YouTube Tuesday: I Am Super Lucky Golden Iron Man Edition

Posted by Dave "The Game" Chalker on August 4, 2009 · 2 Comments

Filed under Anime, Comics, Movies, YouTube Tuesday

Test animation for an Iron Man anime, the final of which is to be written by Warren Ellis. Below, a similar test animation for the Wolverine anime, also to be written by Ellis, but that doesn’t look nearly as good. [Read the rest of this article]

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But my father was a blacksmith! – Crafting in 4E

Posted by A Hero on August 4, 2009 · 13 Comments

Filed under house rules, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games

Hi there. My name is Rob, a.k.a. “A Hero”, from A Hero Twice A Month. While I can be a chatty DM at times, I am not the ChattyDM. Still, he was nice enough to let me post my thoughts about crafting items while he is off on his GenCon hiatus.

When the game designers at Wizards of the Coast decided to trim the skill list down from more than thirty-six skills in D&D 3E to a mere seventeen in D&D 4E, it was inevitable that many skills would not make the cut. Most of them were simply rolled into more general skills, like Hide and Move Silently being combined into Stealth. This makes sense to me since I always felt the skill list in D&D 3E was a bit bloated.

Notably absent from the D&D 4E skill list is the Craft skill. To some extent this makes a lot of sense, since Craft was more of a background skill which rarely came up in adventuring (barring the occasional use of the Fabricate spell). Still, I think it is a shame it is gone. There is something nicely thematic about a dwarf forging his own weapons or an elf crafting additional arrows during the time between adventures.

The need for a crafting mechanic is even more necessary if you look at the creation of magical items. According to the Player’s Handbook, Mountain Armor is created when “Dwarf armorsmiths combine the elemental earth of their mountain homes with other metals to craft this heavy armor.” A wonderful bit of flavor text which adds a lot to the feel of the suit of armor.

If you look at how it would be created in game though, the process is somewhat disappointing. Let’s say you want to create Warplate Mountain Armor +3. First, you buy Plate Armor. Then acquire 17,000 gold pieces worth of Alchemical Reagents or Residuum. Cast the Enchant Magic Item Ritual and touch the item. Presto, you now have Warplate Mountain Armor +3!

It is just not quite the same, is it?

I have found that skill challenges can be used to add a little of this flavor back without completely rewriting the rules. While it may seem odd at first, skill challenges were created to determine the success or failure of non-combat situations. So it helps to look at different types of crafting simply as different types of skill challenges.

So how do you go about creating an appropriate skill challenge for the item being crafted? Like any skill challenge, it is just a matter of determining the Setup, Level, Complexity, Primary Skills, and Outcome.

Designing a Crafting Skill Challenge

Setup

To craft an item, the character needs the appropriate tools and raw materials. Appropriate tools could be as simple as fletching knives to make a bow or could be as complex as needing access to a dwarven forge for the aforementioned Mountain Armor. Raw materials have a cost equal to half the purchase price for mundane items. Magic items still require the components for the Enchant Magical Item ritual. However, the item is treated as two levels lower on the magic item price chart.

Level

Level is equal to the items level. Mundane items are generally considered level one.

Complexity

Horseshoes, Shovels, and other basic items.
Simple Weapons, Military Weapons, Heroic Tier Armor, and most Heroic Tier magic items.
Superior Weapons, Paragon Tier Armor, and most Paragon Tier magic items.
Epic Tier Armor, and most Epic Tier magic items.
DM’s discretion. This level may be needed for exceptionally complex magic items like the Apparatus of Kwalish.

Suggested Primary Skills

Crafting Metal Armor/Weapons: Athletics, Endurance

Crafting Bows/Crossbows/Arrows: Nature, Perception

Crafting Cloth/Leather Armor: Nature, Endurance

Additional primary or secondary skills should be chosen based on what is being crafted. For example, Eladrin armor would likely have Arcane as a secondary skill because of the Fey origin of Eladrin.

Outcome

Success allows you to craft the item for the reduced cost in materials listed above. Failure causes you to waste half of the necessary materials.

