Three Magical Items

Pouch of Concealment

Twisting the jewel clasp of this pouch in a particular pattern creates an illusory double of the pouch’s contents at that moment.  This illusion will persist even if the contents are removed or other items are added.  The illusion is all that can be seen if the pouch is opened, and a save is granted only if an item is placed into the pouch or it is reached into (Intelligence Save DC12).  Twisting the clasp again will dispel the illusion.

Crossbow of Illumination

Bolts glow brightly for one hour after being fired from this crossbow, shedding bright light in a 20’ radius and dim light for an additional 20’.

Quarterstaff of Pain

This staff does not do real damage, but on a successful hit causes intense hallucinatory pain, requiring a CON save at DC = unmodified attack roll to take any action the following round except writhe in pain.  If the save is failed by 2 or more the victim also drops prone to the ground.

All Art By Moi

Ring of Fluidity

Ring of Fluidity

Once placed on the finger this ring can only be removed after death (unless Remove Curse is used).  It transforms the internal structure of its wearer under the skin, replacing muscle, bone, and organs with an opaque green goo.  Food is placed in the usual orifice and dissolved internally (nutrition requirements stay the same); nothing is defecated.  The ring wearer can squeeze through finger-width cracks and finger-diameter holes.  The ring wearer no longer ages.

200 Word Sorcerer

I submitted an entry to David Schirduan's 200 Word RPG Challenge.  I already revised my submission once and David posted the revision, and since then I have revised it a couple more times - I am not going to keep resubmitting my revisions, at this point I am mostly just messing around with it because it is a fun exercise in conciseness.  What can I take out and what can I add.  Having read many of the other submissions I have no illusions about winning anything (nor are the prizes particularly exciting) but the process of writing a 200 word class/supplement was a great challenge and got my creative juices flowing. Some of the entries are pretty impressive in that they both give novel rules without reference to a common starting point like D&D (which I relied on) and also are very evocative in describing a setting or milieu.

I don't think my D&Dish sorcerer hack stands up well to some of the other entries, but I still like it. My latest edit is a .PDF with full color background image that I created of a burning hand / embers.

Figs and Faeries

Some hastily jotted and assuredly unfinished business that has been languishing in my Google Drive, pasted here for your pleasure. I only completed the random d8 ripeness/potion charts for two species of fig trees. I did not detail any of the faerie courts which inhabit the fig trees, or their unique potions (nor a single parasitic wasp imp species for that matter). More to come?

Figs = Potion Trees

The ripe fruit has magical properties - see d8 potion tables in individual fig tree entries below.

Each fig tree also has a special syconium, a particularly large fig (~2-4'), magically protected, with a single gate that shrinks those entering it - it is a difficult challenge to force entry past the gate if the keepers are unwilling. Each syconium is a faerie kingdom of blooming fig flowers bathed in a soft golden glow that dies down to a flickering glamer at night  - the faeries dwell in the fig flowers.

Each fig tree species has a unique relationship with a type of faerie that dwells in the syconium - the faeries each have a set of unique spells that they derive from the potion fruit.

Parasitic Wasp Imps seek to take faerie syconiums as their own and have their own spells and magical abilities - great variation exists among the parasitic wasp imps. Syconiums that have been taken by these parasitic imps are quickly filled with their offspring, the magical wards of the syconium perverted to feed the growing brood.

Giant ants tend giant aphid-like bugs which secrete potions as well - ants protect their trees against any intruders deemed a threat

Giant insect ecosystems on the forest floor below depend on the fruit

Also magical birds

Fig sap hardens into a rubber, can be treated when fresh to make magical oils

Syconium Physics - objects are reduced to 1/8 their normal size and 1/4 normal weight when entering a Syconium.

Syconium Time - time passes very slowly inside the syconium compared to the outside world.  One day inside the syconium = 14 days outside.  From the faerie perspective every other fourth day they either leave the syconium to visit a neighboring kingdom or receive visitors from a neighboring faerie court that inhabits a different fig tree.  To the outside perspective these excursions or incursions are roughly 2 months apart.  When visitors come to the syconium it pollinates the tree; each tree bears a harvest about once every four months.   

Visitors, pollination and the special potion fruit - each visiting faerie court has a unique special potion associated with it. Any roll of an "8" on the d8 potion roll for a fig tree requires a second d8 roll - a second roll of "8" explodes, resulting in the unique potion of the visiting faerie court that pollinated the tree.

Banyan or Strangler Fig

Banyan or Strangler Fig - sprawls out, sends down aerial roots, covers other trees or stone structures indiscriminately with strangling roots.

Ripe Fruit:  Reddish brown skin, brown flesh - bitter - get darker and softer as ripen, 1d8 - fig properties, from unripe to ripe:

1. Fig of Climbing
2. Fig of Growth
3. Fig of Plant Control
4. Fig of Undead Control
5. Fig of Animal Control
6. Fig of Giant Control
7. Fig of Human Control
8. Fig of Dragon Control

Cluster Figs

Cluster Fig - figs grow in clusters directly from the trunk,  bark has healing properties, grind into paste in water to make healing potions - LOTS more on wikipedia, lots of cool Buddhist / Hindu traditions

Ripe Fruit: green skin, white flesh, very sweet and soft when fully ripe, firm and pleasant when younger - roll 1d8 on ripeness table:

1. Vitality
2. Philter of Glibness
3. Philter of Persuasiveness
4. Fig of Treasure Finding
5. Fig of Giant Strength
6. Fig of Heroism
7. Fig of Invulnerability
8. Fig of Super-Heroism

Wood Magic (Wands and Staffs)

I have a longstanding dissatisfaction with D&D magic.  It is not that I don't like it.  I loved playing illusionists when I was a kid first starting to play D&D and in general I loved the magic that was there in D&D.  I just wanted more.

I have no problem with Vancian fire and forget magic, but I really don't want it to be the only type of magic in my games.  I have come up with some different options over the years, a trance possession cleric, the hekuras of my 4e game (at this point Tilia, one of the PCs in that game, has four different hekuras living inside of her), some point spend casting systems, herbal and mushroom magic, a recharge mechanic for spells... something I am working on now is a nature magic system based on the magical properties of wood.

