June 2010

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4

"Because everything is worth examining, and if you don't examine your view of the world, you are still subject to it, and you will find yourself doing things that-- Never mind."
Vlad Taltos, Athyra

June 21st, 2010

UA-STYLE RUMORS FOR D&D

Unknown Armies is a great little RPG. As I once wrote in a review, "UA is, I'll be the first to admit, possessed of some flaws -- but it bubbles with such creativity, originality, potential, and brilliance that it overwhelms those flaws." Unfortunately, it never caught on in the way it probably deserved to. (And it probably never will: Too many other games have stepped in and stolen its stuff over the past decade.)

One of the (many) great things about Unknown Armies, however, was the "What You Hear" section. In the world of Unknown Armies all the half-crazed conspiracies and crack-pot theories and urban legends you've ever heard are true at one level or another, but in a way completely alien to anything you might have expected. "What You Hear" was basically a rapid-fire conglomeration of one- or two-sentence rumors that peeled back the mundanities of the world and revealed them to be something horribly different. They were a distorted lens through which the world could be viewed and used.

The great thing about them was that they could be used in any number of ways: Disinformation. Intriguing background detail. Full-fledged adventure seed. Idle chit-chat from a nervous underworld contact. All kinds of stuff. And all of it mysterious and enigmatic and awesome.

Circa 2004, a guy named RemyBuron started a thread on RPGNet for people to post UA-style rumors. Here a couple examples:

There is no state of Wyoming. I mean, have you ever met anyone from there?

If you had been crucified would you ever want to see a cross ever again? The common symbol of a crucifix actually wards off the power of Christ rather than invoking it. That most people believe differently is one of Satan's greatest successes, just above killing a carpenter by nailing him to a wooden structure.

A few months later I started a thread for UA-Style Rumors: Dungeons & Dragons. Recent free-associating resulted in memories of the thread surfacing out of the deep murk of my brain, and I thought it would be fun to track the thread down and loot the stuff I had posted in it. When I did, I was pleasantly pleased to discover that the thread has been periodically revived over the past several years -- with the most recent spurt of activity coming just a few weeks ago (and including someone describing it as the "best thread ever").

Without further ado, here are my UA-style rumors for D&D (including a couple of new ones that never appeared in the thread). Check out the original thread for lots of good stuff from other people.

Mages were all born centuries ago. In fact, they're not even human. No, seriously, think about it: Have you ever known a kid who grew up to be a mage? Nope. All the mages you've ever known are already adults, and most of them are old. Apprentices? Most of them are duped slaves. The few who can actually cast spells are actually archmages. They're just putting on an act to keep up appearances.

Dragons aren't really that impressive. In fact, even the biggest of 'em don't grow any bigger than a large dog. The rest are just bullshit spun by would-be heroes trying to look important.

Why are there are only nine towns in Ten Towns?

You ever notice how the king is never seen without the queen? That's because he's really a living mannequin. The real king died years ago. If you watch closely, you can see the queen's fingers twitching the invisible strings.

Underdark? There's no such thing. The dark elves just live on the other side of the planet. (Although it's true that you can get there through the dungeons -- some of them go deep enough, although you have to watch out for the gravity shift.) And they're not evil. That's just racist elven propaganda. They don't like anybody without pointy ears and alabaster skin. They think we're all orcs.

All those monsters who prowl the wilderness? They were put there by the king. The court wizard makes 'em, and most of them are mutated from prisoners. You can see the lights in the wizard's tower every night from the rituals. Why does he do it? To keep us commonfolk stuck in the cities and the villages. If we were able to travel safely and talk to each other we'd be free of him soon enough.

The gods are a sham. A couple hundred years ago some powerful elven spellcasters set themselves up as "gods". Now the elves effectively rule the world, and their duped priests don't even know they're doing it. The dragons know the truth. That's why they're hunted.

Somewhere in the Duchy of Colbane there's a village. Everybody there is a mind-slave controlled completely by a lich. Everybody.

