Spes Magna Games

Salve!

Quid Novi? subscribers have already been introduced to this monster, and he’s made an appearance elsewhere on the Internet, but that’s no reason not to let him grace this site as well. So, without further ado, we present…

The Wendigo
Just the barest flicker of a shadow passed his peripheral vision. He jerked around, his sword and shield at the ready. Nothing! Nothing but trees and the night and the cold. An icy breeze slipped across the back of his neck. His flesh crawled, but a sudden realization chilled him more than the air ever could. The wind was out of the northwest, and he was facing north. Another puff of freezing air brushed his ear. It was close enough to breathe on him!

A wendigo appears much like a humanoid as tall as an ogre, but one who is the last stages of death from starvation. It is completely hairless, and its flesh is deathly pale except for its blackened fingers, ears, nose, and toes. Its fingers end with long talons made of ice, and needle-like fangs fill its mouth. A wendigo has ragged, bloody flesh around its maw because it constantly devours its own lips. Its tongue is long, pocked with sores, and the color of a fresh bruise. Its most horrible feature are its glowing, yellow eyes that float in large sockets full of blood.

CR 6; XP 2,400
Always E Large fey ( cold )
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision , scent; Perception +10

DEFENSE
AC 16, touch 10, flat-footed 15 (+1 Dex, +6 natural, -1 size)
hp 58 (9d6+27); regeneration 5 (silver)
Fort +6, Ref +9, Will +9
Defensive Abilities quicker than the eye; Immune cold, fatigue
Weaknesses vulnerabilty to fire

OFFENSE
Speed 50 ft.
Melee 2 claws +9 (1d4+6 plus 1d4 cold) and bite +9 (1d8+6 plus wendigo fever)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks howl, unnerve prey, wendigo fever

STATISTICS
Str 23, Dex 12, Con 17, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 13
Base Atk +4; CMB +4; CMD 19
Feats Defensive Combat Training, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes
Skills Acrobatics +10 (+18 when jumping), Bluff +10, Climb +15, Perception +10, Stealth +10 (+15 when moving more than 10 ft.), Survival +10; Racial +8 Acrobatics when jumping, +5 Stealth when moving more than 10 ft.

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Howl (Su) As a free action, a wendigo can unleash a fearsome howl. All living creatures within 50 feet must make a DC 15 Will save or have their current fear condition worsened by one step for 2d4 rounds. Thus, no fear condition becomes shaken, shaken becomes frightened, and frightened becomes panicked. A creature that makes its saving throw against a wendigo’s howl cannot be affected by that wendigo’s howl for 24 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Quicker Than the Eye (Su) When a wendigo moves more than 10 feet, it enjoys a +5 racial bonus on Stealth checks and has concealment until its next turn.

Unnerve Prey (Su) As long as it isn’t seen, a wendigo can target one living creature within 50 feet with this ability as a standard action. The target must make a DC 15 Will save or be shaken either until the wendigo is slain or is farther away than 50 feet for 1 minute. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Wendigo Fever (Su) Supernatural disease – bite, Fortitude DC 17, onset: 1 day; frequency: 1 day; effect: 1d3 Con and 1d3 Wis plus shaken. The save DC is Constitution-based. Cure: Unlike normal diseases, wendigo fever continues until the victim reaches Constitution 0 (and dies) or is cured. To eliminate wendigo fever, the victim must first receive a break enchantment or remove curse (requiring a DC 20 caster level check for either spell), and after which the wendigo fever can be magically cured as any normal disease.

An afflicted creature whose Wisdom reaches 0 becomes unreasoning and insane, desiring nothing else but running off into the wilderness.

Wild Empathy (Ex) This functions as the druid class feature. The wendigo has a +4 racial bonus to wild empathy checks.

ECOLOGY
Environment cold forests
Organization solitary or hunt (1 wendigo plus 2-4 winter wolves or 2-8 worgs)
Treasure incidental

A wendigo consumes only the flesh of sentient creatures, preferring halflings to all others. During winter months, starting shortly after the first snowfall, a wendigo wakes from hibernation and leaves its lair to hunt and devour until the beginning of spring. While awake, a wendigo is ceaselessly ravenous and without compassion and mercy. Only its love for terrorizing its prey gives a wendigo pause in its quest to kill and eat.

Despite its evil nature, a wendigo is part of the natural world. It has as special affinity for animals, especially predators.

Habitat: Wendigos inhabit cold forests. Each claims a large territory, typically at least a hundred square miles. Any sentient creature within a wendigo’s territory during the winter is fair game. It is not unknown for a wendigo to range outside its territory in order to hunt when prey is scarce.

A wendigo always has a lair of some sort. Most hide in caves or canyons when hibernating. During the hunting season, a wendigo may have several lairs, including one or more structures that it invaded in order to feed on those inside. Some times a wendigo will fill stolen pots with gory remains and hide these pots in trees.