A caster in this tradition could only cast a spell either by touching a living tree and casting a spell using its energy or by making a wand or staff which draws on the energy of its parent tree (the parent tree must still be alive of course!).  This system would work with the regular spell level limits, so a 3rd level caster could cast up to a 2nd level spell, but the limits on how many spells could be cast in a day would be based on the tree being drawn upon, not the caster.  Creating a staff takes enough time that it would not be done in combat, while creating a wand can take as little as 1 round (see below).  Wands only function at a very short range from the parent tree (unless linked to a staff, see below) but I hope that the ability to break a twig off a tree in one round and use it immediately as a wand will enable some cool options in combat for a caster.  I am making a random tree species chart for different environments so there will be the element of randomness - a caster could be in a combat near a tree that has magical properties useful for the encounter, and they could either touch the tree directly to invoke the magic or break a wand off on the fly and use it during the encounter.

As you can see, I am carrying my staff around :)

Tree Magic

Each tree species has different magical properties, and I will assign each spell in the game to one or more tree species according to those properties.  For instance, willow wood is associated with spells dealing with water, the element of spirit, death and rebirth, transmutations, emotions, healing, and the will.  When a tree is encountered, a roll on the tree age chart will reveal its age and the maximum spell level that could be drawn from the tree.  A rough version of the tree age chart is below.  Each tree species may have a negative modifier to apply to the tree age roll, depending on the maximum age of that species.  For example, only three of the trees occurring in eastern North America listed in this database have a maximum age of less than 100 years - those tree species would have a -4 modifier to the tree age roll to give a maximum age of 100 years.  Looking at the same database (which is very useful) there are 10 tree species with a maximum age between 100 and 200 years - those trees would receive a -2 modifier and so on.

Tree Age (d20)	Max Spell Level	Max total spell levels castable per day
1-8: Sapling (0-10 years)	2	5
9-13: Immature (11-30 years)	4	11
14-16: Mature (31-99 years)	6	17
17-18: Old (100-199 years)	7	20
19: Elder (200-499 years)	8	23
20:Ancient (500+ years old)	9	26

When physically touching a tree, a caster can cast any spell on that tree's spell list up to the max level of spell the caster can cast, as limited by the tree age as shown above.  The tree age chart shows the total spell levels that could be drawn from any particular tree per day.  To draw upon the power of a tree from a distance, a caster can make wands and staffs.  Each spell in the tree's spell list would have a [W], [S] or both to denote if that spell could be cast with a wand or staff.  Some spells might only be castable by directly touching the tree (Wish springs to mind, and it would have other requirements of course).  In general, wands are used for spells that actually emanate out from the wand, like a lightning bolt or paralyzing ray, and staffs are used to create most other magical effects.  Of course not all tree species are created alike; some will have much more extensive spell lists than others, and some might have a more extensive wand spell selection and others a more extensive staff spell selection.

Staffs

Creating a staff takes takes 10 rounds minimum.  Roll 1d6 per round spent crafting the staff (max = 10 rounds +2 rounds/level);  the result equals the number of miles from the parent tree the staff can be used.  The range is also capped at the age of the tree (a staff made from a 95 year old tree could function at a max distance of 95 miles from its parent tree).  Staffs cannot be made from saplings.  If a staff is more than a mile from its parent tree, a caster must spend 1d2 hours per 24 hour period meditating on the staff to draw magical energy through it.  It is possible to use staffs from more than one tree but this requirement must be met for each staff.  Failing to meet this requirement does not destroy the staff, it simply cannot be used to cast magic until meditated upon for at least one hour again. Even if no spell levels remain to be drawn from its parent tree, a staff can be used in melee and each tree species has a unique effect that is added to the regular 1d6 damage.

Wands

Creating a wand takes 1 round minimum    Roll 1d6 per round spent crafting the wand (max=level) result x 10 = number of feet from the parent tree the wand can be used.  If a wand and staff are created from the same tree, as long as the staff is within range of the tree the wand can be used within its range of the staff as it will draw energy through the staff from its parent tree.  

Magical Circuitry pt.2

A while back I posted about my 4e players beginning to figure out how to assemble magical circuitry to create magical "machines" that functioned much differently from the magical items created through rituals in 4e.  Plants, organs from magical creatures and magical crystals and minerals could be combined to create magical effects.  This worked in a fairly straightforward manner; the blast cannons the party made from the legs of genetically-modified partially robotic giant insects and the dark organs of the larval spawn of an elder godcreature are an excellent example.

Next, the party figured out that magical energy could be transformed in the shadow world to enable magical machines to perform many more functions. They first learned about this by observing how shadow pearls in a magical shield constructed by the snake men scientists transformed raw energy and created both a repulsor beam to fly the shield as well as a laser to blast the crap out of things.  I want to post more about the magical discoveries the party has made since then, but first I need to lay out some cosmological groundwork.

In my game cosmology there is the physical world, the spirit world and the shadow world.  The physical world is a multiverse that I call the IPM (infinite possibility matrix) in my games (I use this cosmology independent of system - I used it for my 3e game and my Mutant Future game as well as the 4e campaign).  The main thing distinguishing the IPM from any other multiversal theory is the travel of energy between different possibilities. Imagine every particle of energy in the universe somehow "freezing" in time.  The planets and suns and comets stop zooming around and hang motionless, as do the electrons and protons and in turn quarks and neutrinos...  and if you zoomed in as far as you could on an individual unit of energy, in the IPM you would discover that the smallest unit of energy both does and does not exist at the same time.  In the frozen universe, outside of time, energy flickers in and out of existence.  It is travelling outside of time between the different possible universes.

If you could somehow follow the flow of energy outside of time between the different possible universes you would be in the shadow world.  The shadow world exists outside of time and the usual constraints on the forms energy can take.  It could simultaneously be thought of as an undifferentiated sea of energy, and as a sea of every form that energy could take.  If you followed a linear conception of time backward to the big bang, the shadow world is on the other side of the big bang if you kept heading "backward".

