oD&D (1974 Dungeons & Dragons) v. Pathfinder

Six weeks ago I joined an ongoing oD&D campaign. We’re three sessions in, and I’m having a blast. In some ways, it’s very different from the D&D I’m familiar with (which is largely 3^rd Edition derivatives, with liberal portions of AD&D and 4^th Edition and a dash of 5^th for zest). I thought I’d put together this table to illustrate how it’s different from my current squeeze, Pathfinder.

Here's a handy reference in case you're wondering "Just how different are these games?"

	oD&D	Pathfinder
Character Creation	Super simple. Done in 10 minutes. What distinguishes one Magic-User from another is his/her personality, loot, and motivations. The negative is that there aren't many crunchy options. You get one spell as a level one Magic-User, determined randomly, and you probably only have 2 hit points. Good luck.	Complex, but the process is very rewarding. I love building characters that can do interesting tricks with the game mechanics. On the downside, my friend's latest character (Sorcerer 10) can cast 31 different spells. While that could be seen as a plus, he's never played a Sorcerer before, and printing off a spellbook for handy reference is kind of a pain when it's that thick and detailed.
DM Prep	I haven’t prepped an oD&D game myself, but there’s a big difference between this stat block: Werewolf: Move 120, AC 5, HD 5 [hp 20] 2 attacks [1d6/claws]. Only hurt by silver or magic weapons.	And this Pathfinder stat block, which is so big I’m just linking it. That said, having a highly detailed and descriptive system isn’t bad, but it does dramatically increase DM prep time.
Lethality and challenge	Crazy lethal. No negative hit points—you hit zero hp, you die. Cure Light Wounds only heals 1d6 and doesn’t show up until level 2. Pray you never fail a saving throw. That said, it is amazingly satisfying to roleplay your way out of a combat encounter you have no chance of winning with force, and it happens pretty often in this system.	In my experience, Paizo published material isn’t terribly dangerous. It's designed for Society play (ie. pick-up groups full of characters that aren’t likely to have good synergy), so to be fair, it can't just be hard-mode all the way through. Homebrew campaigns can ratchet up the lethality by tailoring fights to fit the party, though, in my humble opinion, the Challenge Rating system is utterly unreliable.
Accessibility	Rules are tersely written and require deep reading, not skimming. Upside: They’re short. The layout of the old books is just awful, though, but if you simply can’t tolerate the bad layout, good news: Swords and Wizardry did a great job of  (essentially) re-packaging it for visually oriented people like myself. If I ever DM an oD&D game, I'll likely use S&W.	Pathfinder can overwhelm new players with choices. Hell, it can overwhelm seasoned veterans with choices. Modules are also very densely written. Honestly, It’s probably better to come to Pathfinder after you’ve already played a couple different systems.
What do I do with all this gold?	Since you get XP for acquiring gold, everyone’s a treasure hunter. Of course, spending your gold is tricky, since there are no magic item shops per se. Instead, you can get lost in the minutiae of building castles and strongholds, or figuring out how many mercenaries to hire this month for your conquests. I personally enjoy this kind of thing, but I can easily see where other people would find it dull. A good DM needs to know the in-game options available to his players and be able to deal with greedy players (like myself) who want to set up trade caravans, rob topaz quarries, and offer competitive banking options to the oligarchy.	So you’re level 5 and have 11,000 gold? Here’s a long list of magic items with price tags attached. Some people hate the idea of commoditized magic, but I’m not one of them. I think it’s a reason to have your character loot those golden idols and trigger the boulder trap, because there’s a Phylactery of Negative Energy Channeling waiting for you back in town if you can only scrounge up 2,000 more gold pieces! It does, however, mean you’re likely to have shopkeepers that are 15th level wizards with iron golem bodyguards, just to keep greedy 2nd-level rogues from looting the +3 longsword of haste he’s got on the 20% off rack. (Or you could just let them steal it and make it a plot arc, which has worked well for me in the past). Or you just have players who will happily wander through your game world without questioning any of your conventions, but unless you all agree to play blissful naives who are too fragile for this world, that’s never going to happen. (Amazingly, my current group elected to play Lawful wunderkinds, so I'm actually living the dream.)
The Endgame	The endgame is running a kingdom, your thralls worshipping at your feet, reciting litanies of your legendary deeds. You can still die to a spider bite, but you have a dozen heirs and retainers ready to take your place. You’re a mortal with a fascinating legacy.	You’re a superhero. You summon angels, fly all the time, travel across dimensions in the blink of an eye, and assassinate the gods themselves. Even if you could be killed, you’d just come back as a clone, buy some new gear, and retrieve all your old gear once you’re through meting out vengeance.
Sandbox v. Railroad (Definitions) Sandbox: (copied from Alex Schroeder) Dangers are not adapted to the strength of the party. Generally speaking, it’s safer near civilized settlements. The further you move into the wilderness, the more dangerous it is. That’s how players control the risks they want to take....The actions of your characters determine the direction the campaign will take. There is no planned ending for the campaign. As long as you keep investigating rumors, exploring locations and following quests, [the DM] will keep developing the game world in that direction. The harder you look, the more there is to see. Railroad: In this context, I'm using railroad to mean, "A game with a structured, linear plot in which the characters are expected to take on the role of protagonist or antagonist." There's probably a better word for this idea than 'railroad' but I can't think of what it is.	This game is designed to be a sandbox. Monsters get harder the further away from town you travel, so if you morons want to kill the Dragon of Doom at level one, you should have just told me you didn’t want to play and we could’ve all gone to a movie.  Conversely, if you don’t want to go to the Forsaken Temple of Linear Progress that I’ve spent hours prepping, well, there’s no way in hell I’m getting you through those (obviously trapped) front doors.	Pathfinder is great for running challenging yet balanced encounters in a linear fashion. Some of the modules/adventure paths make BIG ASSUMPTIONS about player motivations (Hell’s Rebels, I’m looking at you. You had so much potential! Grr!) and that can be frustrating both as a player and a DM. If you’re running a homebrew campaign, most of those issues disappear, but then those ugly, multi-page stat blocks show up and make on-the-fly DMing feel like a chore. So, I guess, Pathfinder is better suited for linear gaming, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad, choiceless railroad devoid of player agency. It’s just much, much harder to run a sandbox game in Pathfinder than it honestly should be.

