as Wizards, as people who learn about how magic works. However, what they learn is less disciplined and more thematic. That might be a direction to latch onto for conceptual development, except the class also has to be about people who are just engineers who “accidentally” invoke magic by experimenting with how science works in a magical world. That becomes a little less focused. 

Part of what made me write this is that I don’t think this is how the class design is being approached. What the class says in a broader setting narrative isn’t what the current designers seem interested in. One thing that has happened with a lot of D&D 2024 is that “story” is taken out of abilities for efficiency. To express game rules more simply, the Artificer in the 2024 playtest doesn’t need to have an item and then infuse that item with power. They take a long rest and have whatever items they want, up to the limit of items that they can have available to them. 

If you look at the implied story, Artificers who learn theoretical bits of magic that involve items as much as spells and Artificers who study science that accidentally trigger magical effects in a fantasy world both fall asleep and wake up with magic items. The only thing that mechanically tells you that Artificers “make” magic items or “improve” existing items is the name of the class. Otherwise, they could be people who pray to the gods for gifts that appear to them in the morning after their prayers, dreamers who locate magic items in their dreams and pull them out with them when they wake up, or people who use a power right that use their connection to an emotional spectrum to manifest constructs. 

In some ways, the definition of Artificer becomes a tautology. The Artificer does what it does because it produces effects similar to what has been defined as effects that an Artificer produces. 

My Two Copper Pieces

My thoughts on this are no more valid than anyone else’s, but I do like to break down what I think the core concepts of a game are before I decide how well that concept is being expressed in a game. As I said earlier in this post, D&D 5e doesn’t claim to produce only classes with a clear fantasy archetype, but I find it a pretty good place to start regarding expectations.

According to the old Merriam-Webster dictionary, an Artificer can mean “a skilled or artistic worker or craftsman” or “one that makes or contrives.” That implies that Artificers make things and suggests that an Artificer makes things with intention. That means that narratives that involve haphazardly creating something “accidentally,” at least from the character’s point of view, are a little at odds with that definition.

It also means that, as a fantasy archetype, this is the character in fantasy stories whose primary identity is making things. This can encompass many narratives, but at its core, the character makes things or finds a way to modify existing things to make them work better because they know how to make the item to begin with.

This magical archetype can encompass the elf crafter who makes magical rings or crafts gems into objects of obsession, a dwarf smith who creates magic weapons and armor, or an intelligent, obsessive young man who uses what they learned to make experimental magical firearms to help them get revenge. It could even be a friar working with a monster hunter from the Holy Order of Knights to provide them with monster hunting gear. You may make something that nobody has seen before, but you don’t do it because you randomly put things together that you don’t understand.

So what does all of that mean for what an Artificer style class should be able to do?

Tools

While your entire identity may not be improvisation, there should be some element of the core class that allows you to produce base-level tools that can be useful in any given situation. You make or modify things, so you shouldn’t make these things appear out of nowhere. It’s fine if you have an “omni-tool” to interact with, but changing the tool from one thing to another should take some interaction.

Purpose Built Magic

Like the general concept of having the “omni-tool,” you should know how to use magic to make something mundane do what it does even better through magic. You might have magical oils to rub into it. You might have runes or gems that you affix to it in different places. But you should know how to do something that takes some effort to trigger than enhancement.

Masterworks

There should be a way for you to make permanent items that show off your skill in whatever you specialize in making. Something that isn’t a temporary enhancement but an ongoing item that represents how well you perform your craft. This should be flexible. It’s fine if you’re that obsessive supernatural gunsmith who uses the stats of a wand to represent your firearm, but you know how to make a thing really well. You use the supernatural or esoteric to enhance your creation.

Spellcasting with a Catch

It’s fine to say that your spellcasting is manipulating something you made to produce a spell effect. That should probably be quantified, so you don’t have a divided narrative of “this Artificer casts spells like a wizard would, and this other one attaches a magnet to an esoteric bit of magical metal to cause a spell to happen.” 

Instead of just saying that you can use tools as your spellcasting implement, I think it would be better to quantify, “What is the special physical object that you have created that facilitates your spellcasting?” The star chart that the Circle of Stars Druid uses is a good example. You can flavor your star chart as many things, but it’s something physical that shows you the position of the stars that facilitates your manipulation of cosmic forces.

Saying that you have a box that produces high-pitched noises that you need to align to different sounds is a lot better and more thematic than, “I’m using tinker’s tools as my spellcasting implement.” This is another example of something that you can tack on one of those riders, like, “If you lose it or it gets destroyed, you can put together a new one during a short or long rest.” It makes the process feel less like handwaving and more like specializing in magical crafting or engineering you learned.

Subclasses Still Do the Heavy Lifting

Subclasses currently do a lot to change the personality of the class, and that’s probably the way to go, even if you examine the concept from the ground up. Artificers are expert crafters and creators, and subclasses should reinforce what each kind of crafting does. That said, the class could stand to be a lot more specialized and a lot more focused. For example, the current Armorer subclass isn’t about making legendary armor that mirrors the concepts found in folklore; it’s a class for creating a magical Iron Man suit. I’m not saying that subclass shouldn’t exist; I’m saying that there should be a way to better differentiate a more traditional fantasy narrative from a narrative more in line with Eberron and a way to differentiate an engineer from a master smith.

If you’re looking at the kinds of subclasses you should have for specialization, you should look at characters that “make things” in fantasy stories. Off the top of my head, I can think of the following:

• Smiths–crafters focused on making traditional armor and weapons with enhancements
• Alchemists–crafters focused on making consumables and altering the nature of physical objects
• Fleshcrafters–if you can’t be Victor Frankenstein, what’s even the point?
• Construct Builders–people who make animated objects to perform various functions
• Gunsmiths–you make magical guns that go boom and unleash magic as well
• Engineers–you make fantasy versions of cannons, powered armor, walking tanks, etc.
• Jewelers–you make magical wearable items that produce various effects
• Horologist–you make timepieces that change the flow of time using sympathetic magic
• Non-Euclidean Crafters–you mess with bits and pieces of stuff that shouldn’t be in this reality
• Tinkers–I’m not wild about tying “randomly building stuff and having it work accidentally” as a theme, but it works better as a subclass than a concept that has to be supported by the core class

In many ways, the subclasses would tell the typical story of various fantasy crafters. This is the kind of class that I would advocate should be a 1st level pick instead of a 3rd, but that’s not an option these days. 

