Gods and Religions, Part 4: Reward and Punishment

This week in our ongoing discussion of Gods & Religions, we take a look at mechanical incentives for roleplaying characters of faith and devotion.  Ultimately, a character's relationship with their god is a matter of roleplaying.  But GMs are always on the lookout for ways to encourage more roleplaying and reward good examples of it.  If you want gods and religions to take an important role in your campaign, and you want to actively encourage your player characters' participation in that system, we've got some ideas for you.  Specifically, we have three complementary systems that encourage GMs to hand out mechanical rewards or punishments to characters roleplaying their way through a world of fickle and demanding gods.

First, there are minor ongoing benefits for characters who maintain the day-to-day trappings of their religion, including performing sacrifices, praying, and adhering to dietary restrictions.  Then there are greater one-time rewards for characters who perform exemplary services in the name of their deity.  And on the other end of the spectrum, there are punishments for those who transgress against the ethos of their deity.  Examples and suggestions are provided, but the rules are not hard and fast; a GM should feel free to adopt and adapt them as they see fit for their own campaign.

Faith Rituals
   Every god or religion asks something of its worshipers, something that affects their daily lives and marks them as a follower of that god.  They might make regular offerings, pray daily, wear certain clothing, or refrain from eating certain foods.  In return for maintaining faith rituals in this way, loyal worshipers are granted minor boons.
   The particular details of what a worshiper is expected to do and what boon they might gain depends on the god or religion in question and is at the discretion of the GM.  Examples are given below.  As a general rule, maintaining faith rituals should be a roleplaying choice that does not adversely affect the playability of the game; a GM should not demand followers perform onerous tasks that slow down the game overmuch or impose penalties that affect the efficacy of a character unless this is core to the concept of the deity.  Boons for maintaining faith rituals should be minor ongoing effects such as a +1 to a particular skill, and should be no more powerful than the boon granted by a trait.
   If a character fails to maintain their faith rituals, they lose the benefits of the granted boon until they have flawlessly upheld the rituals for a week straight.

4 Old D&D Design Principles That Are No Longer In Fashion

All modern roleplaying games, especially Pathfinder and 5th Edition D&D, owe a tremendous debt to 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which modified and codified the nascent rules of the game into (relatively) accessible hardcover books.  But that foundational work of fantasy roleplaying was built on design principles that are very different from - and often opposed to - those of modern D&D and Pathfinder.

I'm not just talking about THAC0, that infamously unintuitive system that had players and DMs consulting tables to see whether their roll could hit that powerful fighter with the mighty -8 AC.  THAC0 was just a mechanical system.  Below, I will talk about four design principles of 1st Edition AD&D that fundamentally shaped how player characters worked, why those decisions were made, and why they have since fallen by the wayside.

1. Average-Dude Character Stats

3d6 Probability Graph, via Jonathan Dobres

If you only started playing D&D this millennium, you've probably heard grognards talking about the rough old days when they had to roll just 3d6 in order (uphill both ways in knee-deep snow) for their character stats, none of this namby-pamby 4d6-drop-1 or even 5d6-drop-2.  "Back in my day," they might say, "if you got 11 Strength you'd give thanks to the dice gods, because at least you didn't roll a 6."

While there were certainly plenty of DMs who made their players roll 3d6 in order for their stats, and it seems to us to be a hallmark of such older editions of D&D, the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide actually discouraged this.  The four methods of rolling up presented therein are actually a lot more lenient than you might expect.  The first is the now-familiar 4d6-drop-1 method, with the scores "recorded and arranged in the order the player desires."  Method II has the player roll 3d6 twelve times and keep the six best scores.  Method III has 3d6 rolled six times for each ability score, keeping the best result, and Method IV has the player roll 3d6 in order for twelve characters and choose one of them to play.

So AD&D acknowledged that playing a character with 10s in every stat wasn't particularly exciting, but the game had other ways of enforcing mediocrity on the average character.  If you've only played 3rd Edition D&D and beyond, you might be surprised to learn that a 1st Edition character with 18 Strength got a measly +1 to hit and +2 to damage, compared to 3rd Edition's +4 for both.  In fact, a character only got a bonus to hit with a Strength of 17, and a bonus to damage with a Strength of 16. Characters who used missile weapons were granted +0 to hit with them whether their Dexterity was 6 or 15.  Characters received no bonus hit points from Constitution scores below 15.