So there you go. It’s a biased, far-from-comprehensive list, but it gets the point across.

As an aside, I must admit I had some misconceptions about playing oD&D. I played a game (Castle Zagyg) at GenCon last year and loved it, mostly because of the quirky people at the table and the excellent DM. I learned that lots of people still played oD&D and that the old stuff was getting harder to find, which I found really intriguing.

Then someone told me about the Old School Renaissance. 1974 D&D was still alive and well and hey, you should check it out, there are a lot of indie gamers making new and cool stuff. I didn’t go too deep, though, mostly because my next foray to OSR was through Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and Lamentations doesn’t skimp on the horror, gore, and sex (which is fine, it’s a game for adults, but reading spell effects in the core rulebook that talk about gang rape or genital mutilation was like, “Nope, pass.”) Lamentations also uses THAC0 and AD&D conventions that I find obtuse, but again, like it says in the header, I don’t hate on systems. If you’re playing LoFP and loving it, shine on you crazy diamond.

(Despite the assertions I’ve made in the preceding paragraph, Scenic Dunnsmouth and A Red and Pleasant Land are both LofP products and incredibly fascinating reads. I doubt I’d ever use them exactly-as-written, but they’re inspiring material for any game that makes use of weird horror.)

That said, my current oD&D game is set in the marvelous Yoon-Suin, which the author describes as "Fantasy Tibet by somebody who has never been to Tibet and knows nothing about it, but likes the idea of yak-folk and self-mummifying monks." It's a trip. You should check it out.

