Shaman Spell Lists of the Mater Milia - Pahvelorn House Rules

In Brendan of Necropraxis' long running G+ game Vaults of Pahvelorn, due to the slow evolution of the game world, it recently made sense for my thief to hire a henchman/spiritual adviser name Lau Taxan. Lau is a former clerk and embezzler out of the holy city of Illum-Zugot, but he is also chosen by the rat goddess, and after a few months of adventuring he developed the abilities of a rat priest.

Der Rattenkonig

Now one of the things that's developed in Pahvelorn is an interesting religious dichotomy between followers of the orthodox sky religion, the Eternal Empire and the resurgent cults of old local spirits.  Many local spirit cults are animal in nature, and have very different powers.  In order to make this religious split interesting (it's changed party dynamics a bit - with (arguably evil) the thief and child witch trying to outdo the (arguably good) two clerics with good acts to prove their dubious rat deity is a more generous god than the Empire. One could also comment that the PCs religious beliefs have made the party less mercenary, and more focused on helping the various towns and human civilizations rather than narrowly focused on loot and advancement.

Under Brendan's rules, the distinction between the way priests and traditional religious practitioners work is interesting with an entirely different kind of casting and limited menu of spells based on summoned spirit.  Details on the Cult can be found in this post about Lau Taxan, but it has recently been described as "Rat focused Marxism" and indeed a common mantra of its worshipers is "To the glory of the Mother according to her needs, from each according to ability"

The Death of Ginny Bo - Pahvelorn Play Report

 Ginny-Bo, octogenarian swordsman lies dead, his body brutalized by the axe of a bandit just beyond the skull marked doors that are the entrance to Pahvelorn's lower halls.  Ginny-Bo, originally hired in the slums of Illum-Zugot, was not only a mascot for the adventurous band sometimes called the Order of Gavin, but also a valued member of the group, responsible for landing the fatal blows on many dangerous enemies.

The insane old man's current self-granted title (as recited to his enemies before battle) was "Ginny-Bo, warrior of the black demon helm, giant killer, wielder of the devil sword Oby-nnig (his own name backwards - the sword is not magical), sludgifier of the great wyrm, dragon slayer, dragon friend." Since his death the band's powerful priests, Karna and Tarvis both continue to fuss over Bo's body performing exhausting rituals seeking to bring Ginny-Bo's elderly frame back to life. His wounds are closed with molten gold, and prayers on the purest squares cut from the hides of the rare white deer are burned.  It is unclear if these efforts will succeed in reviving Ginny-Bo's battered corpse, but it is a testament to how valuable the party finds him that they are conducting the ritual.

The ill fated expedition back to Pahvelorn occurred almost as an after thought, with the adventures spending much of the week trying to determine how to get rid of a dragon, soul-bound to Eariyara as a result of last week's battle with Purgle the Brown.  Purgle's electrocuted body was left to rot between his magical bonfires, and he and his boat looted.  On Purgle's body Eariyara discovered a magical ring, inscribed with the name of an ancient dragon "Melisophotis the Terrible".  Using the ring a wizard can command the dragon, though it has a chance of breaking free, but once worn the dragon and wizard are irrevocably bonded.  The party collected a number of treasures from Purgle's boat and and settled down to wait for the dragon's return, hidden amongst the trees.

Thoughts on running a Viking Game

Of late I've been reading some Viking history.  Also a bit about about the Saxon conquest of Britain and am struck by how these time periods might lend themselves to mid-level D&D play.  Generally the dreary heroic and bloody minded nature of the primary sources have the sort of convoluted level of double crosses, poor hasty decisions and pointless feuds that I expect from a game of D&D.  However I don't think the game rules as written really work well for modeling the feel of Dark Ages epics, and my mantra in games has really been, house rules/mechanics must work towards a feeling for the game.

A Pict - 19th century

I am struck by a couple things in the Dark Ages/Viking history and sagas that D&D models badly.  The first is combat, the second magic. Basically the entire subject of dark Age's literature.  Northern European Dark Ages combat seems to have been split into two different kinds of fighting.  First, challenges and ritual one on one combat between leaders or champions and second shield walls pushing at each other until one side broke or gave up and tried to run (with often fatal consequences).  In both cases what you have is a champion or group of champions in better armor, with better weapons and a supporting body of spear and shield armed fodder. The leaders/champions do the work of breaking through the enemy shield wall and killing eachother, while the rest just make sure they don't get surrounded. Basically a warband is a D&D party where the fighters predominate and have a mess of henchmen. 

Here are aspects that need rule changes designed to encourage the feeling of Saga combat where the heroes do most of the "fighting", and it's heroic action that turns the tide of battle, but without a mass of henchmen a warrior is not especially effective against large numbers.  I'd propose using OD&D D6 damage, AC and HD rules because these generally lead to quick and dangerous combat. The changes made however make personal skill and Strength of Fighters more important.

