Mythic Japan: the Tengu

A tengu and a Buddhist monk. Print by Kyosai.

The tengu of Japanese legend is an odd creature.  It seems to have started out as a type of evil spirit, specifically one opposed to Buddhism.  Over the years, the priest-abducting, temple-burning bird-monster became both more humanlike and more benevolent.  Tengu became mischievous, powerful creatures not unlike kitsune fox-spirits, and eventually became protectors of Buddhism, seekers of wisdom, and master swordsmen — though they retained their weakness of pride.  It became common to ascribe to great swordsmen, such as Minamoto no Yoshitsune, tengu training.

Obviously they make a great addition to a game that features mythic Japanese elements.

The Kenku of D&D, which was introduced to fourth edition in the Monster Manual 2, is clearly based on the tengu, but its attributes have changed to reflect its place in D&D lore.  The kenku could be used to reflect the mischievous version of the tengu, but it’s a poor match for the demons, and even for the wise blademasters.

So I used stats of my own.  In 4e, they look like this:

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Deep Psi

Side note first:  I fixed a problem that might have been keeping comments from working correctly, so if you’ve tried to leave one lately and failed, you should be able to now.

On to the main post.  Recently, I decided I’d try a subscription to Insider.  Although I didn’t see a lot of purpose to it when I first got the core books, and I’m not terribly moved by promises of exclusive content, I figured it would be worth a try, and if nothing else there might be some interesting stuff in Dungeon that I could lift for my game.  Plus, I’d get access to stuff like the Swordmage, a class printed in a book I have no intention of ever buying.  And the Monk, in which I have something of an interest, if you hadn’t noticed…

I haven’t played around with Insider enough to really comment on it yet.  I can say that I find the character builder fun to tinker with, and probably pretty useful (although I’ve never had problems with creating characters in 4e using pen and paper, either).  Dungeon and Dragon look promising enough that the subscription might be justified, although the Dungeon content looks a little lighter than I’d like.

But the main thing that’s caught my attention is the Psion class, recently revealed.

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Ritual of Rejuvenation

This is mostly a plot-device ritual, but I wrote it up since it came to feature pretty prominently in my game.  Its purpose is to extend the life of its caster… perhaps by sinister means.  This is the ritual used by evil magicians to bargain with the Raven Queen, trading others’ lives for their own — but it can also be used by a good magician, albeit less effectively.

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4E from One Year In

4e PHB alternate cover image I had sitting around... from the German version, maybe?

Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is a little over a year old now, and I’ve been playing or running it for almost exactly a year today.  On the whole, I’m finding it a pretty robust system.  It’s not my favorite system, or even my favorite D&D (that would be Cyclopedia D&D), but it’s become my favorite version of AD&D.  A few of my favorite parts:

Philosophy

I’ve said before that I’ve been playing the same game since I first picked up basic D&D.  That game is a cinematic game about daring heroic exploits with the fates of villages, nations, worlds hanging in the balance.  Not every campaign has had the same elements, to be sure; many were high fantasy, but some were low fantasy, or even bizarre science fantasy.  Some were set in mythic Asian locations, some in the Bronze Age, one memorable one in the prehistoric during an ice age.  There were flirtations with dark fantasy and steampunk.  But the game remained the same.  With few exceptions, the characters were heroes and did heroic things (or died trying).

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4e Mystic project

Well, not really.  I’ve decided to rename my take on the Monk class “Mystic Monk” in homage to the Cyclopedia’s Mystic class, in order to differentiate it from Wizards’ in-playtest monk class.  I made a few more changes, including one to an epic destiny feature I hadn’t previously noticed was broken (even for a level 30 ability).  I think it’s more or less in its final form now.  The one major thing I might change is the power source:  currently it’s still using Ki, which is deprecated.  Aside from that, I foresee no more than a few small tweaks as further play catches minor problems I’d previously missed.

There are design decisions I would make differently if I’d known when I started the project what I now know about the game.  I think the process has helped me get a better grasp of the way 4e classes work, though.  If I ever get the urge to write up another class, I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned here.  And I’ll know what I’m getting into — 30 levels of powers is no easy task, I can tell you.

I think, in general, it might be a better idea to expand the system by homebrewing new class builds, rather than new classes entirely.  Sometimes, though, the existing classes just don’t come close to what you want, and that was the case for the monk when I began this project.  In the end, I guess it turned out pretty well.  It’s a straightforward class, but it seems to do what I meant it to, and it seems to be roughly balanced against other classes.