Bags of Devouring don't actually destroy anything. They just transport it to another bag. The most powerful person in the whole multiverse is the guy who owns the bag all the Bags of Devouring empty into. I only know this because a friend of mine told me. I've never seen him again.

Look, you've gotta stop casting fireballs. They're dangerous. No, seriously, stop laughing. I mean they're dangerous. There's this dungeon you can't go to any more. It's full of fire. All the time. Some wizard cast three fireballs in quick succession and they all kind of... collapsed into each other. Ripped open a vortice to the Plane of Fire. I used to go delving with a wizard who was scrying on them at the time. He told me that if it had happened on the surface it would have wiped out the whole world. Seriously.

Liches? Not really undead. In fact, most of them aren't even that powerful. They're posers. I heard that a bunch of apprentices who couldn't master more than basic weavings cooked up the whole "lich" thing as a secret society. They used a couple of simple illusion spells to wow a couple of hick villages and build a rep. Some adventurers managed to take out a couple and, hyped up on their own egos, built up the rep of the Liches even more. But now things are changing: The group is attracting more powerful members. And my friend Jacob heard some nasty rumors about that coup in Covartain last year. Something about "lich-ghouls"...

Have you ever noticed how there are always exactly 6 members in every adventuring party? That's the number of the Beast. Think about it.

Tell me about it. My friend got hooked on those things. This would have been back before I lost my eye. It got to the point where he couldn't get through a day without drinking one. Then it got worse. He had to use more and more powerful cure wounds potions to get the same kick. He was downing two or three potions every hour. And then they stopped working altogether. That's when he switched to inflict wounds. Gods, that's an ugly way to die...

I find designing these rumors for D&D particularly interesting: With UA you can just look a the world around you and add a spice of oddness or magic. But D&D is innately strange and magical. You can't just say, "There's a dungeon with weird stuff in it." Dungeons are supposed to be filled with weird stuff. Shapeshifters and covens and illusions are all part of the package. In order to get that full UA-style punch, therefore, you need to look a the typical expectations of a D&D campaign and then deliberately invert those expectations. Force 'em to look twice and re-evaluate their preconceptions.

Got an idea for your own UA-style rumor? Hit the comment button.

June 23rd, 2010

PLAYING BY THE RULES OF TWIXT

A couple of years ago David Myers, a media professor at Loyola University, published "Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt". The paper described how Myers conducted a sociology experiment in the City of Heroes MMORPG while playing a character named Twixt. To sum up:

(1) Myers would enter a PVP area in the game and use whatever tactics were legally allowed by the rules of the game in order to win the area.

(2) These included tactics which other players felt were "cheap", disrupted the normal cross-faction socializing, and/or interefered with non-PVP exploits being used to "farm" the zone.

(3) Other players attempted to force Myers to abandon his tactics by insulting, denigrating, threatening, and/or ostracizing him. (Myers was harassed in the chat channels and forums, expelled from his guild, and even received real-life death threats.)

The conclusion Myers wants to draw from this experiment is simple: "He said his experience demonstrated that modern-day social groups making use of modern-day technology can revert to "medieval and crude" methods in trying to manipulate and control others."

As he put it in the original paper, "That is, the social order within CoH/V seemed to operate quite independently of game rules and almost solely for the sake of its own preservation. It did not seem within the purview of social orders and ordering within CoH/V to recognize (much less nurture) any sort of rationality -- or, for that matter, any supra-social mechanism that might have adjudicated Twixt's behavior on the basis of its ability to provide, over time, great knowledge of the game system...."

I'm somewhat conflicted.

 

PLAYING TO WIN

On the one hand, I'm an advocate of Sirlin's philosophy of Playing to Win. (If you aren't familiar with it, I highly recommend following that link.) When it comes to purely competitive games -- games like Street Fighter 2, Starcraft, Twilight Imperium, or football -- those who don't play to win are clearly engaging in irrational and needlessly self-defeating behavior.

But should the PVP area of an MMORPG necessarily be considered a purely competitive environment?