Pathfinder S1: Clash of the Kingslayers (spoilers)

I ran Clash of the Kingslayers last weekend for my current PF group - Paladin 9, Hunter 10, Sorcerer 10, NPC Cleric 12, and they absolutely destroyed it. They had fun. I had fun. Fun fun fun. It took ~8 hours, probably more than we needed but we were drinking hard cider and got distracted by movie trailers for like an hour.

So if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you're (A) interested in running stand alone modules for mid-level Pathfinder groups and (B) looking for good modules to run.

(If that's not you, check out my post on Maggot Lamias if you're into D&D 5th Edition and you don't mind some artistic nudity, or maybe this other thing about killing your friends in RPGs.)

With D&D 3.0/3.5/early Pathfinder modules, monsters tend to be far too frail. Power creep is real. My advice is not to fight it by nerfing players, but to simply double all the hit points for your monsters. The Hunter can throw down 100 points of damage on a turn, easily, and the Paladin averages 30 per hit, occasionally reaching 100+ on Critical Smite Evils. If I want to challenge them, I need to keep my monsters around for more than a single turn.

For this mod specifically, I rounded the Doomguides up from 44 to 50 hp, and made the hydra/dragon lake monster a Colossal monster with triple hit points. It made sense to me to keep the fodder monsters weak and make the boss monsters beefier. This made the Manyfaced One a scary fight, but I'm glad I did it.

These evil dwarf valkyries are metal as fuck. (Artist Unknown)

POSITIVE
Abadox. At some point, the dungeon itself animates and becomes a monster, with the players trapped inside. How cool is that?

Tough Fights. The Manyfaced One deals 1d4 ability damage to a character's LOWEST stat! He also deals ability damage when he "reveals his true form," 1d4 to each of STR/DEX/WIS unless you make a saving throw. Brutal. A follow-up fight with a pair of Spectres had my players justifiably panicked.

Intriguing. The political intrigue in the first section of the adventure is actually a lot of fun to roleplay. It's a little useless as-is: It'd be nice to have some noblemen listed in the dwarf king's hold, but I suppose Pathfinder Society is more about "Ok, read them this text block, have them select YES or NO, then read the following text block depending on what they said." Ok, that sounds like a complaint (and it is, but about PFS, not this mod specifically), but I enjoyed the introduction and my players enjoyed bantering with nobledwarves.

You commit regicide. How fun is that? As a DM, you need to be prepped to deal with whatever happens next for Glimmerhold once the king is dead, but that's good material for future games.

NEGATIVE
It's verbose. You'll need to make a couple crib sheets in order to get through this module without constantly re-reading stuff or looking up monster abilities.

Interesting yet pointless backstory. Yes, the betrayal of the dwarf king fuels the main conflict, but the players go to the monastery because "The King commands it!" The Mistbreather Clan, the Rovagug giants, a hundred years of history and intrigue, it's all just so peripheral. My players never figured out the "mystery" behind the curse, and didn't care to figure it out once the monsters were dead and the treasures looted.

Bad layout. Pretty standard with Paizo stuff, honestly, but this mod is particularly egregious. There's an encounter with a ghostly dwarf monk that includes a two-page stat block (seriously?), but the stats for Manticores are just given as a page number. Boo.

Overall? I recommend it. Just be prepared to do some real work and make it fit your group.

Psychadelic Fantasy Hexcrawl Brainstorm

I read this post and had to try it. I did a quick skim at a random starting spot, ran out of covers, and started adding in stuff from other random fantasy art I had saved on my desktop. I also ran some random name generators, etc. Far from complete and not really my own ideas but a fun brainstorm anyway.

"A Song of Blood." John Buscema.

The disembodied head of a long-vanquished demon lord refuses to die. In the wilderness, a tribe of misguided humans feed slaves into its ravenous maw. They are supported by a misguided prince who believes he has befriended the demon.