Example: Crafting a Longbow

Setup

Appropriate bowyer tools and 15 GPs worth of materials. Each roll requires one hour of time.

Level

As a mundane item, a longbow is level one.

Complexity

2 (Requires six successes before three failures)

Primary Skills: Nature, Perception

Nature (moderate DCs): Carving a bow requires insight into how to bring out both the strength and suppleness out of the wood.

Perception (moderate DCs): A flaw in the wood has been the downfall of many a bow. Perception allows you to avoid these errors. However, no more than half of your successes can come from perception.

Insight (hard DCs): Many elves believe that carving a bow is a spiritual matter. If you make a successful insight roll at the beginning of the challenge, you can gain a +1 bonus to all rolls during this challenge. This roll can only be made once. If multiple people are assisting they can each make this roll, but it only applies to the rolls they make and does not stack with other characters bonuses.

Special (Elf): Once during the challenge, an elf may use his Elven Accuracy to reroll a skill check. You must use the second roll, even if it is lower. If multiple elves are assisting in the creation of the bow, they may each only use this ability once.

Success

The longbow is created at the reduced cost.

Failure

The longbow is ruined. One-half of the materials are lost.

Example: Crafting Warplate Mountain Armor +3

Setup

Because of the nature of Warplate Mountain Armor, access to a dwarven forge within an appropriate mountain stronghold is required. Raw Materials, Alchemical Reagents or Residuum equal to 9,000 GP are required. Access to the Enchant Magical Item ritual is required, although it can be cast anytime after the armor is completed since the component cost is paid for by the crafting process.

Alternatively, the DM may allow the crafting of this armor by dwarves without the Enchant Magical Item ritual. In this case I recommend dropping the cost by only one level on the chart to 13,000 GP.

Each roll requires one hour of time.

Level

Level thirteen

Complexity

3 (Requires eight successes before four failures)

Primary Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Athletics (moderate DCs): Strength of arm important at the forge.

Endurance (moderate DCs): Working at a forge requires a great deal of endurance. At least two of the successes must come from an Endurance skill check. However, if an Endurance skill check is failed, the next roll made for the skill challenge is at a -2 penalty.

Dungeoneering (hard DCs): Understanding the ways of the mountain are essential to creating mountain plate. A successful Dungeoneering skill check adds a success and grants a +2 bonus to the next Athletics or Endurance Skill Check made for the skill challenge.

Arcane (hard DCs): By sensing the shifts in the elemental forces at work in creating mountain plate, you can cancel one failure incurred. This may only be attempted once during the course of the skill challenge.

Special (Dwarf): Dwarves get a +2 racial bonus to the checks required in making Mountain Armor.

Success

The armor is created at the reduced cost.

Failure

Half of the raw material/component cost is lost and the armor is ruined.

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Handling A Legion Of Padded Supermen

Posted by Wyatt Salazar on August 3, 2009 · 21 Comments

Filed under Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games

Hi there everyone, this is Wyatt Salazar, the world’s only biological nuclear reactor (CAUTION CAUTION) from The Spirits of Eden and now also The Amusing Fantasy, standing in for the Chatty DM who’s currently questing for Gen Con, as you know. He still has plenty of healing surges and daily powers left and I wish him the best of luck on that boss battle. But enough about grids.

I’m Okay Guys, I Have 1 HP Left

D&D 4th Edition is my current de-facto choice for gaming. One of my favorite and least favorite additions to the game are the hit point and healing surge systems. There was something about D&D 3.5′s reliance on magic or money for healing that really bothered me, because I liked the rationalization of hit points that D&D 4th Edition uses now, and have always used it.

Losing buckets and buckets of blood and organs in a fight with an ogre only to have a cleric patch you up to lose that many buckets again in the next fight just did not make a lot of sense to me (yes, even with magic). I liked the idea that hit points could represent things easier to recover, like morale or just manly grit. The punch to the face didn’t break your jaw and cause you to cough up your tongue. In fact, it might not have been a clean hit at all, despite the attack connecting and the hit points lost.

