Preview: The Ethereal Bard
The fiolliowing is an element from Chapter 2 of my campaign, The Coming Dark. If you are one of my players and have not reached Chapter 3, you may not want to read this.
D&D 4e has very specific rules on how certain powers affect "allies" and "enemies", but those rules always make the assumption that there are two sides to every conflict. What if there's a third party that's laying down effects that change every round?
For one of my favorites scenes in my campaign I created a thing I call the "Ethereal Bard". Imagine walking in to an inn and, instead of seeing a band on stage or a sole minstrel playing music, there's a semi-transparent illusion of a bard playing music, and that magical construct reacts to requests from patrons, plays songs according to the situation or mood in the main area, or simply plays songs at random. And, when violent action ensues, it doesn't quite know how to react to everything that's going on, so it starts to play random songs more frequently.
Furthermore, each song is similar to a bard's power, treating *everyone* within range of the music as either an ally or as a friend depending on the power.
Here is my official write-up of it:
THE ETHEREAL BARD
The “Ethereal Bard” is a magical device that appears as a humanoid musician with any number of different instruments in hand. The musician himself is an illusion, powered by the magically infused pedestal it stands upon. There is a tip jar near the pedestal at its feet that contains mixed silver and copper pieces.
The bard plays music appropriate to what is going on in the lobby, or will play a completely random song. It will also take requests, giving preference to any creature that adds coins in to its tip jar.
When combat in the lobby begins, the Ethereal Bard floods the room with inspirational music. At the start of each round, it will begin to play one random song that has a magical effect on everyone that can hear it in the lobby.
At the start of each combat round, roll a d6 against the table below to determine the effect. The effect applies to every non-deafened creatures in the lobby until the end of the round, when the device will choose another song.
1) Song of Courage: The device plays an uplifting song that includes shouts of encouragement, making it seem as if a large crowd was cheering.
Effect: Any creatures that hears the song gains a +1 power bonus to attack rolls.
2) Song of Defense: The device intones a battle hymn, bolstering your abilities to resist attack.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song gains a +1 power bonus to AC.
3) Song of Conquest: The device begins to play a bolstering song that makes everyone fight with renewed vigor.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song and hits an enemy with an attack gains +3 THP.
4) Song of Recovery: The device begins to play an inspiring song that instills a sense of perseverance.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song gains a +2 power bonus to saving throws.
5) Savior’s Song: The device begins to play a song inspiring determination and focus, with hopeful verses of battles won despite daunting odds.
Effect: Any creature that hears the song can reroll one saving throw that he or she fails during the turn.
6) Song of Speed: The device begins to play a rousing refrain, imbuing everyone with increased speed and agility.
Effect: Any creature in earshot gains +4 power bonus to speed and can shift 1 extra square whenever he or she shifts.
I mean, just imagine it... Our heroes and the bad guys are duking it out in the lobby, upending tables and throwing chairs at each other, all the time while music from an illusionary bard plays in the background and boosts their abilities.
I considered giving this device an XP weight, but since both the allies and enemies could take advantage of it I decided not to. Just another zone effect to add to the excitement of the encounter.
So what do you think? Anyone out there used something similar?
-=O=-
On a semi-related note, Chapter 1 of my campaign is pretty much complete and being reviewed by a few people. Soon it will be released to the public, and I hope you enjoy it!
And there is a little over a day left in our contest to win "Heroes of Shadow"! Get those submissions in quick!
The Coming Dark, Chapter One
After somewhat of a sleepless night last night (if you follow me on Twitter, you know why. If not, don't ask...), I have decided to buckle down and compile "Chapter One: Homecoming", the first of about eight chapters in my campaign, "The Coming Dark".
There's one section to be completed - the conclusion, which would transition in to the next chapter (that doesn't even have a name) - but beyond that it clocks in at 43 pages. That might sound like a lot, but I admit I'm somewhat thorough; it includes detailed tactical maps, a reprint of some of the new monsters in the appendix, and a lot of talk. In addition - again, due to a noisy, sleepless night - I created a supplement containing all the tactical maps in a usable format (1" squares, no monster or zone markings) that weighs in at 53 pages.
The module consists of five tactical encounters (including one "boss"), two skill challenges and several other ways to gain XP here and there. It's intended for five first party characters, and by the end of the chapter they will be dangerously close to level 2 (about 100xp shy, by my count).
I intend to publish this campaign through my DriveThruRPG publisher page and through other venues. In the meantime, I am looking for a handful of people (3-5, I imagine) that would be willing to review my module for errors (everything from grammar to mechanics) and to see how I did in terms of story, execution and overall "fun-ness" of the campaign. Plus, quite honestly, my biggest concern is how this campaign would translate to the table top; since it was originally designed for "play by post", I have attempted to make several changes in it to try to make it more table friendly.
If you would be willing to review this for free, please let me know via email to dflor@brainclouds.net and I'll provide a pre-release copy.