The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood.

Work continues on our first for-sale product, a one-shot convention-style adventure featuring the heroic Anklebiter League. I’ll be running the first public playtests this weekend at Con-Jour in Clear Lake, Texas. I’m corresponding with a fantastic artist to do the cover (and maybe some of the interior).

Part of the adventure will feature a chase scene. I hunted around the Internet for d20-style chase rules and cobbled these together from what I found:

Chase Rules
A chase scene is a type of combat. All combatants are in motion, whether they be running, riding, flying, et cetera. A chase takes place round to round in initiative order, but the special conditions of the chase require a few special rules.

Actions During the Chase
Here’s where the normal rules must give way to fun. During the chase, everyone is moving all-out all the time, which would normally mean you don’t get to do anything else that round. How dull. Actions during a chase work differently. In addition to moving all-out, you get to perform a single standard or move action each round.

Terrain Checks
At the beginning of your turn, you must make a Terrain Check. This is a straight 1d20 roll against the chase terrain’s DC. There are three categories of terrain: open (DC 3), close (DC 6), and tight (DC 9). If you fail your Terrain Check, you must draw a card from the Chase Deck*. This will probably dictate what you must do for your action during the round.

Close terrains impose a -2 penalty on Notice checks but a +2 bonus on anything to do with tricky maneuvering or hiding. Tight terrains impose a -4 penalty on Notice checks but provide a +4 bonus on anything to do with tricky maneuvering or hiding.

Actions
The basic action in a chase is to Chase. This is a Strength check against a Difficulty of 15. If you succeed, you gain on your opponent by one chase increment. You receive a +2 on this check if you have the Run feat. If your faster than your opponent, you get another +2 bonus. If you opponent has the Run feat, you receive a -2 penalty on the check. If he’s faster, you get a -2 penalty as well. In place of a Strength check, you can attempt a stunt using any of your skills that you can convince the DM is reasonable.

You can forgo your Chase action in order to take a standard or move action of another sort, to include attacking your opponent. These other actions automatically cause you to lose one chase increment (unless, of course, you manage to stop your opponent).

Chase Increments
It doesn’t make sense to try to count squares, draw on battlemats, et cetera, during a chase. Instead, each chaser has a distance from the pursued expressed as one of five chase increments: Point-Blank, Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme.

The DM determine the range for each pursuer when the chase begins. Characters at Point-Blank can use melee attacks against each other. Characters at Medium range suffer a -2 penalty on ranged attacks, and characters at Long range suffer a -4 penalty. For purposes of spells, if the chase increment exceeds the spell’s range category, then the opponent is too far away to target. Characters at Extreme range cannot target their opponent.

* The Chase Deck is a small deck of 20 or so cards, each one with a specific, exciting chase-related event to thrill and challenge the players.

This past Saturday, I was DMing a Pathfinder/Fencing & Firearms/Rewarding Roleplaying adventure, using Goodman Games’s Lost Vault of Tsathar Rho. A good time was mostly had by all. Our resident grouch bad-mouthed Pathfinder‘s consolidation of certain skills (such as combining Listen, Search, and Spot into Perception). I was suddenly reminded of something I read on EN World. I’m not sure if the poster was actually referencing a game system, but the post stuck in my mind, and I pointed out, “Hey, it could be worse. d20 skills could be reduced to just six.”

So, if you think that there are still too many skills, you can always use The Ultimate Skill Consolidation List:

Doing Stuff (Strength)
Doing Stuff (Dexterity)
Doing Stuff (Constitution)
Doing Stuff (Intelligence)
Doing Stuff (Wisdom)
Doing Stuff (Charisma)

Player: I jump over the table, and then knock it on its side to hide behind.

DM: Please give me Doing Stuff (Dexterity) and Doing Stuff (Strength) checks.

How’s that for consolidated?

Alzrius continues to provide some grade-A feedback on Spes Magna products. Here’re some clarifications about the “Expanded BAB” section of Fencing & Firearms. First, let’s sum up what “Expanded BAB” does for you:

Every character has a Base Attack Bonus, or BAB. F&F expands the uses for BAB two ways. First, BAB is added to your Armor Class as a dodge bonus. BAB reflects a character’s general skill in combat This includes not only the ability to land a blow, but also the ability parry and dodge attacks. Furthermore, a character’s BAB affords a certain amount of flexibility in combat from round-to-round as well.

Each round on his turn, a character can “shift” his up to his BAB to provide a bonus to a specific facet of combat. The same value is applied as a penalty to another facet. This bonus/penalty combinations lasts until the beginning of the character’s next turn. A character can apply up to his BAB as a bonus to attack rolls, to damage rolls (for attacks that require an attack roll), or to AC (as a dodge bonus). He must apply the same value as a penalty to one of the two other facets.

