Heroic Roleplaying in a World of Swords, Sorcery, and Steam
I’d like to introduce Aetrimonde, a TTRPG I’ve been designing with heavy inspiration from the houserules my group used back in our Dungeons and Dragons 4e days. I’m not ready to publish Aetrimonde yet, but I’m opening up this blog to discuss its design principles, mechanics, and systems.
With the fourth sample character Ipki Chainbreaker recently finished, I think it’s time to start the next stage of building Aetrimonde’s starter kit: writing an adventure! As with the sample characters, I’m going to incorporate some reader feedback into this writing process, and the first thing I want to get settled is the location of the adventure.
I’d like to set this adventure away from Aetrimonde’s major powers, somewhere not quite civilized and yet not quite wilderness. This will give me the most flexibility to write in segments of the adventure dealing with combat, exploration, and intrigue, and to drop in brief visits to neighboring regions that are a bit more or a bit less civilized. Fortunately, Aetrimonde has plenty of places like this! Don’t worry: I’ll make sure to provide plenty of exposition on whatever region the poll selects before I ask for any more reader input–and if you just can’t decide which one sounds more interesting, you can pick multiple options in the poll!
I’m aiming for the starter adventure to take characters from levels 0 to 3, meaning it will contain around 30 encounters all told. They will likely be running around the entire region during the adventure and maybe crossing into neighboring areas: here’s a map showing what this might entail, and here’s a post where I briefly described Aetrimonde’s major polities. With that in mind, let me ask:
One of the things that I think is crucial to writing a campaign setting is to raise interesting questions and not give a definitive answer to any of them. As tempting as it might be to write a canonical answer to the big questions of the setting, authors have to remember that a published setting is intended to be a sandbox for other GMs and players to work in. A setting works best when it leaves plenty of room for a campaign to fill in the blanks and tell a unique story.
So I’m not going to answer some of Aetrimonde’s big-picture questions, like “how old is Aetrimonde’s planetary system” or “what does the colossal machinery in the Heavenly Realm do.” But that won’t stop me from discussing some potential answers and how they might make for an interesting campaign. Today, since I’ve lately been touching on topics related to Divine characters, I’m going to tackle one of the big ones: what are Aetrimonde’s gods? Finding a definitive answer to this question has consumed generations of Aetrmonde’s fringe theologists, and would make a great high-concept for a long-running campaign.
The Canon
There are a couple of things known about Aetrimonde’s gods (and if you want to change these facts, more power to you–but it might conflict with the campaign hooks I’m about to discuss):
The gods are distant: they don’t have avatars, they don’t talk directly to anyone, and even their servants, the angels, are tight-lipped about them.
The gods are associated with certain philosophies and creeds, and adopting those creeds can let mortals tap into divine power.
So what can we do, working within these facts?
Playing it Straight
The simplest way to use Aetrimonde’s gods is to take them at face value: they’re powerful entities with the quality of “divinity,” each of them embodying a different philosophy or concept, and they interact with Aetrimonde largely through empowering mortals whose beliefs are properly aligned with them.
The biggest question here is: why don’t the gods intervene more directly in the world? Why doesn’t Deum Militant lead armies, and why doesn’t Deum Harmonious prevent logging and mining from despoiling nature?
Neutral Territory: The gods don’t intervene directly because they have agreed among themselves not to. Perhaps they’re simply tired of fighting each other when their interest conflict, or perhaps their interventions would risk destroying the world, or perhaps there are metaphysical consequences to intervention that they aren’t willing to suffer. A campaign could revolve around getting the gods to make an exception in the face of a world-ending threat; if the players are on board for it, you could also write a campaign about breaking the agreement between the gods and aiding their preferred deity in winning the ensuing struggle…consequences (literally) be damned.
A Difference of Scale: The gods don’t intervene directly because they can’t easily do so: they’re so cosmically huge, and Aetrimonde so tiny in the grand scale of things, that for them to intervene directly would be like trying to remove one particular ant from an anthill…without crushing it. So the gods listen to prayers, and identify mortals who they can empower and guide to act in their interests on such a fine scale. A simple campaign in this vein might have the PCs trying to draw a god’s attention to some impending threat or overlooked wrong, and getting it to do something about it directly. A more ambitious campaign could let the PCs try to fix the entire system by pulling the gods down to a level where they can actually understand the mortal perspective…
Cosmic Dead-Zone: The gods don’t intervene on Aetrimonde because they can’t do so at all: something about the world (or solar system, or plane of existence) prevents them from directly exerting their will. Perhaps it lies in a cosmic dead zone where divine powers simply don’t work, or it is under the influence of some eldritch quasi-deity from a previous cosmos, or the gods themselves did something that placed the world beyond their reach. A campaign based on this premise could involve this situation changing in either direction: the PCs might discover that the gods are becoming even weaker as Aetrimonde passes further beyond their reach, and set out to do something before the world is completely cut off from divinity…or it could be the opposite, where the gods are returning and the PCs must reckon with the consequences (intentional or not) of having divinities active in the world once more.
The Gods are Missing
What if the gods don’t intervene because they’re…gone? In this take on the gods, they used to be around, and perhaps intervened more often, but something happened to them.
Gotterdammerung: The gods aren’t just missing, they’re dead, and all that remains of them are fragments of their power, which resonate with mortals who embody the creeds of the dead gods. Could the gods be brought back, a la Osiris? Could someone take up the shards of their power, beginning a new generation of gods? And most pressingly…what killed them, and what does it intend for Aetrimonde?
Neglectful Creators: The gods made Aetrimonde, but they don’t care about it. Either it already served its purpose, or they made it on a whim and abandoned it once they lost interest. The echoes of their power still resonate with mortals following the appropriate creeds, but the gods themselves barely notice. What does it do to mortal society to know that they have no cosmic importance?
