Back to Work

Today is back to work for most of us.  I took the time off from Christmas to now and spent it at home.

Got in a lot of games with my kids.  Mostly I worked on some projects I have needed to get done with.  Made good progress too.

Every Christmas we either watch all the Harry Potter movies or Lord of the Rings.
This year we opted for the Hobbit Extended Editions and Lord of the Rings.

I saw the Hobbit in the theaters.  Some of the new material I liked, some I didn't.  But what bugged me the most was not what was added, but what was missing.  These extended editions have added that material back in.  I can honestly say I enjoyed the Extended Edition far more than I thought I would.

Last year at this time I had worked out a vague-ish plan for the blog, but not so this year.
I do know one thing, with the increased demands of work and the need to get some other projects done I am likely not going to be posting as much here.
No worries.  I only mean that my multiple posts per day.  For the last 5 years I have been posting about 1.3x a day, or 9 to 10 posts per week.  Can't keep that up forever.

I am hoping that as quantity goes down, quality goes up. One can hope right!

Skylla: Compleat Spell Caster

The Compleat Spellcaster

Recently +Eric Fabiaschi over at Swords & Stitchery did a retro-review of the old Bard Games "The Compleat Spellcaster".   A book I have enjoyed for a number of years. A book that I will freely admit got me interested in doing my own witch class back in the day.  I played a witch using these rules rather briefly, but soon switched over to my own version.   Eric points out that the book is rich in ideas and magic.  What I personally liked were the spells and the variety of demons.  I still use Astorath, Shax and empusa demons.  

Eric did a fine review, so no need for me to go over the same ground.  Instead I want to see what sort of witch I can make with it.

In this book witches are a sub-class of the druid. Likewise necromancers and mystics are subclasses of the cleric.  I rather like this to be honest, I like that wisdom is the primary stat for the witch.

Skylla, 7th Level Witch
Chaotic Evil

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 11
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 13

Breath Weapon: 13
Poison & Death: 7
Petrify: 10
Wands: 11
Spells: 12

Hit Points:  25
AC: 4 (Ring of Protection AC 4)
Familiar: Imp (looks like a small dragon)

Spells
1st level: Detect Magic, Disguise, Eldritch Fire, Hex, Object Reading, Summon Familiar
2nd level: Circle of Darkness, Frost, Levitate, Youth
3rd level: Dispell Magic, E.S.P., Locate Object
4th level: Invisibility, Thunderbolt


There are a lot of great spells for the witch.  There some powers that the witch gains including some alchemy and gathering followers.  I think this is good version of Skylla, though the lack of 8th and 9th level spells reduces the overall power of the class.

In the end I will repeat what Eric said, "...the Complete Spell Caster has a lot to offer if a DM thinks outside the usual boxes."

Year End 2015

We are a few hours from seeing the end of 2015.
All in all not a bad year.  I got in a lot of great gaming, not a lot of variety of gaming, but a lot.
I played a lot of 5e and I even got to play some rather than just DMing.

One of my favorite features here were my Class Struggles posts.  Originally I only thought about doing about 15 of them, but it grew into something more.  Looking forward to doing more of those in 2016.

After 258 posts and nearly 5 years I think it might be time to retire Zatannurday. It has been a good run but I don't I have added anything new to it for a while.  I have a few posts left I want to do on it, but I think I will replace it with something new in Feburary.

I have a few more Skylla posts I would like to do.   I also have some posts on running horror games I would like to get out as well.

There are few games I would like to try this next year and some adventures.
My son has gotten pretty good at running 5e so maybe I will get in more playing too.

Hope you all have a great new year's eve and a happy new year!

Class Struggles: The 5e Witch Project

Been playing a lot of D&D 5 of late and it has been a real blast.
It really has a lot going for it and feels like a D&D Greatest Hits.   But what it is lacking is a real witch class.

Well...I am not getting ready to write one to be honest.  I have plenty on my plate, but that doesn't mean I can't try to make something witch-like.

So something I have done with pretty much every other version of D&D I have played, most recently with 4e.  That was fun, but ultimately...well we know how that all turned out.

With 5e it has been a bit of different story.  For this experiment, I took five character concepts I have been playing around with for different things and thought this might be fun.

So in each case I built a by-the-book character of each of the main magic-using classes (and one extra, but I will get to that), cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard.  I used a variety of the backgrounds, feats, skill choices, and spells to create witch-like characters.

So far I have finished the warlock, the cleric, and druid.  I am working on the wizard and the sorcerer next.  I also built a paladin using the Oath of the Ancients, to build a witch-knight like character.

I am particularily fond of the Acolyte and Sage backgrounds for the characters.  I typically give Acolyte to the Arcane characters and Sage to the Divine, but not always.  It helps give them some background that I think would make them fell more "witchy".

Magic Initiate and Ritual Caster are also good feats to choose.  Typically something different than they already are.  My Warlock for example has Ritual Caster (Wizard) and Magic Initiate (Cleric).

Lastly are the spells.  There are a lot of great witch-like spells in the new PHB, much more so than say 4e had.  But there is still room for improvement.   There are plenty of spells in my Basic Witch book that could be converted and even improved under 5e. "Bewitch" is one of the first examples that comes to mind.

Pretty much everything else I can cover in role-playing.  The Cleric and Druid were tested out last week while my son ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen (or "Hoard of the Demon Dragon" as he was running it).  The Warlock has been coming in off and on while I have been running.

The real test for me will be the wizard and sorcerer.  For 4e the Wizard made the best "witch" for the concept I wanted to play and the Sorcerer did the same for 3e.   Interestingly enough the Cleric was the best 2e witch and the Druid the best 1e one.  Again...at least for concepts I was doing at the time.

Again, I am not ready to write a 5e witch class, nor am I even convinced I need to, but the experiments will continue.

Christmas Gaming

It's been busy time this Christmas.  So far I have gotten a lot of gaming in.
We went to my in-laws to see my wife's sister and her kids and my kids brought out D&D.  I got hit with some allergies and could not run, but my oldest decided to run some games.  He got both of my nephews to play some D&D 5.  They had a great time.  So great in fact that I went out got them some dice, minis, a Starter Set and the Basic Rules.

We went back out to visit and Liam ended up running Hoard of the Dragon Queen.  Instead of Tiamat he used his own creation, Aži Dahāka.  It went fantastic.  Really fantastic.

Even their other cousin and her boyfriend joined in for a couple of sessions.

They had such great time that the brand new Xbox One went largely ignored.  Not to bad really.

So I got 4 new people into gaming this holiday.  How did you do?

Zatannurday: Pinterest

We have been using Pinterest at work a lot lately, so naturally I also started "pinning" things I liked on my own accout.

There has been an applet on the side of my blog for some time now to see things I am pinning real time.  But here is the collection of all my Zatanna related pins.


Follow Timothy's board Zatanna on Pinterest.

Enjoy!

Friday Night Videos: Christmas Music

Merry Christmas from the Other Side!

Here here some of my favorite Christmas songs.