WARNING: If you are currently playing my campaign, this chapter contains a fair amount of spoilers, so I'd be very hesitant in letting you see it in the first place. Be warned!
Critical Effects
One of the biggest complaints I had about D&D 4e is that a "critical hit" didn't really mean as much as they use to, and many people that discussed the topic missed the ways it was done in the past. In 4e a "critical" usually means not much more than "max damage", and "max damage" wasn't much different than being lucky on die rolls. I mean, a dagger would roll "max damage" 25% of the time as it is... That hardly seemed like anything special or dramatic.
I know that, as levels progress and magic weapons become more readily available, the damage and effects do add up. In one of the campaigns I'm running I'm playing a goliath tempest fighter that, when he crits, has a boatload of damage and effects piled on to the maximum damage. When he critical hits, he causes:
- Maximum damage on the main weapon (2d6 +17 = 29 damage)
- +4d6 damage on the main weapon, +4d8 if I have combat advantage (Chainreach Short Sword +4)
- +2d6 with Executioner's Bracers
- +1d10 with Devastating Critical feat
- Gains Resist 10 all until the end of his next turn
- If the critical hit is with the main hand, gets an attack with the off-hand as a free action.
So damage on an MBA rockets up from a mere 19-29 hit points of damage to a bone crushing 36-83 damage on a critical hit (plus an additional attack with the off-hand), almost three times as much. Then again, he was designed for this sort of thing; I don't imagine the "average" character being able to do that much.
That character is level 23, however; he's already working through his epic destiny. What about a character that's level one? Shouldn't rolling a natural 20 be something special regardless of your experience, above and beyond being lucky on the damage roll?
And there's another issue: what if the attack roll isn't a damaging roll? In one of the online campaigns I'm running we have an invoker that likes to use Whispers of Defeat every chance he gets. It gets an attack roll (Wisdom vs Will) but it doesn't actually cause any damage. Rolling a natural 20 on that means absolutely nothing, and I'm not even sure if the magic weapon damage bonus applies to that sort of attack.
So while looking around the 'net I found a "Critical Effect Chart" that seems to satisfy most of the issues. Here is the one I am currently using:
Critical Hit Effect: Roll a d20
1-2: Target deafened until end of target's next turn (-10 to Perception checks).
3-4: Target weakened until end of target's next turn (half damage against all targets).
5-6: Target blinded until end of target's next turn (everything has concealment, -5 to basic attacks).
7-8: Target slowed until end of target's next turn (movement speed reduced to 2).
9-10: Target pushed 1 square and knocked prone; attacker can shift 1 square as immediate reaction.
11-12: Attacker makes another melee or ranged basic attack against target as a free action.
13-14: Attacker gains 3 temporary hit points for each tier (+3 THP in Heroic tier, +6 THP in Paragon tier, +9 THP in Epic tier).
15-16: Target dazed until end of target's next turn (only one action, move, minor or standard).
17-18: Target is bleeding (ongoing 5 damage, save ends).
19: Target is stunned until end of target's next turn (no actions).
20: Attacker adds extra 1w (2w for Paragon tier, 3w for Epic tier) to the damage total.
I apply the above to ANY "attack roll", so a natural 20 on Whispers of Defeat still has the possibility of causing some more lasting effects. Also note that this is meant to be in addition to the documented rules: weapons still do maximum damage and magic weapons and implements still do additional damage due to their enchantment.
In the above chart, if the creature rolls another 20 and the source of the attack doesn't have an explicit "W" defined, use the attack's base die, multiplying x2 for Paragon tier and x3 for Epic tier. For example, a warlock's Eldritch Blast would cause an additional 1d10 per tier.
The blog also contains a "Critical Miss" chart. I considered it at first, but after discussing it with my players I elected not to use it. Reason? I think it's too much. We're talking about seasoned adventurers here, and I just don't feel that they're going to go all Keystone Kops 5% of the times they make an attack roll (the odds are even higher for burst effects). When a monster critically misses, it's DM's choice whether to turn it in to a bumbling idiot - I have had undead trip over themselves and bandits fire arrows in to the backs of their allies because of a critical miss - but I don't think the players should ever be that stupid.
All in all, it works out real well. Players get excited when they have to roll for the critical effect, even during the first encounter of a level 1 campaign.
Bioware Read My Mind
I've been designing my campaign for quite some time now. Officially, the campaign's been built in the D&D 4e mechanic for about nine months, and before that some of the underlying concepts have existed as part of an alternate reality game that I've been designing for almost two years. A lot of the ideas came to me in the same manner most of my good ideas come: in the middle of the night, while driving, in the shower, etc...
A week ago I purchased Dragon Age: Origins "Ultimate" Edition ($40 on Steam, I think). Everyone I know who's played it loved it, and it's a game that I've been looking forward to playing myself for quite some time, but didn't have the necessary hardware to run it adequately until recently. I've been playing it since, logging close to 40 hours of play time, and it's kind of awkward for me to see several of my ideas - ideas that I had thought were original creations of mine - in the game.