Celestial Bureaucracy: The gods may be omnipotent, but they’re not omniattentive: they can only do so much at once, and with an entire cosmos to manage, they’ve had to delegate. Specifically, they’ve created a celestial bureaucracy staffed with angels and devas and all sorts of other divine servants. Of course, as we all know, bureaucrats never get involved in departmental politics or inter-service rivalries, so obviously the branch office looking after things on Aetrimonde must be working as intended…right?
The “Gods” were Misidentified
Perhaps there are no gods, just something that Aetrimonde’s mortals mistook for gods because they could draw power from them.
Cosmic Forces: There isn’t any intelligence or consciousness behind Divine powers, but there is a truth to their creeds: contrary to Terry Pratchett’s Death, there is an atom of justice and a molecule of mercy. Mortals are tapping into these impersonal cosmic forces and mistaking them for gods…but is there a way to connect more deeply to them, or even control them, to become an actual god?
Extraplanar Visitors: The gods are actually powerful, but mortal, entities that hail from another plane of reality, or a distant alien world. Their advanced grasp of technology and magic seemed godlike to primitive Aetrimondeans, and for reasons of their own (or even without their noticing), they began to empower mortals. What exactly did these alien visitors want when they first arrived? What do they want now? And could it be possible to take direct control over the mechanisms they use to grant powers?
Eldritch Horrors: It’s well-known that there are many variations on the creeds acceptable to the gods of the pantheon. But the horrifying truth is that none of these creeds even come close to approximating the true natures of the gods: the creeds heretofore accessed by mortals are merely the ragged fringes of some vast and incomprehensible idea that a mortal mind cannot grasp…not without breaking. The sudden appearance of strange new doctrines and heresies could herald an alien god taking note of the tiny mortals drawing on its power…and attempting to reshape them into a better reflection of its true nature.
So there you have it: nine different treatments of Aetrimonde’s gods, each one serving as the setup for a different tone and style of campaign. As to whether any of them are the canonical truth for Aetrimonde…well, that would be telling.
To wrap up Ipki Chainbreaker, I’m going to take a look at one way that Ipki might advance through her first few levels. And, this will be a nice opportunity to preview some other types of Divine power, aside from the Wrath powers that Ipki focused on at level 0.
Also, be sure to read (or skip) to the end of the post, because I’ve got an announcement about where this blog will be going from here…
Level 1
One thing that Ipki’s level-0 powers don’t have is a melee option for when Ipki gets in over her head. Dazzling Smite helps with that: it exemplifies one “strain” of Divine melee powers, representing a weapon strike that erupts in magical energy–in this case, a flash of dazzling light–affecting creatures near the target. Powers like these are Divine melee characters’ main source of area damage: unlike Martial characters, who get powers that attack many targets at once, Divine characters make a single attack which spills over to other creatures nearby–if it hits. This means that they are all-or-nothing: the attack either hits its target and damages several creatures, or misses and does nothing at all.
Beneath Notice is one of the feats I previewed in an earlier post; it allows Ipki to remain under the radar until she gets her first turn in a fight, and I think it ties in nicely to her backstory as a guerilla slave liberator.
As her level-1 perk, Ipki will take Esoteric Knowledge [The Slave Trade]. This helps her out with knowledge checks related to capturing, transporting, selling, and working slaves–not so that she can engage in the trade herself, but so that she can better dismantle it. Better to know your enemy…
Level 2
Word of Mortality occupies a midpoint between Ipki’s ranged powers and Dazzling Strike: it has a 5-square range, but because it has a Pulse range, it can be used without provoking opportune strikes, giving her a little more range when tied up in melee. Aside from only targeting Anathema, this exemplifies another strain of Divine powers: “Word of” powers, representing a Divine character channeling the power of their god through the recitation of scripture, target a single creature at short range, cause small amounts of psychic damage, and have increased effects on injured creatures. Word of Mortality is an excellent niche option for cutting through the resistances of Anathema, and Ipki can Denounce non-Anathema to make them valid targets of it as well.
Radiant Exemplar is another feat I previewed in an earlier post: it has a minor but useful effect of giving Ipki a renewable, hands-free light source, which is not to be sneezed at when trying to fight something in a dark place. It’s also a rare example of a feat which is a prerequisite for another feat: we’ll see the second feat in a couple of levels.
For her perk, Ipki will take Craft [Improvised Weaponry]. This is a bit of an odd perk, because if you’ve used a Craft perk to make a weapon, is it really improvised? But the way I would adjudicate it is that this perk lets Ipki repurpose tools and other objects that are already similar to weapons (pitchforks, mining picks, manacles…) into actual, functioning weapons, given a bit of time to work. Very useful for arming slaves prior to an uprising…
Level 3
We’ve given Ipki a couple of powers branching out from the Wrath powers she specializes in: time to get back to those basics. Sweeping Sunbeam is a sustained area-damage power: while it has a relatively small area (blast 1, so a 3×3 area), it really shines on subsequent turns, when Ipki gets to move the zone it creates, attacking every creature in its path. Used well, this can sweep over wide swathes of a battlefield, and its path can be adjusted to avoid catching allies in the beam. Plus, it sheds bright light, effectively shining a spotlight on enemies in the zone. The big drawback to Sweeping Sunbeam is that it eats up Ipki’s main action: if she doesn’t use it to repeat the attack, her concentration breaks and the zone expires. That means she likely won’t be firing off any other powers while concentrating on the sunbeam.
Devout Prayers is the semi-obligatory bonus-to-attack rolls feat for Divine characters, and by level 3, Ipki will probably want to take it. Because Ipki really wants to apply her recoverable effects to Anathema, she benefits from a bonus to attack rolls more than a bonus to damage rolls, so that her attacks land and the effects go off. The Divine keywords Ipki can choose from are Binding, Psychic, and Wrath:
As her level 3 perk, Ipki will begin dabbling in Ritual Magic: as part of this perk, she learns three rituals which for the sake of brevity I’ll just summarize here:
Dowsing: Creates a talisman that indicates the direction to a known creature, object, place, or substance. Ipki plans to use it when hunting down slavers known to her, or trying to rescue specific captives.
