Never Split the Party

There is an old maxim in D&D: Never split the party.  You usually hear this from the player perspective, in the context of survival advice.  Just like a horror movie, as soon as you wander away from the party you are going to be the first corpse.  United we stand, divided we are strangled by measles whilst taking a shit.  Keep the magic users in the middle.  Hi diddle diddle.

Of course there is a meta game reason to not split the party as well - the game runs smoothly when all the PCs are in one location, but  as soon as they separate, the DM has to run each group through its actions separately and track time for each group.   Temporal anomalies are a very real problem that you run into when you split the party - Bill and Ted spent eight excellent hours sleeping in the inn before going to the future, but in the meantime Beavis lit Butthead's fart on fire and burned down the inn.   Usually a handwave back in time is enough to fix these sort of problems (umm, actually Bill and Ted, you guys didn't sleep through the night, you were awakened in the middle of the night to panicked commotion in the hallway and the smell of smoke, so what would you have done then?).  If all the party members are each doing their own thing, at a certain point it would make more sense to stop playing as a group and start playing a bunch of interconnected one on one campaigns.  Which actually sounds pretty cool, but it isn't really D&D as most of us understand it to be - a group experience.

I personally have no problem with splitting the party as a player or DM.  The players in my new world campaign have made a lot of the traditional problems with party splitting obsolete anyway.   All the PCs have a permanent telepathic link of unlimited range (this was created about two years real time into the campaign using the telepathic energy technology of the alien spacecraft that Tilia found on the moon) and can teleport to each other's side or back to the hovercraft as a minor action (they found a bunch of matched teleportal coins, pairs of matched gold coins that when activated open a portal between the two coins - each PC carries a coin linked to a coin carried by another PC, and each PC has a coin linked to a coin on the hovercraft, as well as coins to some other locations that the PCs have sprinkled around the campaign landscape).

While this solves many of the traditional problems of splitting the party, we have found ways to split the party into a more psychedelic fractal gamescape than I could have possibly imagined when this campaign began.   For starters, we have been exploring the idea of splitting your consciousness into multiple copies for quite some time.  I actually first introduced the concept in my (now defunct) Mutant Future game* when the PCs learned that a recurring villain, Julius Corple, had made multiple copies of his consciousness that inhabited a "space" called shadow, the "place" that energy "goes" when it flickers in and out of existence (although shadow is not a space or a place, and exists outside of time as perceived in the PCs universe, and energy particles don't so much travel through shadow as become it). Julius Corples' shadow consciousnesses could create seemingly magical effects by manipulating the way energy was structured in the Mutant Future reality, changing its form in shadow, outside of time.  I have a unified theory of magical physics that I use in all my games regardless of system, and I allow exploration into and manipulation of magical physics outside of the normal D&D structure of spells, ritual magic and powers.  My new world campaign is run using 4e rules, but of course shadow lies outside of the realm of 4e rules.

Fast forward to the present, four years into the campaign, and the last few sessions have been a "never split the party" purist's nightmare.  One of the three main PCs did not even play at all last session, even though his player was in attendance and running two NPCs!  Here is an outline of how the party was split up going into the beginning of last Tuesday's session:

Tilia A:  Underneath the ruins of lost Eridu, between the first dungeon level of the temple of the moon complex and the surface, earthswimming with Hammer back toward the sacred lake to get a badly needed full heal from the holy waters (*not* psychically connected to the party's healer Beautiful Bob, who intentionally severed the link before going to sleep) .

Tilia B: [not active this session] surfing through deep shadow, retaining sanity because she is merged with a shadow dragon, in the middle of a subjectively centuries long mindfuck of a trip through the multiverses as the shadow dragon rides potential energy connections [note - Tilia split herself in two and Tilia B has already rejoined with Tilia A in Tilia A's timeline, but Tilia B is still an active game PC that we will revisit in future sessions to explore more about the nature of deep shadow and the way that energy is connected through the multiverses]

Hammer:  Earthswimming with Tilia back toward the sacred lake to get a badly needed full heal from the holy waters (*not* psychically connected to Beautiful Bob, who intentionally severed the link before going to sleep).  Hammer is a barbarian.  He doesn't split himself up.  Can he split something else up with his axe?