It certainly can be: For example, the Warsong Gulch mini-game of capture the flag in World of Warcraft takes place in a sequestered game map: The only reason to go there is to enter into a PVP competition.

But the PVP area Myers was competing in presents a more complicated situation: Other players clearly had coherent and rational non-PVP reasons for participating in that area. Myers may have been following the rules of the game, but should that automatically give his agenda priority over the agendas of the other players in the game?

At one level the question really becomes: Why are we playing these games?

And, frankly, I have no doubt that Myers would have found similar responses to his "griefing" tactics even if he had been using them in a completely and indisputably competitive environment. Sirlin elucidates the fundamental nature of scrub behavior, and it's absolutely trivial to find complaints of "cheap sniper!" or "spawn camper!"  in any number of FPS deathmatches. (Although would the responses have become so severely virulent without the accompanying disruption of a social norm? That's an interesting question.)

But I think there is a deeper failure of self-analysis on the part of Myers.

 

TWIXT IN THE REAL WORLD

In his paper, Myers writes:

In real-world environments, “natural” laws governing social relationships, if they exist at all, are part of the same social system in which they operate and, for that reason, are difficult to isolate, measure, and confirm. In Twixt’s case, however, two unique sets of rules – one governing the game system, one governing the game society -- offered an opportunity to observe how social rules adapt to system rules (or, more speculatively, how social laws might reproduce natural laws.) And, the clearest answer, based on Twixt’s experience, is that they don’t. Rather, if game rules pose some threat to social order, these rules are simply ignored. And further, if some player -- like Twixt -- decides to explore those rules fully, then that player is shunned, silenced, and, if at all possible, expelled.

Myers assumes that the game rules should naturally define the rules of society. That society, in failing to live by those rules, is acting irrationally.

To analyze the legitimacy of Myers assumption, let's hypothetically apply Twixt's behavior to the real world:

Twixt enters a small town. He sees a woman he desires, so he rapes her. He then moves on to other women and begins raping them, one after another. The people of the town don't like what Twixt is doing: Attempts to physically restrain or kill him fail (either because he's too strong or perhaps they are unarmed while he has a gun), so he quickly finds himself ostracized from society. People avoid him, and when they can't avoid him they try to shame him into changing his behavior.

From Twixt's point of view he's playing by the rules of reality: The system is clearly set-up to reward mass procreation and a wide "sowing of the seed". Nor is he breaking any natural laws of reality. In fact, people keep praying to God for Twixt to stop and God never does anything to stop him. That only proves that Twixt is playing by the rules. (Myers specifically uses the fact that the GMs in City of Heroes didn't punish his behavior as indicative that his behavior was within the rules of the game.)

Twixt is just "exploring those rules fully". And Myers apparently expects us to consider the efforts of the townsfolk to have Twixt "shunned, silence, and, if at all possible, expelled" to be "medieval and crude".

But I think we can all agree that Twixt the Serial Rapist should be punished and ostracized by society.

Myers writes, "If either natural or system laws governing social order in the real world are in any way analogous to the game rule sof the COH/V virtual world, we can conclude that social orders in general are more likely to deny than reveal those laws." He goes on to say that this denial "seems drastically and overly harsh, even unnatural".

But the very nature of society is to deny the primacy of natural law. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" has been pretty consistently shown to be a spectacularly crappy philosophy (as Twixt the Serial Rapist demonstrates). A healthy society, on the other hand, tends to operate on the principle that "your freedom ends where my nose begins".

Myers, on the other hand, seems to willfully ignore the fact that his flailing hands are smashing into people's noses.

 

IN CONCLUSION

But while I find Myers' general conclusions regarding the function of society to be wrong-headed, I remain conflicted regarding the specific example of behavior in City of Heroes.

While "your freedom ends where my nose begins" is a relatively solid philosophy in the real world, we obviously set it aside when we sit down to play a competitive game. (Football, for example, would be a relatively boring game if all the players politely agreed not to invade each others' personal space.) In fact, I would argue that one of the things that makes a game appealing is specifically the fact that it constitutes a safe environment in which we agree to abandon certain social norms.