A forgotten race of headless bat-men (they have totemic faces in their chests) rule over a nightmarish cavern network, domesticating enormous, blind serpentine worms and harvesting psychedelic fungi.

A tribe of gray skinned goblins has begun kidnapping human women. They drag them off to strange, mauve ruins and perform despicable midnight rituals.

Zarazig Mountain. Fighting men from a dozen different clans have gathered here to fight for the bemusement of a white-clad sorcerer with a skeleton’s face.

Prismatic golems capture travelers for their wizard master. They are kept in an elaborate slave pit until the wizard chooses them for his unspeakable rites.

An enormous orange aberration dwells in the roots of an ancient tree, feeding on those who trespass through its forest valley.

Green-scaled lizardmen dwell here in great numbers, warring against pathetic humans and those who trespass into the ruined primeval city they call home.

A garden of living trees (with disturbingly human mouths and eyes like sunsets) watch over an incredible hoard of lost treasure. The wealth of hundreds of would-be plunderers is strewn amidst their roots.

An otherwise peaceful city has a gargoyle problem (sudden appearances, kidnapped women, horrified onlookers). It is worst when the moon is full.

  

A stormy lake plagued by fierce crocodiles.

A sorceress (revealing red attire, a-la Vampirella, wearing a golden skull mask) rules from a crystal tower. She delights in tormenting souls and commands a vast and varied collection of incorporeal undead.

The women of a remote village have been cursed with lycanthropy. They do not permit those who know their secret to live.

A tribe of spear-fighters has learned to tame and ride crocodiles. Their small empire is expanding rapidly. Their elites have become tauric man-crocodiles and dwell in a sunken city beneath a lake.

Fat, legless gargoyles (their lower half is that of a serpent) hunt trespassers in their mountain home.

Icecrown Mountains. The land is covered in a thick coat of windblown snow and ice.

Were-lions dwell here, brutally oppressed by a sorceress in an ivory skull mask. Her legions are her experiments, poor bestial things that cannot disobey her yet hate her with every fiber of their being. The secret of the sorceress’ power is a demonic stone face in the heart of her tower.

A were-lion stalks the ruins, claiming women for his harem and men for his sustenance.

Green-scaled lizardmen wage war against their red-scaled subterranean counterparts.

A lost city protected by a dwindling order of knights who ride giant hawks into battle. These knights worship hawk-headed gods and prey upon the man-crabs of the lower cliffs.

A lonely bog. It is the last known location of the fabled Eye of Set, a jewel worth more than kingdoms. The swamp’s most famous inhabitant is a dark-haired woman who wears the skin of green leopards; most believe she is a sorceress.

Bat-infested caves which house the remains of a forgotten race of giants. Some giants have become undead guardians.

Atop a bare mountain, green-scaled lizardfolk pay homage to their petty goddess: a great serpent with a gorgon’s head.

Man-crabs dwell in a sunken city, placated by pirate gold.

Buandu Plains. A sentient stone golem is worshipped by local tribesmen. Its prowess in battle has made them wealthy and warlike, yet dependent on the creature. Its high priests wear cloaks of yellow silk and helmets of beaten gold.

A squat, deformed sorceress has mastered pyromancy. She teaches her secrets to those who show her homage. She is protected by a tribe of were-bears.

A coven of green-scaled lizardfolk meet in a benighted valley. They make deals with ape-wizards, trading gorgeous violet stones for pyromancy.

In this ancient labyrinth, ape-wizards have successfully bred two-headed purple tyrannosaurs.

Orange skinned goblins in pink loincloths dwell in a green stone ruin. They serve the whims of the ape-wizards.

Near the lake’s shore, a small city built within the calcified remains of a gargantuan angler fish.

An ancient monastery guarded by one-eyed yellow serpents. Its steps ascend to the clouds. Its guardians never sleep.

