Wereraven Throwbacks

 I was about to insert a Wereraven (from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) into one of my 5e D&D campaigns, until I read the stat block more closely. 

The NPC in question isn't really meant as a combat challenge, but more of a roleplaying challenge, so I almost rolled ahead with this without looking too closely at the stats. Glad I noticed it now, while I still have time to scour the internet for a different version of the Wereraven, or make up my own custom stats for this NPC.

The stat block in Van Richten's is weirdly retro. It feels like it is from a completely different edition of the game. Here's all the stuff that seems out of place:

Lack of Immunity:  Most lycanthropes in 5e have "Immunity to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks not made with silvered weapons". The Wereraven does not. Instead it has:

The Only Lycanthrope with Regeneration: "The wereraven regains 10 hit points at the start of its turn. If the wereraven takes damage from a silvered weapon or a spell, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the wereraven’s next turn. The wereraven dies only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn’t regenerate."  

It is identical to what a Troll has in 5th Ed, just with silver and magic as it's weakspots instead of fire and acid. So it's not entirely unprecedented for a monster, but it's really unlike any of the other lycanthropes in 5e. it is like lycanthropes in earlier editions, from back when Regeneration was a much more common effect. It seems like the authors of Van Richten's Guide just converted an old 2nd Ed stat block directly, without looking to see how the current version of lycanthropy plays at the table. 

10 HP per turn is more than 100 times better than a Ring of Regeneration (heal 1d6 every 10 minutes) or Ioun Stone of Regeneration (heal 15 every hour).  You might be thinking "yes, but those are magic items a PC might get their hands on"... but if I were to use this Good-Aligned Wereraven as-written, I think my PCs would feel a strong temptation to get themselves bit. Regeneration 10 would be huge on a PC. 

The only downside to lycanthropy in this edition to prevent PCs from seeking it out is this: if you catch lycanthropy your personality and alignment transform to that of the species that bit you, and the GM is free to turn your character into an NPC when that happens... but if our party's Lawful Good Paladin contracted wereravenry and became... Lawful Good? Well, I think their player would be pretty miffed at me taking their character away for that, and rightly so.

I will say that the default 2014 Lycanthrope Damage Immunity rule makes Lycanthropes very dangerous if you don't have an appropriate weapon or spell, but keeps the fights reasonably short if the whole party does have access to such features (and usually they all do by the time you're high enough level to fight were-critters). So it makes you feel like well-equipped competent heroes, and explains why the townsfolk needed you to save them. I'm glad they went with immunity for these monsters (generally) instead of regeneration, which sometimes makes fights drag on forever.

Useless Mimicry: The wereravens have a Mimicry ability that seems entirely pointless. They can duplicate nearly any sound, which has cool roleplay possibilities, but they are hamstrung by not using the current editions typical rules for illusions, tricks or buffs. Seeing through an illusion in 2014 edition PHB usually involves the person using an entire Action to make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You basically don't get to roll unless the player has some reason to wonder if things aren't what they seem, and is willing to waste a turn gambling that they'll roll well. (2024 PHB is basically the same, but they standardized this into the Study Action, which means there's a couple subclasses who can do this as a Bonus Action instead of burning their turn.) 

Instead of following those standards, this mimicry ability can be detected with a Wisdom (Insight) check vs DC 10, with no mention of it taking any other resource (not Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, etc). 

In 5e, the target numbers for such things are usually 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Spellcasting Modifier.  So for a CR 2 monster with all above-average mental traits like this one, I'd expect a DC in the 11 to 13 range, not 10. And since it didn't cost an Action, chances are the whole party is going to want to roll, so somebody's bound to pass it. Even if you do the Insight equivalent of "Passive Perception" so that you're not alerting the table to the fakery by having someone roll... well that DC 10s not enough to fool basically anyone. You'd need a below-average Wisdom and be untrained in order to fail that Passively. (Not that Passive Insight is a thing in 5e either, but my point is that even swapping what skill is being tested to Perception and avoiding the die roll still doesn't salvage this useless ability.)

EDIT: And lastly, it seems odd that a creature with a Mimicry ability doesn't have ranks in Deception skill. I know the GM rarely rolls such skills, but thematically it sure would make sense for this ability to involve such a roll, and/or to give the wereraven Advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks made to mimic a voice or fool someone about what they heard. Just a thought.