Beautiful Bob A: [not active this session] Hundreds of miles away in a cave in the swamp north of Siss Anor, in the middle of the horrific nightmares that are a withdrawal symptom of the psychotropic plants he consumed to aid in a ritual several sessions earlier.  A Nur-Kubi shaman (kind of like a reptilian praying mantis anteater psychic vampire,  the first sentient race released into the world by the snake man scientists) is siphoning off and feeding on the negative energy.  Bob A intentionally severed his psychic link with Tilia, Hammer, Nur-Kubi, Zanninum, Beautiful Bob ∞ Beautiful Bob C before going to sleep, worried that the psychic energy that might be released in his nightmares could damage them (Bob A was supercharged with nightmare energy, having taken on the nightmares of the four million plus souls trapped in Mother Mind three sessions back).  The session before last we advanced Bob A through several nightmare skill challenges, representing two full REM cycles of sleep, so we began last session needing to advance Tilia A and Hammer about 3-4 hours through game time before Bob woke up from his nightmares and re-established his psychic link with Hammer and Tilia.

Nur-Kubi the Cambion/FAKE Beautiful Bob [NPC controlled by Beautiful Bob's player, no psychic link to Tilia or Hammer]  Guest bedroom in Lady Mirriam's compound, the old temple of the moon in the ruins of old Eridu.  Nur-Kubi is assuming the appearance and demeanor of Beatiful Bob per Bob's commands.  Nur-Kubi begins the session fifteen minutes in time behind Tilia A, Hammer and Zaninum.  Lady Mirriam made a show of dismissing her handmaidens to the courtyard to watch out for any soldiers still angered by the party's actions of the day before (another story) and has shown Nur-Kubi/FAKE Beautiful Bob where her bedroom was and made it known that she would like him to visit her.  Nur-Kubi is waiting a few minutes after his companions have settled into their adjoining rooms before strolling down the hallway. Nur-Kubi is behind Tilia and Hammer in time because the session before last, Tilia earthwalked through the floor of her bedroom and encountered some cultists of the Nameless One in the first dungeon level below and got in a fight.  Hammer teleported to her side and they eventually killed the three lower level weretoad cultists and their higher level vampire leader, but not before sustaining serious wounds, expending a lot of powers and advancing their timeline past Nur-Kubi's.

Zaninum the Cambion  [NPC controlled by Beautiful Bob's player , no psychic link to Tilia or Hammer]  Just been spotted by the guards stationed around Lady Mirriam's compound (the old temple of the moon), was trying to stealthily make his way toward the sacred lake for a badly needed full heal after nearly being killed by an intelligent talking mace that could transform into a winged lion that he found last time while skulking around the ruins of old Eridu.

Curious George the hovercaft [NPC intelligent magical item hovercraft created by the party in dimension X using materials from that dimension] Circling high above the jungle, keeping an eye on things.  Psychically connected to Tilia and Hammer (and usually to Beautiful Bob but not currently until Bob wakes up from his nightmares).

Beautiful Bob B [not active this session] surfing through deep shadow, retaining sanity because he is merged with a shadow dragon, in the middle of a subjectively centuries long mindfuck of a trip through the multiverses as the shadow dragon rides potential energy connections [note - Bob split himself in two and Bob B has already rejoined with Bob A in Bob A's timeline, but Bob B is still an active game PC that we will revisit in future sessions to explore more about the nature of deep shadow and the way that energy is connected through the multiverses - also Bob B is connected to Beautiful Bob ∞ and Beautiful Bob C]