Gargantuan, pale green dragonflies with exaggerated, sharp-toothed humanoid mouths live amidst a cold pine forest. A single tower of white stone with no visible entrance dominates the landscape, rising a thousand feet into the sky. The local barbarians believe that riding a dragonfly is the greatest show of bravery.

The undead remnant of a powerful barbarian chief rules over a red, steaming lake. He demands sacrifices of children and stands twice as tall as a normal man. He wears a tattered black cloak, a horned helm, and wields a great-sword with a human skull counterweight. In battle, he rides a black stallion with bat wings and glowing red eyes.

Gray goblin cannibals live in squalor on the shore of an underground lake.

Kinbaram Fields. Mottled green dinosaurs rule this sandy waste.

Deep below the earth, a many-tentacled yellow thing with a woman’s face speaks prophesy from a clay-stained red lake.

A white primordial serpent, two hundred feet long, rules over the broken ruin of an ancient castle.

Several desiccated corpses are chained to a monolithic stone engraved with alien symbols. The surrounding desert offers few clues.

Dreaming Forest. The trees are full of dancing lights and mysterious laughter.

A three-headed spider demon (the heads are human with five eyes apiece and horrible distended tongues) rules this forest, worshipped by savage human cannibals.

The smoking ruins of a small town. The air is filled with smoke.

Bloodfen Mire. A ring-shaped stone monolith floats serenely in the sky. Below, the trees look strangely like men. Approaching the monolith is difficult: Not only because it is hovering, but also because of the predatory trees that stalk the fen.

Fighting pits of the orange-scaled lizardmen. Dinosaurs, subterranean beasts, and captured nomads fight for the amusement of aristocratic snake-faced gorgons.

A tribe of elephant-riding nomads is expanding its territory.

Empress of Silk. A green-silk-clad human sorceress with power over spiders rules this ancient city, as she has for a thousand years. Order is kept by spider-riding knights. Fates are decided in the gladiator pits.

5th Edition - Maggot Lamia

Maggot Lamia (CR 4, 1100 XP)

Large monstrosity, chaotic evil
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 97
Speed 20 ft.
Str 18, Dex 13, Con 15, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 16

Skills Deception +7, Insight +4, Stealth +3
Senses darkvision 30 ft, passive Perception 12
Languages Abyssal, Common

Multiattack. The lamia makes two melee attacks.
Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8+4 piercing damage).

Intoxicating Touch. Melee Spell Attack: Hit: The target is magically cursed for 1 hour. Until the curse ends, the target has disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws and all ability checks.

This is hands down the best image Google showed me for "lamia."
It's not what I was going for with this monster but hey, it's too good.
 By John Suarez.

Similar to their mythological counterparts, lamias are an amalgam of the harpy, the siren, the succubus: essentially, they're yet another temptress. We're spoiled for choice when it comes to temptresses in D&D. The maggot lamia is a variation on this theme, different in that it promises physical metamorphosis, not sexual fulfillment, to those who serve it.

Maggot lamias are abhorrent. Their upper bodies are grotesque women who would've been great extras on The Hills Have Eyes. They have the lower bodies of maggots. They also lack the ability to change their appearance, and so must always be seen for what they truly are.

Their best method of defense is the secretion of a thaumaturgical pheromone that causes humanoids to feel an intense desire to serve. The maggot lamia instinctively seeks to transform herself into something else, and the beings which fall under her command take on this desire as well.

Successful maggot lamias establish cults which keep them fed—and they prefer the flesh of sentient humanoids. At some point during their life cycle, their flesh begins to harden; the maggot lamia will soon seclude herself to undergo a potent metamorphosis into—well, that's up to you. In classic D&D, chasmes, being fly demons, would work perfectly. If you're playing D&D 3.5, you could slap the Insectile template on her, bump up her hit dice, and give her a fly speed. Really, the possibilities are endless.

