Monster Monday: Rustbound Skeleton

Today's Monster Monday is the rustbound skeleton, an undead creature that can reduce your fighter's armor to dust.  Bones and rusted armor fused together by necromantic energies and driven by a will to visit death and decay on the living.

Remains from the Battle of Visby, 1361

Adventurers might encounter rustbound skeletons in a crypt that has been infested with rust monsters, while investigating a shipwreck, or while traversing an old battlefield.  Check out the rustbound skeleton template below, and the example rustbound skeletal knight!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Gods and Religions, Part 1: Worldbuilding Options

Some of my players may find it funny that I am starting up a series of articles on gods and religions.  It seems like whenever they roll up new characters for one of my work-in-progress campaign settings, one of them asks, "So what gods do we have to choose from?" and my response is always a sheepish, "I, uh, haven't gotten around to making the gods yet."  In my defense, even if it rarely comes to fruition, I devote a fairly large portion of my thought processes to the gods of a setting.  Gods and religions are important, and if executed properly, their influence on the campaign setting can be profound.  

The fantasy worlds of D&D and Pathfinder have an advantage over our world in that the gods have an empirically verifiable effect on those worlds.  Our world has a variety of competing religions and faiths and an increasing number of people who doubt the veracity of any of them.  If army chaplains could heal the wounds of their companions with a touch of their glowing hand, like D&D clerics and paladins can, our world would likely have a very different outlook on religion.  As it is, we as worldbuilders have to deal with this difference as best we can.  

There are two main approaches that a typical campaign setting takes to religions: universal gods, or local pantheons.  

Universal Gods

In this approach, the same gods hold sway over the entire campaign setting.  This is what most campaign settings (eg. Faerûn, Greyhawk, Golarion) tend to use.  It is the easier approach for the creator of the world, because they only have to think up one batch of gods (usually adding in some new ones in later supplements), and it is easier for the players because they don't need to navigate a treacherous web of home-brewed theology.  

Getting Into Character: An RPG Character Questionnaire

Whether you are new to roleplaying or a storied veteran of the form, sometimes you need a little help getting into character.  Maybe you have a great concept for a character that you need to flesh out, or maybe you have a character you know intimately but want to view from a different angle.  Inspired by exercises authors use to get into the minds of their characters and that actors use to get into their roles, I have created a short questionnaire to flesh out your RPG character.

Go beyond the usual 'race, class, height, weight, hair, etc.' on your character sheet and delve into your adventurer's personality, background, and physical features.  Some questions (like "Where or with whom do they feel most as home?") are broad, allowing you room to expand and interpret your character's nuances.  Others (like "What would a demon lord try to tempt them with?") are more specific, designed to get you to explore aspects of your character that you might not otherwise think of during character creation.  One word answers are discouraged; instead of "What color is their hair?" it asks you to "Describe their hair," opening the door not just to color but to texture, smell, thickness, style preferences, and more.  The goal is to fully realize your character physically, emotionally, and mentally, making roleplaying easier and more rewarding - and more fun!

Read the questionnaire below or click here to download it from my patreon in pdf or docx formats!

Monster Monday: Valraven, the Soul-Eating Raven Wolf

Today's Monster Monday is the valraven, a half-wolf/half-raven beast from Danish mythology that stalks charnel grounds and eats souls, because it turns out that Scandinavians have always been pretty metal.

In Bestiary 5 there is a monster called a vilderavn which is based on one variant of this mythical creature.  The vilderavn is a shapeshifting fey raven knight, but one of the forms it can take (only briefly mentioned) is that of a raven/wolf hybrid.  Honestly, I was more interested in that raven/wolf creature than I was in the fey raven knight, so I had to stat it up.  My valraven is a CR 6 monster, meaning it will likely be of more use to the GM than the CR 16 vilderavn.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

5 Videogame Lessons for the Tabletop

This won't come as a surprise to most of you, but videogames and tabletop roleplaying games are two different things.  As such, they end up doing things rather differently.  But that doesn't mean they can't take lessons from each other.  As roleplaying videogame series like WoW, Fallout, Mass Effect, and The Witcher have grown more popular, RPG-like elements have begun to invade other genres of videogames, to the point where players of popular first-person shooters find themselves spending skill points and leveling up their characters between matches.  Videogame elements can work their way into tabletop RPGs as well, especially as more players enter the tabletop realm through the gateway drug of videogames.  This can have mixed results - some say 4th Edition D&D was an attempt to make D&D more videogamey, and it ended up being the most controversial and shortest-lived edition since the 70s.  But while there are many elements of videogames that would translate poorly to the tabletop, there are lessons from videogames that we can safely bring to the table.

