5e Sorcerer Variant?

One of my beefs with 5e is the uneven distribution of long rest and short rest abilities among classes (i.e. encounter and daily powers). The biggest offender, imho, is the sorcerer who gets only long-rest resources and is encouraged to use them up quicker because the sorcerer can spend more resources for a nova round. The quick brainstorm with a friend is to make sorcery points short-rest resources somehow. There's two issues with it.

Number of Sorcery Points. First, the number. 5e sort of assumes something like 2-4 short rests per long rest, so if we simply divide the sorcery points between half and a quarter, that should come close. Say half for now. That'd mean a level 5 sorcerer gets 3 points, which equates to one heightened spell per short rest or a bonus 2nd level slot. That seems pretty strong since warlocks get two 3rd-level slots per short rest, and the sorcerer would also have 3rd level daily slots. If it's a quarter, that means the level 5 caster has 2 points per short rest, which prohibits most expensive metamagic on spells other than cantrips and first level spells, but one level 1 slot per short-rest seems about right but weak. A third is probably about right.

Creating spell slots. The second issue is sorcery points being used to make new spell slots. Short rests could essentially be used to recharge, meaning why not take 3 short rests in a row to recover more slots? This is easily solved by capping created slots with a duration. I'd say end of next round, so you could create a slot in preparation for using it the next round. 1 minute might also be reasonable, or even 10 minutes though. But since they're easy to create, there's not a lot of reason to make them so long-lasting. And if/when they expire? They could automatically convert back to spell points. There's a slight loss here, as it's more expensive to create a spell slot (5 sorc points to make a level 3 spell) than you get from spell slots (3 sorc points for a level 3 slot). But that's probably fine.

Level 20. The sorcerer capstone ability is finally the short-rest sorcery points we want. Nice, but super late. They'd need a new capstone.

Done. What other consequences would this have? Some metamagics aren't going to work on your big guns. You won't have enough points to heighten, twin, or whatever your highest level spells. There's also a question of limitations, can you have more sorcery points that your max? I say sure, convert one big slot to points to power metamagic on your other big slots. Finally, it limits some metamagic options flat out, like Heighten Spell. We might be able to address this by either explicitly mentioning the option is best when you have more sorc points, or by fiddling with the number a bit, more like 1/4 plus 1 or half minus 1 something to ensure the number of sorc points at each level is about right. This still feels a little clunky, but I like the idea. Combine it with 1-2 bonus low-level utility spells for each origin, and it might do well.

The lost perception skills of older D&D

Older D&D was weird. Though I don't think I ever used the rules in the 90s, dwarves and gnomes (and some other races) have these strange detection abilities. And they're subtly different between the races. I'm going to focus on dwarves, elves, and gnomes here because the others just cherry pick some of these detection powers.

In AD&D 2nd Ed, dwarves can spend one round to detect things if they're within 10 feet of that thing (except depth underground, since you're always within 10 feet of your depth I guess): sliding and shifting walls or rooms (4 in 6), grade or slope (5 in 6), stone traps/pits/deadfalls (3 in 6), new construction (3 in 6) as well as depth underground (3 in 6). Gnomes can detect depth better than dwarves (4 in 6), grade/slope (5 in 6), but also detect direction underground (3 in 6) as well as unsafe walls and ceilings (7 in 10).

That's right, while 2nd Ed raised a few of these detections so they were all using a d6 (dwarves went from grade/slope and new construction of 3 in 4—75%—to 5 in 6—83.3%) except the gnome's 70% chance to detect unsafe walls and ceilings couldn't be lowered to 4 in 6 or raised to 5 in 6 to make it standard. Stout halflings and half orcs likewise ended up using a d4 for their detect grade/slope abilities (3 in 4 and 1 in 4 respectively), and later races in Skills & Powers just get percentile scores assigned. So while the system mostly uses a d6, it doesn't use it consistently.

In the basic Rules Cyclopedia D&D (which only has dwarves), dwarves get all of these stone skills at a 2 in 6 chance, whereas Swords and Wizardry (my ersatz oldest-school D&D) says dwarves get this but the rolls are up to the DM.

This is fascinating in part because these skills were/are probably almost wholly ignored by most D&D players, but also how specific they were to dungeon crawling. Knowing how deep you were (approximate dungeon level) would be hugely helpful in figuring out how tough monsters might be, as well as if the 5% grade in the 100-foot corridor (nigh imperceptible) was taking you further down or not. New construction seems like an ersatz measure of things being walled off, but it also gives you a sense of history within the dungeon, while shifting walls, traps/pits, and unsafe walls/ceilings are obvious hazards (of apparently differing difficulty). Also interesting to note is that dwarves and gnomes got slightly different sets, meaning it was useful to have both types of characters in your party. It also conjures some strange image of dwarves keeping their eyes down and watching for pits and new construction at the base of walls while gnomes are eyes-in-the-sky noticing the ceilings of the dungeon plus a different sense of direction.

Elves get a different ability, which is passive secret/concealed door detection. They get this at a 1 in 6 chance, so just by walking through the dungeon elves will find one secret door in 6. Not great, but totally nice if the DM remembers it (I also just roll this for random noticing facts in my AD&D Al-Qadim Church game). Elves who are actively searching find 1 in 3 secret doors, and 1 in 2 concealed doors.

It's also interesting to note that there are no rules for how these interact with thief abilities (does a dwarf searching for a trap get his roll plus the thief roll? does it take extra time to get both rolls?) nor do these detection abilities ever increase with level: you have them or you don't, and they never improve.

In 5e, we get a little of these as ersatz fixes. Dwarves get their stonecunning and elves get free proficiency in perception, but I can't help but wonder if the sheet blinders work in reverse here. Often with skills, new players are wondering which one they can roll for a certain thing to get more info or move the story along, but there's nothing specific enough about those skills in 5e to warrant the utterly specific uses (or expectations?) that the old AD&D options provide.

I've been thinking about this more and more because, in my 2nd edition game, many of the rules are buried in paragraph form, when bullet points would bring them to light easier. The oft-maligned Skills & Powers book does a nice job of presenting each as a clear option since you needed to spend points to purchase each one, but it can also be used to nicely gather each option together so you can really see what powers you have. So in my vague dream to do some cut-and-paste work to compile and solidify some 2nd ed material and make it more accessible at the table, I'm wondering if these strange powers shouldn't be made broader (i.e. dwarves and gnomes might passively notice sloping corridors rather than needing to actively do it) or otherwise wrapped into a coherent system which includes general thief/rogue skills.

There's also a strange element of DM determinism in these skills, which is the information these detection powers provide or the paths these open up need to be a bonus in the adventure. For traps, their detection is generally simple since the failure result is merely that the trap is set. For sliding walls/rooms though, a passageway could be blocked if not detected. Similarly, if a secret door is the only exit and it isn't found, the party is just stuck. Just because this stuff is on a character sheet, doesn't mean it will work when you need it. Also, while there's been a lot made about dungeons haveing interesting design (loops, multiple entrances, etc.) there seems to be little attention paid to some of these other issues here: sliding doors or cave-ins which trap a party and force them to continue onwards, subtle changes in elevation leading to distinct levels (or over and underpasses), the history of a dungeon's construction and determining which areas are original and which are recent editions, natural construction problems and hazards vs consciously-made traps. It's a small laundry list of good elements to put into a dungeon that I hope to keep in mind for the future.

It's easy to see how these old skills got consolidated in third edition into a version of notice and search (along with the rogue skills), what you're noticing or searching for has perhaps been lost a little. Also what's lost is the race-specific nature of these skills. Dwarves and gnomes have an uncanny ability to detect a grade or slope in a corridor, others could attempt it with weights or marbles or water, but these races just are that attuned to their world that they get these automatically and no one else will ever be as good as them. And I think that's one thing that's been a little lost in modern D&D: some races were just better at some things than others, which actually made the race/class choice matter a bit more.

Powerful NPCs destroy verisimilitude

My current DM really likes throwing high-level NPCs at us now. I'm not super happy with this because it really brings us out of the game. Here's how it came about, as far as I can tell:

The DM has decided the CR system is ridiculous since we could easily handle many battles in the past campaign. In the last campaign, we did well with a lot of battles, but he's also remembering the past year of high-level play when we really could handle a lot of stuff. I think the earlier parts of Princes of the Apocalypse (before level 7 or so) were fairly well balanced modulo travel nonsense (see below).