From a design standpoint, the maggot lamia (or a clutch of maggot lamias) serves as the 'big bad' of a low level cult. They can unite a wide array of humanoids under their control, adding mystery and variety to a dungeon crawl, and if they're not dealt with in a timely manner by the PCs, they can 'upgrade' and become even more dangerous the next time they're encountered.

Since they're always repulsive, and the beings serving them grow to want to serve them (because they, too, aspire to become more), exposing them as monsters does nothing to disillusion their followers. They are monsters who want to become more monstrous; they are evil, and they want to be worse.

Two Stories With Regard to Killing People

Some people love save vs. death ray or be forever destroyed, and other people think it’s the dumbest crap.  And maybe I’m weird but I like all of it.

This post is about things I hate.

What do I hate? As a player, my #1 buzzkill is feeling like nothing you do matters. You were scripted to kill the Vampire when you started this campaign and no matter how badly you fuck it up, you’re going to kill the Vampire or I will turn this car around so fast. Removing agency from the player is essentially using your friends to stroke your ego—“Ooh, yes, I’m such a good dungeon master. Mmm, look at my nuance. You love three-act story structure, don’t you? Say it! Oh god, my adventure, it’s climaxing!” If I fuck up, I want to deal with the consequences. Hell, even if I try my best, I should still be able to fail.

Example: In a d20 Modern game, my gunslinger suggests to the party’s mage that we visit a lonely lighthouse during a thunderstorm. We know there are things out there that only emerge during stormy weather, and despite the fact that the other two PCs are engaged with researching how to kill a homicidal fire demon and can’t accompany us, we go anyway. We get ambushed. It’s a brilliant ambush, honestly – troglodytes attack our boat, capsize it, and drag us underwater to their lair. The mage can’t cast spells underwater, and my enchanted revolver can’t shoot with water-ruined bullets. We are so screwed.

Despite this, we manage to kill two troglodytes with boot knives and start swimming toward the surface, but we flub our rolls. We’re drowning. We fail more rolls, we suffocate, we die. The person playing the mage and I exhale, not realizing we were holding our breaths. What an awesome and dramatic way to go out!

Don't get me started.

But we don’t die. We wake up on the shore, inexplicably, with some vague MacGuffin quest psionically implanted in our brains. What the hell? I loved playing my gunslinger, but he died when I rolled a 1 on my Swim check and failed my Fortitude save. He should’ve been left in the water. Instead, I’m left feeling like none of this otherwise amazing session mattered. Is this a game or is the DM just using us to polish his novel?

Now, I hate to be too critical here, because the DM who ran this Modern game was one of the very best I’ve ever had and his games were, overall, really very wonderful, but even the best DMs mess up. Please, don't do this. Let your players die.

What’s my #1 buzzkill as a DM? Players who aren’t engaged with the other people at the table. I don’t really care if people are checking their phone or having side-conversations when they’re off camera—I mean, it’s not ideal but I’m not going to fight human nature. Even a player who is all like, “Ok, well, my character doesn’t give a fuck so I’m just gonna try to murder some pig farmers” can work out great, and honestly, I’ve loved DMing for those crazy Chaotic Evil bastards, but it doesn’t work if the rest of the party is Lawful Good. Likewise, a character that just wants to dungeon crawl and kill monsters in a subtle, Game of Thrones style adventure clearly didn’t pay attention while everyone was rolling characters.

Example: I’m running a Pathfinder campaign for a trio of Chaotic Evil players (not my current game). They’re having fun looting the ruins of a long-dead Cyclopean temple complex, fighting fungus-infested undead Cyclopses therein. A new player wants to join, and we all welcome him.

I explain, “So, the game is a sandbox pastiche: the heroes are chaotic evil criminals who have meddled with Incomprehensible Powers and are damned for it.  You’d be coming in as someone who isn’t part of their core group, and you’d be coming in during a dungeon crawl. It’s up to you to roleplay your way into their good graces. Are you OK with that?”

New Guy: “Yeah man, sure!”

Me: “OK. Because if you’re not OK with that, we can find a way to introduce you after they wrap their current adventure. The group has been fighting Cylcopses...”

