Aetrimonde

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.

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Economist by profession. Game theorist, enjoyer, and designer by vocation.

  • Gwynne of House Midwinter IV: Powers, Feat, and Equipment

    In today’s post, I’m going to be picking out the powers, feat, and equipment for my elf artificer sample character, Gwynne of House Midwinter. I’m also going to be taking this opportunity to introduce three new power keywords that define some unique kinds of power: Armament, Ward, and Summon. While not unique to Arcane powers or artificers, I think these powers work incredibly well with the concept I have for Gwynne, and I’m also going to be putting some extra thought into how these powers interact with her Gadgets class feature.

    Powers

    I’m envisioning Gwynne as largely a support character who aids her fellow PCs but doesn’t directly do a lot of fighting. So, the list of things I want her powers to be able to do will revolve around how her powers help an ally:

    • Help an ally hit harder.
    • Help an ally avoid and survive attacks.
    • Distract or keep enemies away from an ally.
    • Attack an enemy.

    As an artificer, Gwynne’s Healing Ward already covers “heal an ally,” so at least initially, I won’t be looking for ways to double up on that. And “attack an enemy” is as much for Gwynne herself to have an attack option as it is for her to be able to put it in a Gadget and hand it off to an ally.

    The next consideration, after deciding what Gwynne’s powers should be able to do, is how they should do them. Arcane powers are divided into roughly ten Schools, each one focused on a specific keyword like Fire, Force, Illusion, Teleport, etc. Most of these Schools contain powers filling each of the four niches above, but differ in the specifics. (Fire powers set things on fire, Force powers throw enemies around, etc.)

    As mentioned in the skeleton I’ve already come up with for Gwynne’s backstory, the elves of House Midwinter organize solstice celebrations involving grand spectacles and cunningly-made toys and knickknacks. As an artificer, Gwynne already has “knickknacks” covered through the Gadgets feature; to cover “grand spectacles,” I’m going to lean into Illusion magic

    So let’s see what we can do with these goals in mind:

    “Help an ally hit harder” is exactly what Armament powers are for. These power target not an ally or an enemy, but an object: specifically, a weapon, shield, or implement. Equipment under the effect of an Armament power becomes mildly magical, enough to overcome some damage resistance as described in my post on magical items. But all Armament powers have further effects, causing the affected weapon to deal additional damage and have additional effects with its attacks.

    Phantasmagoric Armament leans toward effects over damage: it allows an ally to make a single attack that causes creatures hit to flee, possibly provoking opportune strikes if used judiciously. If this attack is used against a single foe, they must flee further, and take additional damage from the attack. (About half of all greater Arcane Armament powers have an effect like this, that is more powerful if used on a single enemy.) And the attack also deals partly-psychic damage, which is useful for overcoming armor resistance.

    Putting an Armament power into a Gadget lets an ally apply it to their equipment as a minor action and then immediately use it in an attack in the same turn. Thus, Gwynne can give an ally Phantasmagoric Armament in a Gadget, and then they can quickly seize on any opportunity to use it–such as using it to attack an enemy surrounded by the PCs so that it then provokes several opportune strikes when fleeing. As Gadgets, Gwynne’s Armament powers will take the form of a sprig of mistletoe that can be wrapped around the grip of a weapon, shield, or implement.

    Ward powers are the defensive counterpart to Armament powers, providing an ally with defensive benefits. A creature under a Ward power counts as wearing mildly magical armor, and is thus protected from some creatures’ attacks. In addition to providing bonuses to defenses, many Ward powers have retaliatory effects on attackers when the Ward is broken by an attack that gets through it and hits.

    Refracting Ward, as an Illusion Ward power, is a little bit unusual, in that it provides concealment (+2 to AC and Poise vs. melee and ranged attacks) rather than a direct bonus to defenses. This makes it a bit more specialized, in that it doesn’t help against area attacks, but also means that it can be used to help an ally sneak around using Stealth. And, when the ally gets hit, and the Ward breaks, it erupts in a flurry of flashing lights, causing nearby creatures to be dazzled, while the target gains improved concealment (+5 instead of +2) covering their escape.

    Ward powers are probably among the less useful to place into a Gadget, since in most cases it would work just as well to use them immediately on an ally. However, there are niche cases where it might make sense, and in the case of Refracting Ward, it could be given to a sneaky ally before they go off scouting, in case they find somewhere that they need to sneak across an open, well-lit area with nowhere to hide, or rush through a group of enemies and hide on the other side. As Gadgets, Gwynne’s Ward powers will take the form of a sprig of holly, to be affixed to an ally’s armor.

    While there are Illusion powers that would “distract or keep enemies away from an ally,” I can’t resist filling this niche with a Summon power instead, in order to further build out Gwynne’s theme and Gadgets. Summon powers have some complex rules, but the gist of them is that they summon or create allies for the caster.

    Rules for the Summon Keyword

    Unless otherwise noted, creatures summoned by powers with the Summon keyword work as follows:

    • A summoned creature is a Medium magical construct. When summoned by a power, it appears in an unoccupied space of your choice within the range of the power that summoned it. A Summon power can summon only a single creature at a time; if re-used, any creatures previously summoned by the same power are destroyed.
    • You and your allies are your summoned creatures’ allies, and your enemies are their enemies. Summoned creatures threaten adjacent squares and can flank.
    • Summoned creatures can be attacked. A summoned creature has 16 AC, and 14 Brawn, Poise, Wit and Composure.
    • Summoned creatures are destroyed when reduced to 0 or fewer hit points. A summoned creature has 16 maximum hit points, and has all of them when summoned. Their healing die is 1d6. They have no resurgences to use, but can regain hit points in other ways.
    • Your summoned creatures do not have their own turns or actions. Instead, you command them to take actions using your own actions. As a minor action, you may command your summoned creature to do most of the things any other creature could, such as interact with an object.
    • Summon powers may also describe additional actions that a summoned creature can take, in which case the power will also note what action is required to command it. Summoned creatures’ attacks are usually based on your abilities.
    • Summoned creatures have a movement speed of 6 squares. They gain movement at the start of your turn and can use it as you direct during your turn.
    • Summoned creatures must remain within the range of the power that summoned them. If you move out of range of a summoned creature, or if you move a summoned creature out of range, it immediately expires. If you are killed, the summoned creature immediately expires.

    Summon Defender Construct, as a lesser Summon power, summons a relatively weak creature that is destroyed by any amount of damage from an attack (much like a mook). And while it can’t attack, it can be commanded to rush at creatures attacking its summoner to interfere with their attacks.

    I actually didn’t realize how great a power this was to put into a Gadget until I was looking through the options for a Summon power to give Gwynne: in a Gadget, it can be used as a minor action, and can be used repeatedly since it’s a lesser power. So Gwynne can hand this out as a Gadget to an ally likely to draw attacks, and they can keep summoning replacement constructs as long as they have minor actions to spare. And, perhaps even more usefully, the constructs can flank, providing a melee-focused ally with their own source of flankers to aid them.

    Gwynne’s Summon Defender Construct, as a Gadget, takes the form of a handcarved wooden toy soldier, which when given an order creates a full-sized duplicate of itself. She keeps a wide selection of the figurines, ready to be turned into Gadgets, and carves new ones whenever she meets someone with a suitably interesting appearance. She also hands them out to children, naturally, although she reserves the Gadget-ized versions for dealing with bullying problems.

    Finally, I do feel the need to give Gwynne an actual offensive power. There are options among the Illusion powers, but they either deal no damage or psychic damage (which is great for dealing with armor resistance, but plain doesn’t work on inanimate objects and mindless creatures like zombies). So I’m going to pick something that’s an actual damaging power, and since Gwynne’s sworn enemies are the Winter Court, who work with ice a lot…I’m going with good old reliable fire.

    Fire Bolt is the most basic of Arcane Fire powers: it deals fire damage to a single target, sets it on fire, and as a bonus, can be used as a normal ranged attack. It could make a useful Gadget for a character unlikely to be in the thick of melee, allowing them to get a second ranged attack as a minor action. As a Gadget, Gwynne’s Fire Bolt takes the form of a red-and-white candy cane…flavored with cinnamon and hot chilies.

    Feat

    Gwynne has access to the usual combination of general-purpose, ancestry-based, and class-based feats, which includes a slate of Arcane School feats that would allow her to specialize in certain kinds of Arcane powers. Here are some examples that Gwynne would find useful at level 0:

    As an elf, Gwynne has access to the Swiftfooted feat, building off her Lightfooted feature to further improve her mobility. This could be useful if we put Gwynne in heavier armor.

