What You Did While You Were a Werewolf

Who wouldn't want to be a lycanthrope?  You get strength, invulnerability, near immortality for just a bit of anger issues.  Point your aggression at foes and it's win-win.  But, what if characters that catch lycanthropy have no control over it whatsoever and in fact only learn after the fact what they did while changed.  This seems more in line with the original folklore than later Hollywood and D&D renditions.  I'm imagining this as a Rientsian carousal type table.  Some ideas:

1. Killed the party's livestock
2. Killed all the livestock in a campaign hex
3. Killed a party member's animal friend
4. Killed a random hireling
5. Smashed up the local tavern/hangout
6. Infected a family member
7. Killed the local priest/clergy
8. Infected the local priest/clergy
9. Killed the local ruler
10. Infected the local ruler
11. Wake up next to unconscious young person (infected?)
12. Wake up next to unconscious child(ren) (infected?)
13. Wake up next to sleeping animal of lycanthropy type
14. Wake up in a bell tower
15. Wake up under a bridge
16. Wake up on a an altar
17. Stashed bodies in a bell tower
18. Stashed bodies under a bridge
19. Left bodies on a an altar
20. Infected all of a local orphanage
21. Infected all of a local brothel
22. Destroyed local apothecary gardens, good luck finding healing/potions
23. Accidentally set fire to childhood home/friend's home
24. Accidentally set fire to local place of worship
25. All your equipment is missing/scattered
26. Accidentally set fire to the docks
27. Dug up a corpse from local cemetery and brought it back with you
28. Dug up all dead in local cemetery
29. Slaughtered a city guard patrol
30. Let yourself be seen clearly from the highest point nearby, hunted now

Symptoms & Side Effects II

Follow up from here.  I've given mechanical effects to symptoms that could come from diseases, drugs, or just magical traps.  These are temporary physical effects mostly.  Mental afflictions will need their own separate madnesses chart.  Here is the pdf.

I realized that in a campaign world where disease matters, where it can spread and kill people, visible symptoms will have serious in-game effects.  Rashes, pustules, or skin coloration might prevent you from shopping, or even entering town depending on the context.  I suppose that means that neither this nor the disease chart I've been working on are truly "one-pagers" because they are dependent on each other.  The more deadly the pox causing disease is in your campaign the more npcs will freak out when they see Joe fighter has them.

I think another big effect is interfering with spell casting.  I put "miscast" in the chart to make things more interesting I might interpret that as:

1. Wrong memorized spell cast
2. Wrong target
3. Too weak, half power
4. Too strong double effects

 I suppose you could make all those symptoms interfere with prayers and petitions too.  Hard, with a blasting headache, to pray for anything but relief.

The specific number mentioned for seizures is taken from Zak's lucky numbers-- player chooses a number, say 9, any time they roll it they have a seizure, whether its from trying to hit in combat or trying to save from something else.  Though, maybe it should be a number from 1-6 to include more possible rolls, like listening at doors etc.

Escape from Animal Island

This is from the session last Friday.

Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Derrick - F
    Jimbo - hireling
    Zigfried - trained baboon
Athydas - MU
Gessup - DP

G's player decides to try out a cleric (divine petitioner) so his one-eyed fighter and hireling are shelved for the time being.  The rest of the session is essentially one tense battle.  The party realizes there is a room with bent bars that no one has ever gone into.  Spike and Athydas then impulsively enter said room to get the action going.

In the room is a puma-pheasant, the most beautiful of all beasts.  Just the sight of it charms Spike, Athydas, Darkyo, Derrick and his hireling Jimbo.  Zigfried the baboon saves but runs off in terror.  Z and company are outside.  Gessup doesn't look.

First round the creature drops Athydas to 0 with one blow.  Next round it drops spike to -1.  Next round it breaks poor, faithful Jimbo's neck.  Gessup has saved and gotten off a few sling stones in the meantime wounding it. 

Z manages to drag Derrick outside, his hirelings trying to rouse him.  Gessup is then mortally wounded.  Darkyo broke the charm and begins to flee.  Then Z puts on his beautiful cap and re-enters the hall (the cap worked the last time one of these was encountered).  There is a tense "charm-off," but both Z and the creature save.  A few rounds and Z slays it in combat.  Gessup cries out to his god for aid and is answered!  The party tends to Athydas.  Spike's player doesn't want him saved, chooses to roll up a new character.

After discussion and poking about, the party finds a passage heading down, a boarded up door, some shining objects on the ground.  Derrick falls into some soft, burrowed-out earth in front of a door injuring himself. In the chamber they find a chest.  Z has suspicions that it is similar to one they saw long ago, they test it and it teleports each of them back into some catacombs in the Maw, next to Nidus.

Some thoughts
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The last time the party saw the other of the pair of chests was almost a year of real time ago, Nov 25th, 2010.  The last time they've been in Nidus was in February this year.

There is unexplored stuff on the island, I wonder if they'll go back, now that they know they have a way.  Though, I think they are sick of it.

The mage, who just died last session, reaches death's door again!  In talking with him about it, he feels someone has to do something or the rest of the timid/undecided party will never move.  They need to work this out as a group or play will never be fun, bursts of annoyed action that results in deaths because it was incautious.

I didn't like so much that Gessup managed to escape a mortal wound the way Athadys did just last session.  Maybe this mortal wound thing isn't a good idea after all.  Although, it was just a chance.  His petition had to be answered and he then had to roll enough hit points healed to live.  Both happened.  Maybe I'll let it ride.  I think it's much less likely to work again.