Might sound silly to you, but I love that sort of thing, rather than the idea that hit points represent, I don’t know, some esoteric amount of flesh and blood you’ve lost. I also happen to hate hit locations rules. That’s unrelated, but I just do. (Chatty DM: Wyatt, King of the non sequitur)

I like Healing Surges because they represent that ability to get back in the game, because the damage you’ve taken was not fatal. They also allow more than Clerics to heal reliably and potently. A martial character can “heal” himself or others also.

The Problem With This

Healing surges present an illusion of invincibility when looked at over a long term. A player or DM sees 10 healing surges on his Fighter and thinks of it this way: the Fighter can regenerate its full hp two and a half times today. This gives the player a sense of fearlessness and the DM a sense of dread. Your character can die three and a half times today, or become bloodied seven times today, and you’ll be back up in no time, just spend a healing surge and gain that 1/4 of your HP back.

Your instinct might be “well, if players can heal that much, and standard encounters aren’t hurting them, I should have really powerful monsters fight them that can deal a lot of damage, that’ll scare them!”

The problem with this is that it’s not really true – in the short term players can’t spend all their surges whenever they want unless they have enough surge outlets (powers and potions that can heal by spending surges) to cover them.

Second wind covers 1 surge each encounter, leader can do 2 each encounter with class feature powers and more with their other powers, non-leaders tend to have one or two outlets as well, and there’s potions. This may seem like a ton of things, but aside from leaders, I’ve not seen players picking healing powers highly over damaging or buffing powers.

So your super powerful monster may end up killing them all, not scaring them, and they may only be able to spend 2 or 3 healing surges in the process, unlike the grand 100% recoveries you imagined. Rather than add danger and lethality, you nailed the portrait to the wall with a bulldozer.

Usually the longing for gritty, difficult encounters and frail PCs is one that throws back to fantasy literature like Lord of the Rings, where you see heroes running from any enemy that seems too large and generally treating their mortality quite seriously. D&D 4e PCs might try to kill the Balrog and loot the body and that’s a state of mind not many people like.

So before trying to put a Level 15 Balrog analog in your Level 8 game to scare your players out of their metaphorical coat of invulnerability, try a couple of other things first and see how that works in ending the invincibility notion and adding some element of danger (or at least, having your players act like there’s danger).

Wyattlutions To The Problem

So what do you do about this? How do you handle it? Here’s some of the things I do before I even send one enemy out.

•Ask Nicely?: Ask players to act more like regular people would in their situation instead of metagaming. Yes, you’re a legendary general who can make people move out of their turn, but you’d probably still be at least a bit frightened and wary of a 5 story dragon, not thinking about killing and looting it. Treat your character like the only one you’ll have, not an utterly disposable game avatar. Even if you’ve done all your HP math and you’ve realized that a string of balanced encounters probably won’t put a dent in you, don’t act like you own the world because of it. To your PC, healing surges don’t exist. It’s just him getting lucky.

•Tell Them Straight: I often tell my players that I will be presenting encounters that are unbalanced and that they should know this up front, all their metagame analysis will be mostly fruitless. I don’t say this with the intention of actually throwing an Oni at a bunch of level 3 players or to destroy the rules base as they know it. I do it to get them in the mindset that this is going to be my game, not the DMG’s balanced encounter guidelines that they’ve memorized. Even if it IS going to be the DMG’s balanced encounter guidelines in disguise, it can help cause a shift in attitude.

•Burn Surges: Wizard’s of the Coast has begun using this method to get PCs to spend resources. Newer skill challenges, for example, have consequences that require expenditure, or punish failure with the loss of, healing surges. Healing surges are entirely abstract, and if you feel like your players are riding too high and loose because of healing surges, you can now, quite within acceptable rules, find ways to get rid of some of them. Not only that, unless you run them entirely out of surges, this isn’t a highway to a total party kill like an over-leveled encounter might be, and still makes the players more wary.