(And, by extension, one of the reasons why "The Most Dangerous Game" is such an appealing scenario is because it ironically inverts the paradigm again by removing the safety of the game-space.)

But here we come to the crux of the matter: Are MMORPGs games? Or are they digital extensions of our social lives?

That's obviously not a question with an easy black-or-white answer. MMORPGs create a complex shade of gray somewhere in the middle of that scale, and they create a natural conflict between people who have different opinions about how much they should be played as games and how much they should be lived as a social outlet.

Myers chose to define himself as an unrepentent blackguard: He vigorously approached City of Heroes as nothing but a game space and, thus, refused to acknowledge any aspect of the social aspect of the game. This conveniently placed him at the extreme end of the MMORPG scale, which meant that everyone else in the game was almost guaranteed to lie further towards the social end of the scale.

Which explains why, as one person quoted by Myers said, "everyone hates you twixty".

June 24th, 2010

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: WEREWOLVES SUCK

Albino Skaven

I know what you're thinking: "Justin, you're obviously confused. Vampires suck. Werewolves bite."

But lycanthropes seriously suck in 3rd Edition.

I'm not one of those who generally subscribes to the theory that 3rd Edition stat blocks are horrendous. (Although I did revise them to improve the usability of the actual block itself.) Prepping stat blocks usually represents only about 5% of the time that I spend prepping for a game.

But lycanthropes? I hate the little bastards.

I can generally whip out even the most complex stat blocks with templates and class levels and fancy equipment in 15 minutes or so. But I just spent more than two hours prepping the stat block for a single wererat, and I'm still pretty sure that I've screwed up the math somewhere. Probably a minor screw-up (the sort of thing that wouldn't bother me in a private campaign); but since this is for a professional project it's driving me insane.

It's not the multiple stat blocks that bug me. I don't actually have any problems using a lycanthrope straight out of the book. And I'll frequently whip up multiple stat blocks for the same NPC in order to facilitate temporary effects (different equipment, rage, buffs, etc.).

The problem is that the rules for creating lycanthropes require you to create all three stat blocks sort of simultaneously while pulling information from both the base creature and the animal form. So you end up juggling five different stat blocks, and if you discover that you need to make an adjustment on any one of them you have to backtrack the change through all the other stat blocks.

On the one hand, I'm kind of looking at the rules for werewolves in 2nd Edition and 4th Edition and wondering if there's any reason we can't adopt that simplicity into 3rd Edition: Just give me one stat block and let me apply a simple template ("add bite attack") when the were-creature enters hybrid form.

On the other hand, having gotten the rant out of my system, I'm beginning to suspect that the real problem isn't necessarily the rules, but rather the organization of the rules. It seems like what the system needs is a clear order of progression:

(1) Create base creature.

(2) Apply lycanthrope template to create humanoid form.

(3) Apply hybrid template to the humanoid form create hybrid form.

(4) Apply animal form template to the humanoid form to create animal form.

And while it's nice to have the generic "use any animal" guidelines, it would probably be easier in practice to have separate templates for each of the established types of were-creatures. Here's a stab at what the wererat templates would look like:

WERERAT TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the base creature to create the wererat's humanoid form. This template can be added to any humanoid or giant.

Size and Type: Creature gains the "shapechanger" subtype.
Hit Dice and Hit Points: Add 1d8 hit die to the base creature.
Armor Class: +2 bonus to natural armor.

Special Qualities
: alternate form, lycanthropic empathy, low-light vision, scent

Base Save Bonuses: Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +2
Abilities: Wis +2, may gain an ability score increase due to additional hit dice
Skills: +8 racial bonus on Climb and Swim checks. Gains (2 + Int modifier) skill points, treating Climb, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spot and Swim as class skills.
Feats: Alertness, Iron Will, Weapon Finesse

Challenge Rating: +2

WERERAT HYBRID TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the wererat's humanoid form to create the stat block for its hybrid form.

