Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

After missing last week’s game due to my eldest son’s Christmas concert, we were back in full force this week.

Present this week were:
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Rosco - deep halfling barbarian
* Miru - human fighter
* Valik - dwarven wizard

After last week’s pitiful battle with the orcs, the party rested up. A door of light appeared and Valik fell through it. After some initial suspicion on both sides, Valik agreed to join the party.

After a very brief encounter with a darkmantle, they found a room with a swirling oblong vortex of black and red, pulsing with eldritch energy. Valik felt that he could close it with a bit of concentration, but before he could begin a man with a ratlike face, Longtail, came down the hallway toward them shouting that they should leave that alone.

The party immediately moved into attack mode. Rosco and Riamara struck at Longtail, but didn’t affect him. Longtail responded by zapping Rosco, Riamara, and Miru with lightning.

Valik enlarged Rosco while Miru jumped Longtail using her newly improved grappling skills. Rosco and Cinner both missed the rat-man. Riamara hit him with an icebolt. Longtail cast a spell to aid him in his escape, but it didn’t help much.

Valik returned to studying the portal. Miru pinned Lontail, but got bitten by him in the process. Rosco and Cinner both missed due to Longtail’s shield spell.

The next round went much the same way, but this time Cinner managed to hit Longtail.

Valik took a swing at Longtail and missed. Miru tried for Longtail’s spell component pouch but failed to tear it from him. An imp appeared suddenly and started attacking Riamara with a vicious dexterity draining poision. Rosco missed completely while Cinner’s axe failed to do any damage. Riamara healed Miru up a bit and Longtail managed to free his muzzle from Miru’s powerful grip.

Valik helped Rosco with his aim and Miru grabbed Longtail’s mouth again. The imp hit Riamara again, but she resited the poison’s effects. Something went crunch as Rosco smashed Longtail. Cinner’s axe barely nicked the rat-man. Riamara tried to mind-stab the imp, but failed. Longtail thrashed about but failed to escape.

Valik tried to close the portal, but failed. Miru managed to grab Longtail’s spell component pouch and tossed it into the darkness.

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The fight with Longtail was a lot of fun. Everybody had something to do - Miru kept him down, Rosco and Cinner swung at him, Riamara fought the imp and Valik tried to close the portal. The party did very well. I’m really looking forward to running Region E.

There were all kinds of technical glitches - nobody could log onto our regular server, I stopped being able to see anyone ’s responses midway through combat, fog was still giving problems. Everybody is going to try to do a fresh install of 1.6.3 before next week. Hopefully that cleans things up.

What is NPC Designer?

NPC Designer is a program for generating random D20 characters. At this point (version 1.0.117) characters can be generated from the SRD, the Modern SRD, and support for Arcana Evolved is being added in. This software requires Windows 98 or higher. It is written by David Jones (Vascant) and is available at RPGAttitude and at the ENWorld Game Store.

From the NPC Designer site:

NPC Designer Features:

• Races: All of the SRD races
• Monster Races: Dozens of monster and more being created each week.
• Advancing Monsters: Many monsters have the ability to be advanced.
• Epic: In Progress
• Racial Paragons: Working and new scripts are being created.
• Bloodlines: Working and new scripts are being created.
• Templates: Working and new scripts are being created.
• Classes: 4 classes and up to 50th level in each.
• Prestige Classes: 4 Prestige classes and up to 50th level in each.
• Skill Selection: Based on not just a random class list but also other factors such as background and region.
• Feats: Go beyond just normal d20 prereq’s, you can also design your own to fit your world.
• Spells: Add your own and have them selected intelligently based on alignment, god and even feats.
• Stat Block: NPC Designer is offers you a wide range of stat blocks and formats to include the new format, Fantasy Grounds Import, DM Genie Import and you can create your own
• Designer Screens: Have that perfect NPC in your mind, use the designer skills to select exactly what you want your NPC to have.
• Equipment: Selected and any modifications are made to the NPC.
• Constant Development: 10+ hours a day is put into this software, that means on most days there is an update with improvements and new functionality ready for you to create with. Have a game this weekend and need a certain feature to work in the system? Let me know on the forums.

I would say that NPC designer is mostly made to generate bit characters, e.g. the evil overlord’s 10th level guards and their supporting clerics and wizards. With a little bit of tweaking to make the generated character fit your needs, you could even use this to create the evil overlord himself. If your evil overlord is known for using a +3 dire flail, or for being unusually intelligent, or for being an expert in mounted combat, you can specify those kinds of options prior to character generation and you’ll get a character that has those items, attributes, or skills/feats.