As part of his play style, the DM tends to keep combats small, where I think the math of 5e makes a battle with fewer enemies than the number of players easy. Players can gang up on people, and with a few clever uses of some battlefield control can really keep one to three of the enemies out of combat to focus fire on the half of the group that is still a threat. Still, it's easier to keep track of 3 enemies' stats than 6 enemies' stats.

Another aspect of his play style is he tends to say yes, even to ridiculous requests at times. He was very willing to give surprise rounds and advantage right away, and still is at times. That makes stealth much more valuable, and I'm a little surprised we didn't make an all stealth party this time because of that. We've always got time to take short and long rests, and he doesn't pressure us for time usually, so we can really handle many battles with ease. The short rest mechanic also means many of us get some nice resources back after a rest (particularly when I played a warlock), so you can really handle battle after battle when he makes them easy (or easy for us).

On a related note, overland travel with random encounters is awful in 5e. Not only does our ranger ensure we'll never get lost or need to forage for food while traveling, but since all your resources come back after a long rest, there's really no point to doing these in 5e. I like random encounters to help set the mood or tone of a story, or to siphon off a few resources from the party, but travel in 5e (without the Adventures in Middle Earth fix where you can't get a long rest in the wilderness) makes the resource drain pointless.

Finally, I'm not sure if he nerfs the enemies intentionally or not, but he tends to ignore many aspects of the by-the-book stats. It may be a combo of not reading things close, being tired at the time, or lack of system mastery for the spells (He used crown of madness totally ineffectually tonight and didn't use the enemy's second winds). For the spells, I suspect some of it is by not really playing 5e much, you don't know off the top of your head what most of the spells do. That's easy to mess up, or having an archmage up-cast lightning bolt as a 9th-level spell is just not super useful. So he's not always using his enemies effectively. Some of the theater of the mind aspects of play also might hinder this, there's really not interesting terrain in the game for stunts, and we usually have trouble tracking where enemies are and which one is which (probably once or twice a night at least).

How does this lead to high-level NPCs? Since The DM has thrown out the CR system, we end up having three 6th-level PCs fighting things like two CR9 champions plus a CR6 warlock (this past week's tomfoolery). Or the end of Rise of Tiamat where there were just tons of archmages wandering around. Those archmates were functionally something like 14th level NPCs we just fought, it took everything we had to defeat them, and we got a short rest in the middle because we had been beaten (non-lethal damage on taking down the paladin and fighter/rogue). Obviously, we hunted the survivor down to take our money back, because D&D.

So we're left wondering why the noble was able to hire these very powerful mercenaries to chase us down (The druid made a deal to reincarnate his dead nephew for a lot of cash, but he wasn't going to pay us for it when the mother wasn't 100% convinced it was her son). So why are we the ones going to deal with the giant problems when there are these high-level mercenaries able to be hired?

In the last campaign, where he started out using obviously 20th-level NPCs as patrons for each faction, we also were asking ourselves multiple times why we were being sent to investigate things while the big powerful spellcasters (able to cast wish spells and the like) were doing nothing themselves. I have no explanation for that.

I think this is often a criticism of some of the published D&D worlds: when there are these massively powerful NPCs walking around (Elminster, the Seven Sisters, etc.) why are the PCs really needed to be heroes? It's now exacerbated by the inclusion of these NPC stat blocks in the Monster Manual and Volo's Guide to Monsters, and incongruent with the idea of tiers of play.

In by-the-book 5e, characters of levels 1-4 (Apprentice) are local heroes, levels 5-10 are regional heroes, levels 11-16 (paragon) are global heroes and levels 17-20 (Epic) are cosmic heroes. This means that those CR 6 NPCs that function as 14th level spellcasters are really high up there, and the ones beyond that are just basically god-like. In theory, the CR for one creature is equal to average party level for a 4-5 person party. So that CR 6 warlock is an average encounter for a 6th level party. Give the warlock some support henches and it's a good time. But what's the level of that CR6 warlock? The spell-casting says the warlock is 14th level. Clearly paragon. We could instead try to break monsters down into their tiers, but a proficiency bonus diagnostic doesn't quite map to the tier levels exactly. Nonetheless, it may be a decent stand-in: things with a proficiency bonus of +3 are regional-level threats. +4 spans the end of regional and beginning of global. +5 is solidly global, with +6 being epic. That might not work out properly though because the CR 6 warlock was a 14th level caster with a +3 proficiency bonus. I'm sure with some more time and math I could reverse-engineer something somewhat close though.

What it really means, is by using these high CR NPCs, the DM is telling us there are many powerful people in the world that could be doing our job instead of us. So we need something more of a real hook for the game, especially since the others poo-poo'd my idea of all being good-aligned.

What's the fix? I guess telling the DM. He should know that the one warlock with a couple veterans (CR 3) is much more believable, and something like four veterans, a gladiator, and the warlock might have been a much more believable set of enemies to face. The mage might have an apprentice and two hired bodyguards rather than being an archmage, or might have a bound elemental or demon servitor to defend him. It's difficult to point out NPC powers that I don't know about, but I do try to point out some of the stuff most of the time if it'd make an easy fight harder. I could also try to point out that doing 4 easier combats will drain resources so it's useful to utilize that in the right context, and that random encounters on the road in 5e just serve to bog the game down.

The Evil Eye: Actual Play 3

Session three. One of the players was absent, and we got a new novice to join. We mostly finished chapter 3, skipped 4, and are halfway through 5. So the pacing seems about fine that the game can end after chapter 6 or perhaps with a custom 6.5 in the next two sessions.

This session was totally investigation again. Perhaps a flaw with the adventure (depending on your point of view). I was resigned to keep it a little slow because we had a new player who had never played before, but she caught on pretty quickly. I also wish I had not told players we'd advance in level. Curse of Strahd was designed for 3-9 basically, and this isn't really designed to level up midway through. I had them hit level 4 now, and they'll hit 5 at the beginning of the final session I think.

I feel like I've done a bit better at NPC voices, but I find I need to give them explicit labels. The voice isn't a description (like deep voice, British accent) but a stereotype (1920s gangster). That's helped me give the characters a bit of personality.

I had to do a bit of improvisation with the House of Mists, just because repeating the encounter seemed ridiculously boring at the time. So I drew random cards and tried to deliver some NPC hints based on the card.

I also did some improvisation by deciding to use theme/mood encounters in addition to random interactive encounters. This means I'd totally want to revise my random encounter tables, but it also means I can have them spot an NPC in the crowd or find a body in a dark alley, encounter the darklord's spies, or whatnot. Basically a lot of the old Ravenloft material suggests no random encounters, and I understand that. They generally give railroady set-piece encounters. But you can deliver some of those here and there, and curate your randomness. Basically, I want to revise the tables I made so the generic encounters that can happen anywhere are mostly theme/mood encounters rather than possible combats. Or perhaps so that there's a separate chance for theme/mood builders than possible combats and strong clues or whatnot.

I've also noticed that I wish the text were re-organized a bit more to be encounter-specific. The encounters with Malocchio, Matton, and Gabrielle plus the House of Mists in Karina are really the heart of chapters 3-5, so it was really good that I re-read it today and organize things in my mind if not in my notes. I need to re-organize my notes if I want to put some notes on the DM's guild.

I realize these posts are pretty details-light, I should do something more plot-oriented at the end.

Reinterpreting the Ravenloft setting in light of Curse of Strahd

Its no secret that I really enjoyed running Curse of Strahd last year, and am running The Evil Eye during Ramadan this year. I've even got my eye on running Castles Forlorn and/or Feast of Goblyns in the future. What I've found particularly interesting about trying to run these Ravenloft adventures is the subtle re-interpretations of the setting that Curse of Strahd gives. So I've been thinking about how Ravenloft could be a bit more coherent in 5e cosmology and my interpretations of it.

