Monday, February 26, 2018

Monster Monday: Eretica

Been a while since I have done one of these.  Here is a rare type of vampire that was a witch in her former life. For Basic-Era games.


Eretica*

Armor Class: 3
Hit Dice: 7** (M)
Move: 120' (40')
 Flying: 180' (60')
Attacks: 1 touch or special
Damage: ld10 + double Con drain or special
No. Appearing: 1d3 (1d6)
Save As: W7
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: F
Intelligence: 12
Alignment: Chaotic
XP Value: 1,750
Monster Type: Undead, Enchanted (Very Rare)

Vampires are among the most feared of the undead.  Eretica are witches that have returned from the dead as a horrible vampire.  Believed to be the followers of Hecate the eretica are also created when witches denounce the predominant religion of the area and are cursed by a local cleric.
The eretica can appear as attractive young women, but their true form is that of an ancient hag in rags.

Abilities: All eretica are unaffected by sleep, charm, and hold spells, and can only be hit with magical weapons. An eretica may take the form of a human, a dire wolf, a giant bat, or as a mote of moonlight at will. Each change takes 1 round.

Whatever its form, an eretica regenerates 3 hit points per round, starting as soon as it is damaged. Like the vampire, if the eretica is reduced to 0 hit points it does not regenerate, but becomes moonlight and flees to its coffin.

In dire wolf or giant bat form, the eretica's move, attacks, and damage are those of the animal.
The eretica's AC, Hit Dice, morale, and saving throws remain unchanged. In moonlight form, an eretica cannot attack but can fly at the speed given above and is immune to all weapon attacks.

In human form, an eretica can attack by gaze or touch or can summon other creatures. The touch of an eretica inflicts a double energy drain (removing 2 points of Constitution) in addition to damage. The creature's gaze can charm. Any victim who meets the gaze may make a saving throw vs. spells to avoid the charm, but with a - 2 penalty to the roll. To the charmed victim the eretica appears to be a beautiful young woman. To others she is still a monstrous hag.

The eretica may summon any one of the following creatures, which will come to its aid if they are within 300 feet (300 yards outdoors):

Rats 6-60 Giant rats 4-16
Bats 8-80 Giant bats 3-18
Wolves 3-18 Dire wolves 2-8

Any character slain by an eretica will return from death in three days, as a wraith under the control of the eretica who slayed them.   Only witches killed by an eretica can become eretica in death this way.

Since eretica were witches in life they still can cast witch spells.  They are treated as 7th level witches, but they do not have any Occult Powers.

Weaknesses of the eretica: The eretica shares the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the vampire. A eretica cannot come within 10 feet of a strongly presented holy symbol, although it can move to attack from another direction. The odor of garlic repels an eretica; the creature must make a successful saving throw vs. poison or stay at least 10 feet away from the garlic during that round.

The eretica cannot cross running water, either on foot or flying, except at bridges or while in their coffins. During the day, an eretica usually rests in its coffin; failure to do so results in the loss of 2d6 hit points per day. These hit points are not regenerated until the eretica has rested in its coffin for a full day. An eretica casts no reflection and avoids mirrors.

The only way to truly destroy an eretica is burn the body at the stake or to stake her in the heart with a stake of aspen.

The eretica are Turned as Vampires.

Friday, February 23, 2018

Kickstart Your Weekend: Pirate Campaign Compendium

Still a bit under the weather here, but not so bad I can't share this awesome kickstarter with you.

Pirate Campaign Compendium for 5E and Pathfinder RPG


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendarygames/pirate-campaign-compendium-for-5e-and-pathfinder-r

Here is some information right from their own Press Release.
Legendary Games launched the Pirate Campaign Compendium Kickstarter for 5th Edition and Pathfinder! This project is intended to create a spectacular seagoing supplement which includes five complete adventures plus ready-to-use nautical NPCs of every level, aquatic options for your characters, treasure troves of pirate plunder, ship combat, treasure maps, and so much more with stretch goals aplenty to create a glorious 300+ page compendium that'll shiver yer timbers!

Publisher, Jason Nelson states, “Whether you come in as a Salty Sailor or join us for a glorious Pirate Feast, take the plunge and walk the plank with us today!” Rachel Ventura, Business Director of Legendary Games, said “Everyone loves a good pirate adventure, this book has FIVE! There’s also some fun swag like clear pirate minis, wooden engraved dice boxes, and new dice!”
It looks like a bunch of fun and it appeals to my desire to dual (or triple) stat everything.

10 days are left for this and it looks like it will be a lot of fun!

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Magic School: I have Hogwarts on my Miskatonic U!


Mulling some ideas over lunch today.

My kids have both over the years expressed an interest in more Lovecraft and Cthulhu themed games but not really wanting to go full on Call of Cthulhu.

So a few things came to mind right away.