    Improved Armaments would allow Phantasmagoric Armament to also provide a +1 power bonus to the attack made using it, which would be great for reducing the likelihood that the attack just misses and wastes the power.

    Ergonomic Gadgets would allow Gwynne’s allies to make use of her Summon Defender Construct and Fire Bolt gadgets without provoking opportune strikes, making Fire Bolt useful to melee characters and Summon Defender Construct useable when the character carrying the Gadget is already beset by enemies.

    Warding Gadget creates a synergy between the artificer’s Healing Ward and Gadgets features, giving the artificer a link to creatures carrying their Gadgets so that they can receive a Healing Ward even when separated from the artificer. This would be useful when an ally has scouted ahead and become separated, or if the party has had to spread out to cover attacks from multiple directions.

    Protective Constructs is an Arcane School feat that would further improve Summon Defender Constructs so that the summoned creatures can outright take attacks aimed at Gwynne. And, because of the wording of Gadgets allowing Gadget-ized powers to still benefit from the artificer’s feats, I would allow Gwynne’s allies to gain the same benefit from creatures they summoned using a Summon Defender Constructs Gadget.

    Of these, I think that Ergonomic Gadgets is likely the most immediately useful, so I’ll go with that at level 0.

    Equipment

    As far as equipment goes, Gwynne will need:

    • Armor
    • A magical implement (a focus, for Arcane powers).
    • A melee weapon (as backup, and perhaps to use her Armament power on if appropriate).
    • A basic adventuring kit.

    As far as armor goes, Gwynne is proficient with up to chain armor, which contains the following options:

    ArmorACAREncumbranceSave MoveSpeedValueBulk
    Maille Shirt (Medium)31-115gp6
    Maille Armor (Medium)41-1-120gp10
    Maille Hauberk (Heavy)51-1-1-125gp15

    Because she has +1 <DEX> and <GRA>, one of the medium armors is going to be her best option. (The Maille Hauberk would provide the same AC as Maille Armor, but with an additional speed penalty.) So it’s really a choice between the Maille Shirt, which would give her 15 AC and 1 safe movement, and the Maille Armor, with 16 AC but 0 safe movement. Since Gwynne has Refracting Ward which can boost her AC against most attacks, I’m going to opt for the lower AC and give her a Maille Shirt.

    I’m envisioning Gwynne as a precise spellcaster good with the intricate, finicky bits of spells just like she is with the fine details in her woodcarvings. So, I’m going to give her a focus in the form of a wand (which can be wielded at the same time as a one-handed melee weapon). This will run another 20gp.

    And speaking of weapons…as an artificer, Gwynne is proficient with military weapons. The Caras Elvaren culture suggests bows and heavy blades as weapons, so I’ll give her a longsword, at 10gp. And because she has Armament powers, and it might be a convenient way of delivering them…I’ll also give her a longbow at another 15gp, plus a pack of 20 arrows at 1gp for the lot.

    Finally, the basic adventurer’s kit will run another 15gp, bringing her purchases to a total of 76gp. I’ll add on a set of Thieves’ Tools for another 10gp, since Gwynne is trained in Subterfuge and can use them to disarm traps…and also, a set of Tinker’s Tools, useful for working with machinery. (And we’ll say that her particular set of Tinker’s Tools includes her woodcarving set…) And that leaves her with just 4gp to her name at the start of the game.

    I should note here that Gwynne only has -1 <STR>, and this is going to impact how much of this gear she can carry. Carrying capacity is 50 bulk plus 10 per <STR>…so hers will be just 40 bulk. Her armor, focus, weapons, and basic adventurer’s kit will come to 28.8 bulk, the two toolkits will bring that up to 32.8…so Gwynne had better be careful how many toy soldiers she packs, or else she’ll be asking an ally to carry her things for her.

    Up Next

    Next week, we’ll be putting together all of these decisions and calculating all of Gwynne’s relevant numbers. And then, just in time for the holidays, I’ll wrap this series up in a bow with a post on how Gwynne might advance up to level 5…which, now that I’ve discussed some of how magical items work, will include a few magic items that she might find or make.

    Stay tuned!

  • Subsystems: Magical Items

    In a recent post on the creation of Gwynne, elf artificer, I revealed the artificer class’s Tinkering feature, which allows them to temporarily modify an enchantment on a magical item. But at the time, I didn’t go into details about what an enchantment was.

    Well, today I’m going to be revealing the basics of Aetrimonde’s magical item system, which includes defining these enchantments!

    Subsystem Design Goals

    I’m treating magical items, or rather, the creation of magical items, as a subsystem: players do not have to interact with magical items beyond finding them as treasure when the GM places them as such, and then using them. Even an artificer, who has a class feature involving magical items, does not need to interact with magical items all that much more deeply than the average player. But if a player wants to create magical items (as would be very, very thematic for an artificer), I want Aetrimonde to have rules support for that!

    When setting out to design this subsystem, I had some thoughts on how magic items should fit into the Aetrimonde setting:

    • Relatively simple magical items should be relatively common and easy to create. Aetrimonde is undergoing its version of the Industrial Revolution, and industry, in Aetrimonde, covers magic. Narratively, there should be a thriving magical-engineering industry pumping out these simple magical items using regular, widely-known processes. This means that these should be relatively easy to acquire, even if they are expensive.
    • Conversely, more powerful magical items should be rarer: these are the works of master craftsmen and singular geniuses at the pinnacle of their craft, and not producible by replicable processes that can be industrialized. These artifacts are the sort of magical item that would be the object of a quest, or a plot device.

    It’s much easier to devise rules for the former type of magical item, created according to standardized procedures, and so this is the kind that Aetrimonde’s magical item subsystem will cover. One-of-a-kind artifacts will remain the province of the GM to create (although if a player wants the creation of such an item to be a part of their character’s arc, I strongly encourage the GM to work with them on it).

    I have some further thoughts about the kind of magic that should be present in these standardized magical items:

    • One kind of enchantment these kind of items can carry should simply enhance their innate nature, making weapons sharper, armor more resilient, and implements better channels for magic. These enchantments can be reflected by providing an item bonus to something that the item is already used for (damage rolls for weapons, AC for armor, attack rolls for specific kinds of magic for implements, etc.).
    • A second kind of enchantment should make an item do something that it wouldn’t normally, but that is thematically appropriate for the kind of item. These enchantments can create things like thrown weapons that return to the wielder, cloaks that let the wielder glide, or boots that cling to walls.
    • A third kind of enchantment should allow ordinary Arcane, Divine, and Spiritual magic (the kind represented in powers and feats for the respective classes) to be set into a physical object. These enchantments can provide their owners with powers and even feats that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

    And finally, I have some mechanical goals for this subsystem:

    • It should be possible to find not just complete magical items as treasure, but also components for them that a character who has opted to interact with item creation (or a friendly NPC) can use to make items to order. This lets a GM put part of a magical item into a treasure at low levels instead of an entire (valuable and expensive) item. It also lets a GM nudge their PCs in a particular direction by, say, providing components that are specifically for a fire-based magical item.
    • Any bonuses provided by items should be noticeable, but not game-changing. As a rule of thumb, item bonuses should be equivalent to the effect of having +2 expertise. In other words, item bonuses should grant +1 to attacks/defenses/armor resistance, +2 to damage, +4 to hit points, etc. It shouldn’t be possible to stack these, and they definitely shouldn’t scale with level.
    • The most powerful magical items should be an inefficient use of resources, encouraging players to have more, but less powerful, items. (And, also, making powerful magical items a noteworthy piece of loot…) Coupled with item bonuses being only an incremental bonus, this will nudge players away from being overly reliant on single powerful items that cannot be taken from them without making their character impossible to play.

    So let’s take a look at the implementation:

    Defining Magical Items

    Before setting rules for how magical items can be made, let’s define what magical items do and how PCs can interact with them. The full rules for magical items take up a couple of pages, so I’ll be summarizing here:

    Basic Benefits of Magical Items

    Magical weapons, shields, and implements can bypass the invulnerable resistance (a resistance applying to all types of damage from all sources, which is more comprehensive than armor resistance) of some powerful, supernatural creatures like demons and faeries. This is noted in the creatures’ stat blocks; it is not a universal property of invulnerable resistance.

    Likewise, magical armor and shields provide additional protections against the attacks of some creatures, like ghosts and wraiths, that can just reach through non-magical armor and shields.