New Guy: “Oh man, I love Cyclopses! I want to play a Cyclops! I’ll be a Cyclops hunting down the fungal Cyclopses in the ruins, and we can fight ‘em all off together.”

Me: “Uh… OK. Well, run it past the group.”

The Group: “We could really use a Cleric and we kind of kill Cyclopses on sight.”

New Guy: “Cool. Cyclops Fighter it is!”

Art by m0ai @ DeviantArt. If only this image had existed when I ran this adventure.

He spends forever on his Cyclops Fighter. Won’t ask for help. When he’s finally done, we all sit down to play, and I introduce his character at an organically convenient moment about 10 minutes into the game. He appears, bellows a challenge to the party’s Ranger and moments later they are fighting, and it’s kinda fun but also confusing because there’s zero context for who New Guy’s character is or what he’s doing here.

The Sorcerer asks, “Who are you? Why are you here!?”

New Guy: “Silence, coward! I will master you, and your pathetic race will bow to me!”

The Cyclops is totally losing the fight and the Sorcerer says, “Yield! Throw down your weapons, you cannot possibly defeat us!”

New Guy: “I will destroy you all!”

The Ranger has some sick rolls next round. A glorious, full-on murder spree of attacks all land on the Cyclops, and he goes from standing to dead.

New Guy: “What the fuck, dude? You killed me!?”

Cue awkward silence. New Guy was legit shocked at what had just occurred. I was shocked that he was shocked. Dumbstruck, I said, “Honestly, what did you think was going to happen?”

New Guy: “I’ve never had a character die before. I mean, that has legit never happened to me. Wow. Dude (to the Ranger), you’re an asshole.”

Lucky for us, the guy playing the Ranger actually was an asshole (<3 U PAUL), so he just laughed in the New Guy’s face and the rest of us kept playing. Needless to say, we didn’t game with the New Guy again. From time to time, however, I still reflect on this incident. I don’t know what I could have done differently. The New Guy eventually spoke to us again (we were all coworkers, so it’s not like we could really avoid each other) but he never really came to terms with his own role in his character’s untimely demise. Baffling.

Briefly Sort-of-Reviewing Assault on Castle Stormbringer

Spoilers maybe? There's a trapped book and a storm giant. So if that ruined it, you have my pity.

Yesterday, I finished running Assault on Castle Stormbringer. It's out of print, so you've got two options: find a pdf online, or go on Amazon or Ebay and shell out $30. Either way, you're money ahead. I got a good 16 hours of game time from it; your mileage may vary, but it's still a pretty cheap two-to-four session adventure.

Cover art by Chuck Whelon.

It's a simple adventure really: The heroes need to infiltrate a castle built by storm giants for storm giants (it's enormous) and kill Stozari Stormbringer, a maniacal storm giant druid. There are a few clever traps and a lot of high-hit-point monsters to fight, and some outside the box thinking is required to even get into the damn place without fighting an army of giants.

My players like a challenge. I sent three of them in at level 9 (geared as roughly level 11) with a level 11 NPC Bard, and oh my god so much killing.

This was their roster (And I should mention: I ran Pathfinder, not D&D 3.0, the system for which it was originally written. Conversion took about 10 minutes).

Ariosto, the Paladin (Warrior of the Holy Light archetype)
Mancy, the War Priest
Vruk, the Hunter (with Hakumet the lion)
Eldorel, the Bard-who-somehow-survived

They put out a lot of damage. The Paladin can hit for over 100 in a turn if he doesn't flub his attacks, and the Hunter plus his kitty (plus the Bard's bonus damage) aren't far behind (and make up for it by being amazing with skill checks). The War Priest was a new character and died mid-way through the session, so I never got a chance to see how much face he could really melt if he tried, but he did have a few emotionally satisfying ogre kills.