Now for Alzrius’s questions:

Alzrius: “Does that rule (regarding BAB as dodge bonus, and “shiftable BAB”) apply only to PCs, or to NPCs and monsters also?”
Me: “Only if the DM wants it to. I wouldn’t bother with it except in the case of a solo BBEG or in the case where a monster has a stock tactic. For example, I regularly run monsters that have Power Attack as if they go All Power Attack All the Time.”

Alzrius: “To be clear, the shiftable BAB can only be used for one thing at a time, right?”
Me: “Yes. The intention is to provide a character with a bonus/penalty trade-off that is both flexible and easy to track. So, a 5th-level fighter could go +5 attack rolls and -5 AC, but not +3 attack rolls, +2 damage, and -5 AC.”

Alzrius: ” While martial characters will always be applying the offsetting penalty somewhere that’s of concern to them, this doesn’t seem to be true for spellcasters. A wizard, for example, can max out his shiftable BAB to his AC, putting the penalty towards attack rolls…and then just cast a fireball, which has no attack roll….”
Me: “Excellent catch! This was certainly not my intention, and my lack of clarity could easily cause confusion. The idea behind “Expanded BAB” is that you only get the bonus if the penalty applies. So, that fireball-lobbing wizard can’t flex his BAB to get an AC bonus by reducing his AC.”

Alzrius’s last question there got me thinking. I clearly envisioned a wizard flexing his BAB with, say, shocking grasp. The idea is that a character has to be making an attack roll at some point during his turn in order to get the “Expanded BAB” benefit. Alzrius also theorized that the spellcaster “problem could be solved by applying it to his magic check instead, using the F&F rules.” IOW, the caster could make his spell harder or easier to resist in exchange for a bonus or penalty to either the spell’s attack roll or its damage.

This is an idea worth exploring, especially since Magic, Mind & Muscle will be using the Base Magic Bonus concept found in Trailblazer by Bad Axe Games. I definitely have to expand on Alzrius’s magic check idea to see how it looks once it’s all worked out on paper. My initial instinct is that it could indeed prove a fruitful exercise.

On another front, I’m still dithering about whether “Expanded BAB” should have a cap. IOW, should there be an upper limit to how much BAB a character can flex? The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to say, “Yes.” I’m thinking about capping the flex to +5/-5 at most. The question I have is this: Should this be an actual rule, or just a friendly suggestion?

Among the many other Spes Magna Games projects in the works, it’s about time to start another round of editing on Rewarding Roleplaying. I have the feeling that I need to (a) change the number of Action Points characters get and (b) streamline the uses of Action Points. At the same time I’m reviewing Rewarding Roleplaying, I’m thinking about completely removing the use of Action Points for d20 re-rolls. Instead, I’m considering adding this to F&F:

Extra d20s
A character gets a pool of extra d20s equal to one-half his character level (maximum 4d20 at 8th level). Whenever a character rolls 1d20 to determine success, he has the option of rolling one or more extra d20s from his pool and choosing the best result out of the dice rolled. Since F&F has the players roll their own fate, this gives a character a powerful tool to determine the results of a wide variety of situations.

For example, Jeremiah Dawes is doing battle with a fierce gnoll. The gnoll’s attack score is high, and Jeremiah has failed most of his defense checks. As a result, Jeremiah has suffered serious damage. He won’t be able to fight much longer at this rate. The next time Jeremiah makes a defense check, he rolls 2d20, using a die from his pool. He takes the better of the two results, improving the odds that he’ll avoid more harm at the gnoll’s hands.

Extra d20s Issues: A couple of questions pop up in my mind when looking at this possible addition to F&F.

1. Is it a good idea?
2. What is the mechanic for replenishing a depleted dice pool?

Well, the roll out for Fencing & Firearms seems to have gone off without a hitch. My Internet ninjas report that about two-thirds of Quid Novi? subscribers have downloaded F&F. I’ve already received some great feedback, either by e-mail or on our website.

Work on The Mad Monk’s Revenge continues. This convention-style module is Pathfinder-compatible and uses F&F. It’s public debut will be at Con-Jour and at OwlCon, and it’s still scheduled to go on sale in March. Also, don’t forget: 50% of all TMMR sales will help benefit Mission of Yahweh, a Houston-area shelter that helps homeless women and children.

If you missed the debut of F&F, it’s not too late. All Quid Novi? subscribers receive both Rewarding Roleplaying and Fencing & Firearms. Speaking of Quid Novi?, issue 4 arrives in subscriber in-boxes early Sunday, 24 January 2010. Issue 4 will include another monster inspired by North American lore, a 5-Room One-Shot, and more Recommended Reading.

Finally, work has also started on Magic, Mind & Muscle, the handbook for players related to our upcoming Novus Mundus campaign world. Novus Mundus blends myth, history, and fantasy RPG within the context of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Pathfinder-compatible MM&M retools character creation, races, and classes to fit Novus Mundus at the same time it presents new interpretations of psionic classes, skills, and feats.