Isolation and the mists. The big change in Curse of Strahd (from the Ravenloft setting, not the original module) is Barovia is about 99% isolated. I think this is an artefact of them wanting it to be self-contained. There are no clear neighboring Ravenloft domains for Barovia. This didn't bother me too much, except for during Curse of Strahd, the Darklord card indicates no ally. Had I picked this for my group, I would have given them each an uncommon magic item (a simple weapon +1 or a scroll of daylight maybe) per person with a note just signed A. The Tarokka reading could have indicated that one of Strahd's greatest enemies would send aid, or maybe "A foul and evil enemy of Strahd will make himself known when the time is right." When trying to pick a second Ravenloft adventure to run, however, this made it tougher. Feast of Goblyns, a widely noted great adventure, explicily involves some domain hopping, and The Evil Eye involves some visitors from other domains. I picked Evil Eye because I thought I could downplay the visitor part, or make it clear that the visitors are also not free to move around as they wish.

My solution to some of this issue, is to make domain hopping difficult, and knowledge between domains less certain (or at least more difficult / less certain that some of the adventures imply). Ravenloft domains are part of the Shadowfell, and are not always aligned properly. They're all islands, essentially, but some collide with some regularity, while others may essentially bump into one another randomly. New domains are created with some regularity, and their creation can disrupt previous cycles. This means the people of each domain will know that the mists generally block travel, but merchants and scholars may know when the mists generally lift. Domains may not be synched in time, as each small flat earth has different seasons or celestial properties. Scholars may also know that there is a dark lord of each world that can control if these borders truely open, so the citizens may be most likely to appease (or petition?) the darklords at certain times to ensure the borders are open. Even a darklord, however, may not be able to align two domains or planes, however, so some scholars may know that traveling down a road or river doesn't alway take you where you expect to go.

Somehow, I intend for both the Vistani and some members of the Church of Ezra to have the ability to cross the mists to other domains, and possibly even arrive where they want to (most of the time). One could also introduce a tool proficiency, like a planar orery or planar etherscope which could be used to predict where one might end up upon entering the mists.

Souls and Husks. Curse of Strahd establishes that souls are trapped in the Domains of Dread, reincarnating. Furthermore, the majority of people in a domain are soulless husks who can never leave. I do like this idea. It hampers travel, so only a select group of besoulèd heroes (or villains) can domain hop. Communities that establish themselves in a new domain will end up developing husks as well, and essentially be trapped since the entirety of the group can never leave.

A soul, however, always knows its home. Mist-travelling out of the demiplanes is likely to take one back to their own home, or a shadowfell duplicate of it.

The mysterious Dark Powers' true nature.  In Curse, there's a strange side quest that reveals some of the nature of the mysterious Dark Powers of the Domains of Dread. This is kinda taboo, because they were always written to be mysterious in the old stuff. My solution to this is to let some be the odd vestiges that Curse of Strahd uses, but also to define (at least for myself) the nature of the demiplane(s): they aren't just cages for evil beings, but the dark powers need evil to sustain themselves.

To keep it mysterous though, scholars stuck in the demiplane(s) or outside of them may have different theories. I plan to use this to great effect for one of my alternate sets of plot rails in The Evil Eye, as they party might work with a local arcanist (of the Fraternity of Shadows) to achieve their goals rather than what the module suggests. This lets me play with crackpot flat-earth or twisted religious theories (e.g. "Do you know that no one in this realm has reliable memories before the Witch of Loupet came to Invidia?" "If the gods truly feed on acts of malevolence, is it not the duty of the pious to ensure they are fed?" "What remains to be seen is if those bright-eyed souls who can move about the lands are the only ones who's pain feeds the gods or if even the dreary dull-eyed plebians' pain is effective."

Darlords and domains differ from one another. One thing I never quite understood about the old Ravenloft setting is how much the common folk knew about the darklords and the nature of the demiplane they were trapped in. Given my assumption about the dark powers, I intend to work to make sure that a domain is a reflection of the darklord's psyche. I think this is, to an extent, done in the old Ravenloft materials. But for a weekend in hell or sliders-style domain hopping, I want each domain to feel different. This can be reflected in the types of creatures encountered, how husks and souls are distinguished, how the domain borders are closed, among other things.

What's interesting about this, is one could try to add in horror tropes that relate to a character's inner struggles (aligntment, background, perosonality trait, ideal, bond, flaw or general backstory). I think this is, perhaps, the key to getting the weekend in hell style of game to work, and I wish I had explored this a bit more in Curse of Strahd and had time to add it into the Evil Eye.

Conclusion. There we have it. Some preliminary thoughts on the setting. I should gather some of my other ideas, weed out the bad ones, and throw these up on the DM's guild at some point. Some of the things like Ravenloft minor properties for magic items or Tarokka-based personal characteristics might be useful, even if these musings aren't.

Backgrounds and personal characteristics for a weekend in hell: Running Ravenloft

This is my second rodeo running a 5e Ravenloft game, which is slightly surprising since I wasn't the hugest fan of the setting in those halcyon days of 2nd edition in the 90s. And for a second time, I'm left with a bit of awkwardness as the PCs have minimal background and the adventure truly doesn't foster any roleplaying background. This isn't necessarily odd for one-shots in general, for shorter games, a character's backstory doesn't come into play much. But it is a little disappointing and I wanted to have characters with a few more ties to the setting/adventure. Unlike a dungeon where I can simply say the noble's family had some interaction with it, or that it was a haven for criminals, the weekend-in-hell style of Ravenloft really prohibits that a bit.

I explicitly told players they could (and perhaps should) swap any languages granted by their background for tool proficiencies, and I'm sure the players can manage to play up their backgrounds as criminals, nobles, outlanders, or entertainers. So what I'm going to focus on here are the personal characteristics that 5e uses.

I know the antagonizer and I have discussed how we find these personal characteristics disappointing by the book, since many of the examples in the Player's Handbook seem to blur the lines between these nebulous categories as well as encourage conflict within the party. But it's by-the-book 5e and that's mostly what I'm going with here.

With Curse of Strahd, I asked everyone to roll on the Harrowing Event from the haunted one background. This provided some minimal links for a party of monster hunters. For The Evil Eye, we didn't go so far as that much planning ahead and we took the first hour of chitchat time to finish characters. I knew this was happening, so I fleshed out my idea to use the Tarokka cards a bit. I dealt each character one card from the high deck and asked them to use one of the two personal characteristics associated with the card. These were ideals, bonds, or flaws based on the card's theme. For example:

These turned out to be a bit more generic than I had imagined, and as they're random I didn't make enough that were specific to this adventure. Since the beast wasn't drawn, it's cat-based option won't be coming into play. Since the cat-bond was an option anyway, there was no guarantee it would even come into play ever, which makes for some bad design. But, I can totally re-use them later with minimal updating (like removing the overly specific cat aspect). With just these three, you can see that they could use some revision anyway. The Raven was the hardest card to do, and the choice is really about whether you want that as an ideal or flaw. I thought the beast and innocent were a bit better by getting two different aspects of the theme in there. Since I'm also using the high deck to track inspiration (giving players a bonus d6 on their roll if they get their card), this adds some utility to the Tarokka deck that I bought but also reminds the players of this somewhat creepy setting element. [Aside: I know I used Tarokka cards to track inspiration for Curse of Strahd in a similar way, but for the life of me I can't find any notes on how I did it. So this is a bit of a rehash somehow.]

Ideally, this system would have mimicked more closely Appendix A from the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which I was disappointed wasn't reused in future WotC adventures. Lost Mines of Phandelver does this slightly with the pre-generated PCs, not with personal characteristics, but giving a minor backstory with a clear goal. I may have failed a bit in this attempt with The Evil Eye, but succeeded in coming up with some options to use the Tarokka deck in future Ravenloft games. 

Random tables

I've been terrible at blogging this year. Oh well.

I'm currently in the final stages of prepping to run a 5e conversion of the 2nd edition Ravenloft module The Evil Eye (a conceptual sequel to last year's Curse of Strahd). To do this, I've been adding in some random tables that I feel are missing in the original. In part because I feel like I need to flesh it out a little more to avoid a possible sense of railroading (there's only one way to escape Invidia) and in part because I find the random tables to be really helpful in my Al-Qadim Church 2nd Edition game I'm running.