So, yeah, War Priests shouldn't read books. Or roll 1s.
And they really shouldn't do both at the same time.
(Not sure who the artist is on this one)

And I killed two of them. The War Priest died to a trap, and the Paladin died during the final glorious combat. They made it out with barely half the treasure, limping and broken and ecstatic they'd overcome such an insanely hard opponent. They spent most of their loot on resurrecting the Paladin and will probably spend the rest rebuilding the city that the storm giantess destroyed during the preamble. It was really a wonderful session.

I think it was the aesthetic of being tiny heroes hiding under chairs or lifting up ogre mattresses to see if there's anything underneath that really brought this mod to life. Something as simple as a change of scale can go a long way toward making an environment seem fresh.

Stozari herself is a hell of an opponent. I edited her only slightly. Instead of fighting her in her lair, the PCs ambushed her at breakfast, so I replaced her usual coterie with a pair of Ogre Barbarians and the Ogre Mage Druid which escaped from an earlier fight. This made the Challenge Rating of the fight slightly higher, so I dropped Stozari's lowest attack with her greatsword - my reasoning is that it's way more fun to be nearly killed than to be killed outright in one activation, and Stozari could kill any one of them outright if she hit on three attacks in a round, but would need to get lucky to do it in two.

I'd love to hear other folks' experiences with this mod, if you've had 'em.

The Repercussions of Bible Camp

In my current Pathfinder campaign the players decided to all worship Korada. They refer to themselves as Bible Camp, and undertake missions for the church. They all interpret Korada's will slightly differently, and argue over the correct interpretation of faith. (All except the heathen Hunter, who replaced the ascetic Monk after he was crushed-to-death by a giant boa constrictor, but I digress.) 

I love this mechanic. I especially love how it gives them all common ground and acts as a teamwork-inducer, and want to incorporate something like Bible Camp into my next campaign. So I'm already thinking of how, and I've decided to tell the next group that (A) they're working for the church and (B) let them choose which church.

The Church has sent you to Bleak Falls to investigate the ever-increasing strangeness there. Considering there are no ordained priests in Bleak Falls who follow your religion, you’ll likely have to answer the question, “You worship what now?”

Lashoon, God of Commerce
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Holy Color: Yellow
Holy Symbol: A golden pyramid
Holy Texts: The Golden Tablets of Lashoon; The Divine Contract; Selling Souls with the Best Intentions

The Church of Lashoon seeks to help others by helping itself. Lashoonites don’t see themselves as greedy because they often give far more than they receive, but other faiths sometimes criticize their ‘materialistic’ spirituality. Lashoon seeks a peaceful world, free from trade disruptions and profitless wars.

Serenéa, Goddess of Holy Light
Alignment: Neutral Good

Holy Color: Orange

Holy Symbols: A blazing orange sun, often with a woman’s face in an expression of repose
Holy Texts: Trials of the Firebrand; The Holy Writ of Purgation; The Battle Hymn of Sun-Blessed Paragons

Followers of Serenéa are called the Serene. They seek the betterment of all through the relentless purge of evil. They hunt down the undead, the debased, and their supporters wherever they may hide. Other faiths sometimes mistake this righteous zeal for wild-eyed fanaticism, but the Serene know better: They protect the innocent and punish the unjust and, in so doing, create a better world.

Igvar Zom, God of Mysteries

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Holy Color: Blue
Holy Symbols: An open book, a cluster of eyes,

Holy Texts: The Seven Inscrutable Scrolls; What the Squirrels Said; Glokojlokoj’Vorkr’Zee: A Memoir

The Church of Igvar Zom is a repository of indecipherable lore, all of which lends insight into the impossible enigma that is the God of Mysteries. Zomits search the world for the unknown and the unknowable, hoping to reveal truths that the common man could never have understand without the help of the priesthood. Some accuse the Church of being reckless or aloof, but Zomits know they cannot make an Omelet of Universal Truth without cracking a few Eggs of Common Decency and Widely Proscribed Taboos.