Making Mundane Weops. Unique

I've never been happy that almost every player picks long sword and greatsword, so I made a special chart to make them more unique. I use this in OSR and Pathfinder. I use 20 only as crit threat,double damage.

dagger +2 to hit, D4 damage
short sword +1 to hit, d6 damage
long sword, threatens crit on 19-20, D8 damage
battle axe, ignores one Damage resistance(scale at higher L?) D8 damage
Mace, 0ne damage on a miss(Scalable?) D8 damage (Ok , should prob only be vrs Metal armor but not looking for that kind of complexity)
spear D6 damage, d12 damage vrs large creatures
great sword 2d6 damage
military pick d6 damage, x3 damage on crit
great axe D10 damage, +3 to confirm crit
quarterstaff(2 handed) D6 damage 1 bonus to AC
Etc.

Link to GREAT post over on Dragons Foot

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=75374&p=1791863#p1791863

Very well thought out contiplation of RPING in modern day, check it out!

link in comments below works

My "cleric" for Crypts and Things

Secret Priest of Hope

The god Hope is the sole remaining truly good god of C&T He is an ascended artifact/holy sword and appears as a gold glowing great sword. He has survived because his ultimate power was true, unending and absolute invincibility and immortality.This is the result of his being a real manifestation of the concept of hope, a spark of good that can never be extinguished. He has lost the vast majority of his power and only a tiny few of his servants survived with him(a very few avatars of holy great swords)


The Others are at this time  are only suspicious that Hope exists, it's just a question of time. It is your ULTIMATE goal that knowledge of Hope be kept from general knowledge.


He uses his meager power to give life to a very few covert clerics, holding on to the possibility of good triumphing ultimately, prob a doomed philosophy. Although LG , he has become a stark realist in his methods.(He has acquired Neutral tenancies).With the weakness of hope in the world, he is far far more limited in his abilities but not his goals.
Priests of Hope have the following abilities and restictions

In all ways they are sorcerers except as follows.

Their patron is automatically Hope and they may have no other.

They do not have spellbooks but do have all the limitations of number of spells known
They may learn spells from spellbooks in any way a sorcerer could

They have use of both great sword and long sword but as the great sword is a dead give away of who they are Hope suggests that they have their companions carry these and only use them in the direst of emergency
Like wise they may wear chain but it does nothing to further their disguise and is strongly advised against.

All of their white spells are actually grey.
They MUST know exactly ONE black spell and only one.There are no restrictions as to what it may be and it MUST be changed(IE Known) once a month. They may not use this spell if they are carrying a great sword or wearing chain mail. Public use of this spell is strongly advised.

The priests are FORBIDDEN from associating with one another, there thus may only be one in a party. Any gathering of priests can only be undertaken at the direct order of Hope.
At NO time may they preach the faith except under direct orders of Hope.

They suffer a -1 on Luck tests vrs magic and successful saves result in the loss of 2 luck points

The following new spells are automatically known to priests

Superior Magic Weapon(all spell levels)
summons spell L +1 magic great sword, this spell is never memorized and can be substituted for an appropriate level spell 3/ a week.

Dreamsend
L2 white(registers as grey)
This spell can freely be cast in your sleep it allows the sending of a 25 word message to Hope or to any one who you have cast Receive Dreamsend on. Receive Dreamsend is a varient of this spell and the spell must be memorized separately

DM RANT (lucky) 13: OSR Cleric(if you rake away ONE thing from me,let it be this!)

Allow Spontaneous casting of cure spells by clerics! This means a cleric can substitute a cure spell for an appropriate spell. You can always set a limit on number of times per day they can do this. Makes clerics more than cure machines! I used to laugh at the spell lists of NPC clerics in old school products and magazines. 7th L clerics w/ only 2 CLW, laughable!

DM Rant 12ish Some thoughts on specific spells concerning OSR

I HATE Sleep and Color Spray, far, far too powerful BUT if your going to ignore Rant 11 ,they HAVE to stay, if your only going to get one spell it might as well be a doozy!

The more modern "Magic Weapon" is VERY suitable to OSR play(makes weop +1/+1 magic for a moderate amount of time) should be available to MUs and Clerics both

adding DOOM to clerics list will not kill you either(save for -2 to hit and saves, short duration)

Crypts and Things House rules are DONE!!!!!!!!!

Follow link in comments below!

Rude Surprise

I had the pleasure of playing a google game on hangouts. I only played 1 game of 1e,played a 6th L MU.

Wow do low level MUs suck in early D&D!!!!!
I spent almost 20 years making peep run L 1-5th wiz's!!! No wonder no one wanted to play MUs!!!!

I CAN"T BELIEVE I WAS THAT IGNORANT, THAT LONG!