    Identifying Magical Items

    The basic benefits of magical items work even if a character isn’t aware that it’s magical, but their more advanced and intention-driven benefits don’t. The Arcana skill is necessary to detect that a magical item is magical and work out what it can do in order to use it. It takes two Arcana checks to fully understand a magical item: more powerful ones are easier to detect as magical, but harder to figure out the functions of.

    Properties and Powers

    Magical items can provide properties and powers.

    Item properties are near-passive benefits, like feats and the features of classes and ancestries: they do have to be purposefully turned on, but can be left running indefinitely…or as long as the item is properly worn or wielded.

    Item powers work essentially like a character’s own lesser and greater (and feature) powers, with the exception that they do not, generally, benefit from the user’s feats and bonuses. In fact, many item powers that replicate Martial, Arcane, Divine, or Spiritual powers override the user’s own abilities with their own, generally mediocre, values. This is for two purposes; the first is to ensure that a character’s own powers are generally better than those granted by an item; the second is to ensure that a character can use such powers that would normally require abilities that they don’t have (as in the case of a Divine character with an item granting an Arcane power, for example).

    Creating Magical Items

    With those general concepts out in the open, let’s look at how a standard magical item is created:

    A magical item is created by combining:

    • A base item, which must be a well-made but mundane example of an appropriate physical item like a weapon or a pair of boots.
    • A power source, which provides the inexhaustible supply of power needed to create a permanent magical item.
    • One or more enchantments, which channel the power source’s magic into particular effects.

    Power Sources

    A power source serves two functions in a magical item: it determines how many enchantments the item can support, and it also determines, in many cases, the potency of the item’s powers. More powerful sources can support more enchantments and provides bonuses to the attack and damage rolls of the item’s properties and powers. (Which is not the same thing as bonuses to ordinary attack and damage rolls using the item, as in the case of a normal attack using a magical weapon.)

    Power sources can be Arcane, Divine, or Spiritual, depending on which character class the creator has. (If the creator is none of those types of class, they choose one.)

    Enchantments

    This is the real meat of a magical item, determining what it can do that a nonmagical item could not. Enchantments can be Arcane, Divine, or Spiritual, and can only be applied to a magical item with the same type of power source.

    Enchantments are what determine the properties and powers of a standard magical item, and there is a wide variety in the core rulebook, of which I’ll reveal several today. Let’s start with some simple ones, that might be applied to a magical weapon:

    The Accurate and Powerful enchantments are straightforward and universal (can be applied to an item with any kind of power source), and both contribute to the most basic concept of a “magical weapon.” Accurate would make a sword more likely to strike true; Powerful would make it bite deeper when it does.

    And with these two enchantments, I can give a first example of how an artificer’s Tinkering feature can be used: if the artificer or their ally has an Accurate magical sword, but doesn’t feel the need for an item bonus to attack rolls, the Artificer can temporarily alter the Accurate enchantment into a Powerful enchantment, giving the weapon greater damage instead of greater accuracy.

    …or, the artificer could perhaps get creative, and instead transform the Accurate enchantment into a Magebrand enchantment.

    Magebrand can only be applied to melee weapons with Arcane power sources, but can be incredibly versatile. It requires that the creator make a decision when applying the enchantment (including through Tinkering), choosing an Arcane power that they themselves know and storing it in the enchantment. The weapon’s wielder can then use this power, albeit at what is likely lesser potency than the item’s creator could have. The choice would be permanent when applied as a normal enchantment, but an artificer using Tinkering can choose a different power each time they use the feature to change an enchantment to Magebrand.

    In many cases, Magebrand may be a better choice for Tinkering than Powerful: while it doesn’t inherently grant a bonus to damage, the wide range of damage types available with Arcane powers means that this can give an ally a power that exploits an enemy’s vulnerability, such as a Fire power when facing flammable mummies. It can also be used to “double-up” on a useful power that the Artificer has and wants to share with the rest of the party, much like the artificer’s Gadgets feature. Magebrand also makes ranged powers into melee powers, making them more useful for allies likely to be in the thick of battle.

    Of course, it’s not just weapons that can benefit from enchantments: magical implements can benefit too.

    The Totem of Potent Bonds enchantment makes a totem more effective when using Spiritual powers that have either of a pair of keywords. (Item bonuses affecting Spiritual powers commonly affect a pair of keywords, because there are a lot of these keywords, and it’s common for Spiritual characters to use multiple types of power.)

    The Storied enchantment, for the totem implements used with Spiritual powers, allows a magical totem to convey the benefit of a feat intended for Spiritual classes. Of course, it only works if the implement’s wielder is actively wielding the implement…and if the wielder is ever deprived of the implement, they also lose the feat, so this is a risky way to gain an extra feat.

    Then, there are enchantments for items that wouldn’t normally convey much if any benefit, like gloves, cloaks, and boots.

    Handwraps of Hardened Fists is an enchantment for items going in the Hands slot like, yes, handwraps, but also applicable to gloves, gauntlets, and even hypothetically mittens. It provides a pair of item bonuses increasing the attack and damage rolls of unarmed attacks, making it an excellent enchantment for a would-be brawler. The downside, however, is that it doesn’t actually provide the benefit of a magical weapon for unarmed strikes: there are ways to get that, though.

    The Chameleonic Cloak is an excellent enchantment for a would-be scout or sniper, letting them blend in and gain concealment even in open terrain. This, in turn, can let them sneak about more easily, since becoming and remaining hidden from enemies using the Stealth skill requires some degree of either cover or concealment from enemies.

    The Boots of Rapidity enchantment has a subtle effect that can be quite powerful if fully understood: at the cost of a minor action, the enchantment’s power grants two turns of effectively doubled movement: in the first turn, the user keeps the normal movement they already had, and if they then take the Run action, can gain twice that much additional movement…and on the second turn, even the initial, normal movement is doubled. The wearer can thus get up to seven times their speed in movement, in just two turns…and that’s not even counting any movement that they could get between turns.

    To wrap up this showcase, let me reveal a couple of armor enchantments, including one tied to the Ward powers that I previously hinted at and which we’ll see more of in Wednesday’s post.

    The Toughened and Reinforced enchantments both protect the wearer of magical armor. Toughened increases armor resistance, further reducing most damage taken by a small amount, while Reinforced drastically reduces the damage from serious critical hits.

    The Blessed enchantment, however, provides access to a Divine Ward power. I’ll go into details on these on Wednesday, alongside their Armament power counterparts, but the short version is that Ward powers provide a character with some kind of defensive benefits; a character can only gain the effect of one Ward power at a time. The Blessed enchantment, carrying a Ward power with it, therefore gives a character access to a defensive power (albeit with probably reduced effectiveness) that they can use if none of their allies are in a position to help them out.

    Up Next

    On Wednesday, keep an eye out for the next post in my series covering Gwynne of House Midwinter, elf artificer–with a bit more context, now that I’ve revealed the gist of how magical items actually work. And, for the rest of the month, keep an eye out for the occasional magical item worked into some of my other posts!

  • Gwynne of House Midwinter III: Skills, Perk, Languages

    In this next post covering a third sample character, elf artificer Gwynne of House Midwinter, we’ll be going over choices of skills, perk, and languages.

    Skills

    Gwynne has some overlap in her preferred skills:

    • Arcana and History (Caras Elvaren culture)
    • Arcana and Engineering (Technician stratum)
    • Arcana, Engineering, Medicine, Perception, Subterfuge, and Warfare (Artificer class)

    So Gwynne only has seven preferred skills, one of which (Arcana) she’s required to have by the Artificer class. She next gets to pick five other preferred skills to be trained in; she gets one extra due to the Extended Youth elf ancestry feature.

    Frankly, it makes more sense to decide which preferred skill Gwynne won’t be trained in. I don’t see this former toymaker being particularly warlike, so we’ll rule out Warfare, and she’ll be trained in all the others.

    And for her final choice of skill, which can be any of the eighteen, Gwynne will be trained in…Insight. I’m increasingly working to a theme here, and it will help if she can tell who’s naughty and nice.

    Gwynne’s trained skill bonuses (before any encumbrance penalties) will thus be:

    • Arcana +6
    • Engineering +6
    • History +6
    • Insight +4
    • Medicine +6
    • Perception +2
    • Subterfuge +3

    It helps that so many of Gwynne’s trained skills key off of her high Intelligence!

    Perk

    I think there’s only one reasonable choice for Gwynne’s perk, given the theme I’m working to. As a former toymaker, Gwynne will have the Craft [Elven Children’s Toy] perk. Will this be as directly useful in adventuring as Etterjarl Ragnvald’s Craft [Clockwork]? I’ve no idea, really. I suppose it may depend on how many children Gwynne runs into.