- San Scores and Sanity rules.  As a former QMHP and someone with degrees in psychology, I have been largely critical of most of the "sanity" rules I see in games.  In fact, most of them suck.  My son is using an elegant option for sanity. Your wisdom modifier plus your constitution modifier plus 10.   I will still use San points as Sanity x 5.

- The College of Dreamers is gone.  If I am using the 2nd Ed Glantri school of magic as my base, then I am going to say that the School of Dream was destroyed last year.  No one knows why and because of that attendance and new admits are way down.  What happened of course is they connected to the Dream Lands and the Far Realm (mixing my CoC and D&D 3 terms) and it killed them all.  This is the first phase of the return of the Old Ones.  Totally stealing this idea from the Wizards 101 MMORPG.  This is the big mystery of the 1st Years, what happened to the Dream College (not to be confused with the Dream Academy).  They won't learn till later in the term or even next year.

- With the Dream College gone, the School lessens admit standards.  What this means is Bards are now allowed. I am even considering a type of healer.

- All characters will have a Psionic wild power.   This is another side effect of the return of the Old Ones.  I just have not figured out if I am going to use the wild psionic powers of Basic Psionics Handbook or Realms of Crawling Chaos.  I am going to use both books in other ways.

So this game will have much more horror influences even though I am planning on avoiding using demons and devils for the most part.  Undead will be fine. It is Glantri afterall.  I will add some of elements from Ravenloft, though "Gothic Horror" and "Cosmic Horror" are not always a good mix.

Not 100% sure how this will all fit into the "War of the Witch Queens", but I have lots of time to figure that one out.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Weekend Gaming: Treasure Hunters Crawl to the Forbidden City

This weekend we spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning my game room this weekend.  It needed to be done,. plus I needed to sort my minis too.

Once that was done we had a couple of hours to play.

The Treasure Hunters of the Second Campaign made it to the front door of the Forbidden City.

But before that, they had to deal with a bunch of pterodactyls.


We had quite a bit of fun fighting these and grabbed a bunch of old dinosaur toys for when they leave the  City.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Magic School: Going Back to Glantri

Curse my gamemastering ADHD!

So despite the fact that I have not one, not two, but THREE D&D 5th Edition games going, I was working out some details of my Magic School game using the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

So last night I pulled out my GAZ3 The Principalities of Glantri by +Bruce Heard and my Glantri: Kingdom of Magic.

I thought I might run it set in Glantri's past, 800 or so AC.  OR even 1000 AC which is close to the present day for the Gazetteer.  My current year is 1414-something AC.

But there is so much great stuff here.

This is going to focus 100% on the magic school so the political goings-on will be part of the background noise.

Though I DO want to expand on my whole Ravenloft is from Mystara/Glantri idea some more too and introduce a young professor of Alchemy from Boldavia, Strahd von Zarovich. Gives me an excuse/hook to drop in Ravenloft II.

But back to the school.

There are the Seven Secret Crafts of Magic in the Glantri School of Magic; Alchemy, Dracology, Elementalism, Illusionism, Necromancy, Cryptomancy (rune magic), and Witchcraft.

These were restructured in the 2nd Ed book, notably Witchcraft becoming Wokanism and Illusion dropped in favor of Dream Magic.  I am keeping Dream Magic from one and Witchcraft from the other.

I am thinking of adding others.  I would love to add a School of Healing; an exception to the normal rule of priests/clerics.  And MAYBE Druids.   I know they don't fit, but I like them.

Couple things I am considering.  Back in the Day I had a wizard character, Phygora, who was a
Glantri trained mage, but he "disappeared".  In reality, the mini I used belonged to my old DM.  He recently sold them all to me so now I have all these REALLY old lead minis including a recently repainted Phygora.  So guess who is now the new Headmaster!  Dosen't matter if I set this in the present or the past since in my game Phygora became something of a time-traveler.

I know that this campaign will go from level 1 to 7 (or 0 to 6), after that I want to move it over to my War of the Witch Queens.   I was talking with +Brian Isikoff this morning and he is considering doing something with Magic School grads and Bruce Heard's Calidar.  I think that is a fantastic idea!
Flying magic ships, flying circuses, I am SO there.

I just need more time to play!
But in the meantime, I can work out all these details.

Thursday, February 15, 2018

D&D Rules Cyclopedia Unboxing and Pre-review

I wasn't going to post today. Really busy at work. But this really could not wait.



I got my Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia in the mail today and wanted to check it out.



I could not decide if I wanted the hardcover or softcover.  So I got both.





As you can see the cover is more cream colored than the original white. I kinda like it to be honest.
There is a huge border of it on the front cover.  Less noticeable in the soft-cover edition.




The color is good, not as strong as the original but still extremely readable.

These books compare very favorably to the original.





You can see the colors are stronger in the original, but the paper is much thicker in the POD versions.


The pages of my original print are a little yellowed with age. The new ones are still bright white.

Compare this to one I made a while back on Lulu. I call it my "Wizards & Demons" Cover.




I also still have a really beat up version.


All in all I am really happy with these.  Looking forward to playing a game with them!