Pros:

• This program works well. If a generated character has +2 dire flail, they will have exotic weapon proficiency (dire flail), and probably weapon focus (dire flail) and weapon specialization (dire flail). Feats make sense for the generated character.
• The support is unparalleled. Vacant usually answers any questions posted on the messageboard within an hour or two. He’s also very responsive to user requests for new features.
• There are lots of options to customize the characters prior to generation so that you can get that neutral wizard with the heighten spell feat, the lawful good warrior with the +5 warhammer, or the chaotic evil cleric with the eyes of petrification.
• This program is easy to use. The most complicated parts are some of the fancier options for what to do with the generated statblocks, and those don’t take too much effort to learn.
• With a little bit of work, many aspects of the program can be customized, e.g. new races and classes can be added or old ones changed.

Cons:

• There are occasional issues with the Windows 98 version. These have been resolved quickly in every case where they’ve popped up.
• Arcana Evolved support is only just being added in. Don’t count on being able to create Arcana Evolved characters for some time yet.
• The documentation stinks. This isn’t an issue for using the program as is, but customizing the program is a matter of trial and error at this point.

Conclusion

This is a great program. If you are a GM and need a variety of random NPCs quickly, this program is ideal. There are some problems, but none of them prevent the program from being very useful. A demo is available at RPGAttitude. Overall rating 4 out of 5.

Looks like I’m getting a faster computer next week so I’ve been going through the games I’ve got to see what might be fun to try on a better machine. Along the way I’ve found a number of games I’ve tried, some for hours or days, and disliked. The reason I’m listing these is because they seem like games I should like, but these just miss the mark for me.

Civilization, specifically Civilization 3. I’ve tried every single version of Civilization except for the one that was put out by Activision. I’ve disliked them all. This is weird because I love games where you discover new technology, explore the world, and manage resources. Alpha Centauri (along with the Alien Crossfire expansion) is one of my favorite games ever. The thing that drives me nuts about Civilization is the randomness of combat. I just can’t get into a game where a single spearman defeats a fleet of tanks. It brings back memories of playing Risk with my brother and watching hime roll sixes while I rolled ones.

Homeworld has good graphics, and interesting story, and is a real-time strategy, a genre I enoy immensely (I’ve been playing RTS since the original Warcraft came out). I fired it up again last night and remembered what I hate about this game. You put your ships in a fancy formation, the enemy puts their ships in a fancy formation and the two fleets fly back and forth and shoot at each other for minutes on end before anything happens. There is time to build a whole new fleet while waiting for one minor skirmish to end. This turns a fun game boring.

More later (maybe).

A $10 Linux Answering Machine LG #120 looks like a fun project. I may be retiring an old machine soon - maybe I could use that for this.

Well, we played in our Ruins of Intrigue Campaign last night. Unfortunately it didn’t get too far. We got the the grandparents to watch the kids and had our Christmas party. Between the distractions of stuffing our faces with too much food and a little wine, it was hard to focus on the game.

Last time the PCs had overcome a bunch of bandits and chased some more into tunnels beneath their hideout. There was a green glow behind some rock in a side tunnel. The PCs decided to retrace their steps and try to find the last surviving bandit or two. Thanks to some good rolls, they managed to track the survivor to where he was describing what has happened to a group of his fellows. The PCs jumped them and managed to drive them off. Again, there was only one survivor, but this time he managed to make it up into the city and escape into the crowds.

That was about it. We decided to play “Men are from Mars…” and Munchkin instead.

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I had plot hooks for the green glow. I had a nice mystery adventure planned for the city. Instead they kept wandering the tunnels. Aargh! If I can’t get them out of the tunnels next time I may drop a piece of the World’s Largest Dungeon in so that they have lots of room to wander and stuff to run into.

December 14, 2005

This week we had five players:

* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Rosco - deep halfling barbarian
* Miru - human fighter
* Jamendithas - elven rogue

A busy session this week. The party woke refreshed and proceeded to go back to the area where Rosco and Miru got blasted by a trap last week. Cinner disabled the trap with ease, but there was still nothing of interest in the room.

As they proceeded down the hallway, Cinner’s dwarven senses noticed a door hidden in a wall. Upon entering they found rats feeding in a pile of garbage. Cinner charged in and attacked the rats, perforce dragging the rest of the party with him. The fight went well for Cinner, not so well for Rosco and Miru, and terribly for the rats. For some reason, Rosco and Miru just didn’t have good rolls tonight. The fight ended with Rosco, Miru, and Jamendithas sick with some rat-borne disease.

