My Elves are… Odd

In an earlier post, I discussed the fact that my dwarves are based roughly on Greek and Roman culture.  Among the comments, I mentioned that my elves were a little more nonstandard.  Which leads, naturally, to this post.

If nothing else, this is spurring me to update my setting to fourth edition.

I like to draw from real-world societies when defining my nonhuman cultures; it tends to make it easier for the players to grasp them.  The elves of Galadria are one of the stranger groups, though.  They’re based partly on Native American plains cultures, with flavor drawn from medieval northern Europe and Russia as well.

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My Dwarves are Roman

Well, actually, they’re not.  They’re more like a Greek-Roman hybrid.

The stereotypical dwarves these days are vaguely Scottish; prior to that, Germanic-flavored dwarves were in vogue.  But mine are inspired by ancient Greece and Rome.

I bring this up because of a recent post at Unclebear regarding the “vanilla”-ness of D&D settings.  I disagreed with Berin’s implication that the restrictions on worldbuilding were intrinsic to the D&D system — I believe that such limitations are intrinsic to any system that goes beyond pure storytelling.  Systems are made up of assumptions.  Some, like the HERO system, make those assumptions primarily in the mechanics; without such assumptions, it’s impossible to model anything.  Most assume more about the setting.

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Defining the Raven Queen

In yesterday’s post, I briefly examined some mythical entities that might serve as inspirations to those who intend to give the Raven Queen a prominent role in their campaigns.  Today’s post presents a more fleshed-out, in-game model of the Raven Queen and her domain.  Almost none of this is official in any way, of course, but I hope it will prove useful, or at least interesting.

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The being now known as the Raven Queen is the second-oldest entity in the universe.  In the moment of the first entity’s creation, death became a possibility, and from that possibility the Raven Queen was born.  She became the consort of this entity, of whom little is known other than the titles found in rare and obscure texts: the King Most Ancient or the King of Moments.  And when that King died, his passing tore the universe in two, creating the Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea from what had come before.  From the failing sparks of the King’s being arose the first gods and the first primordials.

It’s little known that the Raven Queen is not, properly speaking, a goddess at all.  She predates gods and primordials alike, and in many ways she possesses more in common with the latter, those creatures who arose from the Elemental Chaos.  When the primordials formed the world, the Raven Queen was among them; it was she who first began to remove the darkest areas, setting into motion the creation of the Shadowfell, the dark echo of the first world.

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4e Monk project update

I updated my 4e Monk class somewhat.  Many of the powers were balanced around the assumption that a monk would be using a 1d6 attack and would not have access to striker bonus damage.

The first assumption was untrue because of their proficiencies, although its impact would be fairly minor.

The second assumption was untrue because of multiclassing, and was not so easily fixed.

Damage from powers has generally declined across the board, but the monk now has access to a 1d6/2d6/3d6 bonus damage effect.  He can apply this damage once per round when striking an enemy who is already under the effect of Quivering Palm.  The base Quivering Palm effect, in turn, is no longer limited to one target at a time; I’ll see whether that needs to change as I continue to test.

Aside from the damage, certain effects were changed or removed for balance purposes.

I haven’t yet gotten around to revising the paragon paths or epic destinies to match.  That’ll be my next step.  Some of those are pretty overpowered.

Monk-y Business

I’ve mentioned before that I miss the monk class in fourth edition.  I can see why they passed it by for the PHB — monks have always been kind of fiddly in D&D, and they don’t exactly fit into the Tolkienesque heroic fantasy D&D takes its inspiration from.  Gandalf and Frodo didn’t travel with Bruce Lee or the Bronzemen of Shaolin.  There are historical Western — European, I should probably say — unarmed martial arts, of course, but they don’t have the same kind of mystique built up around them that their Eastern counterparts do.  Whatever its actual strengths, pankration doesn’t draw the romantic associations that the 72 Shaolin Arts do.

My own games, however, draw heavily on Eastern influences.  They’re as much Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as they are Lord of the Rings.  So a monk class is, if not vital, at least important to my longest-running game world, Galadria.

The monk class is going to appear.  Eventually.  But since I don’t want to wait a year or more to see and use it, I’ve decided to create one of my own in the meantime.

It’s in an “alpha” stage right now — the pieces are all there: all of the powers from level 1 to level 30, the class features, the related feats, 7 paragon paths, and an epic destiny.  But they’re not all finished.  There will be balancing, and there will be revisions.

Still, it’s a start.