The State of the Craft

I don’t think we’ll see the tweaks I’d like to see to make the Artificer a broader, more appropriate class to use across the board. I hope we get a little bit of a return to class abilities that are more concerned with telling stories and less about abject efficiency. We may see a version of some of the subclasses I mentioned, but they’ll probably be broader than I outlined.

I’d love to see the Artificer added to the SRD to open the class to 3rd party design. I enjoyed the creepy Artificer subclasses that Ghostfire Gaming did on the DMs Guild, but it would be nice if they could develop those subclasses outside of the DM’s Guild. Even if some of the changes I don’t like from the Unearthed Arcana stay in place, some subclasses with strong story elements could go a long way to making it easier to get into the core mechanics.

We have another similar concept active in the 5e SRD gamespace with Kobold Press’ Mechanist. Ironically, as the mechanics currently stand, I think you could almost switch the names of the classes between WotC and Kobold Press, and they would make more sense since so much of the Artificer narrative at WotC seems to be about the Artificer making “devices” and not just crafting and enhancing more traditional items. 

I’d also like to see another 3rd party class that builds the concept from the ground up as the Kobold Press did with the Mechanist. I’m interested to see if EN Publishing enters that arena with any of the main books or if we can see a version of this from some other publisher. 

If you don’t mind kicking in to keep the proverbial lights on here on the blog, you can use the affiliate links below and help contribute to my terrible habit of buying and reviewing games:

• Vault 5e: Hammer and Anvil
• Vault 5e: Mortar and Pestle
• Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Roll 20 VTT
• Alchemist (5E)
• The Gunslinger: A Complete Player Class & Firearms Sourcebook (5e)

#Artificer #DungeonsDragons2024 #DungeonsAndDragons #DungeonsAndDragons5thEdition #Eberron #UnearthedArcana

It’s time to look at something I wanted to dive into as soon as I received it, but work and evil humors in my body conspired to keep me from doing anything extra last week. But there’s no time like the present, so today we’re going to look at the first issue of Horizons, by Wildmage Press.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but to recap, this is a new fantasy RPG magazine from the Editor-in-Chief of MCDM’s Arcadia and some names that may be familiar from that magazine. This is going to be a quarterly outing, with three 5e SRD-based articles, and a fourth article from an additional fantasy RPG system.

Disclaimer

I received this issue of Horizons as a review copy. I have not had the opportunity to utilize or play with any of the material in this magazine, but I’m very familiar with 5e SRD games, both as a player and a DM. I am less familiar with the Pathfinder 2e Remaster rules. 

Horizons, Issue 01

Editor-in-Chief: Hannah Rose
Designers: Willy Abeel, Rue Dickey, Imogen Gingell, Erin Roberts
Additional Designer: Jessica Redekop
Editors: Sadie Lowry, Simone D. Sallé
Layout Designer: Clara Daly
Cover Illustrator: Anna Grinenko
Interior Illustrators: Allie Briggs, Jessica Nguyen, Veronica O’Neill, Zuzanna Wuzyk
Art Directors: Clara Daly, Hannah Rose
Alpha Testers: Kat Alysha, Anna Guimarães, Alex Hencinski, Roman Penna, Jessica Redekop, Parker Robins
Beta Testers: davidqshull, Félix Gauthier-Mamaril, Meg Hanna, Ada Hauser, Simon Irving, David Spring, Stefan Timmons, Alyssa Visscher, Aaron Flavius West, Patrick “007190pats”, Andrea Aloisi, Alpacnologia, AlpegioTheSorcerer,
Test Players:George Aspesi, Casey Bell, Rigby Bendele, JT Booth, Ed “Wandering Fox” Chivers, Nick “Clu2Clu”, Cassandra “Dig” Crary , Gina Devlin, Franklin H., T. Ashley Jenkins, Jethoof, Keraln, David Lucas, Hazel Margaris, Robert O’Connor, Chesley Oxendine, Tom Pelkey, RJ3thatsme, Ashton Sperry, Devon Stork, Alexander Swafford, Bennoni Thomas, WatchfulWizard, Robin Weber
Wildmage Press Staff: Clara Daly, Sneha Deo, Alice Gitel, Hannah Rose
Special Thanks: Dr. Victoria Condie, Meredith Gerber, Laura Hirsbrunner, Amber Litke, Vee Mus’e, Lauren Urban, Alyssa Visscher

On the Horizon

The PDF of Horizons Issue 01 is 41 pages long. Those pages include the following:

• Front and Back Cover: 2 pages
• Credits, Table of Contents: 2 pages
• The Desk of Many Thoughts (Editorial): 2 pages
• Articles: 29 pages
• Resources: 1 page
• Designers, Artist, and Staff Bios: 2 pages
• Licensing: 1 page

The interior of the PDF looks amazing. Gorgeous borders, multiple full color illustrations for each article (including some glorious full color dragon illustrations), and some graphically impressive stat blocks in the D&D 2024 and Pathfinder Remastered style.

The Articles

This issue contains the following articles:

• The Desk of Many Thoughts
• Next Stop: Adventure
• Look Up to Cuculan!
• Draco Ex Astris
• Atraxis the Crystalline

If you are the type that usually skips the editorials in a magazine, don’t. Hannah Rose and Clara Daly not only introduce their new magazine, but provide some interesting and provocative thoughts about the assumptions of modern fantasy, and how they contrast with fantasy assumptions of the past. 

Next Stop: Adventure

Our inaugural article details fantasy conveyances and mass transportation. The article is framed as information provided by Harper Tolly, a semi-retired adventurer. The two broad types of conveyances we see are Scrawlers and Loreriders. 

Scrawlers are stone conveyances powered by a variety of runes, which give them various properties. There are four different types of Scrawlers detailed, with variations on the number of passengers, carrying capacity, and individual quirks.