The party moved to a room where two darkmantles lay on the floor near a pedestal with a glass sphere and a carved tusk on it. Cinner tossed his hammer at the tusk and shattered the sphere, which gave off a bright flash as it broke. As he entered the room a darkmantle jumped him. Again, Miru and Rosco had a heck of a time hitting anything. Miru did manage to land a mighty blow on the last of the darkmantles leaving the part as proud possessors of a dagger-like tusk with “poison” engraved on it.

Cinner tried to repeat his hammer-throwing trick in the next room, but missed the metal box entirely. He followed up with an ax and a number of dead rats but the ax missed and the rats that hit barely budged the box. Jamendithas found a trap on the box and tried to disable it. His first attempt barely failed and his second attempt triggered the trap – spewing out yellow spores all over him and Cinner. Disgusted by this he flipped the box open, triggering the trap again and choking to death as the spores completely overwhelmed his body. Thus died the party’s first victim of the World’s Largest Dungeon.

The party then found the scene of a tremendous battle with one surviving orc and one darkmantle. Cinner threw his hammer and crushed the darkmantle before it could move. The orc wasn’t much of a conversationalist. He told Cinner that he was the last survivor, save for Orghar in the next room. The party went to investigate and found what looked to be an orc chieftain sitting and staring at the wall. Cinner attacked and the chieftain didn’t even try to dodge his blows. Miru was unimpressed with this unprovoked assault on Cinner’s part. The party tried to subdue the wounded orc, but he insulted Rosco as he fought and seemed glad to die.

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That’s where we left off. Next week’s session is cancelled as I won’t be there, but we do plan to play again on the 28th. All current members are maxed out levelwise for this region. They’ll have to move on to another region before they can be promoted again. It looks as though we’ll have a dwarven wizard joining us next time as well as the new character from Jamendithas’ player.

This week we had five players:

* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Rosco - deep halfling barbarian
* Miru - human fighter
* Jamendithas - elven rogue

Much of the session was spent fighting darkmantles. Thanks to pitiful rolls on the darkmantles’ part and excellent rolls for the party, none of the darkmantles put up much of a fight. After several encounters, the party left a dozen or so dead darkmantles in their wake while they were barely wounded.

Cinner fell unconscious but the party did some more exploring. Unfortunately, without a rogue to check for traps, they sprung a lovely fireball trap that half-killed Rosco and Miru. They decided that discretion was the better part of valor and barricaded themselves in a room for the night.

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Short game this week. Jamendithas showed up a bit late. Then, right in the middle of things, my connection went down for 20 minutes so he left. Cinner also had to leave a bit early (which is why he fell unconscious).

The new version of OpenRPG doesn’t seem to have helped with the fog problems.

[Yoinked from Save My Game ]

Spellcraft

The Spellcraft skill already allows characters to identify potions (DC 25) and scroll spells (DC 20 + spell level), so why not broaden it to include other magic items as well? Using Spellcraft, a character can identify a scroll in 1 round or any other item in 1 minute. That way, characters still can’t identify most items in the middle of a battle, but they can do so as soon as the battle is over and then move on.

Spellcraft DCs using the prerequisite level for the relevant item creation feat

Potions DC 25
Scrolls DC 20
Arms DC 30
Armor DC 30
Wands DC 30
Rods DC 35
Rings DC 40
Staffs DC 40
Minor Wondrous items DC 25
Medium Wondrous items DC 30
Major Wondrous items DC 40

A character with the relevant item creation feat get a +5 circumstance bonus on checks to identify magic. That technique gives a character with Craft Wands a better chance to identify a wand than someone without the feat.

Appraise

If you take the feat Appraise Magic, you can identify items as described in the Spellcraft section above.

Appraise Magic [General]

You are skilled at evaluating magic items and discovering their secrets.

Prerequisite: Appraise 3 ranks.

Benefit: You can use the Appraise skill in place of the Spellcraft skill to identify magic items. Appraise is always a class skill for you

When we left off last time, the party was facing a table that had a force bubble around it with an anti-magic field around that. They made some effort to get past the bubble, but couldn’t. They decided to finish exploring the area.

The unfettered set off the pentagram trap and got caught in the endless chute. Fortunately, she was the one with the ring of true phase so after exchanging a few blows with the vulturewretch hordlings, she escaped. They decided to leave that alone till the ring recharged.