    Languages

    In addition to the campaign’s common language, which we’ll presume to be the default of Westerling, Gwynne also gets to speak Modern Elven due to her Caras Elvaren culture.

    Up Next

    Coming up next, we’ll be taking a look at the kinds of powers, feats, and equipment that Gwynne can choose from, including some Armament and Ward powers that are especially appropriate for an artificer. Stay tuned!

  • Bestiary: A Knave of the Autumn Court

    In today’s post, wrapping up November’ series on the Autumn Court of Faerie, I’m going to at long last reveal an actual member of the Autumn Court!

    The statblock I’m presenting here is representative of Knaves of Autumn, but there is a lot of variety: I highly recommend that if a Knave of Autumn (or any of the Courts) is going to be a recurring villain, a GM should give them some variant abilities separating them from the “generic” version. But before I get into the statblock, let me take a brief detour into the concept I based this Autumn Knave on:

    Design Concept

    I generally start designing major enemies (like Champion-tier ones) with three big-picture concepts. In the case of the Knave of Autumn, here are the three that I settled on when I sat down to brainstorm:

    • Control of the Narrative: The Knave of Autumn is tied into the magic of Faerie: it is a focus for the plane’s narrative, and can draw mortals into the narrative against their will.
    • Tarnished Glory: The Autumn Sidhe outwardly embrace an aesthetic of tarnished glory: they use glamour and illusion to garb themselves in ancient-looking armor and faded robes, and dwell in the crumbling ruins of grand edifices. Autumn’s Knaves weave this aesthetic into their Control of the Narrative: they have a palpable aura of venerable, ancient grace and wisdom, and it is difficult for mortals to bring themselves to oppose them.
    • Vicious Killers: But, behind the glamour, Knaves of Autumn (and all the rest of the Court) are vicious killers. When they don’t get their way (when their Tarnished Glory fails to sway mortals to their side…), they abandon the glamour and unleash their inner savagery…including through any mortals who did succumb to their spell.

    Next, with these three concepts in place, comes the general mechanics:

    • Control of the Narrative is best represented through a Charm effect (Charmed creatures are flatfooted and have disfavor on attack rolls against their charmers) of some kind. And it should be passive, or at least, reactive: mortals fall under the Knave’s spell mainly just by being it its presence.
    • Tarnished Glory gives me a more specific flavor for the Knave’s Charm effect: when a PC tries to attack the Knave, they are overcome with veneration for its ancient wisdom. This can be a swift reaction.
    • Vicious Killers, however, suggests that the Knave should have a “mode change” midway through a fight, as it realizes that it won’t be able to bring the PCs entirely under its spell. So Tarnished Glory should work only until this mode change…but after the mode change, the Knave should be able to force some violent actions on its charmed creatures. (And in order to make it likely that it has some charmed creatures after the change, it should be difficult to shake off the charm effect, at least until the change.)

    Now: all of these concepts form some interesting ideas for mechanics going into the Knave, but they’re all about passive and reactive mechanics. What should the Knave actually do with its turns?

    The mode change between Tarnished Glory and Vicious Killers gives me a good concept here, too: before the change, the Knave should fight in the manner of a chivalrous, graceful knight…while afterward, it should more resemble a crazed killer. It should have melee attacks, and a different set of them in each phase.

    And, since the mode change is forming so much of the Knave’s concept, the change itself should be a significant event during which the Knave transforms.

    So let’s see how all of these ideas come together into a statblock:

    Knave of Autumn

    The biggest mechanics in the Knave of Autumn are Autumn Glamour and Vortex of Decay:

    • Autumn Glamour both defines the two phases of a fight with the Knave (Tarnished vs. Vicious), and alters its defenses. In the earlier Tarnished phase, the Knave has high but tier-appropriate armor resistance of 5; in the Vicious phase, it has higher (and more useful) invulnerable resistance of 7, but it can be bypassed by cold iron weapons and implements, which a prepared groups of PCs can be counted on to have.
    • Vortex of Decay provides a short transitory phase marking the change from Tarnished to Vicious. When it is first injured (reduced to half hit points) during a fight, the Knave erupts in a vortex of withered leaves: this conceals it from view while it transforms (and switches equipment), and it also becomes insubstantial (takes half damage except from area attacks). This lasts until the end of the Knave’s next turn, which allows it to move into the midst of the PCs and make the Vortex of Decay’s attack against several of them.

    The Knave’s Charm ability has different effects in each stage:

    • While Tarnished, the Knave can charm its attackers using Tarnished Glory, which as a swift reaction means that if the attacker is successfully charmed, its attack becomes less likely to hit.
    • When it becomes Vicious, it can no longer charm attackers, but Vicious Instincts forces those it has already charmed to attack each other at the start of their turns until they break free of the charm effect.
    • Control of the Narrative makes the Knave’s charm effects difficult to break out of, ensuring that Vicious Impulses has charmed PCs to work on.

    The Knave also fights differently in its two phases:

    • While Tarnished, it makes a single Broadsword attack on its turn, and can use Tarnished Grace to evade and reposition its attacker when missed by an attack.
    • When Vicious, the Knave can make two Handaxe attacks on its turn, and a Vicious Counter attack when hit by an attack.

    All in all, I think that the Autumn Knave does a good job of capturing the general concept I started with (vicious savagery behind a veneer of nobility), while also providing interesting mechanics for a fight.

    The Knave doesn’t actually have a lot of combat-as-puzzle mechanics, though. (I wouldn’t consider the mode shift to be a puzzle, really, just a gimmick to spice up an encounter.) There is a bit of a puzzle element to Tarnished Glory (which can be countered by attacking from out of its range) and Vicious Impulses (which can be countered by charmed PCs positioning themselves to not have good angles of attack on their allies). And if the PCs have foreknowledge of the Knave’s mechanics (if it’s a recurring villain, for example), there is an opportunity for them to try to trigger the change from Tarnished to Vicious at a good moment, when few of them are charmed. But most of the challenge in the Knave will come from its mode change.

    Up Next

    Well, this wraps up my “official” month of Faerie and Autumn Court content. But, if you’ve been reading my first couple of posts on Gwynne of House Midwinter, my third sample character, you’ve also been getting a preview of my December theme: elves and magical toys items! Stay tuned for content including a history of Caras Elvaren, mechanics for creating and using magical items, and more!

  • Gwynne of House Midwinter II: Class and Abilities

    Today, I’ll be continuing with the creation of Gwynne of House Midwinter, elf artificer, and introducing the artificer class!

    The artificer fills a different niche than the two classes I’ve previewed thus far: the fighter is a tough “tanky” character able to protect allies; the skinchanger is a deadly shapeshifter able to quickly bring down foes; the artificer belongs to a third group of classes, designed to empower allies and heal injuries. Let’s take a look at how it accomplishes that:

    Class: Artificer

    Aetrimonde’s artificer represents a specific kind of magician who uses physical tools to aid their practice of magic. Here’s how the core rulebook explains the nature of artifice:

    Arcanists have long used tools to enhance their magic: enchanted implements are prized by all kinds of magic-worker, and the concept of placing spells on objects rather than casting them directly is not a new one. Artificers are unique in that they make magical tools into a core part of their practice. Working with only the pittance of magical power available to most mortals, they create physical objects that substitute for some of the complex memorization and mental gymnastics that other arcanists rely on.

    At their core, an artificer’s tools are mnemonic aids: artificers condition themselves to associate the mental state required by certain spells with specific tools, or specific uses of those tools. Thus, they can quickly reach a specific mindset by waving an implement through a complicated gesture, or tapping out the right series of runes engraved on their armor. An artificer can also imbue their tools with actual magic power: with even a little time to prepare, an artificer can ready a tool to hold and channel part of their magic, and even hand these prepared tools off to allies to use as they see fit. One of the simplest uses of such tools is as a protective talisman or warding device: a physical object that protects against harm and can heal a wounded ally.

    Many artificers find that their talents apply naturally to the creation of magical items, and even those who don’t tend to be passingly familiar with how they work. This expertise allows artificers to rapidly alter the workings of magical items, achieving effects that their original creators might never have expected.

    If wizards are scientists and philosophers who study the nature of magic and how it fits into the cosmos, artificers are the engineers who apply magical principles to practical effect. Artificers are often less concerned with why a novel piece of magic works the way that it does than with how they can interact with, modify, or adapt it for their own purposes.