Here's the secret: I tend to use random tables for inspiration. I also tend to stick with the random rolls, the trick is how to fit it into the story (i.e. improvisation) and when to know when to re-roll. Random encounters (and I call them random encounters, not wandering monsters) can be used to move the story along (i.e. tell the players to stop dilly-dallying), they can be used to instill a sense of danger into the game (i.e. dilly-dallying in a dungeon can be dangerous, traveling in the wilderness can be dangerous), and they can be used to hand additional clues into the players' hands (i.e. they randomly encounter a corpse with helpful information). From a GM's perspective, they can also be used to slow down the pace of a game and/or liven things up with a bit of roleplaying or combat as well.

Examples of some great random encounters:
The horse. Early on, the PCs randomly encountered a horse. I wasn't super sure what to do with this, but obviously, when the players wondered if it belonged to a missing hero, it surely became that horse. The random encounter fleshed out some of the story that was otherwise going to be missing.
Elf tribe. I don't really recall what I did with these, but I randomly rolled an entire group of over 100 elves. I hope I did something like using them to foreshadow the gnoll horde because otherwise large group of elves in the middle of the jungle made no sense.
Banderlogs. After rolling baboons a number of times, I noticed the Monstrous Manual had another entry on the same page. These baboon-like creatures were intelligent, numerous enough to be negotiated with, and able to provide some totally unplanned clues as the party flubbed their comprehend languages spell and did it all with gestures and pictograms.
Mystery. Not wanting to spoil a potentially ongoing plot, I had rolled a particular creature twice on the party's journey recently, and given the ecology section of the monster's description, it clearly ought to have been a mother and daughter combo. With an impromptu fleshing out of their backstory using some obvious recent events (a tribe of jungle giants had been slain), these things being in the area suddenly made sense to me.
The turtle. In one of the early adventures, the party was traveling upriver to the site of some ruins to plunder. I totally role a giant snapping turtle which the low-level party had absolutely no business dealing with. I made it easy to avoid, but it served as a neat reminder that in the game I'm running, they would encounter things well beyond their capacity to deal with. Later on, when I rolled another horrible river encounter, the sea hag was looking for the turtle and only extorted the party for a bit of loot then let them go.

So, what does this look like in The Evil Eye? Well, it's the land of Invidia in Ravenloft, so I'm using the Tarokka deck for randomization when possible.

First off, I've got a random attribute table: eye color. Given that the evil eye plays a role in its titular adventure, I'm going to try to use eye color for some subtle narrative effects. So it's important that people pick an eye color that I want them to, meaning I'm going to deal out a card and let them choose.

Eye color and descriptions
Suit Color
Glyphs ❧ Green
Stars ✭ Blue
Swords ⚔ Brown
Coins ◎ Amber

Crossbows in D&D 5e and in general

Crossbows (and similar weapons) have been bad choices in most editions of D&D despite being rather iconic. This is a recurring theme in 5e, where the system itself seems to work very well in general but there's a few options that just don't quite work well. Supposedly crossbows're easy to use (point and click) but have a longer loading time, which makes them reasonable for wizards but not other less skilled users, but bows are often superior. Combat & Tactics allows them to ignore up to 5 points of legit armor, making them actually viable in late 2nd edition because you've got a reasonable to-hit bonus over bows which are multiple shots. Let's ignore the fact that bows also require strength and longbows shouldn't be used by Str 8 characters and focus on the crossbow though.

The whole "realism" thing in D&D is rather odd, because up until Combat & Tactics rounds were 1 minute each, so attacks and HP and AC were all rather abstract (like you'd really only make one or two attacks in one minute or legit 1.5 attacks a minute so on even rounds of combat you get an extra attack). Fast forward to third edition: loading takes either a move or a full round, perpetuating the idea the they're slow but powerful. Except they're higher crit range than bows (19-20 vs 20) and damage (1d10 for heavy vs 1d8 for a longbow) and simple weapons (longbows are martial) but longbows have a bigger crit multiplier (x3 vs x2 for crossbows). So there's benefits of crossbows but they don't seem that big.

I wish the loading property in 5e came with a rider that loading weapons did an extra die of damage (or extra d12) at 5th, 11th, and 17th level to counteract their incredibly limiting loading property (or perhaps only if you have the extra attack feature). Slow but powerful, but once/per/round like a cantrip.. 2nd edition made that happen eventually with the Combat & Tactics upgrade, plus a larger damage die meant more in 2e I think. But then 5e went and ruined this by making the crossbow expert feat which lets you ignore the loading property, and my proposed loading property fix isn't going to play nicely with the rogue who doesn't care about extra attack right off the bat.

As far as I can tell, the crossbow expert feat does exactly what feats shouldn't do: this feat is basically required for any warrior-type who would be using a crossbow to make use of their extra attack feature (but rogues and clerics don't need it as badly as they don't get extra attacks). In essence, if you want to play a crossbow using ranger, you need this feat. Its also ridiculously abusive, if it was meant for a drow assassin to be able to attack once with the short sword and once with the hand crossbow, because in practice people use it to dual-wield hand crossbows. This just kinda breaks the versimilitude for me. But whatevs, that's how its written.

Can crossbows be fixed here? I think they can with a little slight of hand. This needs to be a D&D style fix though, so it can't be as simple as an alternate weapon system like in 13th Age or Dungeon World where your class determines weapon damage (which is a mighty fine solution, just not D&D). First, remove the loading property from the light crossbow. The feat give it that wonkiness and rogues get it, and removing the loading property will fix the rogue problem. Any rogue can now use it off-hand for a bonus action attack but the ranged attacks while engaged disadvantage will make it less-than-ideal still. Technically any rogue could also dual-wield these, but they could also toss an off-hand dagger so that's not much of an issue. Still ridiculous, but meh. Next revise the loading property: if you are entitled to an extra attack with a weapon with the loading property due to the extra attack feature, it deals an additional die of weapon damage per extra attack you are entitled to. If you ignore the loading property, you ignore all the loading property, because a level 17 fighter making extra attacks is probably better than getting a pittance more damage. This also clandestinely fixes slings in the process. And maybe blowguns, its not clear what an extra die of damage looks like when a weapon's damage "die" is just 1 point. I'm torn between saying an extra die of damage or just an extra fixed damage like a d10.

By the by, I'm still torn on trying to fix strength by removing the ability of Dex to add to damage, or capping it at +2 to damage (i.e. a finesse weapon adds strength to damage or a max of 2 points of dex bonus, whichever is higher). It would nerf dex-based characters a bit in terms of damage, making strength a bit more appealing, but might have other implications that I haven't explored yet.

Alignment Redux

After listening to the Antagonist's latest podrambling, I had a few reactions to their comments on the problem of alignment (I'm going to keep this alignment-focused). I see the point of their discussion, but feel the two of them were talking a bit across one another.

See, the Ginger Giant seems to like players having slightly wacky PCs (mental trauma for almost dying), while the Antagonist and I fall a little closer on wanting serious PCs. Which isn't to say that I don't like a whimsical or gonzo game, I just prefer to know what I'm getting into and have most of the players interested in the game I'd like to play (which, for longer-term things, is generally something more serious). I got the sense from their discussion the the Ginger Giant doesn't think alignment is worthwhile or adds much to the game and that's why it is problematic (the shades of grey problem), whereas the Antagonizer sees alignment as an active problem (and mostly the Chaotic Neutral problem).

Basically, I see a combination of two problems with alignment, both of them coming in at the point where people have different underlying assumptions about the game.