Loreriders are transportations that move along on magical, multi-dimensional legs. Paying for passage on a Lorerider costs the passenger a story, and the more substantial and detailed the story, the longer the amount of time the passenger can access the Lorerider.

The Scrawlers section of the article details five different runes that can be used to power and modify the Scrawlers. These runes can also be used on personal equipment to provide a different, related effect, and there are rules for what characters can learn to scribe these runes.

Both sections include tables for generating other passengers, as well as encounters associated with using that mode of transportation. The passenger tables include the character’s description and destination, and the Scrawlers include character secrets, while the Loreriders include what story the passengers told to gain passage. Scrawlers are geared towards transporting people from more remote locations, and often have other adventurers onboard, while Loreriders are often urban conveyances that may have a host of different passengers.

• I am a fan of an expansive rogues gallery of unreliable narrators with a wide range of expertise showing up in various articles
• I love how imaginative this article is, and the world building included in who uses each type of conveyance
• The unique descriptions of the conveyances makes me want to use them
  I may be a little less able to drop this into my Curse of Strahd or Thrones & Bones campaign that I would a homebrew setting, a setting like Eberron, or a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Midgard that have lots of varied regions with room to introduce additional magical wonders
• I may not want to throw the runecarving rules into every game, even though they are highly constrained, but I’d be willing to let characters that have different runecarving feats or talents from D&D or Tales of the Valiant supplement their abilities with these runes
• I wish we had more traditional vehicle stats for the conveyances, but I also know that we don’t know what or if vehicle stat blocks will look like in the 2024 DMG.

Look Up to Cuculan!

This article introduces a cloud island called Nim, and a town located on that island, called Cuculan. We are introduced to the concept of Cloudstuff, solid cloud matter that can be worked like stone, and is able to float on the surface of regular clouds. Cuculan is meant to be a location that can be dropped into various campaigns, by virtue of being largely hidden from view from the ground.

Cuculan is populated by Aislynn, people made of cloudstuff itself, Balloon Gnomes, who navigate the island via their personal balloons, and Cerulean Dwarves, blue-skinned dwarves with beards and hair that drifts away like clouds being blown in the wind.

There are adventure hooks related to the town and other locations on the cloud island, and NPCs for the player characters to interact with. Several establishments are detailed, along with secrets and rumors that drift around the location. One of the recurring plot elements is the Terrible Crane, a mysterious bird that will show up and harass various people for inscrutable reasons. The crane is also cited as a means for GMs to provide assistance to overwhelmed PCs, as well as a means for land-based PCs to be transported to Cuculand. 

There is an interesting intertwined story that can become a major campaign issue, or that can be drawn out as a background element until the GM is ready to pull the trigger on the series of events that resolve the story beat.

There are stat blocks for the Terrible Crane, and the local rocs, which are raised by one of the locals. The stat blocks are in D&D 2024 format, with the realigned ability score section with bonuses and saves. 

• This is easy to plug and play into most campaigns, and it explores something implied, but not often detailed, since we already know creatures like Cloud Giants have similar homes
• The story hooks are great, and the local NPCs have a lot of personality
• Your mileage may vary on how well whimsical gnomes using balloons to navigate a cloud settlement, but I’m already buying into people living on clouds, so I’m good with it
• That said, I might not portray the titan detailed in the article as described
• I wouldn’t mind more articles either about this island, or about other island settlements that might interact with it

Draco Ex Astris

As you might be able to glean from the title, this article is about dragons. In this case, the article is about Star Dragons, creatures that have a similar life cycle to stars, and who have different outlooks and personalities based on the constellations with which they are aligned. The article details 12 constellations and their guiding principles. The dragon’s lair and purpose will be modified by these constellations. The following stat blocks are provided:

• Protostellar Wyrmling (CR 7)
• Sequence Star Dragon (CR 17)
• Giant Starwyrm (CR 27)

There are Lair Actions and Regional Effects which are the same for all three dragons, although some things, like the save difficulty of effects, change, depending on the age of the dragon. The Sequence Star Dragon and Giant Starwyrm both have Legendary Actions. I think this is worth noting, because the stat blocks are in D&D 2024 format, but these dragons don’t have the “multiple reaction” replacements for Legendary actions that we’ve seen overtaking Legendary Actions. I’m fine with this, since I’m not entirely sold on the multiple-reaction solution for Legendary creatures.

Various elements provide information on how to use these dragons in a campaign, from the various constellations that the Sequence Star Dragons seek to embody, to the adventure hooks provided at the end of the article. The Giant Starwyrm, however, is effectively its own story arc, by virtue of what happens when they reach the end of their lives. If a Giant Starwyrm dies, they have a feature called “Core Collapse,” which means ther is a chance that the Starwyrm will explode in a 20-mile radius. 

• It could either be a feature or a bug that between WotC and Kobold Press, there are already Solar, Lunar, and Void Dragons, but I think Stellar fits right in
• Now that I’m thinking of it, I really like creating some connection where Giant Starwyrms that don’t go nova somehow spawn Void Dragons
• While we’re on a Tales of the Valiant kick, Giant Starwyrms are a great candidate for the “Colossal Enemies” rules from the Gamemaster’s Guide, but that’s also my Spelljammer nostalgia speaking, considering how big the stellar dragons were in that setting
• These dragons are great content, but they are also something you aren’t going to put into a campaign casually
• Once you pull the trigger on the PCs dealing with a Giant Starwyrm potentially leveling the countryside, it’s probably going to be a long time before you can repeat that plot point

Atraxis the Crystalline

Our final article details a unique NPC, an academic whose body has become suffused with elemental energies. Living in a settlement in a rift in the Elemental Plane of Earth, Ataraxis’ studied the frequencies of crystals, and was proposing ways of transmuting crystals to different forms. After facing pushback from more hardline traditional scholars, Ataraxis attempted to present their findings, but began to radically sprout crystalline structures from their body, and began transmuting their surroundings into different materials.

Ataraxis eventually created a crystal fortress to continue their studies, rarely leaving except when they needed supplies, or to study planar intersections that connect the Plane of Earth to other planes of existence. Ataraxis can cause different crystals to form around them based on their emotional state, often involuntarily. 