Size and Type: Small or the size of the base creature, whichever is larger.
Armor Class: +1 bonus to natural armor (if better than the base creature's natural armor bonus)
Attacks: Gains 2 claw attacks and 1 bite as a secondary attack (-5 penalty).

Hybrid Size Claw Bite
Small 1d3 1d4
Medium 1d4 1d6
Large 1d6 2d6
Huge 2d4 2d6

Special Attacks: curse of lycanthropy (Fort DC 15); cannot cast spells with verbal components
Special Qualities: DR 5/silver for afflicted lycanthropes; DR 10/silver for natural lycanthropes

Abilities: Dex +6, Con +2

WERERAT ANIMAL FORM TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the wererat's humanoid form to create the stat block for its animal form.

Size and Type: Small
Speed: 40 ft., climb 20 ft.
Armor Class: +1 natural armor (if better than the base creature's natural armor)
Attacks: Replace all attacks with a bite attack (1d4 plus disease).

Special Attacks: curse of lycanthropy (Fort DC 15); cannot cast spells with verbal, somatic, or material components
Special Qualities: DR 5/silver for afflicted lycanthropes; DR 10/silver for natural lycanthropes

Abilities: Dex +6, Con +2
Skills: Can choose to take 10 on Climb checks even if rushed or threatened. Can use their Dex modifier for Climb and Swim checks.

I think that should produce 100% rules-accurate stat blocks with less hassle.

(Pardon me for a moment while I wander away from my HTML editor...)

And the proof is in the pudding: Despite forgetting to apply the old age template to my base creature's stats (so that I had to start over while I was half-way through the hybrid stat block) and taking extra time to design a custom magic item from scratch, it only took me half an hour to put together three wererat stat blocks for a 4th-level orc barbarian. And I'm far more confident of the result than I was of the mess I managed to generate after 2+ hours of struggle this morning.

(This, of course, is the point where one of you will point out some egregiously idiotic mistake I made in those templates and send me crying back to my drafting table.)

June 25th, 2010

NODE-BASED SCENARIO DESIGN

COLLECTOR'S EDITION

The Node-Based Scenario Design series has been conveniently collected onto its own set of pages for easy access, easy reading, and easy linking.

Part 1: The Plotted Approach
Part 2: Inverting the Three Clue Rule
Part 3: Sample Scenario - Las Vegas CTU
Part 4: Plot vs. Node
Part 5: Alternative Node Designs
Part 6: Freeform Design in the Cloud
Part 7: Types of Nodes

The essays on the Three Clue Rule and scenario-based design make for good supplementary reading if you haven't seen them already.

June 28th, 2010

MOVIE WEEK - PRINCE OF PERSIA

Prince of Persia

Dear Prince of Persia,

You have one gimmick: A dagger that lets you rewind time.

You might want to try using it to some meaningful effect at some point during your movie.

Sincerely,

Justin Alexander

In all seriousness, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a fairly entertaining action-adventure flick. But it's not particularly clever, and that's disappointing because a dagger that lets you rewind time should give you plenty of opportunities for cleverness.

I think the film's real source of struggle is that they turn the Prince into the infallible star of an action movie: For example, one sequence has him effortlessly surf his way down an avalanche of sand, parkour-leap perfectly onto a narrow ledge, and somersault his way into the next chamber. And he's doing that sort of thing pretty consistently throughout the entire movie.

But the essential nature of the dagger of time is that it lets you erase your mistakes. So if you never let your prototypical action hero make any mistakes, then you're knee-capping your premise. The disappointing thing here is that the dagger of time gives you the opportunity to create a prototypical action hero who is still a fallible human being (because he achieves that action hero perfection through the use of the dagger) -- thus re-creating cinematically the same basic appeal that the game had.

The film also chickens out of using the incredibly funny-yet-bittersweet ending from the original game, opting instead for a paint-by-numbers Hollywood Romance ending. Which I, personally, find disappointing.

Final analysis: Fun to see, but nothing you're going to remember six months from now.

