Do a Reality Check

            Greetings!  This week I wanted to introduce two potential game mechanics that you could incorporate into your campaign. 

            The first mechanic is one that I call “Reality Checks.”  Basically, this would be a way of determining the plausibility or possibility of an action within your D&D world.  The way it would work is say your chaotic evil, half-ork barbarian (level 3) is milling around a town and sees a helpless beggar on the streets.  The half-ork then says “Ok, I wanna take the beggar into an alley, tear him in half and eat him” (true story).  This is where a reality check comes in.  For a level 3 barbarian is this even possible in your world?  So, the player would roll a d20 for his reality check of “is it possible for me to tear a beggar in half and eat him” (this example might require two checks actually, haha).  The DM would have discretion as to what the DC would be, but in general a natural 20 means it’s possible (unless it’s some that is actually impossible like if the barbarian said he wanted to fly away but had no wings or spell to do so).  In addition to this, if your DM really wanted to, he could allow you to put points into Reality, like a skill.  That would be interesting to say the least.

            The second mechanic is one that was actually suggested by one of Do A Spot Check’s readers, Shadow-Savant.  The basic idea is that even if you are a lawful character you still are capable of doing somewhat chaotic actions and if you are a chaotic character you can still act lawfully (on occasion).  So the way you decide your actions is you roll a percentile die to determine where your actions lie on lawful chaotic chart.  It might look something like this for a lawful neutral character:

                                   Lawful                      Neutral           Chaotic

0%  <---------------------------65%---------80%------->100%

            To clarify, there is a 0-65% chance of acting lawfully, a 66-80% chance of acting neutral, and a 80-100% chance of acting chaotic.  Now you can mess with these numbers however you want depending on the character.  For instance, a Lawful good character of the Paladin brand might only have a 10% chance of chaotic action and a chaotic evil character might only have 5% chance of acting lawfully.  You get the idea.  Either way, I thought it was a fun concept and worthy of mentioning.

           

Until next week.

Raz

P.S. I realize that this is one of my shorter posts, but with the school year swiftly approaching I need to start making my posts shorter or else I won’t have the time to finish them during the year.  Hopefully this doesn’t disappoint anyone, but it is better to have shorter posts, than no posts at all.

Hopefully Inspiring Campaign Ideas

Greetings! This week I wanted to throw out a few campaign ideas that I have been planning to DM at some point. However, it is unlikely that I will have the chance to act on these ideas for at least six to 12 months so I figured that I should at least put them out there for your consideration. If these campaign ideas “inspire” your next campaign, please do let me know in the comments section.  Enjoy!

All Monsters Campaign

            The idea for this campaign is that everyone would play as a monster (as the title implies) of their choosing so long as the challenge ratings were 7 or below (and no dragons).  Everyone would also have to be either evil or neutral for the purposes of the story.

An epic Mindflayer courtesy of HELMUTT.

            It would start off with all of the players just doing their own thing individually when they would all coincidentally meet in the (roughly) same area of a particular forest that is adjacent to a moderately sized town.  However, just as they all meet, the players notice that smoke is filling the air to the [insert direction] and they all go to investigate.  Soon after they discover that a large group of humans are burning the forest and slaying the players’ monster counterparts.  The players should not be able to kill such a large group of enemies and be forced to flee the scene.

            From here, the players should be able to do just about whatever they want in terms of either exacting revenge or just generally causing trouble, but in their trouble making they soon find out that humans [or whatever race] are now working to destroy all monsters, good or bad.

            It is then up to the players to decide how they want to handle the threat.  Perhaps they want to raise an army of monsters to fight back.  Perhaps they want to be stealthy and assassinate the “leader” of the movement.  This is where the DM gets to decide the plot twist.  Perhaps the scourge on monsters is actually being led by a group of dragons who want to rid the world of lesser monsters and reign supreme over it themselves.  Maybe it’s just a crazy king who wants to end all monsters.  Maybe this is part of a “Holy Vision” that the world will only be saved once it is rid of evil and the Paladins of this order interpret this to mean evil = monsters.  Take it however you want, but this campaign is meant to be more on the silly side and to just have fun pillaging and blowing stuff up.