But if you absolutely must have a high level, extremely dangerous and unbalanced encounter in your game to scare the bejeezus out of your players and make you feel all macho again as a DM, please consider doing the following things:

•Drop Potions Beforehand: The Potion of Vitality may say Level 15, but lets face it, at level 8 or so, the Potion of Healing is crap. 10 hit points per surge is a waste. If you want to have more difficult encounters but don’t want to massacre PCs, drop some of the next tier’s basic healing potion somewhere. This gives PCs a good, reliable healing surge outlet that can keep them from getting stomped, but it doesn’t do damage, doesn’t cripple the opponent, so it won’t downplay the difficulty.

•Have Escape Routes: Aragorn and company didn’t sit there fighting the Balrog, they ran. If your PCs don’t run immediately, give them the option to later. Most PCs playing D&D 4e, I’ve noticed, don’t think that running away is an option. They see it as losing XP because the encounter wasn’t completed. I know, I know, this mentality is unhealthy, trying to maximize the amount of XP you earn in the game isn’t a mindset I want in a PC. But if you give XP for running away, you encourage it as a viable option. Prepare a skill challenge for escaping one of your psycho overpowered combats and reward its successful completion. If they fail it, allow them to try it again, don’t just cut everything off and have them all get wiped by the monster. Show them that the world does have horribly powerful things that they can’t kill, and more importantly, that they don’t have to kill them.

•Add Houserules?: Most people hate house rules, I myself rather like them. I’ve collected a bunch. If you’re thinking of using overpowered encounters to make things gritty, but you also don’t want the players to just suffer endlessly at your grasp, you may be able to tweak the game to allow you to this. We’re moving out of known rules territory here, but it’s worth a look. I don’t think the rules intended for level 8 characters to fight level 15 monsters either, so you might as well break them a little more, no?

Well, that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

However, Chatty told me that I could “even post an anime picture” if I liked, and I’d been searching up and down for what screenshot I wanted to put up here. I decided to go with this animated one from K-On! after careful consideration, because it really illustrates how I view myself giving this information.

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Inq. of the Week: Non-RPG Content?

Posted by Bartoneus on August 3, 2009 · 12 Comments

Filed under Featured, Inquisition of the Week

09nominee Several readers commented on last week’s Inquisition to point out that the Eberron campaign setting for D&D doesn’t actually fit in that well to the Steampunk genre, but the results of our poll are an astounding majority (76%) of people who are interested in or like Steampunk. Only 7% actively dislike the genre, while the remaining 17% are either indifferent or don’t know enough about the genre to make a decision. Perhaps we should have some educational posts to enlight and convince that 17% to be more interested in the genre.

Well voting for the ENnies closed over the weekend, first and foremost I’d like to extend our thanks and appreciation to everyone who voted for us! No matter what you ranked our site compared to the others, they all help and hopefully we will be pleasantly surprised at the ceremony during GenCon. Being nominated for an RPG award for “Best Website” is an absolute honor for Dave, myself, and everyone else who contributes here. During the first two years of this site (2005-2007) I always took some pride in the fact that I first added the “Videogames” category to the site and for that period of time it was our biggest category. Since then RPGs has easily overtaken all of the other categories, which is not a surprise to us because 2007 is when we all started playing regular tabletop RPG campaigns again after several years of hit and miss attempts.

In an effort to always be looking and moving forward, this week I’d like to ask you all what kind of content you are most interested in seeing here at Critical Hits other than RPG and D&D related posts. Each of these categories includes reviews, editorials, previews, and everything else related to the topic that we can think of but if you have something specific in mind please share it with us in the comments. For example if you’d like to see weekly reviews of the coolest and best comic books each week (or month), then vote for comics in the poll and share the specifics with us in the comments. The one stand alone entry in the poll is “Original Webcomic”, for the few of you that have been reading the site for long enough might remember that I used to do a webcomic and post every week called Random Encounters for a few months, if this is something you’d be interested to see more of please let us know! You can vote for as many choices as you like, so feel free to vote for all of the categories you’d like to see us post more about in the future.