In addition to Ataraxis, there is information on the Hall of Light and Stone, the institution of learning where Ataraxis studied. Three of the scholars from that institution are detailed, each with a personal connection to Ataraxis.

Stat blocks are provided for Ataraxis, the Fork of Earthly Tuning, the Elemental Audience ritual, and Ataraxis’ Palace, which is statted up as the Emotive Crystal Framework Hazard. Ataraxis is has both the Orc and Oread tags, which in D&D terms (should you need the translation), they would be an Orc/Earth Genasi.

The plot hooks surrounding Ataraxis involve convincing them to help local miners, correcting an accidental environmental hazard Ataraxis created, convincing Ataraxis and the scholars to speak to one another about a phenomenon related to the event at Ataraxis’ dissertation, and recruiting Ataraxis to help with an impending planar rift linking the Plane of Earth with another plane.

• I’m getting Elsa from Frozen vibes from Ataraxis, but I want to make it clear that I’m not saying that as a negative
• I’m a fan of planar settlements to give player characters a “home base” when exploring the planes, and its interesting to have that settlement be tied to a school
• This is a Pathfinder Remastered article, but most of the plot elements are universal, and play with themes that work with other fantasy RPGs with similar assumptions
• I know the focus was on Ataraxis and their work, but I would have liked a little more information on the Hall of Light and Stone to broaden how easily I could attach this article to a campaign
• That said, I wouldn’t mind a follow up article that revisited the location with a focus on other characters in addition to Ataraxis

Final Thoughts

Like the gaming magazines I enjoyed from the past, this issue put me in mind of how to integrate the material, what I would tweak, and what existing material would synergize well with these articles. As someone that doesn’t currently have much of a connection to Pathfinder Remastered, the expanded content still had value as inspiration for a location and for seeding potential plot hooks. 

The biggest downside to most of these articles isn’t any deficiency in the article’s content or execution, it’s only that some of these articles have a very strong footprint if they are used, making them less plug and play and more “carefully think of how to use a good idea to build a new campaign around, or to add to an existing campaign.” That’s clearly going to vary based on your campaign. If you’re running a Spelljammer campaign, the Stellar Dragons are going to be a lot easier to work in. If you’re PCs are going to a new part of the campaign world, it’s going to be a lot easier to find a region that has already implemented magical mass transit.

To be clear, some of the best material will be the material that inspires big ideas, and I love having big ideas to “bank” for those moments when it’s time to roll out something new. I think this was a strong first issue, and I am looking forward to other articles with the level of personality that these have.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/16/what-do-i-know-about-patreons-horizons-issue-number-01/

#800080 #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #ff6600 #Horizons #Pathfinder #Pathfinder2e #PathfinderRemastered #rpg #ttrpg #WildmagePress

Time to follow the tides and float into another look at the latest issue of Vodari Voyages. This time, we’re looking at Issue number 4, with the theme of Naval Combat. The Seas of Vodari campaign setting book did an excellent job of converting ship statistics into the format introduced in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Which WotC promptly ignored any time they revisited vehicles, most notably in the Spelljammer release.

Naval combat may be one of those subsystems that has been tackled over and over across the lifespan of D&D. AD&D 2nd edition had different naval combat rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide series, DMGR 9 Of Ships and Sea, as well as rules in the Forgotten Realms product Pirates of the Fallen Stars, and in the Birthright setting in Havens of the Great Bay. That’s all in addition to the vehicle combat rules in the Spelljammer boxed set.

Sometimes it’s just something simple like giving vehicles the same stats as PCs or monsters, complete with armor class and hit points, which is the direction 5th edition went before it began to split vehicles into different sections with their own armor class and hit point totals. Ghosts of Saltmarsh gives vehicles ability scores, a number of actions the ship can take, and what actions the ship can use with the actions it can take.

Now that we’ve taken a very quick and abbreviated tour of the current state of the naval game, let’s roll into this issue with a little more depth.

Disclaimer

I am working from my own copy of Vodari Voyages, which I received from my subscription to the Vodari Voyages Patreon. I have not used the rules included in this issue, but I have run and played D&D 5e quite a bit, including using the vehicle rules that were expanded in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Vodari Voyages Issue Number 4: Naval Combat

Designer: Shawn Ellsworth
Editing: Brandes Stoddard
Graphic Design: Dave Jumaquio
Artwork: Mariam Trejo

Navigating the Document

The PDF for Vodari Voyages Issue 4 is 14 pages long. There are also some extras you can get, which include tokens for the ships presented in this document, as well as a big, gridded map of open sea, so you can upload these to your VTT of choice, should you so choose. The document is split up into these sections:

• Naval Combat
• Shipboard Roles
• Ship Stat Blocks
• Ship Upgrades

The Rules of the Sea

Core D&D 5e is pretty sparse on vehicle rules. You have a vehicle with an armor class and hit points, and if you do something to get the vehicle to go somewhere or do something, someone with the right vehicle proficiency can make a check with proficiency to see how well the vehicle responds.

In Ghosts of Saltmarsh, as mentioned above, ships had more of a creature stat block, and it also rolls initiative and takes its turn when it comes up. There are some ship roles included, which give the captain, first mate, and bosun additional actions, Take Aim and Full Speed Ahead.

Now, if you want to run vehicle, or specifically ship based, combat in the 2024 rules . . . there isn’t really anything published yet. In fact, the 2024 rules don’t reference vehicle proficiencies at all, and don’t include any vehicle statistics. This could change with the DMG, but for now, vehicles rules are in limbo, minus a default tool that existed before to portray proficiency.

