White Knights and Black Powder
There’s been some talk about fourth-edition stats for early firearms over at Dice Monkey. (Edit: Jonathan pointed out Stargazer’s post on the topic, which I’d read but overlooked when writing this. Mea culpa.) I’ve been thinking it over myself, and I’ve come up with a set of stats I think will work well for my purposes:
Pistol: One-handed Superior Weapon; Proficency: +2; Damage: 1d6; Range: 10/20; Price: 50 gp; Weight: 2 lb.; Group: Firearms; Properties: Load minor, high crit, brutal 1, off-hand
Musket: Two-handed Superior Weapon; Proficiency: +2; Damage: 1d10; Range: 20/40; Price: 100 gp; Weight: 6 lb.; Group: Firearms; Properties: Load minor, high crit, brutal 1
“Brutal” is a keyword from Adventurer’s Vault which allows rerolling any damage die that comes up that number or below. In other words, the pistol’s damage range is 2-6, while the musket is 2-10.
Categories: Advice, Original Game Content | Comments (8)
Hunter of the Dead
One of my players wanted to adapt a third-edition character who’d taken the Hunter of the Dead prestige class (from Complete Warrior). This was a prestige class for undead-slaying (obviously) paladins and clerics — its prerequisites included the ability to turn undead. I’m sharing the paragon path we came up with in case it might be of interest to others.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this path, or something very similar but differently named, turned up in official form in Divine Power in a couple of months. The vampire slayer is a pretty common archetype, after all.
Categories: Paragon Pathfinding | Comments (1)
Happy Thanksgiving
I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday.
I’m out of town for a couple of days. Regular posting should resume by Monday, perhaps sooner.
Categories: Blog Status | Comments (0)
What Religion Means
Another contribution to this month’s RPG Blog Carnival on religion.
Much has been posted this month regarding ways of looking at the gods and religion in your game, but today I’m dealing with a slightly different way of making your religions seem more real: the interaction of religion upon society.
In some games I’ve played in, religion doesn’t have much of an impact. The priests of this god or that build temples and hold services, and perhaps some of them are involved in local politics, but often the temple serves as nothing more than a passive nexus, a place where the party might go for information or healing, or where they might be given a quest.
In reality, though, religion is an important social force. The teachings of most religions prescribe ways of living, and these prescriptions (and proscriptions) shape the society. Where a certain religion is dominant, they become social norms, perhaps even laws. Where it is not, they cause believers to stand apart, which can lead to becoming shunned or reviled; even if it doesn’t, it marks the believer as different.
Categories: Advice | Comments (5)
Review: Martial Power
I’d been looking forward to Martial Power, the fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons supplement for martial characters, for some time. Happily, Amazon got it to me a day early, so I’m able to review it. Does it meet expectations? I obviously haven’t been able to play with the new content yet, so this is based on just a reading, but my initial reaction is: Yes, mostly.
Wizards of the Coast, like TSR before them, has a history of putting out player-oriented supplements in large numbers. Generally these are broken down by class “groupings” — so we have the Complete Priest’s Handbook, covering second-edition clerics, specialty priests and druids, or the Complete Arcane, covering third-edition arcane spellcasters, including wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks. Martial Power follows in that tradition. Its content is oriented, not surprisingly, toward the four classes that employ the martial power source: fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords.
These lines of supplements have one other thing in common: their quality was always variable, and their content best taken by the GM with a grain of salt. While I’d put Martial Power pretty high on the quality scale, at least on first glance, I did take note of a couple of things that might warrant some GM attention.
Categories: Reviews | Comments (9)