I really like the charming monster, that thing is dangerous.  I also like Z's cap.  I thought it would be too powerful, but when I started making all his hirelings and party members roll to save or just following him around dumbfounded it limited greatly when he can use it to good effect.

I screwed up with Spike's character.  She didn't want to play him any more so, sure, roll up another character.  But the one she rolled up was a total scrub with multiple stats below 7.  I said, sure roll another character.  This one got multiple 14s.  I should have made her stick with the scrub, if she wanted to switch, but I was distracted with the rest of the game (still ongoing) and wanted her to have fun (but thinking high stats will make play more fun is the wrong philosophy if you ask me, she could still fail her save versus the puma-pheasant with this new character if she's just going to run into rooms willy nilly).

Have no idea what they'll want to do tonight in Nidus.  I'm trying to make some NPCs and rumors.

Cleric Petitions Again

Here's a pro-tip for you rules system designers, try explaining your rule to a drunk.  Last Friday, one of my players decided he wanted to try a cleric to mix up the fighter brigade.  He'd been imbibing before I even arrived.  And I had to explain my cleric petition rules about five times.  Now, I'm not saying all rules should be so simple that buzzed folks understand them, but the multiple attempts at explaining how my petition rules work certainly forced me to think of them holistically and from every angle.   I've never really been satisfied with them anyway.  The difficulty is that I've wanted to incorporate diminishing returns for asking for miracles over and over and for asking for miracles of more and more power.  I've found it hard to be simple and work with both axes.  Here's another attempt:

I'll give a cleric 3 glass beads and this little chart. They can put their bead anywhere they want but only three times. Any miracles of an order below their level will work 70% of the time.  I think I'll give them 3 more beads at 4th and then again at 8th level. I also give permanent miraculous powers to these holy people at those levels (think halos, healing touch that works 100% but limited times per day etc.)  This is weaker than a traditional cleric, but maybe not too much.  An 8th level cleric in S&W Core has 10 spells, and my cleric will only have 9 and then no guarantee they will work.  But then, my clerics could choose to use 4 6th level spells at 70% where the S&W cleric can't even cast that level spell at all.  So I guess what I'm trying to do is inject power and uncertainty; if the entities you're petitioning listen, a cleric in my world can do powerful things, but you can never be so prideful to expect things to happen for you.

The Resurrected Mage and The One-Eyed Fighter

Wanted to capture what happened last Friday before we play again tonight.

G - F
    La Bouche - hireling
    Janis - hireling
Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
    Fabrino - hireling
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Athydas - MU

The lineup keeps changing, and Z and Spike's players coming late, so information sharing has been a problem.  So, not too much accomplished.  Some poking around the outbuildings of the villa at the top of the terraced island they were shipwrecked on.  Then the party decided to mess with the animal hybridization machine some more.  G decided he wanted a little dog.

The machine is upstairs, the animals appear in a large room downstairs.  So G tells Athydas, to go downstairs an wait for it to appear.  It appears, I roll dice and it streaks off into the jungle.  Athydas yells up "your dog ran away."  I rolled for wandering monsters and sure enough got one.  Now I had rolled earlier that some Headless tribesmen had been encountered and gotten complete surprise on the party, but that they were 70 feet away.  So I ruled that they were going to watch, wait and look for an opportunity to strike.  Apparently this was that time.

Three headless with spears entered the front door of the villa's main building.  Athydas saw them, got initiative and took off running for the stairs.  The headless all threw their spears miss, miss, hit.  Roll damage.  Max at 6.  Athydas has 3 hitpoints.  I looked at that roll and was sorely tempted to fudge it-- here was the only mage back to play and he was dead in one blow.  But they had sent him foolishly off on his own, he was hollering foolishly in an unsafe place, and he had chosen to memorize magic missile instead of sleep which might have saved him here.  So I let it stand, but I remembered musing on mortal wounds to make death less anti-climactic.  So I told Athydas' player: "you have a spear through your gut and you are dying, you'll be dead in a few rounds.  What do you want to do?"  He asked if he could cast magic missile at his killer.  I said sure, he did and killed that headless.

At this point the rest of the party is rushing down the stairs and engaging the remaining two headless.  Everyone is rolling bad and Fabrino, Z's long-time hireling is killed.  The other headless are finally dispatched.  I ask Athydas' player, if there is anything he wants to say this round.  He says "Can I cast The Fortunate Punishment?"  Aha, I realized the genius of this.  This was a scroll the party had found in his absence and given to him this session.  He actually has this spell in his book but had not memorized it.  The spell allows the casted upon, instead of dying, to lose 1d6 points from a stat of their choice permanently.  So, I ruled that with his dying breaths he could cast this spell.  He chose strength and rolled a 2, (can't remember if that leaves him with 7 or 5 now).  He saved himself in a completely badass and unexpected way.

Later, G who has had to lead Darkyo around everywhere because she was permanently blinded by a spitting cobra, decided to try something drastic to help her.  He has an Obsidian Blade, that will heal someone for as many hp as you bleed out of yourself.  He decided to try and cut out his own eye for Darkyo.  I though this is crazy, it wasn't meant to be used that way, but I liked his boldness.  I rolled to see if it worked and the dice said no.  But even the very next day, I decided it was too cool to not let work.  So tonight I will tell them them both have vision in a single eye.