What’s New

This issue is rolling back some of the granularity of vehicle combat from Ghosts of Saltmarsh and mirrored in the Seas of Vodari campaign setting. While the rules pull back a little from the Ghosts of Saltmarsh paradigm, it still keeps the general concept of a vehicle having a stat block similar to a creature. That means it still has ability scores, armor class, and hit points. In fact, let’s look at what we’re tracking on vehicles from these rules:

• Size–these sizes correspond to creature sizes, meaning most significantly large ships are Gargantuan
• Armor Class
• Hit Points
• Crew–you don’t want this to drop below 50%, and ship weapons have minimum crews
• Cargo
• Speed–expressed in the same scale as regular characters
• Ability Scores–Int, Wis, and Cha by default being 0
• Damage Threshold–the damage the ship subtracts from damage done when the ship is hit
• Damage Immunities–the standard things you would expect from an object
• Condition Immunities–see above
• Ship Actions–most ship actions are attacks, and we’ll talk about that in a moment

The ship’s initiative is always 0, however, the player characters can use their actions to trigger the ship’s actions. That means that the cannon isn’t going to fire unless a player character gives the order, and they have to have enough crew available to run the weapon or ship component. The comparison made in the text is that when PCs are on the ship, the ship functions like a mount, meaning that it doesn’t have its own actions while the PCs are directing it.

There is a sidebar explaining how to handle proficiency checks to pilot the ship if you are using the 2024 rules. Unlike standard combat, facing does matter, mainly because your ship can spin around fast enough to shoot all of its cannons at an opponent, so you need to know what’s facing your opponent.

What is it You Would Say That You Do Here?

The number of roles has been expanded, as have the actions that player characters can use that interact with the ship. The roles included in this include:

• Captain
• Quartermaster
• Sailing Master
• Boatswain
• Chaplain
• Cook
• Gunner
• Lookout
• Mage
• Musician
• Surgeon

Most of these roles get a persistent ability, as well as abilities they work once per short rest, or in some cases, once per long rest. Captains get a boost to initiative, they can grant someone on the crew an extra partial move and an action, or they can boost ship actions taken. The quartermaster can bolster allies or attempt to impose the frightened condition. The Sailing Master can take evasive maneuvers making the ship harder to hit or give the ship a quick burst of speed. The Boatswain cobble together extra ship defenses or makes emergency repairs. The chaplain has a limited ability to heal the ship itself, even if it’s not normally a valid target, and you can manipulate probability. The cook can make food and drink that grants a number of extra benefits. The gunner can increase the damage of ship’s weapons and can use more precise attacks. The lookout increases your range for what you can perceive and have a more reliable Perception check. Mage’s get better range for spells and can use the ship as their focus. The musician can grant certain actions as a bonus action, and let people reroll dice under a certain set of circumstances. The surgeon gets a limited ability to bring characters making death saves back to 1 hit point, as well as a limited healing function outside of spellcasting.

Player characters gain the option to use the following new actions while on the ship:

• Board–when you are close to another ship, you can move to another ship and impose penalties to that ship while you are there
• Hoist Flag–you can attempt intimidate or dissuade another ship, based on your Charisma check (modified by an appropriate skill) and the flag you decide to fly
• Repair–do some minor patching up of the ship
• Scan–find out information about the opposing ship
• Ship Action–trigger one of the actions detailed under the ship’s stat block

They’re More Like Guidelines

There are a number of optional rules included in this document as well, including rules that address the following situations:

• Side Initiative by Ship–each ship rolls initiative, and its crew goes on its turn
• Broadsides–fire identical weapons as a group with average damage
• Running Aground–taking damage when the ship bottoms out on something
• Targeting Smaller Targets with Ship Action Weapons–how hard is it to shoot the halfling ship’s wizard on the opposing ship, with the ship’s cannon
• Targeting Ship Components–splitting out damage to components

Cross-Section

Not every ship presented in the Seas of Vodari campaign setting book are converted to this new paradigm, but a few are, including the Brigantine, Eleven Warship, the Galleon, the Ironclad, and the Sloop.

There are a number of ship upgrades included. Some of these are modified from the Seas of Vodari, and some are new options.

Shifting Hull, Vessel of the Mists, Spectral Sails, Windchaser Sails, Arcane Cannons, Thunderstone Mangonel, Basilisk Figurehead, Mimic Figurehead, Skeleton Figurehead, Moonglow Lanterns, Ghost-Lantern, and Hidden Compartments are all reworked from Seas of Vodari.

Some of these are almost the same, but have had their costs adjusted, from a moderate change to a significant drop in price. In many cases, these have also been reworded to address the way the 2024 rules expect rules to be expressed.

Final Thoughts

Without getting too specific, I’ve seen other 3rd party vehicle rules that I was less enamored of, because they completely reinvent the wheel. I am very happy that these rules build on the core game rather than creating a subsystem that fights against it or ignores it. I like having the PCs being responsible for the ship taking its actions, because it reinforces that they are part of the crew, not just adventurer’s standing off to the side of the crew.

I was a fan of having components separated out, because it facilitated tactics like blowing out your opponent’s sails. That said, I can understand dialing back some of the specialized parts of the ship to make combat simpler, and I like that it’s only a half-step back, maintaining the more “creature style” stat block for the ship. I really like individual roles that PCs can assume, and I like that there is a mechanic for characters shifting roles, keeping the game from slowing down compared to just allowing players to shift roles each turn. Thinking back to when I was reviewing the Pirates of the Aetherial Expanse adventure series, you can recruit people in different locations that have specialties in various ship roles, and I like that you could keep that structure while using these roles, and possibly allow NPCs with these assigned roles to sit aside from the crew and take ship actions like the PCs. I say this mainly because I can see smaller parties, with three players, for example, having a harder time fully utilizing their ship’s options.