Advanced Topic One: RPing in Combat

I assume most of my audience plays D&D (some version) and Pathfinder. We have picked an incredibly BAD system for RPing in Combat. The combat system we have picked is basically very abstract and does not suit itself for this. I think we are all missing the boat on this. I'm sure some of you handle this idea well, I do not. I almost approach combat as a war game. I never encourage this by RPing the monsters(it would be a great way to lead by example). It's something I am going to try and get started. As a player I recently attended Princecon 41. I was playing a mage and did a very col thing that ended me uo with 2nd place out of 80 or so gamers. Before the con I made a "spellbook" of the actual verbal components of my spells. I found a Marvel Comics Dr Strange site that listed hundreds of the spells he cast. I adapted a bunch for the most common spells I thought I would cast. Why can I do this as a player and not as a DM?

This is def something I need to think about and add to my games.

Prob the way to go about this is rewarding the RPing w in game bonuses, I've got a lot of thinking to do on this.

Pet Peeve's Two

I'm only semi involved in character creation, usually the extent of my intervention is selecting "volunteers" to play the Cleric and the Wizard. The cleric is necessary because I love a combat heavy session (I've mentioned previously: It is my best trait as DM). I find Wiz characters near indispensable for the kind of game I run (for some reason I can't fathom, I'm not thief friendly, got nothing against them).But the area I can be most intrusive in is: Character Names!

The players pick in this is very important to me. Silly names are right out! Usually overly complex, long or hard to pronounce will drive me into a frenzy.

I've really softened on this over the years, My new player a couple of days ago broke just about all my rules except silly. I did what I did now and gave him a short nickname and enforced it. He is Brew now( it was part of his incomprehensible name). Only thing I go active on these days is silly.

Really not sure why this is so important to me. It's not like I've had a ton of problems with this over the years.

I guess everybody has their quirks and this is a big one of mine.

Some Thoughts on Familiers

I have a huge collection of minis. One of my sub collections is familiers. I have around 60. the Warhammer game used to have about 20 , which was the start of the collection in 1986.

So I've got all these cool little guys: what to do with them? I put a demi-plane of familiers in my game.
Even non-Wiz going there can get a familier. Surprisingly it was never a popular destination, but this is where my campaigns beasties come from.

I give them to lichs, dragons, whatever and often make them very tuff for a warm up fight for a boss fight.

Using the Pathfinder rules these days the lore of the bonded item is too great and pcs never take them

In my homebrew rules , I made them pretty powerful, but also allowed bonded item instead, again the pcs never take them. My rules even allow them to "respawn" after death like 4 times a day. Nope bonded item rules supreme(for those of you that dont know: the bonded item allows the wiz to once a day cast any spell they know spontaneously)

Some ideas on familier types (as most things on this blog, geared for low level play.

Wiz type casts spells at 1/2 L of owner

fighter tyoe 1/2 casters HP and fights as fighter caster L

messenger/ scout type Flies and is highly intelligent capable of independannt thought speech and can be any distance from caster

thief type 1/2 wiz L

cleric type can use CLW once a day

Another use I have for the minis is as "true goblyns". Goblyns more akin to western myth, fey type.

A look at Memorization and a new spell type.

As a huge fan of the spell memorization type of magic I did a lot of thinking on it. One of my first concepts was the idea of "pits"

The idea is that spell slots are divided into compartments that are filled when you memorize spells,
a cantrip takes up 1 pit , a first L spell takes up 4 a second L spell takes up 6 a third L spell takes up 8 and so on by two. This also explains what can be substituted for what.This a first L spell can be turned into 4 cantrips and a third L spell can be turned into 2 first.

This also led me to create 1/2 L spells or as I like to call them petty spells, they fill in two pits, but they are not on the spells allowed list. In the lore of my world they are not popular and there are not that many of them. The only one that caught on with my players is Shout, it allows you to yell super loud for L rounds.

Another aspect of spell memorization that is mostly of use in RPing situations is I attached emotions to the spell schools that you must place your mind into in order to memorize spells of that school. All mage carry around a book that is filled with very short stories that enable you to create the emotional state to memorize.
For example , you would read a story about your birthday party when you were young, it would lead you to wonder what was in the brightly covered box in front of you. This would evoke the curiosity necessary to memorize a divination spell. I know, I know its both kinda cool and mostly useless.

A fresh look at an old item: Ioun Stones(and a mini review)

A quik history lesson first. Ioun Stone come from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series. The series is mostly about super high L mages and their adventures. The stones are never defined but mages had them in the hundreds, I always assumed they were a power source. (This is also where the D&D memorization of spells come from). Some of it is a little hard to read but I can't recommend the stories enuf. There is a tribute book by various authors called Songs of the Dying Earth that is also quite good. Anyway, back to gaming.