First, is the (shorter) Chaotic Neutral problem. We've had a few discussions about alignment before, but basically Chaotic Neutral (and Unaligned in 4e) can be an excuse to play a character who's a selfish prick. Not only that, but they can be disruptive to the group's goals and the group itself. But that's not in and of itself a reflection of the alignment, its a reflection of a player who wants to play a selfish prick. They are, wittingly or not, stealing the show from everyone else and making the story more about their character's story than about the group or the adventure. So I think this problem can, to a small extent, be mitigated by a discussion at the table about what sorts of games people like to play and what people are signing up for. Some folks seem happy to watch or participate in conflict within the party, which I find occasionally fun but I don't like that to be the focus of the game. Because if that were the focus of the game I'd like it to be more in the form of a Vampire LARP rather than a D&D group. Those rules are designed to pit player against player, often without requiring any storyteller to intervene on the basics. Now, I definitely was thrilled with the one 4e halfling game that I played in back in the day where we made a slight mockery of things (it was a one-shot, perfect to bring in Frondo Maggins, a do-nothing hobbit with a heart of gold), because we did add in elements of feuding amongst characters and slightly wacky concepts. So its not about ignoring the wackiness, but trying to get the players on the same boat: the game should not be about one character and their zany actions. It could be about the zany group and its members' interactions. It could be about the adventure and narrative wherein the group is the relatively vanilla protagonists with little background or flavor. It could be about some grand narrative of the world where the PCs play a small but vital part. Difficult to do perhaps, but I bet if you nip it in the bud you can channel people's desire for zany characters into something better than Chaotic Neutral.

The second, longer shades of grey issue is that I wonder if we're doing a disservice to our players when we play a game with shades of grey using alignment since alignment was originally absolute. Because we're bringing in our modern mores to the archaizing game (and possibly archaic alignment element), people often have this sense that a drow or orc could be good. Drizzt didn't help here, though Unearthed Arcana was the book that gave us drow PCs in the first place. Evil wasn't necessarily illicit for PCs in AD&D until 2nd edition focused more on the heroic. In Dortherdoreft where I stole the show with derro fetal savants, the players felt bad about killing them but knew that in-character that was the thing they needed to do. Because the things looked young and innocent but were powerful and malevolent.

I recently encountered this repeatedly in my game here. One huge issue with my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign is the DM opted for the morally grey interpretation.  Then when he used DM fiat to say one of the prophets had converted to good (it was one of his favorite NPCs he had planned to use and we just wouldn't let him), he literally had to bring celestial beings and the gods of good into it to try to say "Guys, it's obvious that she's repented and is now good".  It was extremely unsatisfying. We caught a group of bandits and brought them to our supposedly good allies (a group of Order of the Gauntlet paladins) who immediately decided to put the bandits to death. This caused more friction all because of the underlying assumptions about the game: is there an absolute good? I thought we were playing shades of grey. There was another incident where we spent half the night debating how to take out only the evil knights in a tower and not killing innocents when eventually the DM just said "Oh, you know to be one of these knights you have to murder someone," and that was that. Which made my character extremely leery about the group since he was a notorious pirate and I thought we were playing a shades of grey game where not every orc was irredeemably evil. Well, turns out we ended up playing it that the cultists were basically irredeemably evil, despite the fact that one of them was obviously redeemed, and we kept rehashing the same discussion about whether or not we should take prisoners. It was really relevant because, as a fey warlock, I had lots of spells in the sleep and hypnotic pattern realm where I could take a few out of the fight but they weren't dead. We had to deal with them. And I had initially decided to play an evil character bound by superstition to be a party-friendly guy (can't harm widows and orphans or people who have surrendered, cause that's how you get cursed), so I tried to get someone else to kill the captives whenever I could since we were doing morally grey.

And here's where the wishy-washy alignment gets rough: there is nothing truly good in the world, so tactics like assassination and take-no-prisoners hold, despite being thoroughly unheroic and murderhobo-ish. Because its true: anyone you let escape might tell of your presence or come back as a foe again later when they're rested and have gathered more allies. So one clear solution to this problem is to re-assert the cosmic nature of alignments, despite the Antagonizer not being a fan of that when its rare (i.e. with unaligned in the mix). But it can also be common: goblins are evil and must be eradicated without exception. Undead are evil too. The gods of good fight tooth and nail against the gods of evil. Or do it with the old-school Moorcockian system where Law/Civilization opposes Chaos/Destruction. Because a lot of people don't want to play Authoritarian/Lawful characters when Individualistic/Chaotic is much more fun and in line with many flavors of American culture. I think that's why the alignment restriction of the paladin has softened: when good and evil aren't absolute, playing the honorable or lawful good paladin who loses his powers if he makes a wrong choice is really hard and totally dependent on the DM's fiat power.

I recently read the Dragonlance comic books and finally found a statement interpreting why there are gods that are neutral with respect to good and evil, which I've previously dismissed as ridiculous. There was a time when good was triumphant in the setting, and it resulted in hubris and thus the cataclysm. So even the gods of good accept that there must be balance between good and evil, despite fighting tooth-and-nail against evil. The more I read about Dragonlance, the more I keep thinking they did some shit totally right: the setting fits with the rules quite nicely, even if the rules were a bit wonky at the time.

A real problem with 5e alignment is perhaps that if it feels tacked on or like some legacy element, it is! Almost nothing in the rules refers to it. But if the rules and your story were properly wedded, there would be mechanical options for playing heroic characters. I've been really tempted to write up some of these options as a sort of Heroes of Mercy option and throw it on the DMs Guild, but in the original Oriental Adventures the Shukenja had a few options to sort of make their enemies into noncombatants. These are things like charm person or the geas spell but there's a few more. I feel like I've seen this sort of sentiment in a few different anime series, where the villain is defeated and then goes to pursue their dream of being a farmer or some such. It doesn't have to be ridiculous, but if the cleric had a cantrip to ensure an escaping mook wouldn't be a threat again it might allow players to be more heroic. Its been hard trying to put the idea into mechanics, however. I feel like it could be tied to an honor system, but the 5e DMG honor system is really just some wishy-washy half-baked nonsense that I don't understand how you'd use at the table. Basically, the rules don't support that kind of heroic play and players might be happy to take that option to play a heroic paladin rather than a cavalier one.

So I currently suspect that a useable alignment system has a few options:

1. Discuss the group/party dynamics before people make characters. You already are likely to know who the problem players are and maybe you can channel their boredom/"chaotic neutral" nature into a better relationship with one of the other PCs. You could also go with some cheesy random table of party relationships where each player rolls one and that's their relationship to the character on their left. But I had trouble coming up with a lot of generic good options for this. I think the party alignment concept is definitely worthwhile if you are using alignment at all.
2. Use alignments as cosmic truths (and allow wholly good beings in the planes): then you have permission to kill all the goblins and the game makes sense as long as you're opposing evil (or chaos). 
3. Give the players the means to really play their alignment. Mechanically, that is. The rules need to support the player choices.
4. Replace the useless ideals or flaws with alignment, straight up. If you do something good/heroic, lawful/authoritarian, or chaotic/individualistic you're up for inspiration. Or focus alignment on the ideals players select or roll. 
5. Replace alignment with some other roleplaying tool. Drives from Gumshoe or Nature/Demeanor from the World of Darkness games might be suitable. The Dortherdoreft dwarf personality traits were wonderful, and you might give inspiration based on other players guessing someone's nature/demeanor at the table.
6. Why bother with it at all? There's only a few places in the rules where it matters, mostly magic items. I don't think there's even a spell that really needs it as "good and evil" have been relegated mostly to extra-planar creatures. This kinda fits with the replace-it option.

Because I'm a pretty strong proponent of matching the rules and the story, I'm keenest with options 1 (discuss it with the players), 4 (use alignment in lieu of crappy background options), and 5 (create a means so players can play their alignments well) at the moment, but open to counter arguments. 

Hints of abandoned sub-classes in the 5e Player's Handbook?

Reading through the players handbook a bit lately (my Princes of the Apocalypse character was trapped in the plane of Air by Yan-C-Bin so I think I'm making a new character, at least temporarily), I remembered something I thought was strange. There's a pretty clear hint at the storm sorcerer in the flavor introduction to the sorcerer. I know that, by and large, the classes are introduced by flavor text for 3 of the iconic builds, but it struck me that storm sorcerer was seemingly included in the flavor but the subclass was left out.

It immediately made me look at the druid and bard options because they were also only two-subclass classes and I was wondering what else I'd find. Indeed, one of the bard options could be read as a College of Guile/Subterfuge/Chicanery and there's a possibility that a third druid circle would be some sort of druidic avenger/warden. I'm not sure of a good name for this druid, I'd tentatively call it Circle of the Storm to indicate nature's fury but that's likely to give people the impression that its all about lightning and thunder when its about being a warrior druid.