There are a few fuzzy areas that either I didn’t fully understand, or that I feel could be a little more defined:

• The ship is compared to a mount, but we don’t have a default number of actions the ship can take, if the PCs all end up boarding another ship or incapacitated, so the ship can take actions like an unmounted horse might
• The Targeting Ship Components optional rule is basically just saying, separate out hit points like the Seas of Vodari setting book does, but how does that work with the adjusted hit points for the ships, and is there maybe a formula for what percentage you should allocate to different components?
• Some of the ship’s roles provide some useful skills, especially for a team of adventurers that don’t have the standard bases covered, but some roles either give more of something similar to someone taking that role of certain classes, or encroach a bit on their niche–this could be fine if you want to free up characters to step away from their usual roles, but it’s something to consider
• The Broadsides optional rule feels like it’s almost a necessary standard rule–the Galleon has 15 guns per side, meaning if the PCs are the only ones that can trigger the cannons being fired, they are going to be really short on standard firepower for their ship type

I’m interested in taking these vehicle rules for a spin, and my PCs may be sailing somewhere soon, which may give me a chance to do so. The issue mentions that there will be more ships and components being converted in future issues, and I’m looking forward to this.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/03/what-do-i-know-about-patreons-vodari-voyages-issue-number-4/

#DD #DD5e #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #NauticalFantasy #Pirates #SeasOfVodari #UnderTheSeasOfVodari

When a Star Falls is an adventure that I only know by reputation. There is a narrative that evolved that Hickman’s adventures like Ravenloft and the Dragonlance series moved D&D away from this original playstyle towards a more narrative focus. However, I know the UK series of adventures have a reputation for being more plot-oriented than the US-developed adventures.

I can’t speak to what may have been changed because I don’t have my own copy of this adventure. At best, I’ve done some research that tells me that the structure of the adventure, and the highlights, all seem to be present. As it’s been adapted for 5th edition, this adventure is designed for 4th level characters.

Original Credits for When a Star Falls (1984)

Storyline: Phil Gallagher, Tom Kirby, Graeme Morris
Production/Editing: Jim Bambra, Phil Gallagher, Tom Kirby
Design: Paul Cockburn, Kim Daniel
Art: Jeremy Goodwin
Cartography: Paul Ruiz

Artwork

There are about 17 pieces of artwork in this chapter. Six of these pieces are maps of encounter locations present in the adventure, including the overall map of the region showing the relative locations of those encounters. We get the standard thematic image of what the doorway leading to this adventure on the Endless Staircase looks like.

Other pieces include images of locations like the Tower of the Heavens, encounters like an assassin’s ambush, and various character studies of the NPCs that appear in the adventure. One of my favorites in the chapter is the giant eagle nest, with the image of the titular star falling in the night sky.

The Framing Device

The wish that Nafas is interpreting in this introductory material is from Shalfey, the leader of the Tower of the Heavens, wishing that the entourage that he has sent will find the falling star they are seeking. Nafas asks the PCs to help the entourage deliver the fallen star to Shalfey. I think you can argue that maybe, just maybe, this takes a little bit of the charm of the adventure’s introduction away from it, but also, sometimes you do need to make sure your opening hook is well set.

The starting hooks for those not using Nafas are interesting because one has the PCs investigating murders in the region, but the other seems to send the PCs directly to the Tower of the Heavens instead of encountering the inciting incident before the rest of the adventure. The advice for placement in existing settings includes Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk. I know no product has infinite wordcount, but this does make me wonder how the designers picked the three settings they discuss for each of these adventures.

Adventure Overview

We’re about to go into some spoilers for this adventure, so if you want to be surprised, or you may be a player in this adventure, you may want to wish for some other content to consume while you skip the next part of this post.

The best way I can describe the beginning of this adventure is that you get a bunch of big arrows pointing to different spots on the map, but not all of the context on why to go there, or in what order. You stumble across some people that have been killed by a memory web, and after defeating the monster, the PCs get flooded with memories drained from the fallen.

From the gear the NPCs are carrying, the PCs get the following clues:

• Look for someone named Derwyth
• Here is a map of the region

From the memory web, the PCs get these additional hooks:

• The secret phrase used by people employed by the leader of the Tower of the Heavens
• The importance of the fallen star regarding prophesy

This allows the PCs to head to an NPC that can contextualize what’s going on, giving the PCs some additional context on how, why, and when to do various tasks. The PCs can head someone on the map that isn’t the best place to go first, and they’ll find something there, but they may need to fill in the details on what they learned as they talk to other NPCs.

This structure reminds me a lot of how Infinity Engine games like Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale work. It’s entirely possible to see something at a location, think, “that’s got to be important, but I don’t know why,” and then in the next town, someone sends them to that location to investigate it.

What’s really going on is that the leader of the Tower of the Heavens, who has a set of books filled with prophesies, needs the fallen star to trade with a group of deep gnomes who have the next volume of prophetic books. While the leader of the tower is waiting for his emissaries to find the fallen start, there is a coup at the tower, and the usurper tells everyone the former leader is dead. The star itself has been stolen by a band of derro, who have also been murdering locals and turning them into zombie servants. The gnomes are being harassed by a red dragon, with which anyone visiting the gnomes will need to contest.

In addition to all of these locations, there is a druid that tests the PCs to see if they are worthy of her help, who may give them context and material support, and there are some traveling hunters that may give the PCs a head’s up on the disappearances and ask the PCs for information about the situation, which they can bring back to the hunters once they encounter the derro and figure out where all the missing people are going.

There are also visitors staying at the hostel at the Tower of the Heavens, and servants of the leader of the Tower, who may help the PCs if they can be convinced the leader is still alive or that the new leader acted against them. The PCs can also interact with some giant beavers that can understand common, but not speak it, and some giant eagles, who can communicate with them.

Thoughts on Chapter 3: When a Star Falls

The more I describe the adventure, the more it feels like the same structure that the Infinity Engine games have utilized. That feels like a pretty strong recommendation for someone who is a fan of those games. The adventure has a primary goal, but nothing is keeping the PCs from going off in a different direction than is assumed, which makes a fairly linear adventure into something that feels a lot more open.

I am once again reminded that if I had encountered the right adventures at certain points in my early RPG career, I may have been a lot more likely to have used published adventures sooner than I did. I’m not sure if the original When a Star Falls is as clearly laid out, but if it’s similar, I would have understood that structure and purpose so much better than the adventures I first encountered.

Seeing how the NPCs are portrayed, including the talking animals and the wise NPC testing the PCs worth, are portrayed, it feels like this is a different paradigm than NPCs in adventures I have read from this era from the US. There is almost more of a respect of the pastoral or whimsical, versus a slightly harder edge to NPCs and how the world treats them in the US adventures. Take this with a grain of salt, this could just be my impression.

That red dragon is going to be rough for 5th-level characters. As written, the dragon retreats if they are reduced to 50 hit points or less, but I would be a little more generous, and maybe change this to 89 hit points, which is half the total hit points, which may give the PCs an extra round of survival.