The spirit world is the borderland between the physical world and the shadow world.  There are as many spirit worlds as there are possible universes, but there is only one shadow world.  The spirit world is how/where energy leaves the universe to join the shadow world, and the spirit world is how/where energy returns to the universe from the shadow world.  The spirit world could be thought of as a veil that covers the universe and defines its bounds, even as energy flows to and from the universe through the spirit world into deep shadow and all other possible universes.  As energy constantly flows between the different probable universes, it is possible for networks of energy to simultaneously become sentient in the spirit world surrounding a universe.  Once such a consciousness arises, it persists even though the individual units of energy that make it up are constantly in flux.  These are spirits.  Different sorts of spirits arise in the different spirit worlds surrounding different possible universes.

Back to magical circuitry - every universe has rules that govern how energy can behave.  Anything that breaks those rules is magic.  The way that magic functions is to tap into the possible forms of energy in the shadow world and make energy returning to the universe retain these shadow forms.  The study of magic is the study of the potential forms of energy, how to tease out the desired form in the shadow world, and how to bring back that form through the spirit world.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh

I am purchasing a Cthulhu mug as a reward to myself for sticking through a rough first year laboring for a new company and getting a work from home position that should both be more lucrative and allow me more time to geek out on D&D.  Cheers!

I already own a raven mug made by Ziggy which is among my most cherished positions, being capable of imbuing stout beers with magical properties (I have proven this on many occasions through a rigorous and very scientific method).

I can hardly wait to get my paws on the Cthulhu mug.  My only question is what sacrificial victim shall provide the blood for my first offering?

As a side note, a really cool campaign idea could be lifted from my conversation with Ziggy's shipping clerk:

"...surreal cabalistic magic, swashbuckling Gypsies and noblemen, overly principled merchants, and incestuous Moorish lesbians, all intricately wrapped up in stories within stories..."


For a frame of reference, my conversation with Ziggy's shipping clerk wherein I "haggle" for a $5 increase in price:

• Kevin Runey
  

  
  

  Hey Carl, here is a second Cthulhu mug which is actually larger and studlier than the one that we put on Etsy, and just as fine in general quality. (Ziggy just snapped this picture with her iPad.) If you like, we could just sell this one to you locally (without the shipping charge) and let someone further afield order the one that's already posted. If you want, I could take some higher-res pictures and email them to you, or show it to you in person downtown or somewhere.
• 

  10:13pm
  

  Carl Nash
  

  
  

  I want! I want! I will take not a penny less than $35 for this larger and studlier version. What is more convenient - a home invasion or a Kiva pickup?
• 

  11:37pm
  

  Kevin Runey
  

  
  

  I suppose whichever is more convenient for you. And we do like your style of haggling—how can we resist? Something like that shows up in The Saragossa Manuscript. Ever see that one? It's a very trippy black-and-white film, set in Napoleonic Spain, based on a contemporaneous Polish novel, with dialogue in Polish and English subtitles available. Supposedly it was one of Jerry Garcia's favorite movies. Hey, with surreal cabalistic magic, swashbuckling Gypsies and noblemen, overly principled merchants, and incestuous Moorish lesbians, all intricately wrapped up in stories within stories, how can you lose?

Check out Ziggy's Etsy store, she is awesome and her creations are magical.

Pai-Gon's Hexagonal Experiments

Poking around in the arch-lich Pai-Gon's work room whilst trying not to draw the ire of the incredibly powerful crystal intelligence bound into the tree of human arms flesh golem thing, some members of my 4e group decided to open up some random sealed ceramic containers.

Pai-Gon's Work Room

These containers were roughly cubic, with each face of the cube being a hexagon and some odd faceted angular faces making up the difference.  Each container was stacked six high with the sealed opening facing out into the room, in three rows six containers long.

Each container held one of Pai-Gon's experiments, left to bathe in the mutating and energizing radiation emitted by the Huwawa Complex after Pai-Gon mysteriously disappeared.

I made some random tables to determine the contents of each jar.  They proved to be very stimulating in play, causing quite a few "what the fuck" moments amongst the players as they had no clue what they were getting themselves in to.

Roll on each chart.  4e Plant, Animal or Insect refers to an organism native to the "prime material plane" or whatever you want to call the normal plane of existence that D&D is played in.  Planet X refers to an inhabited planet in another dimension/plane of existence that has a considerably different periodic table and physics.

Chart 1: Physical Environment inside the container (d20)
1-3: Fresh Water
4-5: Salt Water
6: Acidic Liquid
7: Basic Liquid
8-9: Acidic Soil
10: Ph Neutral Soil
11: Basic Soil
12: Silt/Inorganic Mud
13-14: Organic Mud
15-16: Clay
17: Solid Rock
18: Crystal
19: Metal
20: Metallic Gas (some heavy metals in Dimension X have a gaseous state)

Chart 2: Subject of the Experiment (d20 - containers with plants have a magical light source and magically regulated growing conditions, containers with animal and insect experiments also contain appropriate food species - many containers are much larger inside than their external dimensions would suggest)
1-4: 4e Plant (roll d10: 1-2: Fungus, 3-4: Flowering Plant, 5-6: Succulent Plant, 7-8: Bush, 9-10: Tree)
5-7: 4e Plant / Planet X "plant" hybrid
8-10: Planet X "plant" (roll 2d6: first d6: 1-3: Carniverous, 4-6: Chemosynthetic, second d6: 1-2: Mobile, 3-             4: Anchored but moving parts, 5-6: Stationary)
11-12: 4e Amphibian (roll d6: 1-2: Frog, 3-4: Toad, 5-6: Salamander)
13-15: 4e Insect (roll d6: 1-2: Crawling, 3: Jumping, 4: Digging, 5-6: Flying)
16-18: 4e Insect / Planet X "insect" hybrid
19-20: Planet X "insect" (roll d6: 1: Crawling, 2: Jumping, 3: Digging, 4-5: Flying, 6: Teleporting)