Why?
Clearly some effort was made to help characters escape the mediocrity of the middle of the bell-curve, but why not just make the bell-curve less mediocre in the first place?  There are two ideas at work here.  One is that average should mean average, and there is no point rewarding mediocrity.  The other is that exceptional scores should be commensurately rewarded.  If only a 17 or 18 Strength can give you a +1 bonus to hit, you are going to feel pretty good about getting that +1 bonus.  This ensures that when a character has a great ability score, they will really stand out and feel heroic.

Why Not?
Rewarding exceptional ability scores is great, but if you give hardly anything to less exceptional scores then it is only worthwhile to be exceptional.  It also means most of what you can do is because of the bonuses granted by your class, level, and equipment rather than your own physical attributes.  The linear progression of ability score bonuses introduced in 3rd Edition - whereby 10-11 grants a +0, 12-13 a +1, and so on - is a far more elegant game mechanic that rewards exceptional scores without neglecting the middle-range.

2. High Character Mortality

Giant Toad by David C. Sutherland III, Monster Manual (1977)

AD&D was a deadly, unforgiving game.  It owes some of this reputation to classic tournament dungeons like The Tomb of Horrors and The Temple of Elemental Evil which were designed to be particularly deadly and not an example of typical gameplay.  It is often said that dropping below 0 hp meant death in older editions of D&D, but the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide actually includes the familiar pocket of unconsciousness running from 0 to -9 hp, with death coming at -10.  Even so, between deadly traps, poisons, and monsters, a regular campaign would often see plenty of character death, especially at lower levels.

Why?
The goal of a good DM has never been to kill their characters, so we shouldn't think that AD&D was designed specifically to be deadly.  It simply seems deadlier in comparison to later editions of D&D, with all their safety buffers meant to keep characters alive.  But death, or the threat of death, is an important part of these games.  Without death there can be only minor failures, actions are robbed of consequences, and combat is devoid of tension.

Why Not?
It turns out death was a little too common.  When low-level dungeons all but guarantee at least one character death, it can be hard to become attached to your character, and if you aren't attached to your character it's not much of a roleplaying game.  4th and 5th editions have implemented a "3 strikes" death save system for characters below 0 hp.  In general, the game designers have decided that it is better to have built-in safety systems to make the rules inherently less deadly, letting individual DMs decide whether or not to ramp up the difficulty for extra danger.

3. Race and Class Restrictions

by David C. Sutherland III, via dungeonsmaster

One of the biggest differences a 3rd, 4th, or 5th edition player will notice looking back at 1st edition are the race and class restrictions.  You had to meet certain ability score requirements to become any non-human race.  Most classes had ability score requirements as well.  Plus, each non-human race was restricted to only a few classes, and they often could not advance fully through all the class levels.

Let's say you want to play a dwarf fighter - a fairly reasonable request.  To be a dwarf, you first have to have at least 8 Strength and 12 Constitution.  To be a fighter, you need at least 9 Strength and 7 Constitution.  Furthermore, dwarves can only advance to 9th level in the fighter class, and then only if they have 18 Strength; if they have 17 Strength they can advance to 8th level, or 7th if they have a score of 16 or less.  If your dwarf wants to be anything other than a fighter, that's tough luck.  Dwarves cannot be druids, paladins, rangers, magic-users, illusionists, or monks, and only npc dwarves can be clerics.  The only other classes open to dwarves are assassin (up to level 9) and thief (strangely the only class a dwarf can level up fully in).  The other races face similar restrictions - only humans are unrestricted in class and ability scores.

Why?
Part of the reasoning behind these restrictions had to do with game balance (of a sort), and part had to do with preconceived notions.  Rather than attempting to make the races or classes balanced against each other, Gary Gygax chose to restrict access to them.  In some cases, this was to prevent "overpowered" character builds - presumably a dwarf who could reach 10th level as a fighter would overshadow other races'  10th level fighters, so that had to be restricted.  In other cases, this created balance by rarity - the paladin was a particularly powerful class, so only a human could become one, and then only if they had at least 12 Strength, 9 Intelligence, 13 Wisdom, 9 Constitution, and 17 Charisma.

Preconceived notions of these fantasy races and classes, often tied to the writing of Tolkien and derivative works, also fed into the class restrictions.  Fantasy was still a young and underdeveloped genre, and it seemed laughable at the time to think of a dwarf wizard, a halfling assassin, or a half-orc paladin.  These restrictions helped to shape the world that these games could take place in.

