Koliada, The Winter Witch for D&D 5

Back in June of 2009 D&D 4th edition was still on the shelves and Dungeon #162 was available for download.  Inside was an Epic level adventure by Stephen Radney-MacFarland called "Winter of the Witch". It featured the machinations of the so-called Winter Witch, the minor Archfey Koliada and her plans to freeze the world.    From the adventure:

"In this epic adventure, the Winter Witch—a legendary archfey—has launched a campaign to send eternal winter cascading over large portions of the world. After a summons to Winterhaven, the characters find a land locked in ice, and an old ally in need of aid. A trek to find a artifact known as the Sun’s Sliver ensues, the only force potent enough to defeat the Winter Witch and banish her from the mortal world once more. An adventure for 22nd-level PCs."

While not totally an original plot, it was still fun, well executed and had a lot things going for it.  But mostly it had Koliada who grabbed my attention from the start.  It also started me thinking about witches of winter.  In particular, why are there so many. Louhi, Elsa and the Snow Queen), Jadis, all the Jadwiga winter witches from Pathfinder and so on.  Notably almost all of these are also royalty, if not outright queens.

This also got me thinking about the War of the Witch Queens campaign I want to do next.  So good job +Stephen Radney-MacFarland! Your character from 7 years ago has inspired me quite a lot.

Recently I have been thinking about D&D 4e conversions.  Both to 5e and to BECMI specifically.  5e, because it is the D&D of the day now and D&D 5 makes a lot of allusions to past versions.  For example the Prince of Frost, Koliada's father/brother/lover/patron appears both in the Dungeon #162 adventure and as a potential Warlock patron in D&D5.

For D&D 4 to 5 conversions (and I'll talk about BECMI ones later)  I opt not to use a 1 to 1 correspondence.  Instead, I convert on a 2/3's basis;  Take the D&D4 character and times it's level by 2/3rds.   WotC still has her stats up, she is a 26th level solo skirmisher.  A lot about her though says Warlock, in particular a fey-pact Warlock Hexblade from the 4e era.

Conversion in this case is going to be more concept driven than finding correspondences with powers.  In fact for a 26th level warlock she is missing a number of spells and powers.  To be fair, the adventure never says that is what she is; just my translation.

So in 5e terms what is she?  Well. I think I made a solid case for her to be a warlock. Her powers come from her patron, the Prince of Frost (Fey Patron). She has a magical sword she can summon (Pact of the Blade) and she has a number of ice based powers.  Now she could use some more oomph, she is the main antagonist afterall, so I buffed her up with some feats.  Let's have a look.
26th level in D&D4 translates, roughly to 17.3333 level, or 17th level in D&D5. She also has some really high ability scores too. I am scaling those back a bit as well.

Koliada, The Winter Witch
Warlock 17, Eladrin Female, CE
Background: Noble

Strength 16 (+3)
Dexterity 20 (+5)
Constitution 19 (+4)
Intelligence 17 (+3)
Wisdom 15 (+2)*
Charisma 20 (+5)*

Proficiency Bonus: +6
Proficient skills: Arcana, History, Intimidation, Persuasion
Saves: Wisdom, Charisma

AC: 24 (studded leather +4, Ring of Protection +3)
HP: 165 (HD d8)
Speed: 30'

Sword of Blackice, "Rimefang" +11, 2d8

Fey Patron Warlock, Pact of the Blade
Patron: Prince of Frost

Feats: Elemental Adept (cold), Magic Initiate (Sorcerer), Keen Mind, Spell Sniper

Powers: Fey Presence, Misty Step, Beguiling Defenses, Dark Delirium

Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Eldritch Sight, One with the Shadows, Thirsting Blade, Sign of Ill Omen, Lifedrinker, Witch Sight

Spells Known
Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Chill Touch, Blade Ward, Mage Hand, Ray of Frost (MI), True Strike (MI), Ice Bolt (SS)
1st level: Faerie Fire, Sleep, Fog Cloud (MI)
2nd level: Calm Emotion, Phantasmal Force
3rd level: Blink, Fear
4th level: Dominate Beast, Greater Invisibility
5th level (current casting): Dominate Person, Hold Monster, Scrying, Seeming
6th level: Conjure Fey
7th level: Finger of Death
8th level: Power Word Stun
9th level: Power Word Kill

Languages: Common, Sylvan, Draconic, Primodial, Abyssal

All in all, a nice build.

I am ignoring her Unique Kill quality about only being killed via a bolt of sunlight from the artifact Sun's Sliver. 

Have to try her out now against my players!

Getting Ready

I am getting ready for the big GDQ adventure, but this past weekend I was visiting my sister in my old home town.

I stopped by my Seond Favorite Local Game Store, On/Off the Square in Jacksonville, IL.
I love stopping by to support the local guys so I picked through his box of loose minis and came out with these:

Plus some giants and a bunch of bugs.  I have some more here at home, so my collection is growing nicely.

This is going to be great!

Now I just need to sort through my giants and make sure I have enough.  Though, if push comes to shove, I also have some old toys of the kids that would make decent enough hill giants.

Willow & Tara: D&D 5th Edition (Modern)

I haven't visited my witches in a while. Some part of my brain likes to think they are nice and retired, living in the suburbs somewhere raising a bunch of daughters.  So I never even considered doing a post with them for D&D 5.