Chart 3: Broad area of Pai-Gon's interest that the experiment falls into (d20) (combine with subject matter and environment to determine purpose and exact contents of each experimental container)
1-2: Protection from Damage
3-4:  Controlling Agression
5-6:  Controlling Emotion
7-8: Protection from Fire
9-11: Love
12-13: Dispelling Magic
14-17: Plant Propagation
18-20: Insect Breeding
21-30: Shadow Plant Analogs (I put this entry in the chart because we use the d30 houserule - once a session replace any roll with a d30 roll.  What exactly a shadow plant analog is might be a subject for an entire post on its own I think)

Chart 4: Current State of the Experiment (d6)
1-3: Experiment existing in stasis and performing as designed by Pai-Gon
4: Stasis failed due to Huwawa field, contents destroyed
5:  The experiment succeeded but the intended results have run wild for thousands of years
6:  The experiment failed but a secondary organism in the controlled environment has mutated and thrived (flies included as food for a spider experiment might still be thriving, or a plant included as food for an insect experiment has mutated and taken over the container, etc.)

Obviously these charts are going to give suggestions of categories, not specific results:  It is up to the DM to interpret what an acidic liquid environment, Teleporting Planet X Insect experiment about Love that has succeeded but run wild means, exactly.

My party ended up with worms that burrowed through solid rock and consumed magic, a green gas spore cloud that left sickly mutant flowering plants springing up wherever the spores encountered moisture, a burbling pot full of mud with a fire-resistant salamander in it and a crystal matrix that served as an artificial growing medium for a Planet X insect grub.  Hammer the warforged barbarian opened the container of magic consuming worms, much to his disgust as he realized that they were consuming the very magical lifeblood that flowed through his constructed body.

To Dream

Greetings,
It’s Mike here, coming to write a post on some of the most recent happenings in our 4e campaign. I play Antillia (Tillia) the albino minotaur warden. I wanted to start off by summarizing some of the recent events that will have a bit of a role in some of the events that happen here.
If you’ve been keeping up to date you’ve probably read this post here, which details how Tillia is currently in a dream state with a bunch of liches. They are all asleep in a long-sealed circular catacomb, each lich in its own niche’. There are 6 liches and 7 places along the walls, dominating the center of the chamber is a giant pearl-like black sphere. This sphere I will refer to as the Dream Sphere. Each of the liches has projected themselves, via dream, into the artifact in order to become deities in the world. You will also realize that Tillia managed to wake up one of these liches in the last session, who happened to be the God of Lightning and Thunder. He wasn’t very happy to be awoken. He was confused and to make things worse he discovered that the priests that had built their temple around the sleeping chamber were harnessing the liches for their magical energy. This was causing damage and corrupting their original setup and being as I was the only other thing in the chamber, he turned his wrath upon me. Tillia still being hopped up on all kinds of psychotropic drugs to increase her arcane skill managed to relay that it wasn’t her, she just opened the door and stepped in. The lich immediately realized that Tillia didn’t have the skill to form such a complex network, and let her go. After dealing a wicked amount of lightning damage by grasping her throat and holding her aloft. I felt pretty good about opening the door until he dismissed me so easily! He then released Tillia and began trying to undo some of what had been done. Tillia offered to help and this sealed the deal that she wasn’t an enemy, but an ally of circumstance. This came about when the lich tried to do an arcane check to get a better view of all the shadow circuitry that had been used to drain energy from the liches. He wasn’t doing so hot Carl rolled a 1 and groaned from behind his screen. and so Tillia jumped in using her song hekura which allows her to perform rituals via song, and make them take less time by increasing the DC and allowed him to make another arcane check, with a +20 bonus from the ritual. Needless to say, he didn’t fail this one, and was grateful, if still not pleased. He at least stopped trying to kill her.
At this point Tillia also realized that the Nightmare Beast we had found behind a different iron door much newer than the one to this chamber was sealed in by energy from this room. To top it off, its nightmare powers were being used to cause the dreaming liches massive problems inside the dream and as the temple was closing, it was being unleashed into their dream to the point of causing them to release more power from the increased suffering. This was being siphoned off to power the sealing temple, the reanimation of the skeletons, and the opening/domination of the bati-batis. The lich, obviously, wanted to jump right in and sever all the ties to the liches, thus unleashing this VERY powerful and VERY angry Nightmare Beast. Tillia managed to talk him into letting her release it and she ran to the dark crystal chamber that allows projecting rituals and used it to put her drugs to good use, sealing the beast in a circle of protection and then sending it back from whence it came. The lich then jumped back into the dream world to set things right, and managed to fail miserably Carl rolled another 1 at releasing any of the shadow ties to the liches.
You may ask, why is any of this important? Well, because this drove Tillia to want to help the liches. It also made the dream landscape a little less…painful by removing the Nightmare Beast from the equation. However, this still wasn’t a light decision for Tillia. Nor was it a light decision for me, the player, because Carl made it a point to let Tillia know that entering the dream wasn’t easy and IF I returned, it would change me. This put a lot of pressure and stress on me, because failure could be catastrophic and not acting could be just as bad.
One other thing I should point out that makes an impact later on, is that after defeating the intestine/boar heart beast in the ritual projection chamber Bob sacrificed it to link Gootie and Tillia, so that Tillia could see through Gootie’s eyes without Gootie knowing. After having forced him to go into deep shadow during their last encounter, having an early warning system would be helpful.