Why Not?
More recent editions seek to balance the classes in comparison to each other so that no single class can be too powerful.  More effort has also been put into giving humans some special bonuses so that they don't feel boring compared to other races.  And, critically, player choice is now king.  The restrictions on what races can play what classes have been lifted, and the rules now encourage creativity in character creation.  Want to play a gnomish paladin or an elven monk?  Go ahead, it's your character.

4. Uneven Experience Point Gain

AD&D Player's Handbook

If you've never played AD&D, you might be surprised to learn that common experience point progression is a relatively new development.  In 1st and 2nd editions, each class leveled up at different experience point thresholds.  In 1st edition, the thief reached level 10 at 160,001 experience points, compared to 500,001 for fighters.  Experience points were determined in general by how powerful the monsters were that the group killed and how many gold pieces they gained in loot.  Specifically, there were a bunch of complex formulas that make my eyes glaze over.  Here is a 'helpful example' from the text:

An ancient spell-using red dragon of huge size with 88 hit points has a BXPV of 1300, XP/HP total of 1408, SAXPB of 2800 (armor class + special defense + high intelligence + saving throw bonus due to h.p./die), and an EAXPA of 2550 (major breath weapon + spell use + attack damage of 3-30/bite) - totalling [sic] 7758 x.p.

2nd edition tried to simplify things with group experience points awards for achieving quest goals and individual xp awards for doing things related to their class.  A priest could earn 100xp per spell level if they cast a spell, but only if it was cast in such a way that "support the beliefs and attitudes of his mythos."  A rogue, meanwhile, gained 2xp per gp value of treasure they obtain and 200xp per successful use of a special ability (like detecting a trap or climbing a wall).  Since thieves still benefited from a very low xp requirement to level up, 2nd edition was particularly good for thieves.

Why?
This was another attempt at balance that didn't involve actually balancing the classes.  Wizards are powerful, so they take more xp to level up.  Thieves aren't as powerful, so they don't need as much xp.  It's a sloppy fix, but easier than balancing the classes.  As for class-based individual xp awards, this makes it so you earn xp for doing things related to your class, which sounds pretty intuitive.

Why Not?
As it turns out, this system is stupid complicated and involves way too much math, even for D&D.  If you get your classes even mostly balanced, it is so much easier to have them all level up at the same xp thresholds.  Even the simplified system that 3rd edition D&D implemented pales in comparison to the much easier to use xp system that Pathfinder developed.  Unfortunately, these systems are so simplified that they put the focus exclusively on killing monsters (and disarming traps).  There are suggestions for quest completion xp rewards, but if the only actual xp rules involve monsters and traps, that's how most GMs will use them.  For some groups, this can put too much emphasis on combat, while non-combat triumphs go unrewarded.  Maybe we should bring back those class-based individual xp rewards in some form...  But that sounds like a subject for a later post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Modern D&D is built on the bones of AD&D, and these old design principles that we have since mostly abandoned still leave an impression on our gameplay experiences.  Our characters continue to dungeon-delve under the shadow of these old systems.  In some cases, players and GMs alike will try to hearken back to 'the old ways' in search of the magic that these early RPGs held.  Nostalgia for this gaming legacy permeates the game, even for those who never played the old editions.  Taking a look at where we come from can help us understand where we are now.

-your unintuitive d20 despot

Monster Monday: Giant Tardigrade, Resilient Little Buggers

Today's Monster Monday is the giant tardigrade, a man-eating giant version of the tiny creature often studied for its incredible ability to survive extremes of pressure, temperature, or radiation.  Tardigrades can even survive in the vacuum of space.  But can they survive a group of low-level adventurers?

source

Arnvida stops to examine the body.  Another desiccated sheep corpse, the same fist-sized holes punched into its flesh.  She looks back to the rest of the party to give a wordless acknowledgement of what they all know: something weird is killing Bolg's livestock.  But Perrin isn't paying attention.  He's staring to the west, mouth flapping dumbly, trying and failing to mouth some warning.  Arnvida follows his gaze to the stone well.  Two fat, trundling creatures - like pigs fashioned from a giant's toenail clippings - are clawing their way out on eight stubby legs, toothy tube-like mouths pulsing hungrily as if anticipating the adventurers' meat juices.  