Geek and Sundry decided to do it for me.

Granted they did for the Buffy cast, but Willow and Tara got a special place on their list.
Check out their link, If the Apocalypse Comes, Play D&D, to give them the hits.

They also did some Harry Potter sheets too, because Hermoine and Willow in the same game would be epic. (Also remember, the Scobby gang are the same ages of the Potter kids. They were in "high school" at the same time).

• http://geekandsundry.com/harry-potter-character-sheets-to-make-your-dnd-campaign-truly-magical/
• http://geekandsundry.com/accio-more-harry-potter-dnd-character-sheets/

But here are my girls in their D&D form.

So. What Wild Shape would Tara prefer?  I also approve of Tara being just a bit lower level than the rest of the gang.

Necromancy for Willow?  You know, I think I can see this.

These are obviously early in their adventures, Season 4 to 5 I would say.

Consequently, today is Alyson Hannigan's birthday! So Happy Birthday Alyson!

Tournament Scoring Sheet

If anyone wants a copy of my DM's Tournament log sheet I have it up on Google Drive.
It's not much different than what is in C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness.

Link to DM Scoring Sheet





Enjoy!

Leprechauns: The PWYW Experiment Continues

Something I put together for St. Pat's day, but didn't get through the approval process in time.
Two options for adding Leprechauns to your games.

First up is a race as a class option for "Basic Era" games.
Leprechauns for Basic Era Games

While I working on that one +James Spahn released his very fun Hero's Journey, so I felt a Leprechaun race option might be fun for that.
Leprechauns for Hero's Journey

The PDFs cover the same essential materials, so having one will give 80% of what the other has.
Both are Pay What You Want.

If you have some spare change and what to try a new class/race might I suggest this.

Weekend Gaming: Ghost Tower of Inverness

This past weekend an old grade-school/highschool friend was in town with his kids so we played some D&D5.  They had been over before and we had a lot of fun then.

Their character were all 5-6 level, but all of our characters were higher and in the middle of the Slave Lords series.  Originally I was going to run an adapted Temple of Elemental Evil, but in the end I opted to run something I have been wanting to run forever; C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness.

While reading through it I also decided that I was going to run it as a Tournament module, complete with scoring for individuals and team.

Well everyone had a great time.  It had been a while since I last used this module and even longer since I had thought about it for D&D.  But it was quite satisfying.

Tournament scoring is an interesting beast really.  Not sure if I will ever do it again, but I am happy to say that I have now done it.

The adventure took about 5 hours, which is what I expected.  I wasn't too strict on the time in turns elasped since all it did was change their team score.

To tie this into the larger Come Endless Darkness plot/campaign I am having the Soul Gem as one of the artifacts used to drain the sun's life force.

Should make for an interesting and fun time as we lead into the Giant series coming up!

A to Z Blog Challenge 2016 Theme Reveal - Participation Asked!

It's that time of year again!  Time for the Blogging A to Z challenge.

Today is the big reveal of what your theme will be.

I have done a theme most years of the Challenge and will be doing one again this year.  I find a theme really helps focus what I want to do and gives me the chance to go into a topic very in depth.

For 2015 it was Vampires
For 2014 it was Witches
For 2013 is was Demons
and for 2012 it was RPGs.

This year I want to do something to keep my regular audience engaged and coming back and also to share this wonderful hobby with others.

So for 2016 the theme is Adventure!
(yes I am including the exclamation mark).

For the month of April I want to dive into some classic, some new and some odd adventures.  I want to focus on ones people can also still get.  I will talk about my experiences with them and get some tidbits that others can use.

Since my kids have been old enough to play I have been taking them through the classic TSR adventure modules.  Part of it is nostalgia on my part, I won't lie, but it is also more than that.

I have said before that these adventures give us all a shared story in this community of gamers.  My sons can and have talked to complete strangers before based on this shared experience alone.  Over the years at Gen Con I have run S4, B1, Ravenloft and Bone Hill with my kids and we have had tons of people come by to see what we are doing.   It has been a great experience for us all.

I also enjoy it because now at a much older age I can appreciate these adventures on a completely new level.  Sure I can make (and have made) my own.  But that's not what this is all about. I don't need to prove to myself or anyone that I can write an adventure; I did plenty of that over the years.
This is about nothing more than fun and a shared story.

For this Challenge I think I will focus my attentions on the adventures that have appeared in the Dungeon Magazine's 30 Greatest Adventures of All Time.

I am also going to feature adventures from the games I have been playing with my kids.

• The Dragonslayers Campaign (3e D&D)
• Come Endless Darkness (5e D&D)
• Against the Cult of the Reptile Gods/Second Campaign (OSR D&D, AS&SH)
• War of the Witch Queens (OSR D&D, Castles & Crusades)

So for my regular audience, please stick around all month and see what I have to say.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY PLEASE share YOUR story too!

How did you survive the Caves of Chaos?  How did you die in Temple of Elemental Evil or the Tomb of Horrors?  Who did you see along the way? Aleena? Eclavdra? Mordenkainen?

For my new and returning A to Z visitors. Please read these tales and hopefully you will get some more insight to this weird but fun hobby we have.   Adventures are like stories.  But here the stories and the characters take a life of their own.

I hope to see you all here.