To Dream a Little Dream…

So began the dream session. Carl started the session off by asking me some questions about Tillia’s background. I hadn’t discussed her back-story much from the time I had first made the character, and I was honestly surprised that Carl even remembered most of it. It was just a concept I had come up with when creating the character and giving them life. I always like to have something to draw on when making my characters, to flesh them out, even if I do enjoy pouring over feats/abilities for hours finding cool and interesting ones to use. To fill the rest of you in, Tillia came from a tribal culture. Her father was Chief of the tribe and her mother was a Shaman of the tribe. Tillia is one half of a pair of identical twin albino minotaurs. She was named after her father Antilles who was a previous minotaur character of mine a LONG time ago in another campaign and followed in his footsteps. Both Tillia and her sister were highly spiritual, but upon growing older Tillia spent more time training with her father, while her sister trained with her mother. As she aged the weight of responsibility came down upon her shoulders and she realized that only one of the siblings would be chosen to lead the tribe, and that their husband would be Chief after their father. So with the blessing of her family she handed leadership over to her sister to avoid fracturing the tribe loyalties and causing a bitter rivalry. Her father had two great axes he fought with and when he stepped down as a warrior he handed one to each sibling. Upon declaring her faith in her sister, she gave up her family axe to her sister. By giving up her rights, she also gave up her place in the tribe, so this left Tillia in a very awkward situation. Her family would have gladly had her stay, but there was little left for her in the tribe. With that in mind Tillia set off on her own, prepared to travel and find her place in the greater world around her. A lot like her father before her. Her mother cried, her father put on a proud face, and her sister hugged her. Those are the last memories Tillia has of her tribe and family.
Carl then asked me various questions about Tillia’s fears. Would I fear losing my health or sanity, strength of body or strength of personality, my intellect or my reflexes. This of course did nothing for the anxiety that this could have been a very, very, very bad idea for Tillia. After that quick fleshing out, we sat down to the most amazing D&D session I’ve ever been a part of.
Unable to lucid dream right out of the gates, Carl narrated what I perceived and then allowed me to make a check to do things in the dream that I wanted to do. This did a few things: For the first it made me really think about what I wanted to do before I asked to do it and for the second thing, it took away all my normal skill bonuses. This is a lot more stressful than it sounds, when you’re used to skills you’ve come to rely on and worked to master. I have also grown used to the luxury of being able to roll twice on some of my major rolls due to a feat and my nature hekura. The only bonuses I had on any rolls in the dream were my Wisdom modifier (+6), a focus if I had one (which I did with the artifact black orb +6), and half my level (+8). I also got a sliding bonus depending on how much I stayed with the dream (up to +4), or fought against it (-4). Carl also informed me that besides trying to do things, I was also in a large multi-tiered skill challenge. He then showed me a wicked awesome drawing I hope he posts some version of, and pointed out where I was on the path. On my right I had the “Sea of Dreams” no matter where I went, it was always directly to my right. I could jump into it and try to navigate my way and skip ahead at a very high failure rate or return to the shore I left if I got washed into it a relatively lower DC, failure meant being lost in the endless “Sea of Dreams”. On my left was Deep Shadow, of which, I knew a little… but seeing the effects it had on Old Man Gootie, I was not exactly too thrilled to try out. I also felt a current pulling me in the direction of a castle I could see in the distance. I felt the liches were in this castle and following the stream was the lowest DC, and also where the skill-challenge came into play. In the beginning I had the leeway to fail twice a third fail meaning I’m done, but must make three successes to move forward. As I progressed along the “path” towards the castle, the leeway got smaller with one failure and two successes to move on. Anything I did outside of moving forward, didn’t count as a success or failure for the skill challenge itself, but might help me succeed overall.
In the first stage of the dream I was standing in a swamp as a young girl, the only visible structure being a hut on some very tall stilts. It was surrounded by mist otherwise and all beyond it was shrouded in mist as well. As I approached the hut I made a “dream check” for my perception and noticed that the stilts were moving and squirming like snakes. I continued my approach and some abomination emerged from the inside of the hut like a hermit crab emerging from its shell. Four snake heads moved towards me and opened their mouths wide, their throats and the inside of their mouths inflating out to make four identical faces. The faces looked like the pale, waterlogged faces of an old woman. She had milky white eyes and spoke with a watery voice. “Umsala, is that you? Come closer so I can feel your face.” Needless to say, Antillia has been around and in Carl’s universe that is saying something. To her this was more every day, frightening as it may be, than a rarity. As a player this was some chilling imagery, but I had to decide how Tillia would see it. She has stared a gods in the face, studied giant sentient plants, and come toe-to-toe with the end of the world.
As she stepped beyond the house she began drifting into the mist. She felt herself becoming light, but the first step still gave her a bit of a shock as she stepped out into nothingness. This gave me the first chance to become more lucid, but I rolled terribly and did not succeed Feeling so light and weightless like she was flying, she started to zoom down the path excitedly. I felt that this was probably one of the times she felt safest in a long time and carefree. I’ve also felt quite happy and carefree while flying in my own dreams This was until I rolled a 1 on my second check to move along the dream path. Suddenly something swooped out of the mist and took a bite out of Tillia, draining her sanity and willpower and leaving her hurting. Carl rolled a nat 20 on the dice and the creature drained 4 Wisdom from me, one of my greatest fears and also the stat that helped me navigate the dream. Now, minotaurs in 4e are constantly waging a battle against their bestial side and their more humane side. This loss of willpower, this sudden fear that the pristine and careless mist is full of predators, and the shock of it all cause Tillia to give in to her bestial side. She stomped her hoof, her horns twisted and grew in wickedness, and she bellowed out a challenging cry to the Dream Hunter. Charging forward she felt the mist coalesce and tore through an image of Old Man Gootie that seemed made of paper, and burst forth from the mist. I had succeeded on my third check and passed on
I would also like to point out that at no time did Carl ever tell me what form Antillia was in unless she looked around or took notice, and even then she had the greatest influence on herself by expecting to see herself as something in specific when she looked. As Tillia plummeted through the edge of the mist she found herself falling over the edge of a cliff. Having been in a few dreams over the years where I’m falling, I had a pretty good idea how this would go down, but Tillia isn’t me. This also gave me my second chance at lucidity… I failed. She started to panic at first, but long ago Tillia had learned how to shapeshift into a Gadoro. A Gadoro is a four-armed white ape, highly spiritual and hanging out on the sacred island at the confluence of all the rivers. The major benefit being that the form is immune to falling damage. She had done this before on an occasion when falling from the air ship, so it came naturally to her. This also took her mind off of falling and allowed her to calm down, making the fall go much slower. During the fall she was passing backwards through her life, seeing the most recent things she had done, then middle years, then childhood. This coincided with making the 3 checks to pass through this area. Because Tillia had managed to calm down, she had the option to influence an event in each stage of her life. This may not have a direct affect on her current reality outside of dream, but it would increase/decrease the multiple realities that follow in a similar choice. Basically, she could choose one terrible thing to reverse, or one good thing to enforce upon the multiple realities that exist. This was amusing because thinking back, I had a hard time thinking of anything GOOD Tillia had done. She always TRIED to do good things, but they often seemed to backfire in some way. I mentioned this and all had a good laugh about it. I did eventually think of a few things. Needless to say there were a few things that weighed heavily on Antillia’s conscience. The first was when she unleashed Kariki-Kalos the jellyfish god and it sank the continent she and her party came from, presumably killing millions of people. The second was when she trapped Old Man Gootie in the shadow realm for the first time, sucking the energy out of the whirlpool he had created in the confluence of the rivers.