I’m appreciating this opportunity to look at some classic adventures that I haven’t had the opportunity to experience up to this point, and to put some of the things I’ve read about these adventures in context.

If you are interested in checking out the original version of this adventure, and you don’t mind sending some game-buying funds my way, you can use the affiliate link below. Thanks!

• UK4 When a Star Falls

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/07/11/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-quests-from-the-infinite-staircase-part-three-chapter-3/

#333399 #5eSRD #DD #DD5e #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2014 #DungeonsDragons2024 #DungeonsDragons5e #DungeonsAndDragons #DungeonsAndDragons5thEdition #QuestsFromTheInfiniteStaircase #TSRUK #WhenAStarFalls

This anthology is interesting in that these aren’t brand-new adventures, so they bring with them some expectation of consistency with the original adventures. While we know that WotC is looking for potentially problematic content to address, the adventure itself carries an expectation of unfolding the same way that the original did.

While looking at this chapter, I pulled out my handy copy of OAR4 The Lost City that Goodman Games produced a few years ago. However, I was looking at it as much to reference the older adventure as I was looking for differences in the 5e conversion.

Original Credits for The Lost City (1982)

Design: Tom Moldvay
Development: Tom Moldvay, Jon Pickens
Editing: Harold Johnson, Jon Pickens
Art: Jim Holloway, Harry Quinn, Stephen D. Sullivan
Playtesting: Dave Cook, Helen Cook, Clint Johnson, Steve Kaszar, Bill Wilkerson, Jeff Wyndham, and the Kent State University Gamer’s Guild

What’s Different

Other than the 5e statistics, not a lot changes in this adventure, although I didn’t do an in-depth reread. At least not until we get into the Extending the Adventure section. There is a Raiders of the Lost Ark homage in one of the hallways that gets removed, and some of the factions that were more gender-specific become more egalitarian. That does make the factions feel a little less dogmatic than in the original. There are some creatures that the original adventure notes are good ways for the DM to impart information to the PCs if the DM wants, and this adventure makes some of that adventure sharing a little more explicit.

Both the original adventure and the adaptation contain an “Extending the Adventure” section, but the original adventure has some additional example dungeon levels that aren’t completely fleshed out, not unlike In Search of the Unknown, an early D&D adventure that was more about presenting dungeon levels and conjecturing on what might be located in different sections. This conversion adds two potential extensions, one leading to the underground Cynidecean city itself, and one leading to a temple of Zargon that may involve Zargon the Returner . . . returning. Considering he’s a CR 17 creature,  you probably don’t want to spring this on 1st level characters.

What’s Different, Part Two

I didn’t do a strict reread of OAR 4 The Lost City, the license D&D 5e conversion done by Goodman Games back in 2020. If you haven’t heard of them the OAR series (Original Adventures Reincarnated) were books done by Goodman Games that featured interviews with TSR staff, essays about the adventure featured in the book, pages reproducing the original adventure (sometimes more than once if there were different printings with changes), and a D&D 5e conversion. While most of the body of the adventure was the same, but with 5e statistics or presentation, there were often expansions of the material in addition to the conversion. For example, OAR 1 Into the Borderlands populated the dungeon levels that were left partially undefined in Into the Unknown, and it does something similar with the example dungeon levels in The Lost City.

Beyond being a lot more literal in its conversion, meaning that some of the factions retain their gender restrictions, NPCs aren’t expressly depicted as sharing information that isn’t asked of them, etc., OAR 4 The Lost City has its own version of Zargon.

Measuring Zargons

The Zargon that appears in OAR 4 is a CR 13 creature, while the Zargon presented in Quests from the Infinite Staircase is CR 17. Some of the highlights of this disparity include the following:

• Zargon’s CR 13 version actually as an armor class one higher than CR 17 Zargon
• CR 17 Zargon has 78 more hit points than CR 13 Zargon
• Both Zargons have Legendary Resistance
• CR 13 Zargon regenerates 5 more hit points per round than CR 17 Zargon
• Both Zargons have multi-attack, but CR 13 Zargon has more attacks
• The damage potential (i.e. the average damage if all attacks hit, of CR 13 Zargon is 133 hp, versus CR 17 Zargon’s 71 hp
• Both Zargons are +12 to hit
• Both Zargons have a slime-based area attack that recharges on a 5-6, but CR 13 Zargon averages 18 points of damage and blinds targets, while CR 17 Zargon averages 38 points of damage and inflicts the poisoned condition
• CR 13 Zargon has Legendary Actions which let it do 10 points of damage without an attack roll, make three tentacle attacks, or cast a spell (for 1, 2, or 3 actions)
• CR 17 Zargon has three reactions per round, which allow him to counter a spell and cause 6 points of damage to the caster, or to make a save-based attack to do 7 points of poison damage

Some of the creatures that first appeared in the OAR series, and later appeared in D&D 5e products, had the same stats that they had in the OAR product, which I’m assuming is a case of editorial approval and oversight. That’s why this Zargon being different is interesting to me, because that’s not the case here. It’s also a reminder that I have no idea what the magic spreadsheet of monster design actually weighs in monster design for WotC, because the CR 13 Zargon hits just as consistently for more damage than the version that’s 5 CR higher.

I’m also not a fan of the move from Legendary Actions to additional reactions for some creatures. I guess there is concern that people don’t remember to take Legendary Actions, but I’m not sure that giving something multiple reactions fixes that problem, because I think I’m more likely to forget that something has more than one reaction per round than to forget it’s Legendary Actions.

Artwork

We’ve got 18 pieces of art in this chapter, including a picture of the door in the Infinite Staircase that leads to this adventure, various locations, the masks worn by the Cynidiceans, and five maps, including an underground cityscape. There is an interesting mosaic showing the rise of Zargon, as well as an image of Zargon rising from the lake of slime. While these suitably creepy images of our Returning mono-horned, mono-eyed monster, the best image of Zargon is in the appendix with his stats.