Beautiful Bob ∞ [not active this session] Beautiful Bob split his consciousness up into a near infinite number four sessions ago in a shared dream with Maricanchi, an NPC dreamer from the future. Maricanchi will be an extraordinarily powerful dreamer and split into a near infinite number to show Bob the dreams of the past, present and future inhabitants of the campaign world simultaneously.  [note - I gave Beautiful Bob's player an at will power called The Eternal Moment which allows Beautiful Bob A to connect with the infinite dreaming consciousnesses and learn more about the dreams shown to him by Maricanchi whenever he wants during play.  The only answers that he can get are what the people in the past and future are dreaming, not necessarily the reality of what is happening in the waking world in the past or future]

Beautiful Bob C [not active this session]  In the far future of the campaign world.  One of the many Beautiful Bob ∞ dream consciousnesses has traveled inside the Dream Machine that Maricanchi and his triplet brothers are hooked up to in the future.  The Dream Machine is a complicated piece of magic future technology that is somehow using the dreams of the three triplets to alter reality.  Beautiful Bob C has managed to retain his consciousness while leaving the dream world and taking the form of a single particle of energy inside the dream machine.  Two sessions ago Beautiful Bob C managed to break free of the regular energy routing inside the machine and did not go where the machine was sending his particle, instead choosing to explore the circuitry of the machine on his own terms  [note - we will definitely come back to what Beautiful Bob C is up to inside the dream machine because the dream machine is directly connected to the mind of Manu Jablitu, the technomancer lich who the party would probably consider to be the main bad guy of the campaign at this point over the snake men]










* all three of the current players in my new world campaign were also players in my Mutant Future game.  Those two games ran concurrently for quite some time and PCs from the Mutant Future game even briefly looked through a portal into my new world campaign but did not choose to go through it.

Initiative by the Book (Labyrinth Lord)

I always used to think that group initiative, especially d6 group initiative, was both incredibly boring and unrealistic.  I have used d20 individual initiative, plus Dexterity modifier, in my Mutant Future campaign, and I have been generally happy with that.

Recently, in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign, we switched back to by the book group initiative.  The key thing that I had always failed to grasp when I read the initiative rules was that initiative was rerolled every round.  This is a ton of rolling if you are doing individual initiative, but really not hard at all if you are doing group initiative.

Short story:  I really like d6 group initiative, rolled each round of combat, ties meaning simultaneous action.  It allows the tide of battle to change rapidly, it allows dramatic things like knowing you are already dead but getting one last attack in (and the chance for the ultimate cinematic moment, the simultaneous death shot), and it actually takes less time than the mess of going around the table and recording initiative rolls and constantly having to remind everyone when it is their turn in the initiative order.

I think I am going to switch my Mutant Future game over to this system, and I am seriously thinking about switching my 4e game over as well.  I have to think about that latter proposal a little more, as there are feats that you can take in 4e that improve initiative (I am not sure if any of my players have taken these feats, but if they have, it would be cheesy to completely castrate their usefulness).  I still think I am going to do it, and may just allow players to pick new feats and or powers if they want to given this new information.

I really like the way that this simple change in initiative has made the combats in our Labyrinth Lord game WAY more exciting, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work in other systems as well.

Carl's Creatures pt. 2 - Shadow Octopus

(See pt. 1 for the general intro)

In part the second I want to introduce a really scary monster that I have not actually had a chance to inflict on my party yet.  Having just blogged about attribute attacks on my other blog, this seemed especially apropos.  Had my Mutant Future party continued to head out into the dry sea instead of investigating a magical portal tree, they might have run into this bad boy if the dice rolled just wrong...


Shadow Octopus

HP: 75 - 100
AC: 4
Size: 3' long head, 9' from tentacle tip to tentacle tip when not extending shadow tentacles
Movement: Swim: 150', Land: 30', Sudden Jet Escape: 300' movement for 1d4+1 rounds (must rest motionless for 1d4 rounds after using this ability)

Attacks: 8 x DEX15 range 50' (shadow tentacles) (see my blog post about attribute attacks on my other blog to make sense of this)

Damage: 1 temporary Dexterity attribute drain (lost attributes regain at the rate of 1 per hour outside of the dry sea, but never return in the dry sea or in any other area of strong shadow concentration) + the shadow octopus gains a corresponding point of Dexterity (making subsequent Dexterity attribute attacks more likely to succeed...)