Astral Projection: Allows Ipki to enter a trance and project an intangible duplicate of herself over a distance of kilometers. Ipki plans to use it for reconnaissance and communication, sneaking into slaver dens and slave quarters by simply floating through walls.
False Face: Conceals Ipki’s identity by projecting an illusion over her. In a pinch, could be used to conceal even that she’s a goblin. Ipki plans to use it for infiltration, disguising herself as either a captive or a slaver.
Level 4
Another variety of Divine powers, which has the Boon keyword, provides direct support to allies. Unlike Armament and Ward powers (and there are Divine variants of these…), Boon powers have simple numeric bonuses or otherwise improve capabilities that characters already have, rather than adding new effects to their attacks or defenses. They’re also easier to use in the moment, rather than taking forethought to use well like many Armaments and Wards. Guidance, in particular, gives an ally a small but noticeable bonus to attack and damage rolls.
And, while on the topic of Boons, each Divine class has a feat that ties Boon powers into their class features. For an Inquisitor like Ipki, that is the Denunciative Boon feat, allowing her to use a Divine Boon power as a free action each time the target of Denunciation fails a recovery roll–which they will, given what Denunciation does. As long as Ipki can get a recoverable effect onto an enemy she’s denounced, she can then hand out Guidance for free on a regular basis.
For her level 4 perk, I’m going to give Ipki a free-fom perk: Terror of Slavers. Building on the Fame [Goblin Abolitionists] perk she already has, Terror of Slavers will give Ipki the perk benefits for checks related to terrifying slavers. That includes plain old Intimidate checks made against slavers, of course, but also extends to things like spreading propaganda, inspiring uprisings, and otherwise waging a campaign of psychological terror.
Level 5
The last type of Divine power that I’ll showcase in this post is a Binding power. These powers generally deal no damage directly, but have an effect on a single target lasting as long as the user concentrates. Extirpating Seal is of a variety that, while it deals no damage by itself, causes other attacks against the target to deal additional damage and have additional effects. It also complements Word of Mortality nicely: where Word of Mortality removes an Anathema’s resistances, Extirpating Seal worsens its vulnerabilities–and many Anathema, not to mention some other creatures that Ipki can denounce, have both.
And to cap things off, we’ll give Ipki the second Exemplar feat for Deum Radiant, which Radiant Exemplar was a requirement for: this allows Ipki’s light sources to help allies shake off mind-altering effects, like some Anathema are known for inflicting.
Last but not least, Ipki will delve a little further into ritual magic–this time aimed at striking fear into the hearts of slavers. This second Ritual Magic perk lets her specialize in one kind of ritual–she’ll choose Divination, to help her find and investigate slavers–and also learn another three rituals:
Fabricate: Turns raw materials into finished goods. Useful for arming slaves in, say, an iron mine, and more generally to manufacture weapons that can’t be repurposed from tools or whatnot using Craft [Improvised Weapon].
Geas: Forces a creature to follow one overriding command (while giving it freedom in how it interprets the command). Ipki will use this to dispose of slavers she captures in a way that spreads terror and has the veneer of legality: when a slaver marches into the middle of town and starts uncontrollably confessing their crimes to everyone they can find, nobody’s going to shed tears over what an incensed citizenry does to them.
Remote Viewing: Allows Ipki to see and hear a creature at range using a mirror or pool of water, along with their surroundings. Ipki will use it to spy on slaver organizations from a safe remove, learning their plans and schemes.
Equipment
Finally, let’s take a loot at some items Ipki might find useful:
Ipki really wants to be sneaky, partly because of her backstory as a guerilla liberator but also because, well, she’s a really fragile character who doesn’t want enemies focusing on her. Something like a Chameleonic Cloak would be great: this allows her to flit past enemies, unseen as she blends into the background (Stealth check permitting…), and could also be useful to maybe dodge a few attacks if she gets caught in the middle of a fight with no other escape.
While Ipki doesn’t particularly need an amulet-style holy symbol to keep her hands free, one advantage of such an item is that it can be given enchantments for both holy symbols and amulets, and there are a couple of enchantments that can only be applied to holy symbols in this form. This kind of item is a useful way to make an item that serves double duty as an offensive and defensive item in one convenient package. In Ipki’s case, she’d love a holy symbol combining the Righteous and Sanctified enchantments:
These enchantments are a mixed blessing (ha) compared to equivalents: Righteous combines the item bonuses to attack and damage rolls of two other enchantments (Prevailing and Fervent), and applies them to all Divine powers instead of only those with a single keyword, but only to Anathema. Ipki can denounce a single creature to treat it like an Anathema, but unless actual Anathema make an appearance in an adventure, this means that these bonuses will only apply to a single creature: good for handling a priority target, less so for a horde.
Sanctified likewise combines three enchantments (Deflection, Protection, and Resilience, all for jewelry like amulets) with the caveat that their bonuses only apply vs. Anathema. Again, since Ipki can designate a foe as Anathema, this means she can always protect herself against at least one enemy in a fight, but that relies on being able to Denounce a foe before it attacks her. On the other hand, if she is facing a bunch of Anathema, this bonus becomes incredibly powerful. The Sanctified enchantment also gives this holy symbol another niche use, in that it can be passed off to an ally in need of protection from Anathema.
Up Next
That wraps things up for Ipki Chainbreaker, Goblin Inquisitor! I now have four completed sample characters, giving a representative sample of all four character origins and combat roles. I’d actually like to have six sample characters to include in Aetrimonde’s starter kit…but I’m going to hold off on that for now, because the next thing that I want to build for the starter kit is an actual introductory adventure. And, like these sample characters, I’m going to design this adventure with reader input: I’ll be putting polls as I write this, giving you the opportunity to help pick locations, guide the plot, design NPCs, and so on. Keep your eyes peeled for the first one, coming up soon!
