Spes Magna Games

Not too long ago, whilst talking with Terry and Eric instead of continuing our small-scale post-apoc Savage Worlds campaign, we brainstormed a bit about running D&D’s The Keep on the Borderlands as a reverse dungeon. The players would make up orcs, goblins, et cetera as characters to defend the Caves of Chaos against the human invaders who’ve set up shop in the nearby keep.

Around the same time, I almost got to play in a Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) game (but the GM backed out before the start). I’ve never played DCC, but I’ve read parts of the rulebook, especially the character creation material. For those unfamiliar, DCC players make up two 0-level characters who have little in the way of equipment, abilities, or hit points. The process is highly random. Ability scores, race, and background are all generated via dice rolls. These character are then run through an introductory adventure, called a funnel, and those that survive become 1st-level characters.

These two things — the reverse dungeon and DCC character creation — merged in mind. I’ve put together about a half dozen pages written for 5E D&D that address semi-DCC-esque character creation that randomly generates ability scores, race, and background.

(N.B. The two links above are affiliate links.)

Here’s an example of a 0-level character made using the process I’ve come up with:

Orc Guild Artisan (Cobbler)

Strength 15
Dexterity 12
Constitution 15
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 17
Charisma 10
Luck 12

Birth Sign/Boon Unicorn/Medicine Skill Expertise

Hit Points 4
Proficiency Bonus +2

Skills Insight, Persuasion
Tool Proficiencies Cobbler’s Tools
Languages Common, Giant, Orc
Equipment Cobbler’s tools, a letter of introduction from your guild, a set of traveler’s clothes, and a pouch containing 15 gp

Tags: 5E D&D

With the publication of Volo’s Guide to Monsters (VG), new rules introduced 5E D&D players to monstrous character options, specifically bugbears, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs, and yuan-ti purebloods. Other character options included in VG include aasimar, firbolgs, goliaths, kenku, lizardfolk, tabaxi, and tritons. For whatever reason, only aasimar have subraces, a lack-of-feature shared by dragonborn, half-elves, half-orcs, humans, and tieflings.

Turning away from 5E D&D to Warhammer Fantasy Battles, we find different types of goblins, three of which I’ve developed into 5E-style subraces for goblins. First, however, I need to tweak VG’s goblin traits just a bit:

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.

The other goblin traits listed in VG remain unchanged. This trait is added:

Subrace. Three subraces of goblin exist: forest goblins, hill goblins, and night goblins. Choose one of them for your character.

Forest Goblin

Forest goblins live in wild woods, especially rain forests in any clime. They dwell in burrows excavated among the roots of ancient trees as well as in crude tree forts high above the forest floor. These goblinoids have little skill in most crafts. Their tools tend to be made from wood, leather, bone, and vine. Forest goblins seem to know nothing of metal working, although they may make use of metal tools taken from more civilized trespassers who venture into forest goblin territory unprepared for the goblins’ traps, ambuscades, and poison-tipped darts.

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1.

Forest Goblin Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison used by beasts, fey, monstrosities, and plants, and you have resistance against poison damage from those same sources.

Tree-Borne. Whenever you make a Strength (Athletics) check for climbing or jumping, you are considered proficient in the Athletics skill, and you add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Hill Goblin

Stocky and hardy, hill goblins have burly builds, their arms somewhat longer than their legs. They dwell in rocky hills and caves, often mining the latter for ore and precious stones. Hill goblins are somewhat less war-like than other goblins, but they defend their territories with alarming savagery.

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.

Cave-Borne. Whenever you make a Wisdom (Perception) check while in hills or caves, you are considered proficient in the Perception skill, and you add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus. Also, when you make a Dexterity saving throw against a trap or hazard involving stonework or rocks, you are considered proficient in Dexterity saving throws, and you add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

Powerful Build. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.

Night Goblin

Night goblins rarely venture far from their subterranean homes, and even then sally forth only during the most overcast days or at night. Secretive and vicious, night goblins pay homage to horrid deities and fiends who demand blood sacrifices, especially of sentient creatures. Owing to their preferred environs and horrid practices, night goblin adventurers are rare.

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.

Improved Darkvision. Your darkvision has a radius of 90 feet.

Light Sensitivity. While in sunlight, you have disadvantage on attack rolls and on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight when you, the target of your attack, or whatever you are trying to perceive is in direct sunlight.

Night Goblin Magic. You can imbue a single weapon attack with dark magic as a bonus action. This changes the weapon’s damage type to poison. You can use this ability once and regain the ability to use it when you finish a short or long rest. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast expeditious retreat once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast levitate once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest.

Tags: 5E D&D, character races

Before heading once more unto the OSRIC, let’s detour a bit through 5E D&D. I’ve been DMing a 5E D&D game every other Sunday for several sessions. We started out with AD&D’s Slave Pits of the Undercity. I tweaked things a bit to fit our shared-DM world and to inject the horrid followers of Wastri the Hopping Prophet into the mix. I converted the AD&D module more or less on-the-fly. It proved to be a challenging scenario made lethal by a single foolish decision by one of the players.

As is my way, I turned the total-party-kill into a choice: your character can survive (but with consequences) or you can make up a new character (but with consequences). Three players kept their characters; the other two brought in new ones. The consequences? Starting out naked and equipmentless on a small lake island that served as the sacrificial place for a froghemoth. The heroes escaped the froghemoth after discovering a hidden stairwell leading deep into the island and the lake bed itself.

At this point, the heroes found themselves in Descent into the Depths of the Earth. Out of the frying pan, and all that. They faced drows, bugbears, gargoyles, a purple worm, a giant slug, and trolls. They befriended a group of flumphs. The heroes explored carefully, finding their way into what turned out to be the prison of a demon, which one of the heroes freed in exchange for its “blessing”. From the demon prison, the heroes discovered a path back to the surface.