The Framing Device

The setup connecting this adventure to the story framework of Quests from the Infinite Staircase is pretty brief, about on par with the connections we got with Keys from the Golden Vault. There is a paragraph detailing the wish that Nafas has received, from people asking for deliverance from the creature that destroyed their society. This is specifically framed as “scout this location out and let me know what’s going on there.”

There are also some notes on where you could place the ziggurat in Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Mystara. The most intriguing placement to me is setting it in Anauroch in the Forgotten Realms, because it probably takes less effort to frame this as a Netherese enclave that fell early in the empires history than it does trying to determine how the gods and Zargon fit into Dragonlance, or reconciling the difference between gods and immortals in Mystara.

Nafas’ directive works with the original premise of the adventure, i.e. try to find a way out once you get locked in, because it just requires the PCs to lean something to report back, and not the destruction of Zargon or his cult. That said, I wouldn’t have minded a more specific goal within Nafas’ request that gave the PCs a reason to keep looking around even once they find the exit.

Adventure Overview

There will be some spoilers going on in here, so if you want to be surprised, this may be the time to find another corridor to explore.

This may not be the first time you hear this setup in this book, but you run into a pyramid in the desert. In this case, it’s a ziggurat, a stepped pyramid. As soon as you enter, the door closes behind you, and you need to find an exit. As you are looking for that exit, you run into four different factions, three of which don’t work well with one another, and another one actively working against everyone else.

This is an adventure for 1st level characters, and if you’re using story-based advancement, you get your levels when you first run into a faction, when you first enter the fourth tier of the ziggurat, and when you escape.

Deep underneath the ziggurat is the remains of Cynidicea, a city that fell long ago when the inhabitants encountered an aberration exiled from the Nine Hells, Zargon the Returner. In the time since the city fell, everyone has adopted the custom of wearing masks. While everyone from Cynidicea wears a mask, all of the members of a faction wear matching masks. Three of the factions want to help Cynidicea return to its former glory, but each faction is beholden to a different god of their old pantheon. While not enemies, the factions are all rivals due to their affiliation with different deities. The fourth faction is the cult of Zargon, which is dominating the descendants of the Cynidiceans, and occasionally sacrificing them to their deity.

One thing you may notice is that for an adventure called The Lost City, the adventure doesn’t actually take place in a city. The people are present in the ziggurat because there are important locations with meaning to the fallen city. This includes holy sites for all three of the gods, as well as the crypts of the fallen king and queen of Cynidicea. There is also a whole level that is dominated by the cult of Zargon.

When the PCs meet the three factions not aligned with Zargon, they are given the opportunity to join them. Joining them makes them friendlier. Not joining them makes them a little more aloof, and if they join a different faction, the other factions become wary of them, not fully trusting them or wanting to share resources.

There are several places where the PCs run into ghosts and other undead. It behooves the PCs not to attack undead on sight, not just because they might lose, but because more than one ghost in the ruins provides information, either providing additional context for what’s going on, or telling the PCs where the exit is. On the other hand, there are still skeletons, zombies, and ghouls that are less than friendly to people enamored of breathing.

There are several places where the PCs can find evidence of what happened to Cynidicea, including a mural that shows the rise of Zargon and the fall of the city. It’s actually pretty noteworthy to look at how many set ups and pay offs there are when it comes to story. You can find out about the relationship of the king and queen, a priest and his brother, and some of the events that led to Cynidicea’s demise. Assuming your players are willing to talk to some of the undead in the ruins, it’s actually pretty easy to provide them enough information to point them at these mysteries. In fact, there are a number of people willing to share information in the adventure, which I appreciate, given that some older adventures provide a lot of hoops to jump through before the PCs get actionable intelligence.

Extending the Adventure

There are two places in the ziggurat where the PCs can either find a passage to a new location, or, if you don’t want to explore more of Cynidiciea story, they find some collapsed passages. The new underground version of Cynidicea has a nice map, various locations, and notes on how the factions are operating within this city. If you want to adventure here, you’ll be making up your own information based on the location information provided.

If you wander down the passage that leads to The Mouth of Zargon, the encounter area could give the PCs whiplash, depending on when they explore this section of the ziggurat. If the PCs have already picked up a level, they might be able to handle most of this section of the ziggurat, since the range of creatures is from CR ⅛ to CR 4 . . . until you get to the primary altar of Zargon, which includes a CR 7 aberration in service to Zargon, and even worse, if the cultists of Zargon manage to sacrifice someone, the CR 17 Zargon shows up to make his presence known. A party that can take on Zargon is going to steamroll most of this section of the ziggurat, but there is a wide gap between 2nd level and “can take on a CR 17 aberration.”

Thoughts on Chapter 2: The Lost City

Given some of the adventures I ran into when I started my D&D career, I think I would have absorbed this a little better than Keep on the Borderlands, if only because it’s pretty clear that the PCs have a goal, find the exit, and if they are curious about any of the mysteries they run into, that’s on them to explore beyond finding the exit. While I already mentioned that “you find a mysterious pyramid in the desert” is a pretty common starting point for earlier adventures, it does strike me that at least some of the setup of this adventure echoes Jenell Jaquay’s Dark Tower, although that adventure has two very stratified factions rather than a collection of opposed factions suffering at the hands of a fourth.

I mentioned this above, but I wish there was an additional objective to tie this into Nafas’ request. Maybe describing a specific item in Darius’ office that is needed for summoning Zargon, meaning that the PCs would have done a measurable good for the Cynidicean descendants, instead of just doing a reconnaissance run through the ziggurat that may not gather than much information depending on how focused the PCs are on just finding the exit and using it.

If you would like to check out The Lost City in its original form, or do some more research on Zargon the Returner, and you don’t mind sending game-buying funds my way, you can use the affiliate link below. Thanks!

• B4 The Lost City
• Elder Evils

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/07/10/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-quests-from-the-infinite-staircase-part-two-chapter-2/

#33cccc #5eSRD #666699 #800000 #DD #DD2024 #DD5e #dnd #DnD5e #DungeonsDragons #DungeonsDragons2024 #DungeonsDragons5e #QuestsFormTheInfiniteStaircase #TalesFromTheInfiniteStaircase #TheLostCity