In the grand scheme of things, she had mostly come to terms with having trapped Old Man Gootie. She felt terrible about his insanity derived from his stay in deep shadow, but she had corrected a large disturbance in nature that he had originally created there. She also went on to help Akili and keep Slotek, the abomination of a river god, from being born out of the corrupted union. Given the chance she would have saved Old Man Gootie from being trapped, but she wouldn’t have reversed removing the unnatural whirlpool. She chose to do her best in the dream world to reverse releasing Kariki-Kalos. This hit her harder because it meant the deaths of her family, tribe, Beautiful Bob’s past, and millions of others for no reason. Simple destruction. This pained her the most of the two. She then slowly drifted downward into her adolescence and began seeing flashes of the time before she left her tribe. She latched on to a particular point in her life when her father first bestowed his axes upon Antillia and her sister. She reached into the dream, drawing out the axe, remembering happier times. Remembering her family and what she had left behind. Feeling happiness and sadness at the same time, but she did not regret her actions. At this point Carl said that by drawing out the axe I had a sort of dream “wild card” that I could use at any point. At this point Hammer and Bob piped up about how it was kind of like a game show. Presumably the wild card would grant me a boon in the dream at a later time. With visions of her life flying by, Tillia slowly drifted down into her childhood. Here she spent a lot more time with her sister and chose to strengthen that feeling of the bond between twins. Both children spent a lot of time with their mother at this point in life and so it was filled with time spent outside, playing, exploring, and generally enjoying exploration of the world.
Thus Tillia touched down and entered stage four of the dream sequence down the path to the castle. When she looked around she realized she was standing in a clearing that looked like home, but things were unsettled. Her father and tribesmen faded into view and a battlefield unfolded before her. It wasn’t a battlefield she had ever really fought on, but it was one she had encountered in her dreams before her first real battle ever took place. Her nerves were on edge and fear gripped at her heart. She looked down making sure she was equipped in her traditional war gear and paint. At this point I made a check, Carl pointed out that had I not, it probably would have been brought to my attention that I was naked in the middle of battle at some point. I think everyone has had a version of this dream at some point in his or her life. She wielded a large two-handed warhammer in a fashion mimicking her father’s preference for large weapons, having trained under him up until this point. She fell into line with her comrades and prepared to face the enemy tribe. With a battle shout they all charged into the oncoming enemies, Tillia swung her hammer and was failing. She seemed weak, scared, and her courage dwindled. She was forced back into a corner and surrounded. They disarmed her, and she let out a scream of rage and fear. Suddenly a wall of water from the “Sea of Dreams” rose up over the battlefield and Antillia gazed on in horror, as it was full of the waterlogged dead of her tribe. They screamed out her name and moaned in anguish, their bloated bodies and pale, lifeless eyes gazing into her soul. The washed over the field and consumed all of those in the dream, her father looking to her with fear in his eyes as he was washed away, his axes falling to the ground. Antillia broke free of her paralysis as the wave was closing in on her, arms of her dead loved ones stretching out to pull her down. She charged forward and picked up one of her father’s axes, using both hands to slam it into the ground and anchor herself from being washed away. As she swung the axe downwards it split the wave and it passed on either side of her and faded.I used my nightly d30 roll here to give me the best shot at success, rolling a 27! She turned to the oncoming army, alone. She reached down and picked up a shield and one-handed warhammer from the field, strapping them on. She gazed into the eyes of her enemies on the field and let out a roar, “YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY FAMILY!” and charged… the seemingly solid forms evaporating before her onslaught and the scene fading. Antillia was left panting heavily as she moved on into stage five of this landscape. Just some notes. This was changed to a 2 success 1 failure skill challenge and the DC had increased. I rolled a 5 on the first roll resulting in a failure, and then proceeded to roll a 1, so I was about to be washed away into the Sea of Dreams. I used the axe wild card I had been given earlier to buy myself a chance to re-roll with a +4 bonus. I succeeded and finished up the skill challenge to move on to the next phase. At the point where Tillia stood up to the army by herself I, as a player, was tearing up a bit. I’ll admit I get emotional at the sappy scenes in movies, but this was a lot more personal. We’re only level 18 now, but we’ve been at it for 3 or so years and I’ve grown attached to the character as a whole. Hammer’s player even admitted to feeling a little teary eyed at parts. It just goes to show you how emotionally invested we all were at the table, that’s how much this whole event gripped us. Not to mention the fact my heart was racing and my nerves were on edge with every roll of the dice to make a check.
Antillia emerged from the fading battlefield to find herself in a more recently familiar clearing. This clearing was full of trees and plants that had their roots weaved into the shadow realm by Old Man Gootie. All of the trees had large burls that made up the majority of the tree. These burls were hollow and full of Old Man Gootie’s shadow gardens, where he grew crazy herbs and plants to use in his magic and to feed Akili. This was our first meeting with Old Man Gootie and I believe is somewhat outlined here. She was afraid at first that he was there to come back into the world, but soon realized something wasn’t right because the link Bob had created to Old Man Gootie’s vision wasn’t showing him as being there. This just goes to show you that even when we’re split, the party is still there backing each other up. Bob’s earlier sacrifice of the boar intestine creature gave Antillia the chance to make a lucidity check with a high bonus, which she made with flying colors. Thanks Bob! At this point Antillia fought off some of the dream state and was better able to get her mind around things. She pictured herself in adult form and looked down. She gasped out loud as she realized she was pregnant! At this point everyone around the table groaned, I believe there was some cursing, and throwing up of arms in disgust. The reason being that Gootie often revives himself by impregnating someone and birthing himself through them, with some of their powerful traits, in turn making him more powerful each time. As a player I was wracking my mind as to how Antillia would handle this, having previously stopped Gootie from impregnating her and even trapping one of his “children” in a field. Antillia at this point could hear Gootie approaching, but she used her lucid will to ensure that a young Gootie came forward. He turned out to be even younger than she had ever met, and she smiled at him. Rubbing her belly as she also used her influence to make the child in her womb a normal baby, half minotaur and half human. She embraced Gootie and stepped back, her waters breaking as she went into labor. Thinking to herself, “This isn’t so bad… it’s kind of nice.” Then realizing, “Oh ya, it’s a dream.” She pushed out out of some fanciful shinning light came a clean and healthy satyr looking child. She held him in her arms and kissed him, handing him over to his father, Gootie, who smiled and took the child as that section of the dream began to fade. More notes! This is one of the points where your character manages to surprise even the player. I mean, at the risk of sounding crazy, Antillia did something that even I had a bit of trouble realizing before I had said it and it was done. Everyone at the table was shocked, and I think I even surprised Carl. Carl let me know that I would be seeing my child in my dreams and that I had given Gootie a hook point to return, without so much of the hatred and craziness if he chose it. He said by no means would this alleviate everything, but it was certainly a good start. This whole event and how it unfolded actually left me feeling pretty great for Antillia, and very happy. Hopeful for Gootie even.
So Antillia moved on to stage six of the dream walk. At this point my hands were shaking, I had come so far and come SO close to failure before this. Things were only going to get harder. Luckily I was now lucid, so that gave me a leg up, but it only allowed me to be more creative with my choices. It wasn’t a guarantee of anything. This portion of the dream was just before the “Gate House” to the castle. Immediately after entering this phase, Kariki-Kalos loomed before me, maw agape, heading right at me! He was enraged and ready to swallow me whole, I could see little more than his maw and the shadow eyes surrounding it. At this point I made a check to bring a dream version of Bob and Hammer on either side of me. I also summoned up the liches that had imprisoned Kariki-Kalos to begin with. I think put a Horn of Kariki-Kalos in Bob’s, Hammer’s, and my own hands. We all blew them at once and the deep bellowing sound reverberated throughout the dream. Kariki-Kalos represented all the doubt, regret, and pain that Antillia had been feeling over the years and she called upon her friends for help in that moment of need to overcome all of it. The horn mesmerized Kariki-Kalos and Tillia took advantage. Rather than proceed on she chose to mount Kariki-Kalos with her friends, now family, and the liches to ride him through the “Sea of Dreams” to the base of the castle. She envisioned him being re-imprisoned below the castle, much like he was below the original temple we found him in. She then dismounted as the dream faded and the session ended with Antillia inside the Castle of Dreams, which was crowned with the golden sphere where all the liches were. I think the move of riding Kariki-Kalos caught people at the table by surprise as well. I know Hammer said something along the lines of, “I wasn’t thinking that, but once you said it, it was like… Yeah, that’s totally the way it should be.” I made a strong success to navigate Kariki-Kalos and thus next session will bring the hardest challenges to date!