Looking at the others, we see a dwarf battlerager described in the barbarian intro. Cleric lists three iconic domains. Fighter is a laundry list. Monk lists the three monastic traditions. Paladin lists the three oaths. Ranger, oddly, seems to list two types of hunter and the beastmaster, possibly harkening to a time when there were more subclasses that got condensed. Rogue, warlock, and wizard also follow suit by listing three examples from their subclasses.

Intriguing, but I'm not sure if that means a College of Guile bard or drudic Avenger/Warden were planned but not released yet or abandoned as they didn't make the cut. I'm guessing they were half-baked but due to space some things needed to be cut. The storm sorcerer saw a release in Unearthed Arcana and was later toned down slightly (such a waste, they could have just given the storm sorcerer 5-ish thematic utility spells and it would have been perfect, or perhaps just feather fall (1), gust of wind (2), and wind wall (3) to solidify the storm theme with spells that are thematic but you just don't have room for in your build).

So the druidic avenger (let's stick with Circle of the Storm) is pretty easy to mock up. Take the Valor bard's features as a base: extra weapons/armor plus bardic inspiration uses at 3, extra attack at 6, and cantrip/attack mix at 14. You have to modify it a bit, so the main circle feature is probably a couple ranger hunter-type spells and a melee damage boost at level 2 and/or a bit of extra land speed, extra attack at 6, land's stride at 10, and the bonus action spellcasting at 14. Spells might include: ensnaring strike (1), hunter's mark (1), find steed (2), silence (2), elemental weapon (3), nondetection (3), fire shield (4), locate creature (4),  contagion (5), geas (5). I tried to pick only things that worked on melee and missile attacks and mostly spells from off the druid's normal list. So you end up with a caster using the druid list, who's about as good as a valor bard at melee attacks but with more weapon-enhancing spells and a mount. They're probably about on-par with some clerics, and will be using spell slots to cast spells augmenting their melee attacks. This does make for an interesting variant of the 4e Warden class though without the war-forms. It could be a nice alternative to the ancients paladin, totem barbarian, or ranger for a wilderness character.

A guile bard isn't as straitforward. They're superficially similar to the lore bard, you'd assume they'd get expertise in deception and slight of hand maybe plus something like mage hand. But that's really similar to the Lore bard's training just more specific. And its not really clear how to modify their bardic inspiration here. Lore bard uses inspiration to hinder foes and valor uses it to boost allies. This makes me think that they just said the lore bard basically covers what a guile bard would need, and the guile bard was aborted because the lore bard killed it and took its stuff. One could potentially poach some Arcane Trickster features, but that actually also covers much of the same ground as a guile bard would. The college of satire bard from unearthed arcana (and college of blades bard too mabye) also suggests that if they did consider a guile bard concept initially they abandoned it.

What's odd here is that the battlerager was clearly forseen and released in the SCAG where it maybe belongs (really wish they had just renamed the class berserker still). The storm sorcerer looks like it wasn't done in time for the main book, which also makes sense why it would be left out. They only had so much time to test it and so much space in the book: they just happened to leave the flavor text in. These are obviously things the designers considered and found worked well or otherwise filled a niche. The druidic avenger could just have been a nod towards a land-druid who liked flame blade (following their rule of threes for the class intros) but it is a reasonably obvious concept that would add a bit more diversity to the druid and wouldn't take up that much space in the book. And the druid is the only class other than the ranger that is left with only two subclasses after the SCAG came out, though the circle of the land does have many sub-options within it. There's easily space for another druid build, especially a smaller one like what I sketched out above. So I'm not sure why it wasn't fleshed out unless I'm totally misinterpreting the signs here. Finally, the guild bard seems like a viable option, but maybe less so once the lore bard was finished  and they moved on to some other directions that seemed more viable.

Ridiculous 5e spells for villains

Playing Curse of Strahd, I have a hankering to let the villains do some creative spellcasting. I made nice use of the 5th level spell scrying as a PC in my Princes of the Apocalypse game, and its given me more inspiration to use some by-the-book spells in nifty ways. I mostly looked through the wizard list on the 5esrd (all of it) as the big-bads in Strahd seem to use the wizard list (Strahd, Baba Lysaga, and the Old Bonegrinder ladies). There's probably others, but these were some of the initial thoughts.

Curse of Strahd spoilers below. I'm sure I read somewhere about an alternate spell list in Strahd for when one of the villains prepairs for the PCs, but I can't find it anywhere now. These spells will give some nice fodder for that though, and a few are already on the character's normal lists.

Running Curse of Strahd (and gussying it up a bit)

I like Curse of Strahd. I wanted to run it. So I am.

However.

This is still quite a beast. I've been running a number of modules these days with my Al-Qadim Church game, and starting to get a better feel for what I really need to run them successfully. Some have been great. Some... not as great. Organization has been the biggest problem for most of them. So while its been quite an endeavor to get through the material for the big picture with Strahd, its all the little details of running it at the table that were most frustrating. Four examples:

1. I knew that Ireena wanted to bury her father. But I couldn't remember why Donovich wouldn't do it. Or why they were able to make a coffin on their own but couldn't drag it across town on their own. Had to wing that and it didn't quite work. Alas.
2. The card reading was pretty slick. However, afterwards the players wanted more advice on interpreting the cards. I wasn't overly forthcoming. Not quite sure who other than Rictavio or Ezmerelda would help out there.
3. The maps of places have ridiculous things labeled and described, like the well outside of the Blue Water Inn. There's a well on the map, I'm not sure it needs to be numbered and described. If the map was labeled "well" that would have more than sufficed.
4. Yeska. This kid is named in St. Andral's church and its plot, but there's no details about him. So I was frustrated that I couldn't find where he was described in more detail in the book, but it turns out he isn't.

I think a bit more organization could have helped with all of these: better overviews and some input from playtesting. And Bryce's suggestion of cutting 75% of the text. I still don't get why location Z has so many named NPCs and other locations have few-to-none.  I assume its because literally a lot of the castle text is word-for-word what is in the old modules (well, I've got House of Strahd from 2nd edition, not the original I6, but still).

But what I want to do here is set out a few resources and tricks that I've decided to look into and try as I make my own notes on how to run it, so I can hopefully run it again in the fall and do it better. Because the book is big, and you need a quick overview of the big picture, a few ways to address some of its faults, and some tips for running things at the table.

One of the best resources is the powerscore Guide to Curse of Strahd. Pretty helpful for getting a solid overview of each chapter. Its got some nice suggestions for gussying the module up a bit and making minor changes. One of the best resources, and I've now realized I need to write my own version of it soon. Because I think I can maybe do better, at least for the material I have left, or at least do it better for me to help me run Strahd. This is great, but not quite enough for me at the table. I need to spend a bit of time really making decent notes for each location, and if they're good I might put it out there as my own gussied up Strahd guide.

The second most helpful item thus far is the Curse of Strahd DM's Kit & Screen. It has material both for gussying and for actually running the adventure, but its not as helpful as the powerscore blog. I thought a few of its suggestions were wishy-washy and untested, but it definitely gave me some inspiration and a nice index of named characters and entities. And the tables on its "screen" are actually useful, unlike the official Curse of Strahd DM's Screen which includes maps for no good reason. I mean... the Barovia map isn't half bad on the screen except you can't count the hexes. Basically I feel like unless you want the front screen art (and even that I didn't find impressive) its not useful.

The Tarokka cards are nice, though I could have easily gotten by with the old deck I had from the 90s. In fact, I love how the 90s deck is still colored red and black, which actually makes it easier to use for more than just the reading in game. I bought two DMs Guild products that were supposed to let me make more use out of it (Tarokka Deck Unleashed and Tarokka Expansion) but neither actually made me want to use the products. They both include some pretty wicked-hard tables to use in game. Good ideas, not implemented that well. Instead I took the idea of using the deck as dice and made it better by removing the high cards so you just have 4 suits of 10 cards each (you separate them anyway for the reading). Without needing to consult a ridiculous table I've got a d4 (suits 1-4), d8 (4 suits 1-4, add 4 if the card is even),  d10 (number), d20 (number +10 for 2 suits), d100 (number draw twice). If you need a d6 or d12 its doable but not as clean still, but none of this requires looking at a table really. Also, the encounter rolls of d8 + d12 are equivalent to 2d10 so no worries there, just adjust the probabilities for road/wilderness stuff as needed. The reason the old deck is a little nicer is that is has two color suits vs all black suits: this makes the d20 easy (red = number +10, black = number). I rarely remember to use inspiration in 5e, but I plan on handing out the high cards to represent inspiration when needed, and stealing the Wraith: The Oblivion shadowguide model of passing your personality traits to the player on your left so they're watching out for you.