I’ve recently gotten the Game Master’s Handbook to the point that I can start sharing excerpts of it on a more regular basis. I’ve still got a lot of material to write–but then, that’s part of what this blog is for, to help me organize and trial material going into the GMH.
Today, I’m going to open with an excerpt from the introduction to the GMH, explaining the roles that a GM has to play and how the GMH will support them in those roles.
What It Means to Be the GM
The GM in an Aetrimonde campaign is, as with most role-playing games, the linchpin to the campaign. While you might be able to have a game session where one or two other players are absent, it’s nigh-impossible to play without the GM.
Being the GM comes with responsibilities that the other players in your group don’t have. You’ll be juggling several roles at the same time throughout your campaign:
Storyteller
The GM is responsible for telling the campaign’s story, by narrating the situations that the players get into. This means providing exposition about the world they are in, describing the scenery around them, and voicing and describing the actions of allies and enemies they encounter. Parts of this handbook will give you tools to help convey information in an evocative way that draws the players into the story, and to quickly devise an answer when the players want to know something you hadn’t planned out ahead of time.
Referee
The GM also needs to be able to apply the rules of the Aetrimonde game system, which are mostly in the Core Rulebook. You don’t need to know the rules inside and out, but you should be broadly familiar with how things work and know where to look up details should they become important. This handbook also contains guidelines for handling situations where there is no pre-defined rule or system to cover something that your players want to do, letting you keep the story moving when the players get inventive.
Opponent
As the mind behind the monsters and other enemies that your players will face, you’ll often be the opponent that the players are working to defeat. The goal here is to challenge the players, not beat them: ideally, you’ll set challenges that are beatable, but not trivial, so that the players can still muddle through by brute force if necessary, but coming up with a clever plan and choosing good moves makes things meaningfully easier. This handbook provides guidelines as to what constitutes appropriate challenges, and how to adjust on the fly to make your challenges enjoyably difficult.
Author
If you’ve never GMed before, it’s probably best if you begin by running a published adventure, like the one in Aetrimonde’s free starter kit. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll probably start having ideas for your own stories to tell, featuring new locations or even entirely new settings, fun NPCs and dastardly villains, interestingly dangerous monsters, and strange new magics. This handbook provides examples of settings, enemies (and allies), and encounters that you can use as a framework for your own story—and even some advice on how to write your own content from scratch.
Organizer
As the GM, it may wind up being your job to organize your campaign by finding players, choosing when to play, holding on to character sheets and notes, and so on. You might also be delegating certain roles, like notetaking and bringing snacks and drinks, to your players. While it’s a little bit beyond the scope of the rules for a role-playing game, this handbook does provide a little bit of advice on how to work with players to create a game that’s fun for everyone.
This excerpt is just from the introduction: up next in this column, I’ll be moving on to the first chapter of the GMH, which gives an overview of what it takes to run an Aetrimonde session.
We’re almost done with Ipki Chainbreaker: today, we’ll pick out her equipment and fill in her character sheet, and then I’ll wrap things up with one last post showing off some options she might pick as she gained levels.
Equipment
Armor
Ipki is proficient with cloth, leather, and chain armor—no shields! And with just +1 <DEX> and <GRA>, her armor choices really boil down to a maille shirt, giving 15 AC and allowing 1 safe movement, or maille armor, giving 16 AC with 0 safe movement. She really doesn’t want to be tied up in melee, because all of her powers provoke opportune strikes, so I’m going with the maille shirt at 15gp.
Weapons and Implements
As a Divine character, Ipki can use holy symbols as implements for her magical powers. Like any implement, they can be wielded in one hand–but they can also be made in the form of an amulet worn in the neck slot and freeing up a hand. Ipki doesn’t need an amulet-style holy symbol: she doesn’t wield a shield, and so can have a holy symbol in the form of a scepter (a silver-and-copper rod in the shape of a torch, for Deum Radiant) such that she can wield it in one hand and a weapon in her other. Like most implements, the holy symbol costs 20gp.
Speaking of weapons, Ipki should have some kind of melee weapon for those unfortunate moments when she gets surrounded. For flavor, I would really love for her to have a flail made from her own broken manacles: unfortunately, she’s not proficient with military weapons, which flails are. So we’ll give her a mace, costing 2gp, and as an afterthought give her a broken, non-functioning set of goblin-size manacles that she repurposes as a belt.
Other Equipment
We’ll wrap up by giving Ipki a basic adventurer’s kit, like all of the other sample characters, bringing her expenses so far to 52gp. She has plenty of gold left over, so let’s also give her a disguise kit and forgery kit, which she needs for some advanced uses of the Deception skill, like changing her apparent height or forging official documents that use special paper. These will be useful for a sneaky Inquisitor…
That brings her totals to 72gp (with 28 left over) and 30.3 bulk.
Filling in the Numbers
With equipment selected, that lets us compute Ipki’s stats:
Health and Healing
Ipki is by far the squishiest of the sample characters. With 16 base hit points, +2 expertise and +0 <CON>, Ipki has a bare 20 hit points. She has a similar lack of resurgences, at just the inquisitor’s base 2, and regains 1d6 hit points from small heals and 1d6 + 1 from large ones. (This actually softens the blow of her low hit points a bit: Ipki recovers more hit points, relatively speaking, from small heals than tougher characters.)
Defenses
As mentioned, the maille shirt gives Ipki 15 AC (although note that the Undersized feature will make this effectively 16 against a lot of enemies). Her other defenses come to:
Brawn: 13 = 11 + 2 (<STR>)
Poise: 12 = 11 + 1 (<DEX>)
Wit: 13 = 11 + 1 (<CUN>) + 1 (Inquisitor)
Composure: 16 = 11 + 4 (<CHA>) + 1 (Inquisitor)
Note that Poise will also be increased, and Brawn decreased, by 1 against those same enemies.