From there they went into Lady Arodnap’s resting-place. They did a little playing around with the Pandemonium box via telekinesis, but didn’t open it. They released Lady Arodnap from her sarcophagus. She was not in a mood to chat, particularly after the unfettered blasted her with a circlet of light. She proceeded to move towards the box and to guard it.

After some puzzling they managed to figure out the pentagram trap and bypass it. They freed the water elemental guarding one of the doorways and prodded at the acid water with a quarterstaff (instead of taking a drink as had originally been proposed). The unfettered managed to sweet-talk the dragon heads into letting them past. (At first they thought it was a logic puzzle - try to figure out which dragon head is lying.) They found The Book of Obscure Names, the goal for this quest, beneath a pile of illusory treasure. There was a very brief fight with some invisible nalfeshnee demons - brief due to the greenbond’s blindsense and a few see invisibility spells.

They then proceeded to gather up their loot and headed out. House Vlaadam was largely empty as they passed through it. A couple of weasly-looking characters spotted them and dashed out at full speed. The party then proceeded to make their way to the Inverted Pyramid.

This week we had four players:

* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Rosco - deep halfling barbarian
* Miru - human fighter

They started out in a chamber full of skeletons chained to the walls. Miru touched one of the shackles and her mind was overwhelmed with horrible images of torture that left her unable to move for a minute or so. The party left that room behind them and proceeded to get into a tangle with almost 2 dozen stirges.

As is almost always the case, Cinner started the fight. He lobbed in two flasks of alchemist’s fire, which scorched a couple stirges and alerted them to the party’s presence. Rosco charged in and splattered one stirge. Miru missed the stirge she was aiming at, but got it when it came at her. Another stirge fell to Rosco’s club but two managed to latch onto Rosco and one onto Miru. Riamara froze one of Rosco’s stirges and Cinner completely missed the one on Miru.

Rosco squished the stirge that had latched onto him and Miru remove the stirge from her body and from life. More stirges buzzed towards them and Miru, Rosco, and Cinner each eliminated one in mid-flight, but one got through to Miru. Cinner promptly blasted the stirge off of Miru, reducing it to nothing but wings and a smear.

Rosco promptly turned another bug into a fine mist. Another got through his defenses and latched on while another bug joined the others in a gruesome shishkebab on Miru’s spear and Cinner removed another stirge from this vale of tears. Riamara wounded a stirge with her crossbow and Cinner burned more stirges but splashed alchemist’s fire onto Rosco as well.

Rosco and Miru each eliminated another bloodsucking stirge. Unfortunately three stirges got through their defenses and latched onto Cinner, Rosco, and Miru. Riamara healed Rosco a bit and Cinner got rid of the bug that latched onto him.

Rosco crushed a bug between his club and his armor while Miru was dizzied by the bugs sucking her blood and missed it. The last unattached stirge fell to Cinner’s crowbar as it tried to latch onto him. Rosco and Miru managed to get rid of the bugs that were attached to Miru and the fight was over. Rosco picked up a warm, green-glowing ring.

With the majority of the party seriously drained, they barricaded themselves into a room and rested for a number of days. They heard the occasional bit of movement, and two days in they heard screams and sounds of battle from an adjoining room. Rosco was overjoyed that Riamara managed to cure him of whatever foul disease the rats had given him.

As they looked for the source of the sounds they had heard earlier, they ran across some dire rats. Unfortunately for the rats, they weren’t paying attention and all three rats died before they could even move to attack the party.

Cinner found a blade trap on a door and disabled it. Unfortunately, he missed the lightning trap and got zapped by lightning as he crossed the threshold. After some time, Cinner disabled the trap and the party proceeded to loot the room, which was full of armor and weapons. Rosco found studded leather armor, a buckler, a short sword, a repeating light crossbow with a vial of green stuff hanging from it. Cinner found 2 heavy shields, a waraxe, a warhammer, a light crossbow, and a shortbow of dwarven proportions. Riamara found a chain shirt, a light shield, a rapier, hand crossbow, and a black vial. Miru found chainmail, a medium shield, a longsword, and a mace tailored for humans. The repeating crossbow and the green vial were magical and Miru’s shield was masterwork. Some earlier loot was identified as bracers of armor +1 and a cloak of resistance +1.

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That’s where we ended for the evening. Next week – who left this stuff here and will they be looking for it? Where were the sounds of battle from?