June 28th, 2010 (2nd Update)

LYCANTHROPE WEEK - WERERATS

Albino Skaven

Last week I posted a rant about the difficulty of creating lycanthropic stat blocks in 3rd Edition. The short version is this: Creating lycanthropes require you to create three separate stat blocks simultaneously while pulling information from both the base creature and the animal form. You end up juggling five stat blocks and if you discover that you need (or want) to make an adjustment on any one of them during the creation process you have to backtrack the change through all the other stat blocks.

I concluded that the rules themselves weren't necessarily bad, but the organization of the rules were unnecessarily convoluted. It would be easier if the rules presented a clear order of progression:

(1) Create a stat block for the base creature.

(2) Apply the lycanthrope template in order to create the stat block for the humanoid form.

(3) Apply the hybrid template to the humanoid form in order to create the stat block for the hybrid form.

(4) Apply the animal form template to the humanoid form in order to create the stat block for the animal form.

And to that end I created sample templates for the wererat, which turned the rant into something rather more useful. Noumenon liked the template enough that he asked me to turn it into a series. I was initially skeptical that just churning out templates would be particularly interesting blog material, but then I realized I could spice things up a little by providing some advanced lycanthrope characters as sample applications of the templates.

So, on that note: Welcome to Movies & Lycanthropes Week at the Alexandrian.

Today is a bit of a rehash as we return to the wererat templates (although the sample NPC is new), but tomorrow we'll have completely new material.

Note: These templates are designed to create 100% rules-accurate stat blocks. In other words, applying these templates should give you the exact same stat blocks that you would get if you applied the template from the 3.5 core rulebooks. They're just providing a cleaner, quicker way of getting there.

WERERAT TEMPLATES

WERERAT TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the base creature to create the wererat's humanoid form. This template can be added to any humanoid or giant.

Size and Type: Creature gains the "shapechanger" subtype.
Hit Dice and Hit Points: Add 1d8 hit die to the base creature.
Armor Class: +2 bonus to natural armor.

Special Qualities
: alternate form, lycanthropic empathy, low-light vision, scent

Base Save Bonuses: Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +2
Abilities: Wis +2, may gain an ability score increase due to additional hit dice
Skills: +8 racial bonus on Climb and Swim checks. Gains (2 + Int modifier) skill points, treating Climb, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Spot and Swim as class skills.
Feats: Alertness, Iron Will, Weapon Finesse

Challenge Rating: +2

WERERAT HYBRID TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the wererat's humanoid form to create the stat block for its hybrid form.

Size and Type: Small or the size of the base creature, whichever is larger.
Armor Class: +1 bonus to natural armor (if better than the base creature's natural armor bonus)
Attacks: Gains 2 claw attacks and 1 bite as a secondary attack (-5 penalty).

Hybrid Size Claw Bite
Small 1d3 1d4
Medium 1d4 1d6
Large 1d6 2d6
Huge 2d4 2d6

Special Attacks: curse of lycanthropy (Fort DC 15); cannot cast spells with verbal components
Special Qualities: DR 5/silver for afflicted lycanthropes; DR 10/silver for natural lycanthropes

Abilities: Dex +6, Con +2

WERERAT ANIMAL FORM TEMPLATE
Apply this template to the wererat's humanoid form to create the stat block for its animal form.

Size and Type: Small
Speed: 40 ft., climb 20 ft.
Armor Class: +1 natural armor (if better than the base creature's natural armor)
Attacks: Replace all attacks with a bite attack (1d4 plus disease).

Special Attacks: curse of lycanthropy (Fort DC 15); cannot cast spells with verbal, somatic, or material components
Special Qualities: DR 5/silver for afflicted lycanthropes; DR 10/silver for natural lycanthropes

Abilities: Dex +6, Con +2
Skills: Can choose to take 10 on Climb checks even if rushed or threatened. Can use their Dex modifier for Climb and Swim checks.

BRADOCH THE WERERAT

Bradoch is an elderly, orcish wererat. He has been isolated from his tribe and his kind of decades now. His only companions are his faithful rats, who surround him in great hordes throughout the forest. Bradoch is intensely protective of the rats, and he hates the goblin tribes (who hunt them for food).