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

Races Revisited: High Elves

I've been itching to redesign the core races for a while now.  Part of the reason is 5th edition with its really appealing broad-strokes approach to game design, and part of the reason is that Pathfinder is almost 10 years old, based on a system over 15 years old, and it is starting to collapse under its own weight.  I want the playable races to be as simple and evocative as possible.  They need to get across the core idea of the race without getting in the way with too many extraneous skill bonuses or abilities that function in instances so specific that you forget about them when the time comes to use them.

Last time on Races Revisited we looked at dwarves and tried to distill their essence into a concentrated dwarven liquor.  This week, we turn to elves.  Specifically: high elves.  Why the distinction?  Older editions of D&D made it clear that elven players were of high elf stock, as opposed to the less civilized wood elves or evil dark elves.  1st Edition AD&D relegated the other elven races to the Monster Manual.  2nd Edition allowed players access to the other elven races "with the DM's permission (but the choice grants no additional powers)".  The designers of 5th Edition are, fortunately, big fans of sub-races as character customization options, and the 5th Edition Player's Handbook allows players to choose from high elves, wood elves, or dark elves, each one lending a slight twist to the base elven race.  I have chosen to treat high elves and wood elves as separate races for Races Revisited.  High elves are the aloof, magically-inclined elves who spend their incredibly long lives in shining, elegant cities.  Wood elves, by contrast, are the gritty forest-dwelling elves more likely to be clad in leather than mithral - the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook describes them as "wild, temperamental, and savage."  So look forward to wood elves in a future post, and scroll down for more high elf action.

One thing I noticed when researching past versions of elves was that elves were always described as having a special affinity toward bows, swordsmanship, and magic, but mechanically while they were given an incentive to use bows and swords, they had no inherent bonus to their magical abilities.  It wasn't until Pathfinder that elves were thrown a bone in the magic department, gaining a racial bonus to Intelligence and some bonuses to overcoming Spell Resistance and identifying magic items.  I take things a little further, as you will see below.

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.

Review - The Iron Ship by K.M. McKinley

The Iron Ship bills itself as the story of the six Kressind siblings drawn by fate and ambition toward a great destiny, inexorably linked with the adventure of the titular iron ship.  More accurately, it is seven stories - loosely connected at best - following five of the six Kressind siblings and two other people with whom they have a passing acquaintance; the iron ship doesn't touch water until the last 50 pages of this 650 page book.

Just enough so that the cover art isn't wholly misleading.

Published in 2015 by Solaris Books, K.M. McKinley's debut novel deserves high praise for its rich descriptions and unique worldbuilding.  The Iron Ship is an industrial fantasy novel set in a world of magic and science, a world that grabs the reader's attention and doesn't let go. A mysterious dark planet called The Twin plays havoc with the earth's oceans; high tides push thousands of miles up great rivers and lap at the lowest reaches of cliffside cities, while low tides reveal temporary islands and ghost-haunted marshlands. Archaeologists vie to discover ancient cities of lost civilizations and the valuable technology and mysterious architecture they left behind.  Free-thinking women challenge a social order that treats them as less than their male counterparts. The old aristocracy looks down its collective nose at the nouveau riche industrialists who are quickly coming to dominate high society in the 100 Kingdoms. Downtrodden pioneers populate a boom-town mining magic ore from a dangerous black desert to power the engines of industry.  Also, horses are extinct and some dogs can talk.  Bet you didn't see that one coming.

If you are like me, you'll keep reading just to find out more about the world.  McKinley blends familiar aspects of our own history with fantasy tropes, subverting both in the process and crafting a world both accessible and regularly surprising.  Unfortunately, if you are like me, you will also look up at some point and realize that three quarters of the book have gone by with barely anything happening in the story.  It all feels like set up with no pay-off; like the first third of a bunch of stories, bundled together and stretched out into a full novel.  Each story has its climax, of course, but some of them feel forced, like they were tacked on simply because the book was ending.  Two of the climaxes are simply twists that set up further conflict for the next book, and two of them involve previously established characters that have made the switch to cartoonishly evil villains simply to provoke a violent confrontation.  Moreover, even though the book is pretty long, it feels like every story gets shortchanged, with the narrative dipping in just enough to show how things have progressed before jetting off to another corner of the world.

Story problems aside, I'll be grabbing the next book in the series - The City of Ice - when it comes out late 2016 or early 2017.  But would I recommend it?  If you like worldbuilding, give it a read, but if you're expecting a gripping story, it's probably safe to pass this one up.