END

Words from the player…
I didn’t expect this recap to be so long, but once I got going… it was hard to stop. My notes throughout pretty much cover everything, but this entire night was a supremely fun night. I don’t think I’ve had a better session. Emotions were high and everyone was locked into every detail of the events unfolding before us. I think one thing that made this night a smashing success was that we kept swapping back from what I was doing with Antillia, and what Hammer and Bob were doing. It gave us all time to think in the interim without detracting from the ongoing stories. I was as much enthralled with what they were doing, as they were with what was going on with me. Plus it gave me a chance to wipe off the sweat from my palms and take a breath.
I am also amazed at how well the whole dream walk unfolded. Carl took the little he knew of my background, with my input as we went along, and made a very intriguing dreamscape. I felt that we both worked together to flesh out my character beyond anything I had previously done with her. It was like a brainstorming session that was enacting our ideas, as we had them. Roleplay at its best! I think basing Antillia’s father on my previous minotaur character from back in the day, also helped me quickly think of what Antillia might see in her past.
Bob and Hammer’s players did an amazing job keeping quiet when I was in the dream, not shouting out advice and giving me tips. Usually we are very discussion heavy when we are doing things as a group and I’m sure it was hard on both of them to keep their lips sealed and just listen. I know I probably would have done a much less fabulous job of keeping my trap shut.
I knew I was stepping into a dreamscape at the beginning of this session, but I had no idea it would turn out so crazy, and so defining for my albino minotaur. I’m probably just gushing now, but this goes to show what a creative DM can accomplish. It’s not an easy role to fill and even harder to fill well.
-Mike P.

Synergistic Effects and Contraindications in Herbal Magic

One of the things I wanted to do when I introduced a bunch of magical herbs in my 4e campaign was to eventually come up with some kind of mechanic to resolve the unintended consequences of mixing medicines.    I decided early on that I didn't want to try and make an exhaustive chart of every possible combination, because that would get ridiculous very quickly with the number of different magical herbs and elements we are talking about here.

This issue came to the fore again last session when Tilia was faced with a daunting magical challenge and she ate some vile smelling fungal growth and a wing of the staring moth to gain bonuses they would give to her arcana check (both items collected during the course of the campaign).

This is still tentative but I have a rough mechanic.  For each pair of herbs ingested, roll 1d20.  A result of 1 indicates a contraindication and a result of 20 indicates an unexpected beneficial effect.  When more than two herbs are ingested at once, roll for each individual pair and also once for the entire unique combination.