Note: Bradoch is currently unschooled in the common tongue. But if he is brought into frequent interaction with local human populations, he will make it a point to learn it as quickly as possible -- either relying on his own interaction or falling back onto using his rats as spies.

BRADOCH – ORC FORM (CR 6) – Barbarian 4 – NE Medium Humanoid (Orc, Shapechanger)
DETECTION – darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent, Listen +11, Spot +11; Init +2; Languages Orcish
DEFENSESAC 19 (+1 Dex, +2 natural, +6 +1 mithril chainmail), touch 11, flat-footed 18; hp 26 (4d12+1d8-5); Weakness light sensitivity
ACTIONSSpd 40 ft.; Melee quarterstaff +7 (1d6+2); Ranged dart +5 (1d4+2 and poison); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +4; Grapple +6; Atk Options rage 2/day; Combat Gear third eye of the rat
SQ alternate form, darkvision 60 ft., fast movement, illiteracy, light sensitivity, low-light vision, lycanthropic empathy, rage 2/day, scent, trap sense +1, uncanny dodge
STR 14, DEX 12, CON 8, INT 14, WIS 17, CHA 13
FORT +5, REF +4, WILL +8
FEATS: Alertness, Iron Will, Stealthy, Weapon Finesse
SKILLS: Climb +11, Handle Animal +7, Hide +10, Intimidate +4, Jump +8, Listen +11, Move Silently +10, Spot +11, Swim +10
POSSESSIONS: +1 mithril chainmail, masterwork quarterstaff, 6 poisoned darts, third eye of the rat, ruby (240 gp, worn on cord around his neck)

BRADOCH – HYBRID FORM (CR 6) – Barbarian 4 – NE Medium Humanoid (Orc, Shapechanger)
DETECTION – darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent, Listen +11, Spot +11; Init +2; Languages Orcish
DEFENSESAC 23 (+4 Dex, +3 natural, +6 +1 mithril chainmail), touch 14, flat-footed 19; hp 31 (4d12+1d8); DR 10/silver; Weakness light sensitivity
ACTIONSSpd 40 ft.; Melee quarterstaff +6 (1d6+2) or 2 claws +8 (1d4+2) and 1 bite +3 (1d6+1 and lycanthropy); Ranged dart +8 (1d4+2 and poison); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +4; Grapple +6; Atk Options rage 2/day; SA curse of lycanthropy; Combat Gear third eye of the rat
SQ alternate form, darkvision 60 ft., fast movement, illiteracy, light sensitivity, low-light vision, lycanthropic empathy, rage 2/day, scent, trap sense +1, uncanny dodge
STR 14, DEX 18, CON 10, INT 14, WIS 17, CHA 13
FORT +5, REF +7, WILL +8
FEATS: Alertness, Iron Will, Stealthy, Weapon Finesse
SKILLS: Climb +11, Handle Animal +7, Hide +14, Intimidate +4, Jump +8, Listen +11, Move Silently +14, Spot +11, Swim +10
POSSESSIONS: +1 mithril chainmail, masterwork quarterstaff, 6 poisoned darts, third eye of the rat, ruby (240 gp, worn on cord around his neck)

BRADOCH – DIRE RAT FORM (CR 6) – Barbarian 4 – NE Small Humanoid (Orc, Shapechanger)
DETECTION – darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent, Listen +11, Spot +11; Init +2; Languages Orcish
DEFENSESAC 24 (+4 Dex, +1 size, +3 natural, +6 +1 mithril chainmail), touch 15, flat-footed 20; hp 31 (4d12+1d8); DR 10/silver; Weakness light sensitivity
ACTIONSSpd 50 ft., climb 20 ft.; Melee bite +8 (1d4, disease, lycanthropy); Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; Base Atk +4; Grapple +2; Atk Options rage 2/day; SA curse of lycanthropy, disease; Combat Gear third eye of the rat
SQ alternate form, darkvision 60 ft., fast movement, illiteracy, light sensitivity, low-light vision, lycanthropic empathy, rage 2/day, scent, trap sense +1, uncanny dodge
STR 14, DEX 18, CON 10, INT 14, WIS 17, CHA 13
FORT +5, REF +7, WILL +8
FEATS: Alertness, Iron Will, Stealthy, Weapon Finesse
SKILLS: Climb +13*, Handle Animal +7, Hide +18, Intimidate +4, Jump +8, Listen +11, Move Silently +14, Spot +11, Swim +12*
POSSESSIONS: +1 mithril chainmail, masterwork quarterstaff, 6 poisoned darts, third eye of the rat, ruby (240 gp, worn on cord around his neck)

