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Somehow It All Comes Back to the Giants

September 20, 2013 /

As a DM, I loved to provide players the opportunity to play just about anything. In many ways, I think like the gentleman behind this post about his 52 core races.

Because of that, I didn't have many humanoids as monsters. Whenever the random encounter tables would give me something like Bandits, I'd substitute orcs, gnolls, kobolds or ogres, depending on the level of party. Outside of that, I'd have to defer to the world's most interesting DM:

I don't often use humanoids as mosnters, but when I do, I use giants.

When I say use giants, I mean all of them ranging from the Hill Giants to Titans and a few extra ones in-between. To create a surprise for one of my groups, I developed a Swamp Giant. (It was the only place I could think of that didn't have one in the Monster books until the Fog Giant and Mountain Giant appeared in our Fiend Folio.)

Once we got the MMII with the fomorian, firbolg and verbeeg, I realized that I didn't need to define them by their climate. After that, giants with various names appeared in my adventures that were more like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk than anything else. Nothing I enjoyed more than having the big bad turn out to be an evil, intelligent giant.

Anything bigger than a Hill Giant couldn't be softened up much by a dozen henchmen. Anything smarter than an ogre presented an actual challenge: the giant would send ogres with an ogre mage to soften the party up. More powerful ones would send Hill Giants. I even had a magic-slinging Fire Giant use a Storm Giant he had blackmailed as a body guard.

What do you mean the Storm Giant wasn't the one terrorizing the area and threatening the local baron?

So, for your viewing pleasure, I present the original Swamp Giant and his sidekick, a giant nutria and muskrat. The Giant Bain Red Racoon was on the back, but the stats are not complete.

swampgiant

Call Them What You Will They Are Not Elementals

September 19, 2013 /

Sometime ago, I wrote a series of articles about creatures meant to replace elementals. I have nothing against elementals, it was just a thought experiment more than anything. Unaware of the Forgotten Realms for 4e, I called them primordials. Not wishing to interfere with Mr. Greenwood, et al, I'll thought I'd call them astrals for right now. That, of course, creates issues with Wartune.

Right.

Externals? No. Cruxals? No. Outsiders? Six categories of no. Planars? Maybe.

For now, we'll call them Samatalans.

The first one I wrote about were reskinned elementals with details added to explain how they could survive on our world. From there, they became more abstract. Here's a handy list of the traditional elements:

Here's a list of the non-traditional elements:

I didn't include the ice cream elemental, nor the creatures from the plane of letters, but you get the idea.

My favorite from the first list, is the Fire Samatalans. I always like Fire Elementals and would enjoy using these sugar-fearing creatures in any future campaign.

My favorites from the second list of non-traditional elementals, are either to Men of Iron and Stone or the Manus and Pria.

The Men of Iron and Stone, or Menois, are fun visually. They have these floating plates of metal that they can control to their advantage. These plates float on their bodies as if they lay on a sea of stone that appears to be solid and liquid at the same time.

The Manus and Pria are like a Cleric Elemental or something. Creatures make their own children using alchemy in the name of their god. The alchemical creation is not an aberration, but an aim at perfection. The children do not curse their creators, nor do they worship them. I guess they present existential ideas more than anything else.

Hopefully, I'm back on the bandwagon. See you tomorrow.

The Code of Magic

September 14, 2013 /

While mentally working through the favorite trap/puzzle post (which never appeared), I came up with a way of presenting magic items so that a solo adventurer should learn how to identify something about magic items over time. I assume that the solo adventurer is not a magic-user. My solo games, meaning 1 GM and 1 Player, usually feature a Fighter or a Thief. The system worked really well for a Thief, as it make a lot of sense for the class.

All magic items have a few glyphs on them and a word. As the player gets more familiar with the symbols and decoding the words, they will become better at estimating the particular magic an item has.

Essentially, magic effects are broken up into  eight categories: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necormancy and Transmutation. (I'm sure you recognize these as D&D's traditional schools of magic.) Each categories has its own unique glyph or symbol.

The magical category also determines the first and last letters of a code word that appears on the magic item. For example, any magic item with a Evocation effect will have a word that starts with the letter "m" and ends with the letter "r". The more powerful the item, the more letters appear between the first and last letters. For example, a scroll with a Light spell would have the code word mar while a staff that generates fireballs would be mentafer.

I'll get a pdf up of the entire system, soon. I plan on using Lorc Icons for symbols and a word generator for the rest. For the DIY folks (aren't we all, though?), here a link to get you started from the S&W Companion:

S&W Spells arranged by school

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