A few of the suggestions for gussying the game up then:

Rolling ability scores. I used my now standard-ish ploy of letting humans use the standard array but needing to roll ability scores in order to play other races. Standard humans can re-arrange their scores, or either standard or variant humans can take the array. Everyone is human, but a couple picked standard human to keep the natural 17s they rolled. I mostly like this system because there may be inspiration to play what you rolled, there's a back-up if your rolls are terrible, and the party isn't a Mos Eisley cantina of strange folks in a human world.

Cut the cards. Rather than remove any locations from the adventure, I pulled out about 13 cards from the reading. I picked some of the less exciting locations and removed the possibility that the fortunes of Ravenloft would require the PCs to go to these places. That seemed to be the easiest cut to make rather than trying to legit remove the Amber Temple or silver dragon knights or have Sir Klutz be the party's greatest ally.

XP. I've tried to break down all the "heroic acts" in the adventure and am planning on giving XP for every 2-3 things they accomplish. I like this much more than the generic milestones because its more like XP but less number intensive. Much more like the 13th Age style of incremental advances: 4 sessions and you level, but here I'm making them earn each one. I still need to solidify this list a bit, its likely I can make a decent subsystem out of it that others will find useful.

Spells. Back when I thought one player was going to play a wizard, I made a random table to add some basic rituals and a few other spells to the Barovian witches' spellbooks (or other NPCs). I don't think I need to do that now since no one is a wizard or tome-pact warlock. This felt like a really satisfying gussy though because as a tome-pact warlock in Princes of the Apocalypse, I'm not finding any ritual scrolls except when the DM let me pick which scrolls we found.

Enemies prepare (moar spells). I might use some of the above spell ideas when Strahd, Baba Lysaga, and Morgantha start fucking with the party. I'm excited for them to use animal messenger or sending to get messages to the PCs. PCs will be making Wisdom saves to avoid Scrying each day now. I'm also excited to fuck the PCs using the dream spell. Basically the idea is to adjust spell lists for when the enemies become aware of the PCs as a threat. I might also create a few new spells like this (an undead version of animal messenger?) or look through the old books to see if there are some other spells for spying and communication that have gotten lost in the editions.

So this isn't too much gussying, I'm going to rush the players through this, but if I get the chance to run this again I think I'll keep what works for sure and decide what else I might could add in or change. The weird part though is while people say the adventure is replayable, I feel like there could be more that's card-dependent. Like... each of the interesting events in a location could be card-cued, or even the creature type of some of the allies/enemies. Its a bit of a disappointment at the moment, actually, that more isn't randomly determined. But that's musing for another day.

RamaD&Dan: Curse of Strahd

So when Curse of Strahd came out, it inspired me a bit. I had never really looked at the original Ravenloft module (or its 2e revision, 2e reprint, 3e reimagining...) despite it being a classic. Ravenloft, the setting, likewise didn't really inspire me too much. I can kinda dig the horror and I'm apparently way too keen on undead enemies, but I never got into it as a campaign. Despite this, Strahd inspired me a bit, so I stole one idea during the Viking Bachelor Party D&D marathon, and convinced myself I could run Strahd in 5 weeks during Ramadan.

Game starts tonight.

What I've found really inspiring is a few of the villains, and the fact the module has lots of room for reactions from the NPCs. Basically, each chapter has a few options of what might happen in the location which you can use the first time the characters enter a location or wait till a later time. Oh. And Strahd himself will start actively hunting the party eventually. Yeah.

So obviously I stole that for the White Whale portion of Viking D&D, in which the party saw clear signs of what could have been a dragon, fought it in its lair twice before chasing it as it fled. The dragon was powerful, took a few PCs down but didn't quite kill any. But the players thankfully retreated when they were being licked, and so did the dragon. I can't wait to do this with Strahd and some hags.

I have a big concern though, which leads me to want to run this twice. I have about 25 hours of game play for Curse. That's maybe ok for the original module, but might not quite be enough if I want them to do much of the adventure. They need to do something levelworthy the first four sessions and then go fight Strahd on the 5th (I'm starting them at level 4, so they'll be level 8 by the end hopefully). Because running a module like this is so much prep, I want to run it a second time to get the most out of it. So maybe I'll run it again Sept-Nov, it'll be less prep the second time I'm sure.

The real hard part is figuring out what to cut. I'm working on a list of all the "heroic deeds" that players might do, which is giving me some ideas of what to chop out. There's some suggestions I've found online and at the DMs Guild to suggest how to shorten things (one interesting one is move Argynvostholt to Krezk and replace the Abbey of St. Markovia), but I think I've decided to simply remove 13 cards from the deck to begin with. This way the players won't be required to go to one of the places I'm less keen on (Argynvostholt, Abbey of St. Markovia, Tower of the Mad Mage, Van Richten's Tower, Tsolenka Pass, or the Amber Temple). I've left some in that I do really like (I apparently like hags and witches as well as undead), so those might still feature in the game.

I'm opting not to physically remove or change any places or NPCs, I just think some're just not quite as exciting to me and won't let the cards force the players to go there. I did a pre-draw and all the treasures ended up at the castle anyway, but the winery may be a red herring if they don't do a new draw in-game.

So I'm excited for this. I found a number of interesting ideas online to add in, and I'll probably put up a post soon with some of them.

Of course, anyone considering running Curse of Strahd should also check out this guide.

Water is a terrible element (yet its still my favorite despite being horribly suboptimal in D&D)

While nominally working on my Al-Qadim Church game (I was also tinkering with some 5e stuff for the Princes of the Apocalypse game I'm playing in and working on a secret project), I've been going through a lot of old and new D&D stuff looking at water spells. My conclusion: no one can write a decent water spell to save their lives.

First problem: what sort of damage does water do? You can't really have a water elementalist without enough water spells, but you also can't really have a water elementalist in 5e without those spells doing damage. The Elemental Evil Player's Companion addresses this a bit by adding some spells that do bludgeoning damage. That makes sense: you conjure a big pile of water and whump someone with it. There was an old water blast in Al-Qadim as well, which is just a big spray of water (generally to the face). Unlike fire, however, there's really only one or two big watery face-blasts you can get away with it seems. Thus far one of my favorites is called Cone of Teeth from 2nd edition, where your watery blast takes the form of shark's teeth and rends your enemies.

Second problem: If you're not conjuring water, you're restricted to natural bodies of water. So many spells involve letting things normally on land bypass or function under water. Maybe you need to float or swim or breathe or see in the water? There's a spell for that, and a water elementalist can surely cast it. Possibly a couple different versions of it.

Third problem: Mist/fog is water, but its also air. A lot of the fog spells are listed as both air and water, and its easy to see why. Rain and weather are a combo of the two elements. So, for better or for worse, air and water need to share some spells or you have to decide to try to limit your possibly spells by restricting things to one or the other element. Related: does waterbreathing fall under air or water, or should there be a distinction between water breathing and lasting breath spells?

Fourth problem: ships are both air and water, but also neither. Ship spells are another issue all together. A lot of water spells are found in ship/pirate type games and supplements because it makes sense that they'd be useful in the setting. But is a spell to conjure rigging really a water spell? What about one that strengthens or weakens a ship's hull? Some of the ship spells are even nonsensical if you consider a water-wizard or water-sorcerer to be a "sea" type. Sea things often include storms and ships, by why the heck would a storm-sorcerer have the power to weaken a hull or conjure rigging with their innate magic? Why would a sea wizard gain any benefit for casting those spells which seem like tangentally related spells?