Attacks and Damage
While Ipki doesn’t want to be tied up in melee, she’s surprisingly competent at it, with +2 <STR> and her mace giving her a not-entirely-terrible +3 vs. AC attack, dealing 1d8 + 2 damage.
But her Divine powers are still better: being Charisma-based, she gets a +4 attack bonus for all of them, vs. Brawn or Poise depending on the power. The damage of these powers varies a bit:
Burning Bolt: +4 vs. Poise, 1d8 + 4 fire damage and 1d4 + 2 repeated fire damage.
Holy Blast: +4 vs. Poise, 1d4 + 4 damage and 1d4 + 2 additional damage to Anathema.
Blinding Bolt: +4 vs. Poise, 1d8 + 4 radiant damage.
Peal of Thunder: +4 vs. Brawn, 2d8 + 4 thunder damage.
Note that Burning Bolt and Blinding Bolt will gain an additional +1 bonus to attack rolls from Undersized against many enemies.
Skills
Ipki’s maille shirt is going to slightly hamper many of her skills with its -1 encumbrance penalty. This brings her trained skills down to:
+6 Deception
+6 Intimidate
+1 Religion
+1 Society
+2 Stealth
+2 Subterfuge
Her other physical skills (Athletics, Acrobatics, Endurance) will be her relevant ability -1, and all the others will just be the relevant ability.
Movement
Ipki has 5 base speed and is wearing armor with no movement penalties, so her speed is 5, and she can move 1 square safely if she chooses to.
Carrying Capacity
As an Undersized character, Ipki can carry less stuff than most: her carrying capacity is 40 bulk + 5 times <STR>, which actually puts her capacity at 50 bulk. That’s plenty to carry her equipment, so no worries there.
Initiative
And finally, Ipki has +1 initiative by virtue of her +1 <CUN>.
Character Sheet
With that, here’s Ipki’s finished character sheet:
I’ll wrap up Ipki in a week or two by looking at various ways she might advance, and then…it’s on to a new project!
With 4 sample characters made, and with me starting to get into material from the GMH, I think it’s time for me to start working on the sample adventure that these characters will be attached to. And like these sample characters, I’m going to be using reader feedback to write the adventure! Keep your eyes peeled for the first poll in an upcoming post…
I’ll eventually be putting together two more sample characters, but I’d like to at least nail down the setting and themes of the sample adventure before I do. Depending on how things go, there might be some interesting ways to tie a sample character into the adventure…
I’m slowly working on a post that will go into more detail about the titular spirits that grant powers to Spiritual classes, but the title “Spirits of Aetrimonde” put an idea into my head that has been hard to get out. So today, I’m presenting the first in a series of posts examining Aetrimonde’s cultures through the lens of their alcohol!
Alcohol in the Core Rulebook
The CRB contains a very small section on alcohols, in which it is mentioned that alcoholic beverages are reliably safe to drink when the local water is of unknown quality (a consideration for adventurers). It also provides prices for beer, wine, and spirits of three different qualities:
But alcohol is closely entwined with culture, and it is an excellent facet of worldbuilding for GMs to explore: the nature of the local alcohol is an evocative, informative piece of information to give the players. So, to start with, here are a few of the beers that players might encounter in Aetrimonde:
Beers
Stormrunner Pale Ale: Waystone is a nation of merchants, whose profits depend on the speedy and reliable delivery of goods, largely by sea. In order to extend their water supplies and cut down on port stops, Waystone’s merchant fleet carries strong (and strong-flavored) beers that can be mixed with stagnant water to both sterilize it and cover its foul taste. Stormrunner Pale Ale, named after a class of ship designed to make long voyages across open ocean at speed ahead of a storm, is a strong, light-colored, heavily hopped beer brewed specifically to survive rough treatment in the hold of a ship.
Hardvergar Dinkelbjor: Dwarven beers have a reputation: high quality, high potency…and sometimes, awful hangovers, although that might have more to do with the traditional mode of consumption (quaffing). Hardvergar Dinkelbjor, literally translated as “High Dwarfish Dinkel Beer,” is brewed in remote, highly traditional dwarven settlements according to recipes unchanged since before the Collapse. The malt used in its brewing is made from the ancient grain dinkel (also called einkorn or spelt), giving it a strong flavor of rustic bread that makes it an acquired taste. (Author’s Note: All of the Germans in my playtesting group simultaneously groaned when I explained that the local dwarves brewed nothing but dinkelbier, which is exactly the reaction I had been aiming for.)
Auric Brown: A thick, hazy beverage favored in the Sanctean Primarchy and an extremely acquired taste everywhere else. It is fermented from bread soaked in water rather than malt, touted as a recreation of the beverage provided to the laborers building the pre-Collapse Auran Empire’s colossal temples and monuments. In truth, the recipe is more likely a modern invention, made up out of whole cloth as part of the effort to create a synthetic culture that would unify the diverse pilgrims flocking to the fledgling Primarchy. That the drink is also simple to make and highly nutritious (containing ample protein, vitamins, and trace minerals from the presence of spent yeast left in the brew) is certainly a happy coincidence: it is now a staple of Sanctean peasants, with virtually every pantry in the nation containing a bubbling jug of it.
Monastic Lambic: Lambics are an unusual kind of beer, brewed using wild yeast that gives each batch a subtly different character. This method of brewing has been supplanted by cultivated yeasts, and lambics are now brewed mainly as an artisanal product of certain monasteries that maintain the tradition. The most mainstream lambics, with a sour, fruity, and slightly “funky” notes come from the Cession. For more advanced drinkers, monasteries from the storm-swept Salvage Coast are known for the briny (and sometimes kelpy) notes of their brews, which are often compared to Gose beers. And for the truly adventurous, there are a handful of religious missions to the goblins of the southern Unclaimed Reaches that have combined wild-yeasted brewing techniques with the goblins’ traditional mushroom-based intoxicants, producing a lambic with heavy notes of funk, exotic flavor profile, and only occasional hallucinogenic properties.