Steampunk Campaign

            For those of you who don’t know what “Steampunk” means, basically think of a futuristic world that is based solely on steam power instead of modern forms of energy.  Think the movie Wild Wild West, Steamboy, or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  I’ll admit, I did borrow a bit from these movies as far as the central plot device is concerned, but the story for the campaign is considerably different.

            I actually have an extremely long document on the particulars of this campaign, but to condense it here’s the back story of the world and how the campaign would start.

The world is in a craze for new technology and especially steam powered utilities.  Although steam and gas power have only been around for about 30 years, its effects on society have been astounding.  Jobs that once took hundreds of men to accomplish now only took a mere dozen or two.  Life for everyone from the average citizen to the richest noble has benefited from the dawn of steam power. 

            However, with these great advances in technology, there has been an increasing demand by governments and other militant groups for more and more weaponry.  Rifles, while ineffective just 30 years prior, have become weapons of unmatched strength.  Armies once armed with bows and arrows are upgrading to newer more efficient killing tools.  Inventors and weapon designers are now perhaps the most desirable people out there with their talents to create.  It is an era where there is much potential.  Potential for peace to reign supreme, or war to tear it all apart. 

The adventure would start with each player being summoned to meet a mysterious scientist who is on a quest to find a certain form of water that has the ability to boil indefinitely, thus creating an unlimited amount of steam power.  After giving his somewhat crazed speech about the substance, the other NPCs will leave the meeting in disgust, but the players (presumably) will stay and hear his terms.  The idea for this campaign is to think like an engineer in that the scientist will give you two suspected locations of the substance, but they are in two very difficult to reach places without the aid of technology.  For instance, I had thought up the places of ice covered mountain caverns and underwater air pockets that are on the ocean floor (the places are totally up to the DM so long as the players have to “invent” something to get there).  So, to get into the mountains, perhaps a climbing machine with internal heat and a submarine for the underwater grottos; it’s totally up to the players.

This campaign could go however you wanted from here whether the mythic water is found or not.  There is plenty to go wrong in a Steampunk world.  You just gotta invent it.

If you want more details on this campaign, equipment, weapons, etc. I have a good bit of notes that I would be happy to share.  You just gotta ask.

           

            Hope you enjoyed these two campaign ideas.  If you want two more story lines that I thought apt for a D&D campaign, play the games Dark Cloud 2 and Final Fantasy 10. Even if you don’t want to use the stories, they are still excellent games.

Until next week.

Raz

Masters of the Wild Book Review

             Greetings! Just recently, I happened to finally purchase the D&D accessory book, “Masters of the Wild: A Guidebook to Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers” and figured this would be a good week to review it since I haven’t reviewed a D&D book in awhile.  There are five main sections of the book that I find to be the most informative and useful for most players.

            The first thing that I really like about this book is in the very first chapter it goes out of its way to describe the perspective of these three, wilderness loving, classes.  Often times I’ll find that players will not fully understand the mentality of a character that spends most of his/her time in nature (which is not surprising since most people who play D&D are not going on frequent and extended treks through the forest).  This section of the book really makes a player better understand exactly what their character’s motivations and leanings are.

            The second chapter focuses mainly on Feats and let me tell you there are some pretty crazy ones in there.  Can you imagine a Barbarian that can rage twice as long, twice as many times per day, and deal greater damage while in raged?  Well the feats in Masters of Wilderness will give you all this and much more.  Druids benefit in similar ways in that their wild forms become buffed like no tomorrow.  In my book, a Druid in wild form as a wolf should not normally be able to cast lightning from its mouth and simultaneous shoot a bow and arrow, but with the right set of feats, this is indeed possible. Rangers don’t get quite as many “cheap” feats, but there was one in particular that struck me as pretty ridiculous; a critical threat range of 15 to 20 on a favored enemy of your choice.  Talk about overkill.