 I have a very rough start on contraindication and unexpected beneficial effect tables (these definitely need to be expanded to at least d20 tables - leave suggestions in the comments?):  EDIT:  Mike, player in my 4e campaign and sometimes poster on this blog, sent me an email with a bunch of great suggestions for this that I will be incorporating into these tables soon.

Contraindication Table: 1d12

Remember to tell your doctor about every magical herb you are currently taking when discussing a new prescription!

1. This combination of herbs severely strains the heart.  If strenuous physical activity is engaged in the next 2d6 hours there is a risk of heart attack (this could be a Fort attack in 4e with the potential to do enough damage to kill, or a Save vs. Death in earlier editions).

2.  This combination of herbs inhibits the body's ability to process alcohol for 1d4 days.  Not only will alcoholic beverages be dramatically more potent, the drunk will last for the entire duration and a number of drinks = 1/3 Constitution could result in death by alcohol poisoning. 

3. Combining these herbs interferes with the efficacy of magical healing.  -2 per die on all magical healing for 1d4 days.

4.  These herbs just don't work very well together.  1 (1-5 on d6) or both (6 on d6) of the herbs work at 1/2 normal effect (whatever that is) when combined.

5.  Severe light sensitivity results for 1d6 days, blinded in full daylight and -2 to hit in bright to moderately lit rooms.  If a 6 is rolled for duration, the light sensitivity continues for another 1d6 days.  If a 6 is rolled on 3 successive checks, the effect is permanent.

6.  A numbing of all physical sensations occurs, causing a -4 penalty to Dexterity and the inability to feel pain for 2d4 hours.  

7.  Do not combine these herbs when pregnant.  This could be as simple as a chance of miscarriage or as crazy as a chance of magical birth defects.  Alternatively this could pollute the semen of male characters for 3d10 days, either causing sterility or hyperfertility for the character and magical birth defects for any children conceived during that period.

8.  One of the herbs (randomly determined) does not function at all while the other functions at 150% normal efficacy.

9.  A severe drowsiness results, a fast and unavoidable sleep descending in 3d6 rounds and lasting 2d30 hours.  Although pain or sudden loud noise can wake the character, sleep will return in 3d6 rounds until the original duration has passed.

10.  A slow process of petrification starts.  This initially manifests as +2 to AC and -4 to REF.  Over the next 2d6 days, roll a save at -1 cumulative per day the petrification has progressed.  Each failed save results in an additional +2 to AC and -4 to REF.  Each successful save reverses one days effects (if the first save is made the petrification ceases).  When REF reaches 0, the body is turned completely into stone and can only be cured through magical means.
11.  Dehydration/nausea results (Thanks Mike!).  Rolling a 1 on any attack/skill check dazes you for 1d4 rounds. Rolling a 1 twice without stopping to rest and rehydrate causes dehydration to the point where you fall unconscious for 1d4 rounds and can not be roused by normal means. Falling unconscious twice in this manner causes you to fall into a coma for 1d4+1 days, where you must seek proper medical treatment via someone trained in the Heal skill. Failing to do so within 2 days means you make a Death saving throw, if successful you stabilize and remain in the coma for an additional 1d4+1 days (added on to the first roll) You may also suffer permanent Ability damage. After 2 more days without medical treatment you automatically perish. Receiving proper medical treatment within 2 days prevents the Death saving throw, but you will remain in your coma for the full duration of your total days rolled. (Min 4 - Max 10)
12.  Combining these herbs can be instantly fatal.  Saving throw or die in 4e (or savings throw vs. Death).

Unexpected Beneficial Side Effect Table: 1d10

1.  A random stat is increased by 1d4 for 1d6x10 minutes.  

2.  These herbs work great together.  1 (1-5 on d6) or both (6 on d6) work at 150% normal efficacy.

3.  This combination reduces fatigue and hunger.  No food or sleep needed for 24 hours.  No side effects.

4.  This combination of herbs restores 3d6 HP or grants 3d6 temporary HP that disappear if not used within 2d8 hours.

5.  Lucky combination: +1 to all rolls for 24 hours

6.  A metabolite of this combination is sweated out and is irresistible to a random species (25% chance of being the same species as the ingester), acting as a love potion upon first exposure and a charm person/monster for subsequent suggestions made by the ingester, for 1d4+1 hours.  Even species not affected will find the body odor of the ingester very appealing for the duration.

7.  Magically toughens the ingester, +2 to AC for 3d6 hours.

8.  Grants telepathy to 50'.  This requires concentration and can only be used on one subject at a time.  Does not require line of site.  All living minds within 50' can be detected and contacted with concentrated effort.

9. Moment of Zen.  Exact effect of this is up to the player and DM.  Suggestions of a mechanical nature would include temporary bonuses to Wisdom, initiative, diplomacy, reaction checks, perception; suggestions of a more flavorful nature would include giving the DM a blank card in the form a character "revelation" (the DM gets to either reveal a secret or make up some shit about the campaign world) or some kind of breakthrough on a personality or character flaw.  This effect can never be intentionally recreated, only occurring as a random side effect of different herbal mixtures.

10.  Restores youthful vigor - lose 1d4 years of age.  Each time this combination of herbs restores youth there is a 1% cumulative chance of developing an irrational and overriding fear of aging.

Standardizing Doses and Duplicating Results

Unless very exacting precautions were taken to both accurately measure the potency of each herbal specimen and the exact amount consumed, combining the same types of herbs will not necessarily yield the same result.  I think a good start would be to give a 25-75% chance of recreating a contraindication or beneficial side effect, with the care taken to measure dosage determining the exact chance.  This assumes the same batch of herbs was used - I would lower these chances if this was not the case.  The 25% chance of failure even given the same herbs and very careful measurement of dosage means that there was some other factor present the first time that is missing.  Perhaps a fly flew in the preparation, or it was a hotter or colder day and the reaction depends on a certain temperature, or it was mixed in a copper bowl the first time and a wooden bowl the second, etc.

Addiction 

Yes of course there should be addiction rules but I really haven't nailed that one down yet.  I am still kicking around what sort of mechanic I want to use for addiction.  I don't want it to be a record keeping game of tracking doses used per period of time, I know that much.