Fifth problem: Ice. Ice is the easy way out. Sure it makes a little sense since water is actually ice, but not when a water elementalist's primary means of attack is doing cold damage with a frostbite spell or a cone of cold. I certainly don't think a pirate in an Arabian Adventure (or, honestly, pirates in general) should be using Ice Knife and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm as their primary offensive spells till they hit 5th level. Ice sure can make for a nicely thematic set of spells though, especially if you add in wind/weather (and maybe some enchantments and northern lights type spells).

Sixth problem: Conjuration or Transmutation (or Evocation)? Related to the second problem, you can easily make many a water spell a conjuration and then you have no ridiculous need to cast it in/near a body of water. This could be the case with so many spells that it blurs the artifical lines between the codified 8 schools of magic in D&D. In 5e I can really see why they remove a lot of those sorts of limits in spells so tidal wave and wall of water don't need to rely on the surrounding environment. Still, if the schools weren't such a big thing it might be nice for them to get a boost in power when cast in the right environment.

So, what's the verdict? Its hard to concoct some original water spells. I bet everyone could come up with about a 6-12 fairly distinct ones (depending on the granularity) but everyone will basically cover the same ground with their water spells (stay dry, go underwater, get over the water, blast of water, something ice, something fog, manipulate the current/flow...). So I'm left with a few different feelings on this. One can either stretch the definitions of water a bit (and if you do that, why not add in a scalding steam spell alongside a bit of ice and fog), or accept the fact that if a player wants a water elementalist its part of the DM's job to ensure the setting supports water (i.e. ships or rivers will be involved). The latter is a bit unsatisfying, so maybe there's a few more ways one can make spells which are thematically watery (a spell that smooths and polishes objects, or alternately bloats and cracks them; scrying in a pool of water) that can be used to expand the list a bit.

Side note: all the elements are a bit repetitive, but somehow air, earth, and fire ones don't seem quite as bad. 

Fixing D&D 5th Editon

Things I want to fix in 5e – A minor rant / thought catalogue:

1) Barbarians. The class should be called berserker, because that's what it is. It also opens up a bit more space to make a religious dervish berserker option as well as fixing a few lackluster elements.

2) Clerics. This class works well for good deities, but I wish domain were separate from vocation, so we could have a crusader of Moradin, a theurge of Moradin, a prophet of Moradin, and an evangelist of Moradin.

3) Rogues. They need a feature that rewards dagger use or else we need to differentiate weapons better. A general +1 to hit with daggers might suffice, but every rogue wants a rapier and hand crossbow just because anything else is stupid. Alternately, daggers and short swords just need some crazy bonus properties and the like.

4) Sorcerer and Warlock. There should be a mechanism to reward these classes for sticking to thematic spells. I'm not sure what it would be, but if you're consciously restricting yourself to a very thematic list a bonus spell known might be a nice reward. I had considered: remove 50% of the spells from your class list at each level for one bonus first level spell, but I'm not quite sure that would be the best way to do it.

5) Useful ability scores. Intelligence is a shit score in this edition. The same can be said of strength, mostly. Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma are almost always a dump stat. Dexterity is still stupidly potent, wisdom and constitution are just generically useful for most characters, and constitution, at least, will seldom be dumped because no one wants a penalty to their HP.

6) Useless ribbons. The elf and dwarf racial weapon ribbons are almost useless. They don't help the warrior types at all (who already have the weapons) and any class that dumps strength (wizard, sorcerer) will find them next to useless as they'll go to great lengths to avoid using them. The only real exception are classes that fight with simple weapons, like the cleric or druid because they might possibly have the stats to use them in melee. Allowing the trained weapons to count as finesse weapons might help, as dexterity-based characters might use them, as well as opening up a few more options for rogues.

7) Spell leveling. A lot of spells need to level more, with simple duration increases, or possibly eliminating the need for concentration eventually (even if its just a slot of 6th level or higher). This is a great idea, just not quite universally applied (you find it always on combat spells, occasionally on utilities). I suspect its easier to have the formula for combat spells, and leaving it off of utilities makes things simpler and requires less space in the book.

8) Spell versatility. There's a good number of spells which can and will have creative uses, and I think a number of them are obvious. What if I ready create water for when an enemy casts a fire spell? Can calm emotions affect a barbarian's rage? Can I use featherfall on an boulder about to hit me? Some of these are relatively obvious, and once a DM makes a ruling there's a new use for that spell for the entire campaign. A few guidelines or basic rules might help make those rulings.

9) Working modular dials. Many of the DMG options for hacking the system seem half-baked (group initiative, removing skills, etc.). It would be nice to have at least one well-thought-out option for these, though reasonably speaking there's probably 2-3 ways to implement a lot of those things. Altering the rests/healing seems to be the best of the options, but there's not really things for lowering the level of magic or fantastic in the game.

10) Updates for previous settings. Sure, I can run old modules with 5th edition rules, but each of the old settings could use a few things to help out. Obviously each setting could have its own book, but a simple 16-32 page book of a few crunchy updates would really help. I'd pay for the print-on-demand softcover, probably multiple times.

An elegant solution to the cleric problem

I've been debating writing up my ideas for an improved 5e cleric class, and have a few that I really like. The idea is to make the cleric a much more versatile and customizeable class, rather than what the cleric is now. To that end, there's a few simple fixes. Conceptual at the moment, I might mock up a version later. I'll say cleric and priest interchangeably, but I might ultimately call it a priest because there's not a real reason you couldn't also use the cleric class in the same game as this priest.

Spells and domains. The cleric spell mechanism is stupid. For some reason, they're much more flexible than wizards in their spells known (two bonus domain spells for spell levels 1 through 5!) and any increase to the number of cleric spells automatically makes all clerics more versatile. I think there's a solution to this problem (that I've written about twice before) to be found via Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperboria: just give them a few spells per level. When clerics and druids have a whole list to choose from, its unbalanced. Wizards have to work to expand their list of spells knowable, so why can't clerics? Originally, clerics had a thematic and reasonable spell list which wasn't too big, so why not keep it that way? Then, you can expand the list with a few simple mechanisms. I think it would work something like this:

1) All clerics have access to a small set of pretty iconic priest spells. This is basically the sphere of All from 2nd edition, with a few staples in it like bless and protection from good/evil. So make that 2-3 spells per spell level.

2) Add to that a couple iconic domain spells. All clerics of a specific faith gain the training/insight of their deity or aspect of the deity. This is largely what happens in 5e, and similar to gaining one or two spheres in 2nd edition.

3) Add one more layer to the system, where, based on a cleric's wisdom, you gain a few bonus spells for insight. This allows a player to pick 1-5 additional spells per spell level that a cleric can add to their list which are derived through piecing together obscure bits of theology or delving deeper into the mysteries of their faith. These might be restricted to secondary domains or spheres, but means the player has a finite set of possibilities. This could be ditched simply by expanding the universal cleric list a bit (still restricted from what it currently is), but I like the idea of being able to pick a few additional spells that others of your order might not have access to.

4) As is, you keep prepping spells normal-like, you just create a custom list for each priest. Its definitely not as simple as the current system, but I could imagine two clerics of Lolth in a drow game with different spells this way.

Cross this spell system with a vocation system. Just like fighters or thieves choose an archetype at 3rd level, why not give clerics another meaningful choice? Priests would have a few distinct options:

A) Crusader. The militant of the faith. This option would get a few combat bonuses, like weapon and armor training and extra attack.

b) Evangelist. This is the skillful priest, who gains expertise in persuasion and performance. Alternately you could reword this as votary so the archetype is trained in the deity's ways, so it might cover thief skills for a god of thieves or knowledge skills and tools as appropriate. Or maybe they're two distinct options.

c) Theurge or mystic. This is the caster priests, who probably gains a few additional spell options and maybe a "divine recovery" for a few extra spell slots. You could get halfway to wizard by allowing a theurge to maintain a ritual book as well, giving them more rituals (or a limited number of rituals, like 1 their wisdom modifier).

d) Prophet. A cleric free from the heirarchy, the prophet might lose some basic spell training but gain some big guns and granted powers.

This makes a cleric about as complex as a warlock, with two meaningful choices (domain/deity at level 1 and vocation at level 3).  And I can imagine a game in which the party all follows one deity yet has multiple clerics in the group actually working.