The more in-depth and spoilerific review is below, so if you want to read it and hate spoilers, go no further.

Gods and Religions, Part 3: Domains and Pantheons

If you read my previous article advocating for creating multiple co-existing pantheons in a single campaign setting, you may have thought to yourself, "Wait, you want me to make multiple pantheons?  Won't that get boring?  How many different fricking thunder gods does one setting need?  Damn you, d20 Despot, you ask too much of me!"  Okay, first of all, please let go of my shirt collar.  Secondly, I think you might want to read this very article.  That's right, it's time for another installment of Gods & Religions, and this time we'll be talking about different structures that a pantheon can take, and how to spread domains around creatively so that you don't get stuck with nine nearly identical gods of war.  And, as is so often the case, we can find the inspiration for such diverse domains and pantheons in our own history.

Pantheon Structure
In the first article on the subject, I touched on the idea that there were more options for a religion than your typical eight-to-twenty-member pantheon: many polytheistic religions are centered around a few core deities but include hundreds of gods and god-like beings among their pantheon; others (like Zoroastrianism) acknowledge only two gods, often representing opposing worldviews and locked in eternal struggle with each other.  So when making your pantheons, don't feel obligated to fulfill a certain minimum (or maximum) number of gods.

Aside from numbers, another way to differentiate your pantheons is by structuring them differently.  What do I mean by structure?  Well, your typical D&D pantheon (think the gods of Golarion detailed in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook or the Greyhawk deities found in D&D 3.5) is fairly level, with all the gods on relatively equal footing, ruling independently over their own sections of the outer planes.  Other pantheons have more of a hierarchy.  Take the Classical Greek pantheon as a familiar example: Zeus rules over the Olympian gods as king, with his wife Hera.  They, along with the rest of the twelve Olympian gods in turn are superior to the remaining gods and demigods, like Herakles and Asclepius and the Muses.  Hades, meanwhile, reigns over the realm of the dead, and the overthrown Titans are condemned to Tartarus.

The Ancient Egyptian religion provides an example of an alternative structure.  Depending on what time you are looking at in Ancient Egypt's 3000 year history (and who you are asking), the chief god might be the sun god Ra, or the falcon god Horus (who merged with Ra), or the dead god Osiris, or the sun disk Aten (if you ask Akhenaten), or even the dreaded Set (if you ask the Hyksos).  The primacy of the gods depended on the whims of the ruling pharaoh and the power of the various cult centers (like Heliopolis, the House of Ra, or Thebes, where the Theban Triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu held sway).  Where the Greek gods were like a kingdom, the Ancient Egyptian gods were more like Hollywood, with different actors rising and falling in popularity over time and being called upon to fulfill different roles depending on the needs of the director.

There are many possible structures a pantheon could take.  Maybe the eight major gods each govern a strictly defined domain, and turn either to the god of balance or the god of treachery when conflicts arise between them.  Or maybe three major gods hold primacy over a cavalcade of lesser gods with more focused domains, like the god of the sea or the god of disease.  Perhaps the pantheon is divided into competing halves, with each god and goddess facing off against their polar opposite on the other side.  Mix things up and throw together a wide variety of ideas to make your pantheon as simple or complex as you want.  As cliché as it may sound, the only limit is your imagination.

Immigration and Absorption
One thing that really shakes up real-world pantheons is the addition of other gods from other religious/mythological traditions.  The Greeks were always receiving popular gods and goddesses from the East and adding them to their theology.  The Romans did their fair share of that (as attested by the popularity of Isis, Sol Invictus, Jesus Christ, and Mithras in the Late Roman Empire), but they also tended to absorb the gods of their conquered subjects into their own gods - a process called syncretism.  The ancient Egyptians, meanwhile, were constantly syncretising their own gods together - combining Ra and Horus into Horus-re, for instance.

If one of the civilizations in your campaign world has close contact with another, through trade, war, or conquest, consider adding one or more gods from one of the pantheons into the other.  Consider what gods fill a 'gap' in the theology of those peoples.  Consider also how the god might change as it is absorbed into a new culture.  For instance, imagine a desert people who are conquered by a seagoing foreign race.  The seagoing race's primary deity is Sha, the god of the sea, storms, and physical might.  As the desert people begin to worship Sha, they focus more on the storms and might than the sea.  Perhaps the desert people already had a minor deity of storms and lightning named Surru.  As Sha takes a leading place in the desert peoples' pantheon, Sha absorbs the less-important Surru and becomes Shasurru, mighty god of storms and floods.