When I re read the Vance stuff about 10 yrs ago, I thought: Wouldn't it be cool to have the players fight liches with like 20-59 stones (the idea of Them circling the mage tickles me.) The only way to do this is to make a bunch of low powered stones so the treasure doesn't get out of hand when they kill the beasty.Thus was born the frequently given out , very minor , Ioun stone. some examples
+1 to any roll once a day(by far the most common one I gave out, some of them can be cumulative ,some can only be used alone)
+1 to one spells DC once a day(-1 to saves OSR)
One use individual cantrips
More specific +1s, to hit ,damage ,saves
recharge 1st L spell slot once a day
extra spell slots
+1 ac or saves for one encounter
Just love the idea of peeps walking around in cities with a few of these floating around their heads

Tell me what to post?!?!

That is all

Repeat Post: A note on New Spells you find here

Just a notice for new viewers, the mage spells here are for 7th L casters and below. The spells are NOT balanced for higher L casters(My new focus is balancing them for 4-5 L)

The GREAT idea hidden in the HORROR that was DnD 4th

Ok, I gave 4th ed a good try. I ran the group up to 27th level. I hated almost every min of it. I have no idea why I stayed with it for so long. But it had one truly great idea that OSR can steal: At will attacks.

The idea is that you give everyone several dif basic attacks that they can switch between, fighter are the ones most in need of this. Some examples from my OSR/3.5/4th mash up:

Every time you miss w/ a melee attack you get +1 to hit (max +3)
every time you hit you get +1 to damage( max +3)
+2 to hit but you do ONLY basic weapon damage
Every time you hit you get 2 temp HP
1/2 damage but opponent is -2 to hit

you can only do one of them at a time and it should scale w/ L, Fighters should get about 4 and everyone ese should get 2(they should be appropriate to char cass) You do only basic attacks on charge and AoO

New Spell type: Superior Spells

Superior spells are existing ones that you add a minor bonus to. Most often I have done this with clerical spells. For example I have given out Superior Bless in 2 versions, one that gives +1 to damage too and another that gives plus one to all saves. Superior Clerical spells that you have memorized can never be used as spontaneously cast cures. A Mage example is Superior Magic Weapon, it stacks w/ any other enhancement(first L version only). Give these out as "treasure" only, never let PCs learn them from other NPCs for money(unless that's HOW you want to give it out). Superior spells always have a casting time of one full round and cannot be further modified.

Old school musings Barbarian Class from White Dwarf 16? 8? Hell I don't remember

Ok I can't really call this a review but I remember a great deal of it from letting players play this for 20+ years(about 15 or so years ago) Originally published to go with OD&D, then updated for Greyhawk in a later issue.(some of my modifications are no doubt in here(such as RAW stated you must win initiative to gain First Attack Ferocity)
Here's what a First L one looked like
D8 HD
no armor allowed but +1 to AC(shield OK but come on >2handed sword!)
First Attack Ferocity Double damage at +2 to hit First strike in combat(none of this rage crap!)
80% Climb
20% catch missiles
25% move silently
40% Sign language(able to crudely communicate w intelligent creatures)
25% Sense Danger (30" range, immediate danger only, no idea of direction or type)

EP as Paladin

(Gygax later gifted us with the horrible UA class)

Making Mundane Weapons Unique

I've never been happy that almost every player picks long sword and greatsword, so I made a special chart to make them more unique. I use this in OSR and Pathfinder. I use 20 only as crit threat,double damage.

dagger +2 to hit, D4 damage
short sword +1 to hit, d6 damage
long sword, threatens crit on 19-20, D8 damage
battle axe, ignores one Damage resistance(scale at higher L?) D8 damage
Mace, 0ne damage on a miss(Scalable?) D8 damage (Ok , should prob only be vrs Metal armor but not looking for that kind of complexity)
spear D6 damage, d12 damage vrs large creatures
great sword 2d6 damage
military pick d6 damage, x3 damage on crit
great axe D10 damage, +3 to confirm crit
quarterstaff(2 handed) D6 damage 1 bonus to AC
Etc.

New Spell Type and an Example.

"Leach" spells are added to other spells memorized for example:
Xur the Not-So-Humble is a 3rd L wiz. one of the second L spells he has memorized is "Flaming Sphere" He adds the Leach spell "Leach Magic Missile" to it. He can cast either Flaming Sphere or Magic Missile from that slot. I suggest a limit on how many Leach spells you may attach, prob 1 per Levels you can cast, thus Xur can attach 1 Leach spell to a first L spell and 1 to a second. " Leach Jump" makes a good a good one to attach to a first L spell