    Some artificers start out intending to study magic in the tradition of wizardry, which is often more prestigious, but then find that they can get better results using physical tools—or they just enjoy solving practical problems more than they do the abstract theoretical problems involvedin wizardry. Others are mundane craftsmen who began dabbling in magic and gravitated towards a tool-based approach that they found familiar. Some wizards look down on artificers for taking what they view as an easy way out, but almost everyone gives artificers more credence than sorcerers who gain their magic through accidents of birth, or warlocks who dabble in dark magics as a quick and dirty shortcut.

    So let’s take a look at the artificer’s class features:

    Basics

    With 24 base hit points, a 1d10 healing die, and 3 base resurgences, the artificer is only slightly less tough than the fighter. And with armor proficiency up through chainmail and shields, and proficiency with military weapons, they can actually be quite tough in a scrap! But, at their core, artificers are an Arcane class, meaning that they are spellcasters–just unusually tough ones.

    Artificers are of course trained in Arcana, and add a variety of knowledge and practical skills to their preferred skill list. Of note are Engineering, making artificers familiar with ordinary machinery (although the line between magic and machine is often blurred in Aetrimonde) and Subterfuge, allowing an artificer to disarm traps.

    Gadgets

    The first of the artificer’s main class features is Gadgets, which is a long block of rules for a fairly straightforward idea: an artificer can imbue their own spells (Arcane powers) into physical objects, and hand them off to their allies. At its core, this lets allies get off an extra attack per round as a minor action, but it also opens up a bunch of tactical possibilities, by giving allies access to spells that they normally wouldn’t be able to use. (Imagine giving a rogue a Gadget containing a spell of invisibility before they go off to scout, or loading up a fighter with several Gadgets containing powerful close-range spells and sending them into the midst of an enemy horde.)

    Tinkering

    This class feature is analogous to the fighter’s Martial Endurance and the skinchanger’s Spirit Bond features, in that it fits into a niche shared by all of the classes from a particular origin. The Arcane classes are themed around adaptability, and each one has a feature allowing them to quickly change the powers available to them. These features all work differently, however, and the artificer’s Tinkering feature works by modifying magical items. Given time to take a rest and tinker with a magical item, the artificer can change one of its enchantments into whatever enchantment would be most helpful for upcoming challenges.

    As for what this means in practice…well, I’ll be revealing Aetrimonde’s magic item subsystem in December, before we get too much further in building Gwynne.

    Healing Ward

    The Healing Ward class feature power allows the artificer to protect allies from harm. This is built into the artificer class, giving artificers the ability to heal allies without needing to devote their other power choices or their greater power uses to it–although an artificer wanting to focus on healing could do so.

    Healing Ward combines proactive and reactive protection: it both grants temporary hit points (protecting allies from future harm) and allows the recipient to later trigger it to use a resurgence and actually regain hit points.

    Abilities

    Now, as for abilities: Gwynne will want to have Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma as her three highest abilities, but each will affect her Arcane powers in different ways:

    • Intelligence will be used in the attack and damage rolls of most Arcane powers, and is the most important of the three unless building an artificer that makes no direct attacks.
    • Wisdom will not inherently improve Arcane powers, but can be used by many Arcane School feats that would allow Gwynne to specialize in certain kinds of Arcane power (like fire or illusions). An artificer (or any Arcane character) with high Wisdom and moderate Charisma will be really good at what they specialize in, and mediocre at everything else.
    • Charisma will improve the secondary effects of many Arcane powers, and will also improve Armament and Ward powers that enhance an ally’s attacks or defenses. (We’ll see some of these when we pick out Gwynne’s powers!) An artificer with high Charisma will be decent with most Arcane powers, but won’t reach the heights possible with specialization.

    Since I want Gwynne to be a well-rounded example of a character, that a new player can easily pick up and play, I’m going to prioritize Intelligence, then Charisma, then Wisdom. This will let a player try out different kinds of Arcane magic without being locked into a specialization.

    Gwynne has Intelligence and Grace as preferred abilities, so I’ll buy +3 <INT>, +2 <CHA>, and +2 <WIS>, for 12 points. And to take advantage of proficiency with chain armor, I’ll also buy +1 <DEX> and +0 <GRA> with the remaining point. After boosting <INT> and <GRA>, this will let her have 15-16 AC, depending on whether she opts for a maille shirt or the heavier maille armor.

    This leaves <STR>, <CON>, and <CUN>. And I think it makes sense to increase <CON> and drop <STR>, which will give her better Brawn defense, hit points, and resurgences.

    Gwynne’s finalized abilities will be:

    -1 STR+1 DEX+0 CUN+2 WIS
    +1 CON+1 GRA+4 INT+2 CHA

    Up Next

    I think perhaps it might be becoming apparent why I gave Gwynne a background as a toymaker: artificer class features revolve around handing out “toys” in the form of Gadgets, Tinkered magic items, and Healing Wards. And there’s a lot of room here to give artificers unique kinds of gadgets: I’ve got some ideas already in mind for Gwynne, but that will have to wait until we get around to selecting her spells in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

  • Bestiary: the Wild Hunt

    In today’s Bestiary post, I’m going to be covering some of the Autumn Court’s allies, and a force straight out of fairy tale and folklore: the Wild Hunt!

    Wild Hunt Lore

    The Wild Hunt, in our world, is a folkloric motif: a chase by a group of supernatural hunters, often led by a historical or mythological figure, associated with ill tidings. I’ve designed Aetrimonde’s Wild Hunt to be a more direct threat: they ride forth in the autumn, often at the direction of the Autumn Court, in search of worthy prey…but they will ride down and slay anyone with the misfortune to cross their path.

    Wild Hunt Lore Details

    The Wild Hunt is intended to be a versatile, self-contained, drop-in villain group: faceless, identityless, and more of a force than an organization. They can be filler, with the PCs just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time of autumn, they can be the villains of a short adventure where the PCs foresee their coming and need to protect an isolated village on the night of their hunt, or they can be a recurring threat under the command of another villain, like the Autumn Court.

    Because of this, I’ve designed the enemies associated with the Wild Hunt to work with each other (sort of like the mummies I revealed a while back). Their actions and traits of each type of Wild Hunt enemy interact with those of the others, because I envision all the different types being used together (rather than by themselves, or scattered among non-Wild-Hunt enemies).

    Hound of the Wild Hunt

    The Wild Hunt uses hunting dogs, but these are no mere mortal hounds: they can pass unseen around their prey, stalking them from the shadows…and passing through solid stone to pursue the Hunt’s prey.

    Hounds of the Wild Hunt are Skirmishers, which in their case is expressed through the Unseen Step ability (which may be familiar if you’ve read one of my Apocrypha posts). This ability lets the Hounds teleport quite a long distance, even to places they can’t see, and even with solid objects in the way…as long as nobody can see them.

    I have used Unseen Step to ratchet up paranoia among the PCs: in the opening stages of an adventure featuring the Wild Hunt, I made it clear that something was stalking the woods surrounding a village that the PCs had stopped in. Then, once they were drawn in and investigating, an NPC fled past them in a panic and barred himself inside a solid building, only for there to be screaming, growling and crashing noises from inside. Once the PCs forced their way in (not made easy by the barred door and other protections) and found the unfortunate victim, there was no sign of the assailant…and no other exits from the building. From that point on, I repeatedly described the PCs with high Perception sensing that they were being watched, and even hearing things moving around them in the underbrush, only to find nothing when they traipsed over to investigate…right up until they chased the presence into a ravine, and an entire pack of hounds appeared behind them.

    The Hounds of the Wild Hunt also have Bite, a frankly rather poor attack that becomes much better against flatfooted enemies, and Scent, a trait ensuring that the Hounds can neither be hidden from nor ambushed. Both are shared with ordinary mortal hounds.

    Wild Hunter and Steed of the Wild Hunt

    The next enemy I’m revealing today is actually a twofer, because it’s the first example of Cavalry enemies who fight atop steeds. And in order to explain this, I’ll need to present the Mounted Combat rules included in the GM Handbook (not the Core Rulebook, because mounted combat is sufficiently niche that most players will not need to deal with it).

    Mounted Combat Rules

    Mounted combat can be a serious force-multiplier for PCs and enemies alike: it allows a character to combine their turn with that of their mount, letting them do twice as much. Of course, it doesn’t work in a lot of places where you can’t easily bring a mount, like cramped dungeons, the upper floors of buildings, or royal throne rooms. So for mounted combat to be a large part of a campaign would require planning and cooperation on the part of the GM…but it can be fun if handled well!