Alternate Form (Su): Switch forms as standard action.
Curse of Lycanthropy (Su): Fort DC 15
Disease: Filth Fever (Fort DC 10, incubation 1d3 days, damage 1d3 Dex + 1d3 Con)
Light Sensitivity (Ex): Dazzled in bright sunlight or daylight spell.
Lycanthropic Empathy (Ex): Communicate with rats and dire rats; +4 bonus on Charisma-based checks against them.
Poison (Ex): Medium spider venom (injury DC 14, 1d4 Str/1d4 Str)
Rage (Ex): 5 rounds: +4 Str, +4 Con, +2 Will saves, -2 AC. Cannot use Concentration; Cha, Dex, or Int skills. Fatigued when rage ends (-2 Str, -2 Dex, can’t charge or run).
Scent (Ex): Detect presence within 30 feet (60 feet upwind, 15 feet downwind). Strong scents at double that range; overpowering at triple. Detect direction as move action. Pinpoint within 5 feet.
Trap Sense (Ex): +1 on AC and Reflex saves vs. traps.
Uncanny Dodge (Ex): Retains Dex bonus to AC when flat-footed.
*Skills: Can choose to take 10 on Climb checks even if rushed or threatened.

THE THIRD EYE OF THE RAT

THIRD EYE OF THE RAT
Price (Item Level): 18,000 gp (6th)
Body Slot: Head
Caster Level: 6th
Aura: Moderate
Activation: --
Weight: --
 
This rat’s eye suspended in amber can be placed upon the forehead, where it will automatically attach itself as a third eye. A character using the eye can automatically detect the presence of any rat within 300 feet. In addition, they can attune themselves to a rat of their choice within that range as a standard action and see through the eyes of the rat.
The third eye of the rat does not grant the wearer the ability to control the rats in any way, but if the wearer looks through the eyes of a rat that they control which is currently sharing their space then they cannot be flanked.
            Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, clairvoyance, detect animals or plants
            Cost to Create: 9,000 gp + 720 XP

 

CONCLUSION

Bradoch is fairly straight-forward: I created a 4th-level Barbarian with elite stats, applied the old age template, and then applied the wererat template. I'm showcasing him here because my struggles with Bradoch led directly to the creation of these lycanthropic templates (so it seemed appropriate).

Bradoch is also a secret sneak peek at a super secret project that I'm currently developing. The project is still so far under wraps the only thing I can tell you about it is a hint wrapped inside an enigma:

There is now a hidden way to access the homepage of the Alexandrian. But that is not its ultimate goal.

Have fun speculating! More were-creatures tomorrow!

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

June 28th, 2010 (3rd Update)

HTML HELP?

I'm having some problems with the HTML for the sample stat blocks in the Lycanthrope Week posts: I can either get them single-spaced or I can get them to indent properly; but I can't seem to get them to do both. Even duplicating the HTML from the original pages discussing my revised stat blocks doesn't seem to work (instead breaking the page in various ingentious ways).

I eventually gave up and just copy-pasted them from my Word document, but I'd like them to actually look right. Can someone with a better eye for HTML than me take a peek and drop me an e-mail with a solution?

EDIT: Special thanks to everyone who dropped me a line to help out. The problem should now be fixed. It has been much appreciated!

JUNE 2010: 

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4

RETURN TO THE ALEXANDRIAN - SUBSCRIBE

 

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