Bonfires in the Forest - a Pahvelorn Play Report (Session 34)

Beni Profane, knight of Gazemoral, Rat catcher, Devotee of the cult of Mother of Thousands, Yegg and Road Warden along with his spiritual advisor Lau Taxan and his regular group of companions set off in pursuit of the dragon that had smashed the gates of Gazemoral and ravaged it's populace.

These Guys - A Classic

Beni's companions consist of several adventurers and henchmen. Tarvis the crusader, who despite his adherence to the new religion of the Eternal Empire has piratical mores, similar to Beni's, that have been honed by many months of grave robbing and a penchant for training animals.  Tarvis is accompanied by his taciturn companion Darullian, a former farm boy and now skilled man at arms. Eariyara a pre-teen sorceress whose power has grown frightfully as she plumbs the ancient secrets recovered from the ruins, or snatched bloodily from other wizards. Eariyara's age and sinister aspect have given her some difficulty in hiring competent assistants, but he is always accompanied by Ginny-Bo, an elderly dare devil, who seeks to die violently in battle but has so far only shown a knack for survival, overweening ego, and faculty for slaughtering dangerous monsters.  Eariyara's other companion is a clumsy mercenary named Fitzwalter, who seems oddly content to guard the young wizardess. The band's final long time member is Bishop Karna, newly elevated, a prodigy of faith and clearly touched by the divine.  Karna's loyalty to the Priest King of Illum-Zugot makes Beni distrust him, as does his love of summoning snakes to poison and devour his enemies.  Karna has finally hired an assistant, an untested former gladiator woman named Haxeth.

Illusionist as a Magic-User hybrid

I have been thinking about illusionists, much in the same way that I redesigned the Assassin for my home ASE game, I think the illusionist is worth a few changes.  I've made them a bit of an odd hybrid between thief and magic user, though the illusionist as written is a lot closer to a wizard specifically trained in large scale combat (illusions work really well on masses of low level troops) and intrigue.  Something like a vizer to kings, rather than a dungeoneer (given their lack of utility spells related to physical challenges).  I hope that my changes bring the class back a bit closer to its concept of a nimble trickster.

This could work as an ASE character

Illusionists have a pretty cool spell list.  It gets absurdly powerful at high levels (though arguably no more so than Magic User) and starts out roughly the same, but with wildly impossible statistic requirements (15 + Intelligence, 16 + Dexterity and no stats below 6 except Constitution) it seems appropriate to make Illusionists something special.  The idea of illusionists as written is insufficiently novel as well.  Sure there's a new spell list that is themed around confusion and phantasm but little else is provided in the Player's Handbook to define what exactly an illusionist is compared to a magic-user, except rather they are rather nimble.

To my mind Illusionists are something more than that, they are self-taught magical auto-didacts from a different tradition than academic thaumaturges.  In my ASE game I've always envisioned them as members of traveling circuses, lone wandering wonder workers, or the hedge wizards employed by rural bandits.  Magically talented people who have gotten by on a scrap or two of stolen knowledge and sheer ability to warp reality rather than careful study.

The Treasures of Feh Ling (Tomb of the Rocketmen)

The Treasures of Feh-Ling consist of a great mound of broken machine parts, spoiled foodstuff and valuables looted from military convoys heading toward the Certopsian, plucked from ancient tombs and found in various ruins.

Obviously some of the more valuable items in this hoard are terribly heavy and unwieldy.  Without a dragon to move them a great deal of labor and a large amount of cables and tackle will be required to remove them from the tomb through the large airlock door and then up through the mud and water to the surface. Such activities will take 1D4+2 weeks for a large party (50 plus) laborers and several heavy carts will be needed to haul the larger treasure items back to civilization.  During this time the laborers will need to be protected from the denizens of the woods and slough as well as overseen to avoid thier stealing the bulk of smaller valuables.  Additionally is returned to Denethix, both the government (in the case of the military supplies) and  powerful private individuals (in the case of the roadster, furs and anything else they think they can claim) will seek to recover the plundered items and pay only a small 5-10% salvage fee to the party.  Protracted legal wrangling and the use of high priced lawyers or bribes may resolve these disputes in the PCs favor, but these will be costly.

I believe this is a Talbot-Lago T-150.  It seems appropriate in this hoard

Dwarves are Horrible

Now I've always hated Dwarves.  They are my least favorite fantasy race, I'm not sure why.  Even reading the hobbit I didn't like the Dwarves much.  I like them less now with the strange hybrid of Warhammer Fantasy, LOTR movie and Warcraft that makes them utterly uninteresting gruff stumpy goons one dimensionally interested in Brew (though rarely actual drunkenness or beer), fighting, mining, axes, prickly senses of honor and beards.  The Scotts' accents only make them worse because they are always played for laughs.