The shadow octopus lurks invisible and nearly insubstantial in the shadowy currents of the immaterial sea.  It can extend its tentacles out to 50', stretching impossibly far, and twinkling ghostly lights from the rims of each suction cup.  It lures prey with the curious glimmering, separating comrades until it begins draining the very quickness from their muscles.  With each point of Dexterity that it drains through its tentacle attack, it becomes more colorful and corporeal.


Special Abilities:  Roll its 8 attacks in two sets of four labeled A-D as shown on the drawing above.  If both tentacles in a matched set hit, the shadow octopus can choose to instantly teleport the two targets into the space occupied by the other (no save to avoid).

When the shadow octopus reduces any target to 2 or fewer Dexterity,it can immediately attempt to engulf the target with a CON15 ATT.  If successful, the target is destroyed and the shadow octopus regains 50 HP.  If this attack fails, the shadow octopus can forgo its tentacle attacks in subsequent rounds to repeat the attack.

Special Defenses: The shadow octopus can only be damaged by mutations, magical attacks or magical weapons.  Normal physical damage has no visible effect on it.

If the shadow octopus is reduce to 20 or fewer HP, it will emit a 50' radius shadow ink cloud, obscuring all normal and magical vision for 1d4 rounds while the shadow octopus uses its sudden jet escape movement ability to disappear into the darkness.

Carl's Creatures pt. 1 - Thraxian Hive Soldier

I collect monster manuals.  I never use them, but I collect them.  Every now and then I might page through one looking for inspiration, but that really doesn't happen often when I am actually running a game, which I have been doing pretty solid now for the last three years.  So why do I buy monster books if I never use them?  I dunno.  I guess I like monsters.

My campaign worlds always end up becoming more and more bizarre through a process of accretion.  I make up some weird ass shit, my players do things I didn't expect, I riff of their actions and come up with more weird ass shit, and pretty soon there are so many original creations in play that the standard D&D monsters just don't get into the game anymore.

I make up at least 95% of the creatures that my players encounter in game, be it Mutant Future or D&D 4e (the two games I am currently running).

I end up scribbling out crude illustrations for most of my creations, and I thought it might be fun to share some of them with y'all.

- Disclaimer -  I am making no effort to present these according to the standard stat block for either Mutant Future or 4e.  I use THAC0 for my Mutant Future critters, at least in part because I don't use HD (instead writing down a HP range when creating creatures).  I may not use the correct syntax for the 4e creations.

Carl's Creatures

part one

Thraxian Hive Soldier 


(for Mutant Future or any pre-3e version of D&D)

(I love this picture, because it started out as a quick sketch so the players could get a better idea of what the alien bugs looked like, and then one of the players at the table doodled on it and shaded it.  Apparently, Thraxian Hive Soldiers are polka-dotted!)

HP: 100-150
AC: 2
THAC0: 9
Movement: 150'
Attacks: 4 or 1
Damage: 2d6 x4 (tentacle arms) or 4d12 (bite) or by weapon (see below)
Saves: Level 12

Thraxian Hive Soldiers can survive in a vacuum without sustenance for years, if that gives you a better picture of these tough son-of-a-bugs.  Although fond of and brutally effective in hand to tentacle combat, Hive Soldiers also carry disruptor pulse weapons.  These resemble a large circular shield grasped with all four tentacles (these contain an extremely dense and heavy power core, and each weapon weighs nearly 200 pounds!), concave side facing the target, which emits pulses that molecularly destabilize the target.

Disruptor Pulse Weapons: Range 1000', half damage to 4000', damage: 5d6, special: Save vs. Energy Attacks or the target suffers an additional 5d6 damage at the beginning of its next turn.  This continues until the save is made.  When not in use these weapons are slung over the back of the first body-segment of the Hive Soldier.