            The third chapter of the book focused on weapons and tools and such.  The standard weapons of the guide primarily focus on not killing a foe, but instead “subduing” them.  I thought this was an interesting mechanic, but in all honesty, I didn’t feel like it was overly useful.  In my experience, there are only so many situations where you have to subdue an enemy rather than just kill the thing.  The magic items on the other hand I found to be pretty good, although a bit generic.  Bonuses on wild form, tracking, wilderness stuff, etc.  One item that caught my eye though was the “Standing Stone” which is basically a piece of Stonehenge that when a druid touches it is able to cast the spell it is imbued with, but at a much higher potency.  While these obelisks are not movable, I fell like these are great plot device pieces for any Druid.

            The fifth chapter focuses on Prestige Classes, of which there are quite a few.  However, I will say that almost 60% to 70% of all of them look horribly mutated.  Don’t get me wrong, they are most certainly powerful and/or useful, but let’s just say you wouldn’t want to walk into any towns looking like them….ever.  For instance, if you decide to become an Oozemaster you will have the ability to seep through cracks, cast a plethora of damaging and debilitating spells, and all of their standard attacks have “Oozy touch”, which heightens the potency of any attack from an Oozmaster.  However, you also will appear to be made out of mold, you lose your ability to communicate, and you spend most of your time in a puddle.  Potent, but terribly strange.

Speaking of horribly mutated, here is an Undead Bear-for- Shark, courtesy of SPipes

            Finally, there is the new spells, which while there are not many, I like how most of them are quite useful even for level 0.  For instance, one of the spells is an enhancement on your entangle spell, which not only entangles the enemy, but also deals damage over time to all those entangled.  So, nothing game breaking in the spells department, but most definitely a good addition to your selection of divine nature spells.

            Overall, this book is well worth the purchase considering that it gives new depth and flavor to classes that lack in elaboration for the most part.  The new feats and items introduced make Barbarians and Druids much more useful and don’t make rangers any more over powered than they already are.  So, I give Masters of the Wild a  4 out of 5 stars.

Until next week!

Raz

Improvising

            Greetings!  Raz here.  So after I made the Vladimir NPC Class of last week I remembered that I also had several other custom classes that are half finished and need to be posted.  One of these classes is what I call the “Improviser”.  The point of this class is to make the person act in all sorts of crazy ways since the class’s weapon can be virtually anything he/she can pick up.  It is meant to be more combat focused, but still should mix things up since the class is so “flexible” so to speak.  So without further ado, here’s the Improviser!

Improviser

Alignment

Any Non-Lawful

Hit Die

1d8

Class Skills

Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Knowledge (components) (Int), Listen (Wis), Perform (Cha), Search (Int), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Tumble (Dex).

Skill Points at 1^st Level

(4 + Int modifier) * 4

Skill Points at Each Additional Level

4 + Int modifier

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+0	+1	+1	+1	Improvised Weapon Proficiency Breakage
2nd	+1	+2	+1	+1	Improvised Skill Upgrade
3rd	+2	+2	+2	+1	Improved Critical 1
4th	+2	+2	+2	+2	Improvised Skill Upgrade
5th	+3	+3	+2	+2	Improvised Armor Proficiency
6th	+3	+3	+3	+2	Improvised Skill Upgrade
7th	+4	+3	+3	+3	Thrown Weapon Proficiency
8th	+4	+4	+3	+3	Improvised Skill Upgrade
9th	+5/+2	+4	+4	+3	Misleading
10th	+5/+2	+4	+4	+4	Improvised Skill Upgrade
11th	+6/+3	+5	+4	+4	Improvised Casting 1
12th	+6/+3	+5	+5	+4	Improvised Skill Upgrade
13th	+7/+4	+5	+5	+5	Dual Improvised Weapon Proficiency
14th	+7/+4	+6	+5	+5
15th	+8/+5/+2	+6	+6	+5
16th	+8/+5/+2	+6	+6	+6	Improved Critical 2
17th	+9/+6/+3	+7	+6	+6
18th	+9/+6/+3	+7	+7	+6
19th	+10/+7/+4	+7	+7	+7
20th	+10/+7/+4	+8	+8	+8	Improvised Casting 2

Class Features

Weapon and Armor Proficiency

Improvisers are proficient with all simple weapons and any improvised weapons they can find (see Improvised Weapon Proficiency). Improvisers are proficient with light armor and shields, but not tower shields.