Umpfen Hyperbier: The origins of the Hyperbier are shrouded in mystery, as the original batch was recovered from the cellars of a burned-out Eisenwaldean castle after the resident alchemist went just a hair too far even for Der Eisenwald. The pitchfork-wielding mob tapped the barrels in celebration, and immediately thereafter started combing the charred ruins of the castle laboratory in search of the recipe. Accounts of the Hyperbier uniformly agree that it was “the perfect beer,” although they are entirely contradictory on its style, flavor profile, and even color. Efforts to recreate the recipe from a few charred scraps of notes (some of which likely pertain not at all to the Hyperbier) have inspired generations of brewers and alchemists to try such processes as infusing the yeast with the essence of fire elementals and feeding the wort through the heart of a four-dimensional tesseract. The results have been mixed–and in some cases, explosively lethal–but the pursuit of the Hyperbier has grown into a uniquely Eisenwaldean obsession, culminating in an annual festival in the town of Umpf where those brews deemed safe for consumption are judged on their similarity to the mythical Hyperbier.
I’ll keep updating this mini-column as fun and interesting ideas occur to me. I’ll probably be doing wines next, including wine-like things like mead.
Today, continuing with Ipki Chainbreaker, goblin Inquisitor, we’re going to go over Ipki’s choices of skills, perk, and feat.
Skills
Ipki gets Religion as a trained skill from her class (natural for a Divine class) and the following preferred skills to choose from:
From the Inquisitor class: Deception, Insight, Perception, Religion, Society, Subterfuge.
From the Unclaimed Reaches culture: Endurance, Nature.
From the Unionist stratum: Intimidate, Persuasion.
As a side note, I think this might be the first sample character with no overlaps in their preferred skills.
To represent her concept as a hardline abolitionist, I want Ipki to have the Intimidate and Society skills as two of her choices from the preferred list: she knows how to put fear of Deum Radiant into the hearts of slavers, whether in person or through a campaign of social pressure.
However, as an Inquisitor, Ipki also needs to be able to work from the shadows: unlike a Paladin or Crusader, she can’t just march into a slave camp and start smiting. In order to infiltrate, sabotage, and undermine a batch of slavers, I’m also going to give her Deception and Subterfuge, from the preferred list, and Stealth as her one unrestricted choice.
Ipki’s trained skills will be:
Deception (CHA): +6
Intimidate (CHA): +6
Religion (INT): +1
Society (INT): +1
Stealth (GRA): +3
Subterfuge (DEX): +3
That +1 Religion is going to be interesting: it means that Ipki won’t necessarily know a lot about her own faith (although I would definitely give favor to many Religion checks related to Deum Radiant). Ipki will be strong in her faith, but not well-tutored: she knows in her heart what Deum Radiant asks of her, but perhaps can’t put it into words, and certainly won’t be winning any formal theological debates.
Perk
As a firebrand slave liberator, I think the natural perk for Ipki is Fame. Specifically, Ipki will be famed among Goblin Abolitionists. (Referring, to be clear, to abolitionists working to end goblin slavery, not abolitionists who are themselves goblins.)
Feat
As per usual, feats available to Ipki fall into familiar categories that improve ancestry or class features, or specific kinds of power. As an Inquisitor, Ipki has access to Doctrine feats that are available to Divine classes.
Devout Prayers is a fairly standard feat: it allows Ipki to add her expertise bonus to certain kinds of power. Ipki really wants to hit with her powers, so that she can apply their recoverable effects, so adding expertise to attack rolls is more valuable than doing so for damage rolls. She would want to pick the Wrath keyword, which encompasses all of the powers she has chosen so far.
Improved Goblin Discretion would allow Ipki to use Goblin Discretion defensively, when she is missed by an attack rather than when she misses. This is useful as a way for her to get out of the way of a sudden, unexpected attack, or set up to flank an attacker.
Ipki also has access to a few ancestry feats shared between Undersized ancestries (goblin and halfling in the Core Rulebook, although I have some others that didn’t make the cut…) and representing the benefits of their small size: Beneath Notice allows her to remain unseen at the start of a fight, which is useful for a character who wants to avoid drawing attention.
Surprise and Fear allows Ipki to apply recoverable effects during a surprise round and not worry that they will wear off before combat properly starts. This would be more useful if Ipki had some powers that applied recoverable effects to several enemies; perhaps it will be a good choice at a later level. (Author’s Note: Surprise and Fear is one of three feats whose names form a reference to a certain comedy sketch…)
Brilliant Denunciation is a Denunciation feat, a group of Inquisitor-specific feats that cause recoverable effects to multiply on Denounced targets. This one applies an additional dazzled condition, which would be redundant for Blinding Bolt (since it already blinds), but would add utility to Burning Bolt and Peal of Thunder.
As the final feat I’m going to preview here, Radiant Exemplar is an Exemplar feat, available to any Divine class but requiring that a character worship a specific deity. The CRB contains a couple of Exemplar feats for each of the faiths in the book; unsurprisingly, Deum Radiant’s Exemplar feats revolve around light. Radiant Exemplar gives Ipki access to a long-lasting, hands-free, no-concentration light source, which is a comparatively rare thing. And, the light can be improved with additional effects by a successive feat…
Of these options, I think that the most appropriate to Ipki’s character concept is Surprise and Fear, so I’ll be going with that. But several of these feats are useful enough that I’d probably be picking them up as Ipki gained levels.
Up Next
The next post on Ipki will tie her together: we’ll pick out some equipment, and then fill out some values on her character sheet. Stay tuned!
If this post is taking a while to load, or you have a large chunk of whitespace in it, not to worry! It’s because today’s post features a map of Aetrimonde, in what may be overly high resolution.