Real history is full of political changes resulting in theological changes.  Gods gain power in the heavens as their supporters gain power on earth - though in a fantasy world, which causes which is a matter up for debate.  Perhaps the earliest example is the Enuma Elish, a piece of Babylonian literature describing how Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon, came to overthrow the pre-existing hierarchy and dominate all the other Mesopotamian gods.  Real history is also full of examples of gods being absorbed into other pantheons from outside, adding variety and exotic flavor to an established pantheon.  Incorporating such things into your own world makes the pantheons feel more real.

Leaving Things Out
One great way to make all your pantheons seem very boring and cookie-cutter is to always have every domain represented by a major deity.  Not every religion has to have a god of animals and a god of war and a god of fire and a god of weather and so on ad infinitum.  In fact, not every domain needs to be represented in each pantheon at all.  Some societies might not even have a god of, say, evil.

Think about what sort of gods the civilization would worship.  Take the aforementioned hypothetical desert civilization.  They might have a sun god, since the sun is so omnipresent in the desert, and they might have a water god because water is the source of all life.  They probably would not have a god of the sea (although you might be surprised - Tiamat, who plays such an important role in Mesopotamian mythology, was the goddess of the ocean).

Sometimes domain gaps are filled by the inclusion of foreign gods in the pantheon, as mentioned above.  Other times, other god-like but non-divine forces can fill that role.  It is quite easy to imagine, for instance, a pantheon which has no evil deities; worshipers of evil in such a society might be forced to throw in their lot with demon lords or Old Ones or other such malign forces.

The God of What and What?
This may seem counterintuitive, but don't think too logically about which domains you assign to what gods.  When creating a goddess of the sea, you might give her the water domain of course, plus the weather domain because weather is so closely associated with the sea, the travel domain because ships travel on the sea.  Maybe add in the chaos domain, because the sea is ever-changing, and the destruction domain because of the great destruction the sea can wreak, but also the animal domain because the sea supports so much life.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Okay, now create a sea god for the next pantheon who feels like a completely different god.  If you go about each god logically, you will end up with a bunch of sea gods that seem pretty much the same.  Real deities have so much more variety.  Mesopotamian sea goddess Tiamat is associated with creation and dragons, while the Greek sea god Poseidon is also the god of earthquakes and horses.  The Irish sea god Manannán mac Lir is associated with the afterlife, necromancy, and trickery, the Norse sea god Njörðr is associated with wealth and good cropland, and Ōyamazumi - one of several Japanese sea deities - is also a god of mountains and war.  And those are just sea gods!

In practice, gods tend to accumulate odd associations that we probably wouldn't think of if we set out to create them logically from scratch.  Sometimes this is just due to the unique nature and character of the god - The Norse thunder god Thor is also a war god and a fertility god, because that's just what Thor is.  Sometimes it is because the god absorbed the role of an earlier god who fell out of favor (or a vaguely similar foreign god) picking up strange traits in the process - when Marduk defeated the sea goddess Tiamat, he usurped her role as creator by paradoxically (re-)creating the earth out of her mangled body, and in the process he also seems to have gained an association with the sea.  Sometimes the domain of one god rubs off on their parent, child, or spouse - Apollo, for instance, is associated with healing because of his son Asclepius, god of medicine.  Whatever the reason, gods often come with a plethora of seemingly odd domains which make them unique an interesting.

One easy way to simulate this in your fantasy pantheon is, once you have established your main deities and assigned them a few basic domains, randomly assign the remaining domains to those deities.  Then you can work backwards to create myths that explain why that deity is associated with those domains.  Let's say you have a triad of gods - the god of the sky, the god of death, and the goddess of the sea.  You randomly assign some spare domains to them, and the goddess of the sea gets stuck with love and knowledge.  You decide that her association with love is because the gods of death and the sky are constantly competing for her affection.  Maybe her relation to knowledge comes from the loss of a great library when a once mighty city sank beneath the waves - now all that knowledge lies on the sea floor, where she jealously guards it.