    Cavalry enemies are really just two enemies, an enemy and their mount, who take their turns together. Both count towards an encounter’s EV (just as a PC’s mount counts, too). In the case of the Wild Hunters, they ride on Steeds of the Wild Hunt, which look like horses…but are uncommonly willing to eat flesh.

    The Wild Huntsman itself is another Skirmisher like the Hounds, but with much more flexibility: it has both melee and ranged attacks, allowing it to fight at any range, and its attacks are excellent for supporting a pack of Hounds:

    • Lead the Hunt allows the Huntsman to flank a PC with one of their Hounds, and let both of them get off a (much better, thanks to flanking) attack.
    • Shoot to Wound causes creatures to start bleeding, so that the Hounds can Scent them further away.
    • Denial Strike locks down a PC, making them flatfooted against opportune strikes…such as they might provoke when trying to get away from a pack of Hounds that have surrounded them. And since the Hounds can knock prone when attacking a flatfooted creature, this is especially nasty…

    All this is before considering the benefits of being mounted. Rideby lets the Huntsman move through a melee while taking minimal opportune strikes, so long as they attack their primary target first. And then, there’s the bloodthirsty steed…

    The Steed of the Wild Hunt is a bit nastier than your average warhorse, thanks to its Bite attack and Scent ability. But the meat of it is the Trample ability, shared by most warhorses. This allows the Steed to plow through a crowd of enemies, knocking them aside like ninepins or crushing them underhoof. So, a Wild Huntsman’s typical turn might look something like this:

    • Spur the Steed to Trample, providing a total of 16 squares of movement.
    • Move toward a priority target, Trampling any enemies in the way.
    • Make a Lead the Hunt or Denial Strike attack against the priority target.
    • Move away from the priority target, Trampling any enemies still in the way.

    And if the Steed’s Hoof attacks manage to knock any enemies prone…all the better for the Hounds of the Wild Hunt, who can easily pounce on the fallen.

    The obvious solution to a Wild Huntsman, for a PC, is to get them off their Steed. This is actually fairly straightforward: anything causing at least 2 squares of forced movement will do it. For that matter, the Steed itself is a big target, and could be shot out from under the Huntsman…which might be the better way of doing things, because if the Hunstman and Steed are separated, they can just act separately.

    But then, there’s the really interesting option for a PC…which is to knock the Huntsman off of their Steed and then try to ride it. To make that work, I’d call for the PC to Grapple the Steed, and then hang on long enough to get their feet into the stirrups. But if they can pull it off, it’s exactly the kind of stunt that might get the Hunt to follow their command…

    Up Next

    Wrapping up this month of the Autumn Court, next week’s Bestiary post will present one of the Autumn Court proper: a Sidhe knave wielding the court’s magic…and capable of calling down the Wild Hunt.

    In the meantime, keep an eye out for the next post on the creation of Gwynne, introducing the artificer class!

  • Gwynne of House Midwinter I: Heritage

    Today, I’m starting in on the creation of a third sample character: Gwynne of House Midwinter! Gwynne is an elf artificer, a combination I picked out in response to reader polls. So, as is my wont, I’m going to spend this first post in the series discussing Gwynne’s heritage:

    Ancestry: Elf

    Aetrimonde’s elves are a toned-down version of the Tolkienesque model common to a lot of RPGs: long-lived, but not immortal; lithe and graceful, but not superhumanly so; inclined to magic, but still with a normal mortal’s potential for it.

    Basics

    With Grace as a preferred ability, elves will have slightly better Poise defense, as well as Armor Coverage if wearing light or medium armor. Grace also influences safe movement, which synergizes with the Lightfooted trait that we’ll get to in a moment. And with a perfectly normal speed of 6 squares, elves can easily be quite mobile.

    Extended Youth

    Representing elves’ long lifespans, which see them reach maturity at around 25, Extended Youth allows elves to be trained in an additional skill from their preferred skill list.

    Lightfooted

    While it doesn’t directly increase elves’ speed, Lightfooted allows elves to move a little further through difficult terrain like brush, mud, and shifting sand, which normally costs twice as much movement.

    Low-Light Vision

    This works just like the versions associated with dwarves and ghouls. I should stress that not every ancestry has low-light vision! It’s a mere coincidence that all three ancestries so far have had it…

    Elven Rejoinder

    The elf ancestry power is Elven Rejoinder, allowing an elf to attempt to resist an attack and respond with a counter. While the flavor text describes gracefully dodging a physical attack, it does also work on attacks vs. Wit or Composure.

    While the rules do not touch on this, the way I would try to run this and similar powers at the table is that the player of an elf character must declare their intent to use this power before the attack is rolled: it does not allow a player to force disfavor on an attack roll after seeing the roll, much less after the GM has determined the effect. However, this requires the GM to be consistent about declaring who is being attacked and giving the player a moment to decide to use the power before they actually roll dice. Depending on how a group prefers to play, they might be more lenient about when the power must be used.

    Like Dwarven Stubbornness and Ghoulish Tenacity, there is a way for elves to regain this power, which is to be missed by the provoking attack. That’s a little more up to chance, but it can be made more reliable using a feat, which we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

    Culture: Caras Elvaren

    Since Gwynne is an artificer, using Arcane magic, I’m going to design her to fit the “high elf” archetype. In Aetrimonde, “high elf” is a cultural distinction, not a racial one: the high elves are those elves who live in the nation of Caras Elvaren, which is the world’s most magically advanced society. While it isn’t quite post-scarcity, Caras Elvaren is certainly post-hardship: past generations of Elvaren wizards and arcanists poured their magical efforts into building an automated golem labor force, which by the setting’s present day has grown to the point that the nation has eradicated hunger, homelessness, and virtually all drudgery.

    I’ll be revealing more about the nation of Caras Elvaren in some upcoming posts, the same way I did with the Dwarven Federation.

    The Caras Elvaren culture gives Gwynne Intelligence as a preferred ability, which is great: Arcane magic keys off of Intelligence foremost, so this will give her an advantage here.

    Stratum: Technician

    And finally, Gwynne will come from the Technician stratum, representing the class of skilled laborers who work with magic and machinery (which are often intertwined in Aetrimonde).

    This gives Gwynne a second instance of Intelligence as a preferred ability, which sort of locks her choices in: since she will want to boost Intelligence, and her only other preferred ability is Grace, she’ll also be boosting it as well.

    Tying It Together

    So how do we fit all this together into Gwynne’s backstory?

    Because Caras Elvaren is so much more magical, and more prosperous, than the rest of Aetrimonde, I’m going to write Gwynne as someone who wasn’t always an adventurer: she’ll be an older elf, closer to middle age (so around 150…), and formerly a small-time artificer who built “ordinary” magical things that the high elves would take for granted but would be extraordinary elsewhere.

    Like toys…

    As for why Gwynne is “of House Midwinter,” and why a former toymaker would take up adventuring…I’ve got ideas on that front, but I think that I will space these out a bit. Some of them deserve more explanation than I think will fit neatly into this post, so I’ll return to them once I’ve revealed a bit more about the nation of Caras Elvaren.

    Up Next

    We now have a basic concept for Gwynne: she’s an older elf, formerly a toymaker, who has taken up adventuring as what you might call a career change. And I’m excited to build on that as we get into the artificer class in next week’s post!

  • Bestiary: Creatures of the Autumn Court

    Today, I’m going to introduce the members of the Autumn Court, starting with their creations and hangers-on. All of the Sidhe Courts have other creatures of Faerie among their ranks (though always in a subservient position). The Autumn Court attracts allies who, like the Sidhe in charge of the Court, have no use for so-called civilization.

    The Blightreapt

    The Sidhe make use of many disposable soldiers, among them the Blightreapt: scarecrow-like constructs made from farmers’ crops and sent to wreak havoc on their growers.

    Blightreapt Lore

    While individually weak, Blightreapt can be animated en masse, with dozens coming from a single field, and in a nasty twist characteristic of Autumn, they render the crops they are made from inedible. The Court often cares not whether a swarm of Blightreapt succeed in overrunning a farming community: in fact, they hope for survivors, in the expectation that they will turn on each other when they realize that they have no crops as winter approaches.

    The Blightreapt fill a similar niche as zombies, although with stats taken to less of an extreme. They can be used as part of a horde, with the added twist that when destroyed, they stagger nearby creatures (due to the nauseating stench of their internal decay as it spills forth).

    Redcap Vandal

    Aetrimonde’s redcaps are gleefully nasty little fae, fond of endearing themselves to lone travelers only to stick a knife in their back, and destroying the treasured possessions and life’s works of those they cannot slay outright. This makes them fit right in with the Autumn Court, who likewise seek to tear down systems of civilization, spreading distrust and breaking infrastructure and institutions. Redcaps in general, but Vandals most of all, are only too happy to pursue these aims with a little direction from the Court.