Some of the things are slightly different but the similarity exists at the core. And some things are almost direct copies... For example, DA:O has a village called Haven. My campaign has a village named Haven as well (to be honest, I was inspired by the Haven in Everquest 2), and it's eerily similar in terms of what it contains (I don't want to elaborate for spoiler reasons, as it relates to DA:O as well as my own campaign).
And it doesn't end there. Even the first two encounters are remarkably similar to the assault on Ostagar. They have "darkspawn", I have "shadowtouched" and "darktouched". Two companions are remarkably similar to NPCs I created for my campaign, and one of them even shares a similar name. I also found at least three world NPCs that are similar to NPCs in my world as well. Even my main antagonist makes an appearance (he is an older person in DA:O, but still). And there are several quests and even some items that are similar to what I had created on my own.
Similarities in any design process are inevitable. Someone once said that there's no such thing as an "original" idea any more (which is why Hollywood insists on remaking anything they can think of). And I admit that I probably share some background to those that created this content for Bioware: game designers/D&D player. "Great minds think alike," if you will.
But in the back of my mind I have a problem. During my campaign design I knew nothing about DA:O, and little did I know I was creating something that many might think is a mirror image of it. People might look at my creation and think "he took this from Dragon Age", even if I know for a fact that wasn't the case.
So here I am, seriously considering if I should rename my version of the village of Haven. Part of me doesn't want to change it because its design came out of my mind and, although inspired by loads of reference materials, is not "ripped" from a popular game. But another part of me can't help but think how many people out there would read my campaign and think just that.
Maybe I'll call it "Kirkwall"... That's original, right?
Ever Forward
Before I continue with this blog, I thought I'd clarify a little about myself. I am a "gamer" in the traditional sense, and have been involved with game design and game development for close to 25 years. But, as far as D&D goes, I'm somewhat inexperienced when it comes to running a campaign in person... I'm currently DM-ing four different campaigns and playing in around six or seven, all of which are "play by post" (mostly on the Wizards of the Coast forums). The last time I played a live session of D&D - with other humans - was around 1988.
A lot of my ramblings will seem to most as the trivial, nonsensical banter from someone who may not know what he's talking about and is not experienced in this sort of thing. I freely admit that, when it comes to running a campaign that isn't exclusively online, I don't have the level of experience in this genre that most of my readers do. I will make mistakes, say things that are incorrect, talk about things that have been talked to death... Simply because I'm clueless.
As it turns out, Critical Hits had an article today called "So You Want to Write RPGs", which talks about what it takes to be an RPG designer... And it got me thinking a bit. Of the seven things listed, I fail miserably at a couple of them, and the ones that I do fail at might not be that easy to remedy because of personal situations and available means (full time job, family, geography, etc...). So if I do want to make a run of this sort of thing, I have a lot of work to do. Will that stop me from doing what I want to do? Probably not. If I don't follow those suggestions and continue on the way I have been, I might end up with a product that sucks.
Honestly, I don't care if it does.
Ten years ago I was the lead programmer of a group called "The Redeemed Assassins", and we were developing The Opera: an add-on for the original Half-Life from Valve Software. Development of TO was a brutal, painstaking process that took several years, and during that time we suffered in ways I can't even begin to describe. But we did it anyway. When asked why we would go through so much trouble to create something that would be disliked by anyone who saw it, and would probably not last a week (we released at the same time that CounterStrike came on to the scene; 99% of all Half-Life servers were running CS at the time, and there simply wasn't an audience for anything else) we had a simple answer: "If one person found our product enjoyable, that will make us happy."
After over two years of development, we finally released it... And it lasted about three weeks before it was overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of CounterStrike servers. But, to our surprise and happiness, there was actually more than one person out there that really liked what we did. That made it all worthwhile, and despite appeasing only a handful of people it reassured us that the past two years weren't a total waste.
As nice as it would be, I'm certainly not doing this for fame or fortune. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I've been a game designer for almost twenty-five years and during that time I don't think I've ever been paid to do anything game related (Valve flew me for a day to Seattle to meet the HL2 development team... Does that count?). This isn't a career, and at this point in my life I'm not expecting to make a living doing this sort of thing. But I do it anyway because I do this for myself and the hope that there's someone out there that might actually enjoy my creations.
So I press on, pouring hours upon hours in to something that has no other apparent reward beyond being a part of it. I will continue development of this campaign in the way that I think it should be, even if some of my designs might be awkward and not for everyone. The campaign might end up being such a train wreck that that nobody will ever run it in a table top game, or it might be so campy and flawed that nobody cares for it.
But in the back of my mind I'll remain hopeful that one person out there might like it, or might benefit in some way from that which I do.
Until I find out who that one person is... "Ever forward."
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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