Shake your pantheons up!  Make them feel different from each other.  Above all, make them seem interesting enough that your players will engage with them rather than just ignore them as part of the backdrop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi all you loyal readers!  You may have noticed that there was no post last week.  I'm sorry about that - this month has been very busy, partly because I am on vacation and partly because when I was not on vacation I was working very hard on non-d20 despot related stuff.  So I have decided that this month I will only be posting every other week.  My $5+ patrons on Patreon can still expect all the promised Monster Mondays, but they will be arriving in a lump at the end of the month rather than weekly (except for the awesome leather golem which I posted in the first week of May).  Check back on Monday the 30th for the next post!

-your syncretic d20 despot

Monster Monday: Strix Harpy, Doom-Singing Owl-Witch

Today's Monster Monday is the strix harpy, a savage, doom-singing owl-witch who feeds on fear and blood.

Back in January, I gave my patrons on Patreon a preview of all the rewards tiers available for backers.  Those who pledge $5+ per month get access to a new Monster Monday every week, and $8+ backers get to vote on the final monster of every month.  At the end of January, backers chose the strix harpy (which won out over the bone thief and the pricoloci) and they got it!  Now, three months later, you're getting it too!  Big thanks to my patrons - if you'd like to join their ranks in supporting d20 Despot, head on over to patreon.com/d20despot and make a pledge.  Or if you'd like to help us out without spending any hard-earned copper pieces, like d20 despot on facebook and share us with your nerdy friends!

Okay, enough self-promotion; here's your strix harpy.

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

Harpy, Strix               CR 6

XP 2,400

CE Medium monstrous humanoid

Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +15

DEFENSE

AC 18, touch 14, flat-footed 14 (+2 armor, +3 Dex, +1 dodge, +2 natural)

hp 68 (8d10+24)

Fort +6, Ref +9, Will +9

Immune disease, fear

Weakness light sensitivity

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., fly 80 ft. (average)

Melee 2 claws +10 (1d6+2 plus 1 bleed), bite +5 (1d4+1 plus 1 bleed)

Special Attacks doom song (DC 17), rend (2 claws, 1d6+3 plus 1 bleed)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 4^th)

   at will – ill omen (DC 14)

   3/day – cause fear (DC 14), charm person (DC 14), hold person (DC 15)

   1/week – augury, bestow curse (DC 16)

STATISTICS

Str 14, Dex 17, Con 15, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 17

Base Atk +8; CMB +10; CMD 23

Feats Dodge, Flyby Attack, Great Fortitude, Toughness

Skills Fly +13, Intimidate +11, Perception +15, Perform (song) +5, Stealth +15; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Stealth

Languages Common

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Doom Song (Su)

The strix harpy’s song has the power to instill the chilling fear of death and ill-omen in all who hear it.  When a strix harpy sings, all creatures aside from other harpies within a 300-foot spread must succeed on a DC 17 Will saving throw or become shaken.  A creature that successfully saves is not subject to the same strix harpy’s song for 24 hours.  The effect continues for as long as the strix harpy sings and for 1 round thereafter.  This is a sonic mind-affecting fear effect.  The save DC is Charisma based. 

ECOLOGY

Environment any

Organization solitary, pair, flight (1-3 plus 2-8 harpies), coven (2-8 plus 1 spellcaster of at least 3rd level)

Treasure Standard (leather armor, other treasure)

More bestial and hideous than even normal harpies, the strix harpy is a bloodthirsty creature who delights in inflicting fear and torment on her victims.  She resembles an owl, with large eyes set in even larger sockets and a hooked nose that gives the impression of a beak.  Her wings move as silently as an owl’s, allowing her to sneak up on prey without warning and adding to her species’ ghostly reputation.  Strix harpies are renowned for their cunning and brutality.  With their chilling doom song and host of spell-like abilities, they like to toy with their prey’s emotions, letting them stew in fear before swooping in to tear them apart with sharp teeth and talons.  Even more than other harpies, strix harpies revel in blood.  Their attacks leave seeping wounds, which the strix eagerly drink from.  By the time the strix harpy is finished feeding, she is red with gore and truly terrifying to behold. 

   Strix harpies are loners by nature, but sometimes see the benefit of joining together in hunting pairs or even covens to better prey on sentient life.  Some normal harpies seek out strix harpies to flock with, for the strix harpies’ doom songs make their prey more susceptible to the harpies’ captivating song.  Sometimes a brave mortal will seek out a strix harpy and placate it with gifts in hopes of gaining an augury from the creature.  According to legend, a strix harpy’s feathers can be used to brew a potent love potion, but such a love is doomed to a tragic end.  

-your ominous d20 despot