    Lore on Redcaps in General

    Redcap Vandals, in particular, enjoy smashing things: the finer and more appreciated, the better. They are Afflictors, but unlike the mummies I’ve previously revealed, Redcap Vandals are Afflictors because of their potential to destroy the PCs’ possessions. (And as any experienced GM knows, that’s one of the surest ways to make the PCs mad at an enemy.)

    The way Redcap Vandals do this is twofold: firstly, they must get an enemy flatfooted, either through typical means like flanking or ambush, or by using Spiteful Strike (an attack common to Redcaps) against larger or tougher PCs. One they have a flatfooted foe, the Vandal can then use Improved Sunder1, dealing damage to an object the PC holds or wears…and if it chooses to damage, say, a PC’s armor, the Precise Smashing trait allows it to deal this damage to the PC, too. This is the first part of the puzzle that a Redcap Vandal presents: it is important to keep flatfooted PCs away from the Vandal, lest they wind up with broken armor in the middle of an adventure.

    Also seen in this statblock is the Bloody Cap trait, also common to Redcaps, and this is the second half of the Vandal’s (and other Redcaps’) puzzle: injured PCs should try to stay out of a Redcap’s reach until they can be healed, because a Redcap gaining 5 invulnerable resistance is a definite problem. If a Redcap does manage to dye its cap, a counter to this would be to use Sunder on its cap, which would remove this resistance. A similar tactic would involve the use of Disarm to steal the cap, and if the PCs are prepared, they could always overcome the resistance with cold iron weapons and implements.

    As one last remark, I’ll draw attention to the Vandal’s size of “Undersized-Medium:” this means that it occupies the same space as a Medium creature (a single square), but has some of the advantages of a smaller creature.2 Some PC ancestries (halfling and goblin) are Undersized and gain these same benefits.

    Ogre Glutton

    The design of Aetrimonde’s ogres is centered around hunger: the core of their portrayal is their appetite, which is appropriately huge. The Autumn Court uses ogres much the same way that they use the Blightreapt: to destroy harvests and drive farmers to desperation. A clan of ogres coming “down out of the hills” (or more likely, through a crossing to Faerie) can eat a sizeable farming community out of house, home, and harvest…and that’s before they start in on the farmers for dessert. Ogre Gluttons simply take this to a logical extreme.

    Lore on Ogres in General

    The Ogre Glutton is an Elite enemy and a Controller, and it fulfills this role using its Swallow Whole action…which does exactly what it says in the name. An Ogre Glutton can grab an adjacent, flatfooted PC and stuff them bodily down its gullet, which effectively isolates them. The PC takes damage, cannot be healed by allies (for lack of line of sight and effect), cannot run away, and in fact, cannot really do much of anything except try to cut their way out of the Ogre’s gullet. That the Ogre also gains a bit of regeneration (from Fast Digestion) is merely a bonus.

    Of course, this is a bit of a double-edged sword for the Ogre. Creatures in its gullet have disfavor on damage rolls against it, it’s true…unless they result from a critical hit. And if a creature in its gullet manages to cut their way out, the Glutton starts taking some fairly serious repeated damage. This can happen with a critical hit from outside its gullet too, but critical threat makes it a bit more likely for a creature in its gullet.

    The Glutton has a few other tricks as well: its Brawl action allows it to sling a Butcher’s Hook at a foe just out of range, and reel them in on a chain before taking a swing with a Cleaver. And Morbid Bulk makes the Glutton take just a little less damage from area attacks: bringing it down will require some focused fire from melee and ranged attacks.

    Up Next

    Tune back in Wednesday for the first post in the creation of Gwynne of House Midwinter, elf artificer. And next week, keep an eye out for a continuation of this series dealing with another part of the Autumn Court: the Wild Hunt!

    1. As a side note, Sunder is a combat maneuver that the PCs can use, too. Ordinarily, Sunder gives the target the option of taking damage themselves rather than letting it be dealt to their possessions. (In other words, they can shield an object with their body.) Improved Sunder is a feat that prevents the target of Sunder from taking this option…but Precise Smashing is, for the time being, unique to the Redcap Vandal. ↩︎
    2. Principally, larger creatures (Medium and up) suffer a -1 penalty to attack rolls against the Redcap’s AC and Poise but gain +1 to attack rolls vs. its Brawn; the Redcap gains the opposite effect of +1 to attack rolls vs. larger creatures’ AC and Poise but -1 vs. their Brawn. ↩︎

  • Apocrypha: Faerie Rituals

    Now that I’ve covered Aetrimonde’s ritual magic subsystem, in my previous post, I’m going to jump into some borderline-apocryphal rituals, themed around the plane of Faerie, that are in limbo and may or may not make it into the core rulebook. Why this indecision? Well, mainly, I’m not yet satisfied with the quality of the rituals I’ve written up for the other planes, and I’d prefer not to favor Faerie. So unless I can make some improvements to the other planar rituals by the time I’m ready to publish the core rules, I’ll be saving them all for later supplements, much like the Faerie powers in my previous Apocrypha post.

    Beggar at the Feast

    This ritual is inspired by fairy tales about kings going incognito among their people and witches showing up uninvited to a feast. It makes the caster so bland and unremarkable that anyone who sees them, no matter how out of place they are, rationalizes and ignores their presence.

    Now, I mentioned in my first post on ritual magic that I didn’t want rituals to obviate ordinary skill checks and perks. So does Beggar at the Feast make skills like Deception, Disguise, and Stealth obsolete for sneaking around? I’m going to say no, but let me walk through my reasoning:

    Firstly, while Beggar at the Feast makes a character less remarkable, it doesn’t actually help them get into places that they shouldn’t be: it doesn’t open locked doors, much less castle gates, and so in order to make use of it, there needs to be an existing path to where a character needs to be. This is a plus in my view: it creates opportunities for the PCs to work together to, for example, draw out a bunch of guards so that one of the PCs can go back inside with them under the effect of Beggar at the Feast.

    And secondly, Beggar at the Feast actually makes it harder, or at least riskier, to do things like pick locks or pump guards for information. A character relying on regular old Stealth and Deception checks could feasibly talk their way out of trouble if they get caught; if Beggar at the Feast breaks, everyone looking at them (not just the guards, everyone) immediately realizes that they had been placed under a glamour, and that’s the sort of thing that makes a lot of enemies.

    In all, Beggar at the Feast is a specialized tool: great for sneaking into exclusive parties and eavesdropping on private conversations, not so great for robbing vaults or springing allies out of jail.

    Dolmen Door

    I previously showed off the Open Planar Crossing ritual, which is one way to create crossings into Faerie and other planes. Dolmen Door is another: more expensive, in terms of reagents, with more restrictions, but if used with planning and forethought, potentially more powerful.

    This ritual was designed specifically to replicate a Narnia-style portal to another world: a door that can be opened (or a cave that can be walked through, or any number of variations) under the right circumstances to cross into another plane. It can be used by anyone, with no need for magic (and for any GMs reading, that makes it a great tool for any Sidhe wanting to move an army into the mortal world…), but it also offers tools to control who can use it through passwords, keys, and other conditions that can be placed on the crossing.

    Dolmen Door also offers a way for the caster to control where both sides of a crossing are, which isn’t easy to achieve with other methods of planar travel. This does require performing the ritual on both sides, though…which makes a great premise for an adventure, in multiple ways:

    • The villain is trying to infiltrate a stronghold to place the other end of a Dolmen Door; they have a scroll, so it will only take them an hour, but that’s an hour that they need to remain uninterrupted. The PCs need to search the stronghold and find where the villain is performing the ritual.
    • The PCs themselves want to open a passage into Faerie (perhaps to evacuate refugees from the Sidhe, or move troops in to support a rebellion). They need it to go to a specific place in Faerie, and that means that they will need to cross into Faerie themselves and make the journey to where they will perform the ritual.

    The one big downside to Dolmen Door is that it only makes a functioning crossing for a few days per (35-day) month. Which is, actually, another great thing from a GM’s perspective, because it allows creating time pressure. (“There is a passage that will take you near to where you must go in Faerie…but once you cross, you must return within three days, or else you may be trapped for years…”)

    Fool’s Bounty

    Where do leprechauns get all that gold, anyways? With Fool’s Bounty, we may have an answer. The ritual multiplies ordinary objects (and coins are one of the suggested options…), creating a vast number of temporary replicas. With a good Arcana bonus, and some luck, a caster could easily multiply their available cash by 20 or more, making it a scoundrel character’s dream.