Improvised Weapon Proficiency

The Improviser has the ability to use any object she can find as a weapon.  Unlike ordinary people, the Improviser knows how to work around the limitations of an improvised weapon and as such takes no penalty on any attacks with improvised weapons.  The amount of damage an improvised weapon deals is determined by her level.  In addition, improvised weapons must be of the same weapon size as the person wielding it (DM Discretion on what constitutes the size of a weapon).

Level                Damage                      Size                  Example                        

1-2                   1d4                              Small               Book, Beer Mug, or Fork

3-6                   1d6                              Medium          Coat Stand, Chair, or Iron Pan

7-10                 2d4                              Large               Keg, Tree (small), or Anchor 

10-13               2d6                             

13-19               2d8                             

20                    3d8                             

Breakage

Improvised weapons are not as durable as regular weapons thus whenever an improviser rolls a critical threat or critical strike the improvised weapon will break, becoming unusable as a weapon.  However, when the weapon breaks, the shrapnel from the item will do an extra 1d4 damage to the struck target.

Improvised Skill Upgrade

Every second level until level 12 an Improviser gets bonus miscellaneous modifiers in skills that are particularly important to any improviser.

Level                +2 Bonus

2                      Search

4                      Spot

6                      Bluff

8                      Diplomacy

10                    Forgery

12                    Disguise

Improved Critical 1

At third level the critical threat range for improvised weapons becomes 19-20/x2.

Improvised Armor Proficiency

At fifth level the Improviser gains the ability to take “sturdy” (as determined by the DM) materials and turn them into improvised armor that gives the improviser an additional +1 AC.  If an Improviser is struck by a critical hit, the improvised armor breaks and loses the +1AC.

Thrown Weapon Proficiency

At seventh level the Improviser has the ability to use items of roughly palm size as lethal ranged weapons that can be thrown up to 30 feet for 1d6 damage.  Items such as vials of poison gas or alchemist fire can be thrown as well for the extra 1d6 so long as the thrown item actually hits an opponent.

Misleading

At ninth level the Improviser gains masters the fighting style of an Improviser that is very hard for a normal person to read.  As part of a full round action, an Improviser may make an Intelligence check (DC 19) to confuse his/her opponent.   By doing so, the AC of that opponent is reduced by -2 on the Improviser’s attacks for the rest of the battle.  An Improviser cannot Mislead any creature with an Intelligence score lower than 7 or on other Improvisers.

Improvised Casting 1

At eleventh level the Improviser gains the ability to identify any 1^st Level or lower spell and cast it simply by seeing it cast that day.  By sleeping an Improviser loses the exact memory of how to cast the spell and must see the spell again before he can cast it.  The DC on these Improvised Spells is 10 + Int + spell level.  If an Improviser sees a spell many days consecutively, he can choose to memorize the spell (DM discretion on how long a spell must be observed).  The maximum number of memorized spells per caster level is equivalent to the Improviser’s Int modifier.

Dual Improvised Weapon Proficiency

At thirteenth level the Improviser is able to wield two improvised weapons at once.  This ability acts in the exact same way as the “Dual Weapon Fighting” feat only with improvised weapons rather than normal ones (DM discretion on what is a light and heavy weapon in each hand).

Improved Critical 2

At sixteenth level the Improviser has become so used to using improvised weapons that he/she now deals improved critical damage of 19-20/x3.

Improvised Casting 2

At twentieth level the Improviser gains the ability to identify any 5^th Level or lower spell and cast it simply by seeing it cast that day.  By sleeping an Improviser loses the exact memory of how to cast the spell and must see the spell again before he can cast it.  The DC on these Improvised Spells is 10 + Int + spell level. If an Improviser sees a spell many days consecutively, he can choose to memorize the spell (DM discretion on how long a spell must be observed).  The maximum number of memorized spells per caster level is equivalent to the Improviser’s Int modifier.

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Hope you enjoyed this custom class and please do leave suggestions for custom classes in the future you would be interested in seeing. 

Raz