Tutorials

Call of Duty 2

Most videogames have a tutorial level - a soft introduction meant to allow new players to learn the basic rules and gameplay mechanics.  Sometimes this takes the form of a literal training exercise, as in the above screenshot from Call of Duty 2, where Pvt. Vasili Koslov is practicing his grenade potato tossing.  But sometimes it is a short, low-stakes in-game mission that happens to lead the player through many of the common situations they will encounter in the game.

This latter type of tutorial is a great way to introduce new players to the game mechanics.  Send them on a simple mission that exposes them to a simple combat, a skill challenge, and some diplomacy.  For most people, it is a lot easier to learn through gameplay like this than to have the rules explained to them or to read it in a book.

Four New Magic Weapon Abilities - Armor Piercing, Biting, Reaching, and Sundering

The four magic weapon abilities presented below are so simple yet so useful that I am surprised they haven't been made yet.  The first two, armor piercing and biting, alter the traditional +1 to hit/+1 to damage formula; armor piercing grants +2 to hit and +0 to damage while biting does the opposite.  It is a pretty basic trade off, but one that adds a greater degree of customization when creating a magic weapon.  After all, sometimes you just don't need that extra boost to damage but you want to be able to hit more often, or vice versa.

The reaching weapon sprouted from d20 despot artist-in-residence Kent Hamilton's head, and it seems to me to be incredibly useful.  The ability to add 5 ft. of reach at a moment's notice adds a lot of versatility to a given weapon.  The sundering ability is inspired by Sauron of The Lord of the Rings and the White Walkers from Game of Thrones, both of whom are supernaturally good at breaking swords.  It basically gives you the Improved Sunder feat plus double damage against objects, which should allow the wielder to hack away armor, shatter swords, and bash down doors with ease.

The following material given in gold text and its accompanying table is available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

ARMOR PIERCING                +1 BONUS

Aura: faint transmutation          CL 8^th

An armor piercing weapon gains a +2 enhancement bonus on attack rolls. 

Construction Requirements

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, true strike

BITING                          +1 BONUS

Aura: faint transmutation          CL 8^th

A biting weapon gains a +2 enhancement bonus on damage rolls.   

Construction Requirements

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, inflict light wounds or magic weapon

REACHING                   +1 BONUS

Aura: moderate transmutation CL 10^th

As a swift action reaching weapon can extend to gain an extra 5 feet of reach.  The weapon can be retracted again as a free action.  Hafted weapons (such as spears, axes, and maces) only threaten the final square of their reach, but weapons with a greater effective portion (such as swords, daggers, and quarterstaves) threaten all squares within their reach.  Reaching can only be applied to melee weapons.  This enhancement can be applied multiple times to the same weapon; each time it increases the weapon’s reach by 5 feet, and the wielder chooses the weapon’s length within that range each time it extends or retracts. 

Construction Requirements

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, enlarge person

SUNDERING                            +2 BONUS

Aura: moderate transmutation CL 10^th

A sundering weapon is particularly effective against inanimate objects.  It grants its wielder a +2 bonus on sunder combat maneuvers and such maneuvers never provoke attacks of opportunity when made with this weapon.  In addition, a sundering weapon deals double damage against objects. 

Construction Requirements

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, break or shatter

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My ideal name for the biting ability would have been wounding, but that has already been taken by an ability that deals 1 point of bleed damage.  Alas.

-your biting d20 despot

Monster Monday: Funayurei, the Japanese Ghost That Sinks You With a Spoon

Today's Monster Monday is the funayurei, a drowned ghost from Japanese mythology.  In the stories told by Japanese sailors, funayurei are the restless spirits of dead seamen who take their frustration out by sinking the boats of the living.  One of the spirits appears by the boat and asks for a spoon or ladle - a simple enough request, but one with deadly results.  As soon as the funayurei has the ladle, it multiplies it a thousand times over, and a thousand funayurei hands appear and begin to ladle water into the boat with alarming speed.  Soon the boat is swamped, and the funayurei drag the crew down into the depths to join them in their watery grave.

Amusingly, Japanese boats that sail waters said to be haunted by funayurei carry ladles with holes in them specifically to foil the funayurei's evil spoon-based plans.

via Wikimedia

My wife brought this monster to my attention while she was reading an interesting book called Yurei: The Japanese Ghost, by Zack Davisson.  On its own, the undead spirit of a drowned sailor is a pretty good monster, but the weird spoon thing really makes this myth stand out, so I determined to incorporate it into their stat block.  You can see the result below.  I think the abilities of the monster allow it to pose a serious threat with a spoon, but they are versatile enough that they can be deadly on their own with nary a ladle in sight.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.