Yet many adore dwarves, stereotype and all.  I don't want to speculate why.  The point is I am reexamining the little creeps and doing my best not to change them into horrible mole people, or robots, earth elementals or living statutes.  Below is my conception of Dwarves for Anomalous Subsurface Environment, attempting to follow the majority of Dwarf tropes in standard fantasy: avarice, booze obsession, beards and clannishness.

One of Callot's Dwarves 1592–1635

Dwarves of the Home Warrens
North of the plains, beginning in the low hills and winding high into the bitter brown stone peaks beyond are the home warrens of the the Dwarves.  It is commonly known that Dwarves are a clannish lot, obsessed with wealth and fixated on the production of alcohol and high quality metal work.  They are often cruel to outsiders, or at least entirely lacking in charity and obsessed with honor, family and revenge.  The questions only get more confusing as one interacts with the dwarven emigrant communities of human lands.  Below are excerpts from the lectures of Azimuth Red 721 Alpha, Scientist and leader of a recently returned expedition to the regions of the Dwarven Home Warrens.

What are the Home Warrens?
Dwarven society is one of stasis, hopelessness and endless tiny humiliations, the homeland of these strange people reflect the grim facts of Dwarven life.  Like Elves and Halflings Dwarves are a manufactured race, likely a hybrid between humans and something else.  Whatever alien masters created dwarves created them for a particular type of obedience, and most likely a particular type of warfare.   The Home Warrens reflect this origin a seemingly endless labyrinth of utilitarian passages made from whatever is at hand with whatever technology the dwarves posses: ceramicrete, vitirified stone, reinforced concrete, carved rock or brick and mortar.  Unlike underground elven fortresses, dwarven warrens are almost without decoration, and are designed so that the majority of dwarves never leave them.   The warrens are constantly being built, downwards, and outwards, with many sections long abandoned based on the whims and internal conflicts of the dwarven creditor nobility.

To visitors dwarven warrens are confusing and monotonous, gallery after identical gallery, connected by cramped passages.  When in use some distinction between distillery, workshop, storage rooms and living quarters can be noticed, but once abandoned all that remains is cold stone without signage or evidence of original purpose.  The only differences from monotonous plan are found in the homes of the creditor class of dwarven nobles, who live in luxury surrounded by wealth and decoration (much of it imported from above ground) and the fortress areas of the warrens, where traps and ingenious defenses break up the sameness of the warrens with pits, bulwarks, mazes and redoubts.

On the Familal Impulses of Dragons - Pahvelorn Play Report

Comprising sessions 32 and 33 of play, in which the world appears to move too fast for the party, dragons are revealed for the awesome majestic beasts they are, and promptly slaughtered for their valuable byproducts.  Rumors about the transcendent nature of elves also prove to be untrue.

The return to the town of Gazeamoral was a success, loaded down with objects of value from the ziggurat of the now defunct purple worm cult, Beni Profane and his companions were feeling wealthy again.  The Fifteen year old Hegemon of Gazeamoral was willing to make Beni into a knight, and the party had recently stolen a map to a great treasure from some kind of necromancer/diplomat. From any angle the sometimes 'Order of Gavin' was moving up in the world.

My favorite dragon form the Monster Manual

Why you should read old novels...

Of late I've been reading a fair amount of H. Beam Piper.

Piper was a writer of pulp sci-fi the late fifties through sixties who is far more compelling than he and his lot are given credit for.  Comapred to contemporary sci-fi pulp authors he's a better writer and provides more interesting ideas per novel than any contemporary pulp novelist.  Let's place Piper in his proper intellectual slum - his fiction is space opera, soft sci-fi or military sci-fi (Federation stories) and sword and planet romance (Paratime).  His contemporary imitators are people like Harry Turtledove, David Weber and Eric Flint.  This isn't to say "On Basilisk Station", "Mother of Demons" or the first couple "World War" novels aren't a nice read, but frankly Piper is a better writer - not technically, but because he knew when to let a story die.  Now perhaps had Piper not died himself before the advent of endless mass market sci-fi/fantasy series we'd be subjected to endlessly churning Little Fuzzy novels, but as it is there are a few book by H. Beam Piper that are well worth reading.  Worth reading if you like adventure stories, worth reading if you don't demand literary excellence, worth reading if silver age sci-fi is something you can tolerate and more important to this blog - worth reading if you want some gameable sci-fi ideas...

Dogs aboard the HMS Apollyon

Dogs are among the most common beast in the human controlled area of the HMS Apollyon, and many breeds of dog have adapted and mutated within the hull to become dangerous predators. Players may purchase wardogs and scent hounds in the Rustgates, and perhaps find a witch hound or Hunter if they know the right person, but even these relatively simple breeds require a certain level of skill to handle in mass.  An adventurer can generally handle 2 HD of beasts before they will become unruly, while an animal handler can safely control 2+level HD of beasts.

It is noteworthy that below are just examples of dog breeds.  Other races and factions within Sterntown and the hull use different species, including crabs, giant rats, squid and hyenas.

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A monstrous dog - specifically Woola from the recent John Cater Movie