Little is known of Thraxian Hive Society; it is unclear if the bugs are telepathic, or use scent and chemical markers to communicate, or if they are simply so single-minded of purpose and unified in goal that they can act with incredible synchronized precision without any need of communication at all.

The Balancing Act in Character Creation - Lady Luck vs. Point Buy

A primary design goal of 3e and 4e was to achieve game balance - balance between the classes, encounters that balance with the level of the party, saving throws that are balanced vs. a spell's chance to succeed, and the list goes on.  3e may not have succeeded particularly well at balancing the classes or saving throws, but it was a design goal.  4e does a much better job at achieving this aim, and one interesting side effect became apparent to me when I was thinking about a comment that Jeff Rients made on my post about 4e and the ever expanding "core rules".

In reference to my point that the 4e character generator allowed you to make a character in a relatively short time, Jeff said,

"'Quick with a computer' just doesn't light my jets the same way 'quick with dice' does."


4e has not done away entirely with using dice in character creation, but it might as well have.  The 4e Player's Handbook does pay lip service to random stat generation with the 4d6, drop the lowest method.  However, reading the rules, using the character builder and looking at the careful math that has gone into making sure that you will have exactly such and such a chance to hit as long as your primary stat is within this range and your secondary stat is within that range, it becomes apparent that 4e's designers expect you to use one of the point build options presented in the Player's Handbook when making your character.  It is hard to have a truly balanced game when you could roll up a character with a 4 Strength, 6 Constitution, 5 Dexterity, 9 Intelligence, 5 Wisdom and 14 Charisma, for example.

Lest any of my "old school" readers take exception, let me make it clear that I am not advocating for balance in the sense that every character is expected to be as competent as every other character, and I am certainly not advocating for the abandonment of random dice rolls in character creation.  I am just noting that 4e has moved a long way in that direction.

I personally have always loved the moment of letting those dice fly and seeing the new character start to take shape with each toss.  I love getting that high roll on 3d6, and I love trying to make a character work and make sense with those inevitable low rolls.  Heck, I often have more fun when playing a character that "sucks" statistically.

Of course, attributes meant much less in the older versions of D&D than they do now.  In OD&D they were almost meaningless except for the experience bonuses you could get for your prime requisite.  They might be called into play by an individual DM asking for an attribute check or making a ruling on your ability to perform some action, but all in all it didn't really matter if you had a pathetic strength score.  Fast forward to 4e, and you might as well just slit your throat if you were the character with the rolls described above.  You would almost never hit anything in combat, you would be, for all intents and purposes, useless outside of combat (even that 14 Charisma is not a high stat by 4e standards which expect every starting character to have at least an 18 in one or more attributes!) thanks to 4e's reliance on skills and skill challenges and you would be extremely vulnerable thanks to the transformation of Saving Throws into defenses directly tied to your attributes.  This would be particularly painful if the rest of the group used the standard point buy method - you would be a giant millstone around their necks.

I am currently running a Mutant Future game.  Mutant Future might be the antithesis of the 4e trend toward balance - not only is it a "roll 3d6 down the line" kind of game, it is a "roll some random mutations and deal with the freaky results" kind of game.  One character might be able to fly at a ridiculous speed, completely possess another person merely by thinking about it or reflect damage back to its source, while another might take double damage, be twice as slow as normal, or emit an odor that attracts dangerous predators!  Take that, Balance Police!

While I am not sure what exactly my point is, I am sure about one thing - character creation in Mutant Future is WAY more fun than character creation in 4e... dare I say it is funner, because everyone knows that "funner" is more fun than "more fun".  Don't believe me?  Download the free .PDF of Mutant Future and roll up a character, then talk to me about balance!  Who cares about balance, honestly, when you are a sentient, mobile, mutant aloe vera plant or a bipedal porcupine that can shoot frickin' gamma rays from its eyes?