Thus ended the most recent arc in a 5E D&D campaign that started with Against the Cult of the Reptile God run by Terry, our other DM. In short, we’ve been using AD&D material with 5E D&D for many months, and it’s worked like a charm. We’re probably switching DMs again for the next session, which will likely see us reverting to the the first group of heroes, those who saved Orlane and defeated the Reptile God’s cult.

And now a clumsy segue from 5E D&D into OSRIC territory.

Character advancement in 5E D&D moves quickly from 1st to 2nd to 3rd level. All 5E D&D classes use the same XP chart, and it takes 300 XP to reach 2nd level, 900 XP to reach 3rd level, and 2700 XP to reach 4th level. Put another way, a 5E D&D character reaches 2nd level after earning 1/9 of 4th-level XP and reaches 3rd level after earning 1/3 of 4th-level XP.

As both a player and DM, I prefer lower to mid levels, but I’m not a huge fan of 1st and 2nd levels. For me, the sweet spot in the game kicks in around 3rd level and lasts until about 9th, although I have enjoyed greatly both lower and higher level play. I like the way 5E D&D treats 1st-3rd levels as a sort of apprenticeship of sorts, moving the PCs along quickly before slowing the march toward 4th level.

So, what might this look like for OSRIC? Let’s compare the four main classes via the table below.

Using these modified numbers, PCs progress to 3rd level more quickly than normal, but the distinction between classes stays in place. The magic-user still needs more XP to gain a level than the thief does. After 3rd level, the old-school differentiation between each class’s level advancement would kick back in.

Tags: 5E D&D, OSRIC

Merry Christmas!

First up, as promises a few days ago, there’s trouble in Schuhdorf! An evil noble lady with magic powers has polymorphed Schuhdorf’s leaders into goats and stolen them before flying off in her giant shoe. Later that night, eerie singing from the woods lured away several of the village’s children. Can the heroes track the children and rescue them? The Lady in the Shoe is a 5E D&D adventure for five 2nd-level characters includes details about how to scale the dangers for weaker or stronger parties. It’s pay-what-you-want with a recommended price of $1.

In other news, I purchased a virtual treasure chest of stock art from Aegis Studios, one of which is Jack Badashski’s burbling Skull Ooze, which appears below as a new monster.

Nota Bene: That last link is an affiliate link.

Ooze, Skull

The skull ooze is one of the more insidious fragments of Juiblex that has squirmed its away from the Abyss to the Material Plane. This blob of inky viscosity hides within a skull, waiting for something living to stray too close. Don’t let the skull ooze’s tiny size fool you into thinking it’s a small threat.

Tiny ooze, unaligned

Armor Class 13
Hit Points 7 (2d4+2)
Speed 20 ft., climb 20 ft.

STR 5 (-3), DEX 16 (+3), CON 12 (+1), INT 1 (-5), WIS 6 (-2), CHA 1 (-5)

Damage Immunities acid, cold, lightning, slashing
Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, exhaustion, frightened, prone
Senses blindsight 60 ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 8
Languages —
Challenge 1/4 (50 XP)

Amorphous. The skull ooze can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch without squeezing, although it has to leave its skull behind.

Corrosive Form. A creature that touches the skull ooze or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 2 (1d4) acid damage. Any nonmagical weapon made of metal or wood that hits the skull ooze corrodes. After dealing damage, the weapon takes a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to damage rolls. If its penalty drops to -5, the weapon is destroyed. Nonmagical ammunition made of metal or wood that hits the skull ooze is destroyed after dealing damage.

The skull ooze can eat through 2-inch-thick, nonmagical wood or metal in 1 round.

Spider Climb. The skull ooze can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

Actions

Pseudopod. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) acid damage, and the skull ooze attaches to the target. While attached, the skull ooze doesn’t attack. Instead, at the start of each of the skull ooze’s turns, the target takes 2 (1d4) acid damage. In addition, nonmagical armor worn by the target is partly dissolved and takes a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to the AC it offers. The armor is destroyed if the penalty reduces its AC to 10.

The skull ooze can detach itself by spending 5 feet of its movement. A creature, including the target, can use its action to detach the skull ooze, but this subjects the target to the skull ooze’s corrosive form.

Tags: 5E D&D, monsters

Merry Christmas!

Over at DriveThruRPG, you can find Santa’s Holiday Bag of PDFs. This bundle includes ten PDFs for 5E D&D that are full of monsters, magic items, character options, maps, and more. The normal cost for all ten PDFs together is almost four bits over $14, but Santa has slashed prices by about 50%, making the bundle’s cost $7. Appropriately, the bundle remains available through all twelve days of Christmas.

And here’s a new magic item!

The Golden Crozier
Staff, very rare (requires attunement by a cleric)

This powerful magic item functions just like a staff of the python, and it has further powers as well.

The crozier has 10 charges for the following properties. It regains 1d6+4 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the crozier thereafter functions only as a staff of the python.

Magic Weapon. You can use an action to expend 1 charge, which lets you wield the crozier as a magic quarterstaff that grants a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls. This effect lasts for 1 minute.

Spells. You can use an action to expend 1 or more of the crozier’s charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC: aid (2 charges), control water (4 charges), create food and water (3 charges), create or destroy water (1 charge), dispel evil and good (5 charges), guiding bolt (1 charge), hold person (2 charges), and magic circle (3 charges).

With aid, create or destroy water, guiding bolt, hold person, and magic circle, you can expend more than the requires number of charges. Each additional charge expended for one of those spells count as if you had cast the spell using a higher spell slot.

Tags: 5E D&D, Christmas, magic items