    Of course…there are some subtle pitfalls here, which I’ve gone to pains to insert. (It’s not called Fool’s Bounty for nothing.) Firstly, the ritual makes all the duplicated objects radiate detectable magic. Is every merchant that the PCs want to spend money with going to be able to detect that? Well, no, the provisioner at the general store and the barkeep in the grimy tavern probably won’t have the means to check coinage for magic…but in the far more likely scenario (based on my experience of TTRPG player psychology) where a PC is trying to cheat a merchant of magical items out of a valuable weapon, that merchant is probably able to detect magic, or has a piece of cold iron available. So if the PCs want to pull a scam with this ritual, they’d better come up with a clever one.

    Secondly, the ritual makes identical replicas. So, if the PCs are planning on replicating their weapons to arm a bunch of villagers against raiders…they’d better keep track of which weapon is the real one, lest they find themselves abruptly unarmed 24 hours later.

    The last restriction on Fool’s Bounty is one that I added mainly for flavor (though, also, to prevent the PCs replicating healing potions or alchemist’s fire). You can’t live on food replicated by Fool’s Bounty, unless you want to eat vastly more of it. Which is the basis for another plot: mortals ensnared by the Sidhe, and kept trapped in a neverending night of feasting and dancing, slowly withering away no matter how much they eat… Someone should probably write an adventure about that.

    Up Next

    These aren’t the only Faerie-themed rituals I’ve written, but I think they provide a good taste of what I’m going for in ritual in general: fun, useful, powerful…but not something that trivially solves an adventure without the need to think about the problem.

    This is the last of my Apocrypha posts for the time being: next Wednesday will be the first post in the creation of elf artificer, Gwynne of House Midwinter.

  • Subsystems: Ritual Magic

    Today, I’m going to talk about the first of Aetrimonde’s subsystems, ritual magic.

    I’m defining subsystems to mean parts of the rules that not all characters will necessarily interact with, or interact with in a deep way. Everything I’ve revealed so far (heritage, class, skills, perks, feats, powers, equipment, even how enemies work…) is common to all characters. Ritual magic is not: it’s something that a character must opt into by taking a specific feat or purchasing ritual scrolls. So let’s take a look:

    The Purpose of Ritual Magic

    One of the design goals I’ve discussed for Aetrimonde is Tactical Combat. But, that doesn’t mean that an Aetrimonde campaign should revolve entirely around combat: it’s merely something that the system is designed to be good at handling. Various game designers and ludologists have discussed the “pillars” of RPG gameplay, which can be summarized as combat (fighting things), interaction (talking with NPCs, trying to suss out their motives or persuade them to do things), and exploration (experiencing interesting places and ideas, uncovering secrets, solving puzzles).

    On the player side of the table, Aetrimonde handles interaction and exploration largely through its skill and perk systems. (And it also provides the GM with advice and tools to set up interesting people, places, and challenges.) Ritual magic is an extension to the skill system, allowing characters additional uses for skills. Because interaction and exploration usually take place outside of combat (although I personally enjoy creating the occasional encounter where they overlap), I’ve designed the ritual magic subsystem with the following goals:

    • It should be entirely optional, and not built into any character.
    • It should not significantly eat into character-building resources used to make a character better at combat (feats, powers, etc.).
    • It should offer characters new ways to interact with NPCs or the setting.
    • It should not make ordinary skills and perks obsolete, and should in fact rely on skill and ability checks (which can benefit from perks).
    • It should generally be difficult to use during combat, but if the PCs put together a plan for it (or the GM sets up an opportunity) it should be possible to do so.

    With that in mind, let’s take a look at the implementation:

    Ritual Mechanics

    The rules for using ritual magic take up an entire page in the rulebook, but that covers virtually all aspects of learning and using rituals.

    Ritual Magic Rules

    I’ll also put the actual perk that a character would take to learn ritual magic here: a character who wants to specialize in ritual magic can take this perk multiple times to not just learn several rituals, but also to specialize in certain kinds, applying the benefits of the perk to such rituals.

    The meat of the ritual magic subsystem is the rituals themselves, so I’ll reveal a few of them here.

    Cure Injury

    I previously alluded to a Cure Injury ritual when I was discussing afflictions: some of the examples I provided there mentioned that, if the affliction worsened too far, the only way to remove the affliction was with this ritual. So, I’ll start there:

    Cure Injury allows the caster to (hopefully) heal their or an ally’s injury in a mere hour, rather than waiting for it to heal naturally. This has a cost: not a monetary one, unless using a scroll to cure the injury in 10 minutes, but in resurgences: healing an injury so rapidly is stressful for the body, and depending on how well the caster performs the ritual, it can drain the beneficiary of resurgences in the process. If the caster performs especially badly (or it was a really nasty injury, the ritual may even fail to work while still draining the patient. As such, Cure Injury is not necessarily the go-to answer to an injury: it is best reserved for injuries that it is urgent to get rid of, or that have progressed so far that there is no other way to heal them.

    I’ll also mention, while I’m at it, that there are two other, very similar rituals: Cure Ailment cures poison and disease, while Dispel Curse breaks curses.

    Open Planar Crossing

    I’ve also recently mentioned the Planeshift ritual and planar crossings. I won’t actually go into the mechanics of Planeshift here, because it’s actually really straightforward and I want to cover some more interesting rituals. Open Planar Crossing allows the caster to tear open their own planar crossing wherever they please. And while they won’t have control over where the other side of the crossing is, it will get them to their plane of choice.

    Open Planar Crossing is partly a tool for GMs, allowing them to easily explain why, for example, a bunch of elementals have appeared out of nowhere to trash a small town: some villain in the Elemental Roil opened a crossing to invade the mortal world, and that’s where it popped up.

    It is also another ritual giving PCs rules for building something: with a little bit of work (and the cooperation of the GM), a group of PCs can search out an appropriate place to open a planar crossing that will put them near to where they want to go on another plane. Or, with a bit more work…they can open an entire network of crossings, located in convenient places to let them travel long distances by passing through other planes as a shortcut.

    Dowsing

    Dowsing is a neat utility ritual for PCs, allowing them to easily track down something they’re looking for. This is common enough in many TTRPGs, but I’ve attempted to do two things with it.

    First, I’ve tried to make the ritual generally applicable. D&D, in its many editions, has had oddly specialized spells like Locate Creature, Locate Object, Locate Animals or Plants, Locate City, Locate Water, and Find Traps. Dowsing is, instead, generally applicable, able to find anything from “iron ore” to “my buddy Fred.”

    And secondly, I’ve stylized the ritual. Rather than magically giving the caster knowledge of the location, or even just direction, of what they’re looking for, it create a dowsing pendulum that points them in the right direction. This is perhaps less instantly useful (they have to follow the pendulum until they get to what they’re looking for), but it’s also more helpful when trying to track down a moving target like a fugitive.

    Alarm

    The last ritual I’ll present today is Alarm, which is an excellent example of just how flexible Aetrimonde’s rituals can be (and that’s convenient, because it’s also the alphabetically first in the book).

    The basic version of Alarm is simple: it creates a sensor that watches over a large area and makes a loud noise if anyone enters the area: great for watching over a campsite if the party is too tired to keep a constant watch, or the terrain would make it easy to sneak up. But, the true value of Alarm is in its casting options: for an additional expenditure of reagents, the ritual can be made to:

    • Spot creatures that are invisible, shrouded in complete darkness, or hidden by fog.
    • Watch for doors being opened instead of watching for unknown creatures.
    • Cause intruders to glow so that they are easier to spot, or even break their invisibility.
    • Last indefinitely.
    • Alert guards with a visible signal instead of an audible one.

    And the last option, I will spend some additional time discussing, because it’s an example of what you might call a sub-subsystem. Many rituals can create talismans (of Passage, of Compulsion, of Interaction, etc…) that alter how the ritual works. The purpose of talismans is to provide some lightweight rules for plot tokens like the magical key that opens the warded door to the villain’s secret passage, or the cursed necklace that allows an evil wizard to possess the wearer. And those rules work for PCs, not just the GM: if they want, players can use Alarm and various other rituals to ward and enhance a home base for themselves, and talismans give them a way to have a “key” to their wards.

    Up Next

    Part of why I’ve covered ritual magic now is so that I can now present my next post, which will be another Apocrypha post, this time on the subject of Faerie rituals. Stay tuned!