It’s going to be a short post today, although I’ll mention a few pieces of worldbuilding that I’ve worked into the map:
Perhaps most noticeable is the in-world title of the map, marking it as the product of the cartographers Everson, Courtland, and Wye, of the City of Waystone, in the Kingdom of Waystone. This is not some amateurish map, no: it’s the work of professional cartographers successful enough to have established premises, and who offer a guarantee of accuracy (the “Bonded” in “Bonded Cartographers.”)
Also of note is the compass rose in the bottom-left corner, and the two latitude-longitude lines extending from it: these are the equator and the Waystone Meridian, marking 0 degrees of latitude and longitude, respectively. If it’s becoming apparent that the City of Waystone is important to cartography, good! Waystone is Aetrimonde’s largest mercantile and naval power, and Aetrimonde’s map-makers adopted the Waystone Meridian as their longitudinal datum because the most accurate charts were commissioned by Waystone’s Admiralty.
Finally, I’ll point out the evocative names of the major bodies of water on this map: The Storm-Wracked and Restless Seas, the Gulf of Lost Hopes, and Stormbreak Bay. Aetrimonde’s oceans are rough and risky to sail, and they got names reflecting that. Aetrimonde’s jet streams travel the same direction as Earth’s (west-to-east), and most storms travel the same direction. The west coast of the continent is battered by storms, with Stormbreak Bay being a rare safe body of water, shielded by the island to its west. The Restless Sea is likewise shielded by the bulk of the continent, but still occasionally gets hit by bad storms out of the east…and the Gulf of Lost Hopes is named for the many voyages that successfully navigated the southern cape, let down their guard, and were struck by a freak storm that crossed overland.
Now, is this the extent of the world of Aetrimonde? Definitely not: there’s the entire southern hemisphere and the opposite side of the northern still uncharted. It’s tricky to sail out that far from shore…but Aetrimonde’s naval technology continues to improve, and if a GM wants to invent another continent and run a campaign centered on an expedition into the unknown, more power to them!
Today, I’m going to be picking up after my brief hiatus by covering some of the goblins appearing in the Bestiary, specifically goblins that might appear in the Unclaimed Reaches.
Goblins are a staple of RPGs, where they usually appear as weak low-level enemies that the PCs can mow down in droves. While there are a few goblins fitting this role in the Bestiary, I’m attempting to be a bit more nuanced with them. I confess to being a little uncomfortable with the use of always-evil intelligent creatures in RPGs (which I suppose puts me in good company; Tolkien’s struggle to reconcile the evil nature of orcs with his belief in free will has its own Wikipedia page). So, have a look at some of the more interesting and developed goblins that the Bestiary presents…for PCs to mow down in droves, if that’s what your campaign needs.
Goblin Raider
The tribal goblins of the Unclaimed Reaches aren’t all hostile: some of them have an uneasy coexistence with the settlers moving in from the north. But surviving in the Reaches is hard enough that when push comes to shove, most tribal goblins will resort to raiding soft targets for supplies. Goblin Raiders are the “professional” warrior class among tribal goblins, and they are no mindless rabble or ravening horde: they’re cautious, clever, even tactical…although their favored tactics revolve around running away to fight another day.
The Goblin Raider is a Skirmisher: mobile, evasive, but not particularly sturdy or hard-hitting. In fact, this is almost an archetypal Skirmisher: the Raider has both melee and ranged attacks, of roughly equal effectiveness, and it has multiple options to let it get out of an inconvenient position.
Nimble Strike allows the Raider to get an extra square of safe movement in, to either push through enemy lines and attack a high-priority PC, or to attack, disengage, and then retreat all in one turn.
Goblin Discretion (as seen with Ipki Chainbreaker) allows a second square of safe movement after making an attack and missing: combined with Nimble Strike, this lets the Raider step safely in, attack, and if the attack doesn’t work out, make a hasty retreat.
Goblin Unsoothsayer
Being the smallest intelligent people in Aetrimonde, goblins are forced to rely more on trickery than brute force. Even their magicians, who certainly aren’t held back by their small stature, tend to use illusion and subterfuge more than directly offensive magics. The Goblin Unsoothsayer has two tricks in its repertoire, both of them based on Spiritual powers available to PCs. (And the Unsoothsayer itself is, lorewise, similar to the Shaman class for PCs.)
Misstep forces a PC not just to use up its reaction (which can mess with some PCs’ clever tricks), but to move in a chosen direction. This isn’t ordinary forced movement, which is generally safe for the creature being forced to move: it requires the target to use an action and actually move…which provokes opportune strikes. Using it on a PC already surrounded by a bunch of the Unsoothsayer’s allies can be really nasty…
And it only gets worse when coupled with Misplacement, which swaps an enemy with an ally, and makes it easy to get a PC abruptly surrounded by goblins. As a bonus, it can also abruptly put a goblin in the middle of the PCs…
With these two tricks combined, the Unsoothsayer can cause some serious havoc, and it makes for an excellent way to upset a group of PCs who have well-planned tactics revolving around positioning, forcing them to think on their feet.
Goblin Alchemist
The Goblin Alchemist is a Shooter, an enemy focused on ranged combat, with a variety of attacks and a nasty trick up its sleeve for the PCs to interact with. I’ve presented a few monsterswith telegraphed attacks; this is another variation on the same concept, in which a creature gradually powers up an attack until it becomes a pressing threat to deal with.
Unlike virtually all creatures in the Bestiary, the Alchemist lacks at-will actions or attacks, other than its pathetically weak Dagger attack. Instead, it carries an ample supply of alchemical volatiles, which function exactly like they would for the PCs. The nine flasks that the Alchemist carries are enough to see the Alchemist through any but the most drawn-out encounters even throwing one every round. (And if the PCs manage to defeat the Alchemist before it gets through all of its volatiles, that’s some extra loot they can claim…).
The focus on volatiles makes the Alchemist a very flexible enemy; the volatiles presented in its statblock provide plenty of repeated damage coupled with control effects, but they can be swapped out for others to tailor an enemy for a specific encounter: it would be trivial to give a Goblin Alchemist access to Alchemical Shine, for making the PCs into brightly-glowing targets in a pitch-black cave, or Fragmentation Grenades for raw damage.
However, the Alchemist’s real gimmick is its Volatile Improvisation action, allowing it to strap several volatiles together into a single large bomb. There is no limit on how big a bomb this can create: left to its own devices for many rounds, an Alchemist could conceivably strap together all nine of its volatiles, creating a monster of an explosion dealing 3d6 + 3d4 + 3 immediate damage, plus quite a bit of repeated damage, in a blast 5 (an area 11 squares across…). Bringing a Goblin Alchemist down quickly is therefore a high priority for the PCs.
Fortunately, Volatile Improvisation has a built-in way to do that: if the Alchemist takes as little as 6 damage (1/4 of its maximum hit points, enough to break its concentration), it drops and detonates its own bomb. This could be quite the deterrent for a PC attacking it in melee, but a well-placed shot from range could do it safely, and the damage from the explosion can further soften the Alchemist up.
In my next Bestiary post, I’m planning to show off a few of the monsters created by goblin alchemy: some of them are still used as beasts of war, while others have escaped into the wild and bred true.
Today, as I return from an impromptu hiatus, we’ll be looking at a handful of powers for Ipki, our goblin Inquisitor of Deum Radiant. My poll results say that you would like to give her Wrath powers, which…actually fits quite well with Deum Radiant, so thanks for making this easy!
Power Objectives
The Inquisitor class makes Ipki really good at locking down Anathema (abhorrent creatures like demons and undead) using recoverable conditions, and allows her to also declare a single enemy temporarily Anathema. To play to these strengths, we should give her a combination of powers causing recoverable conditions and affecting Anathema.
Recoverable powers mostly break down into three broad categories:
Making an enemy less dangerous.
Making an enemy easier to harm.
Causing repeated damage.
Ipki has enough power choices that she can cover all of these bases, and have a power that just deals bonus damage to Anathema.
Powers
Divine Wrath powers have a lot of similarities to Arcane powers: they involve calling down the wrath of the gods, in the form of destructive energies. Wrath powers invoke searing fire, deafening thunder, blinding light, and bolts of retributive lightning. Most Wrath powers are long-ranged, which suits Inquisitors like Ipki just fine: they’re fragile enough that they don’t want to be anywhere near close combat.
Burning Bolt is likely to be Ipki’s mainstay attack: it’s usable as a normal attack, deals solid base damage, and is one of a very few lesser powers that cause a recoverable effect. It makes for an excellent opener against an Anathema, or a creature Ipki has denounced, since her Conviction feature makes it incredibly hard for these creatures to shake off the repeated damage. Ipki can then follow up with other powers while the Anathema burns, reapplying Burning Bolt as necessary.
Holy Blast gives Ipki an area attack, and while it doesn’t do a whole lot of base damage, it does deal additional damage to Anathema: it can be used to make a solid attack against a single Anathema or an enemy Ipki has Denounced while also dealing some scratch damage to other enemies around it; or, if Ipki and her party have run up against a whole bunch of Anathema, it can be a effective crowd-clearer.
Blinding Bolt is a nasty control power by itself, because it inflicts one of the nastiest of Aetrimonde’s standard conditions. (Blinded: a creature that is blinded is flatfooted, cannot see, cannot take opportune actions or reactions, and becomes helpless if it is also deafened. All creatures have total concealment from a blinded creature.) It also synergizes incredibly well with Conviction: blinding an enemy drastically handicaps it, and if it is Anathema or Denounced, Ipki can expect to keep it blinded for several turns with a single greater power use.
Peal of Thunder is a powerful area attack with the added benefit of staggering creatures in the center of the blast: like Blinding Bolt, this synergizes with Inquisitor class features, although staggering an enemy (Staggered: a creature that is staggered is flatfooted and cannot take actions when it is not its turn) is not nearly as potent an effect as blinding them. This is useful to help allies attack a single high-value target, while also helping to clear out the chaff from around them.
Abilities
As can be seen from these powers, Ipki will want high Charisma, followed by high Wisdom. She may also want some Strength: Divine melee powers (which I haven’t gotten into here) make use of Strength and Wisdom, so if Ipki wants to later pick up an option to be able to handle a little bit of melee, that Strength will come in handy.
Ipki has Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma as favored abilities from her heritage. It is a no-brainer to pay 6 points for +3 Charisma, and boost it to +4; she will also pay 3 points each to get +2 Wisdom and Strength.
As an aside, high Charisma is actually a bit less necessary for Ipki than it would be for the other sample characters seen so far: as a goblin, Ipki is Undersized, and because of that small size she gains an effective +1 bonus to attack rolls vs. AC and Poise against a lot of creatures. (She gains a +1 bonus against regular Medium-sized creatures, and doesn’t suffer a -1 penalty against Small creatures as most PCs would.) This wouldn’t entirely make up for having only +3 Charisma, but if we were short on ability points (like if Ipki didn’t have Charisma as a favored ability) I might have gone for it.
For her remaining scores, we have some options: I envision Ipki as more sneaky than she is brawny, so I’m going to lean into that and boost her Dexterity rather than her Constitution. I’d also like her to have decent Grace and Cunning, but with only 1 ability point of 13 remaining, that will mean having negative Constitution or Intelligence. Inquisitors are fragile enough I don’t feel great about negative Constitution, so I’m going to drop Intelligence, and have Ipki be clever but not smart: if I were playing her, I’d have her come up with good ideas in the moment, but have issues planning ahead.
Ipki’s finished abilities will be:
+2 STR
+1 DEX
+1 CUN
+2 WIS
+0 CON
+1 GRA
-1 INT
+4 CHA
Up next, we’ll be picking out Ipki’s skills, perk, and feat. Stay tuned!
Aetrimonde 