ANOTHER EDIT: I know I already said "lastly", but I just noticed that the Language entry says "Common (can't speak in raven form)". That parenthetical clause sure makes the existence/logic of the Mimicry ability even more questionable, doesn't it? I know it's actually like that to be more consistent with the other 5e lycanthropes, but I find it funny and a little frustrating that they stick to the template on this one issue where it would actually make sense to divert, but then go way off the gameplan on more critical stats.

ONE MORE EDIT: I eventually figured out why the DC is 10. It's because they just copy-pasted the Mimicry entry from the normal Raven stat block of the Monster Manual. That basic Raven is CR 0 and Charisma 6,  instead of Wereraven's CR 2 and CHA 14.  It would be a very unusual circumstance if a normal Raven were using its mimicry to trick someone or lure them into an ambush, so it didn't need much in terms of rules. 

The Comte de Stradivarius Gray

 Random idea that just ran through my head, for a plotline for some sort of Urban Fantasy game, that I'm not likely to run anytime soon, but don't want to just lose. In a nutshell:

The big bad is the Comte de St. Germain. (Not sure what his evil scheme is, and for the moment it doesn't matter. I tend to think of him as a villain due to first learning of him via the Continuum RPG, but I realize to many he's more like a mystical wiseman.) 

His immortality is linked to a Stradivarius Violin he owns, in sort of a priceless musical instrument version of Picture of Dorian Gray. The PCs are hit with an ethical dilemma that in order to defeat their opposition they must destroy a ~$20,000,000+ musical instrument. It's a piece of great musical and cultural heritage, as only 650 Stradivarius instruments have survived to the current day. 

And then, after you've given them ample opportunity to make that decision of whether or not to destroy this priceless artifact, you reveal that he's not alone. All 650 owners of such instruments are secretly the immortal rulers of the world. They're probably the Bavarian Illuminati as well, since we're clearly in some conspiracy-theory/trope domain here.

1000 Blank Werewolves

A recent spate of 5 opening cards created for a game of 1,000 Blank White Cards.

 

Anchorite Kastyx Broadpaddle

Needed a memorable way to answer the gate at a nobleman's manorhouse for an upcoming session of D&D, so I dreamt this nonsense up:

Sister Kastyx Broadpaddle is a gnomish anchorite who lives in on a noble family's property and advises them spiritually without ever leaving the blessed dovecote in the backyard (it's the site of some famous miracle, that justifies an anchorite taking a vow to prove their devotion by never leaving the bird-hut). 

Visitors who seek spiritual advice (or the next plot coupon, in the case of the PCs) may approach from the side gate to the grounds and ring a little bell there. She uses Thaumaturgy to answer the door remotely: making her voice 3 times as loud to be heard, but requiring the visitors to hollar their name and intention in return or ring the bell twice for no, etc... Then using Thaumaturgy again to make the gate swing open or closed as appropriate. If some business the PCs bring to her requires the attention of the noble family, she uses Speak With Animals to send a dove deeper onto the property (i.e.: to the manor house) to signal them.

King Of Birds (Dredmor Mod)

 Back on the old Dungeons of Dredmor kick, eh? Back on it? Naw... still on it. 

I made another Dredmor Mod: King Of Birds! 

Birdwatching. Carrier Pigeons. Falconry. This Kingdom is for the birds!

Link: Dungeons of Dredmor Mod: King Of Birds

King of Birds is a support skill for (bird-brained) Warriors with big ambitions. It's a tool-box of useful tricks and upgradable equipment, with a side of random buffs to super-charge your Warrior build. While it does have some attacks in the skill tree, it's not really intended to be your main attack skill by itself. Your falcons are here to bolster their King, not steal his glory nor his throne.

This is a new mod by the maker of Interior Dredmorating, Swashbucklers, Aztecnologist, and a bunch of rooms from various official Dredmor DLCs.

King of Birds showcases a 7-level Warrior Skill, bolstered with a series of related items and corresponding crafting recipes, a half-dozen new rooms that support the themes and mechanics of the skill, and other silly surprises.

Aztecnologist (Dredmor mod)

Been on an old-school Dungeons of Dredmor kick lately. Tonight I published an entirely new Mod for Dredmor. 

Link: Dungeons of Dredmor mod: Aztecnologist 

Your degree in Applied Temple Trap Engineering from Mayincatecnical College will make those pesky Archaeologists feel appropriately unwelcome!

Archaeologists the world over plunder mighty tombs and temples, braving all manner of horrific traps to bring the power of scholarly tools like bullwhips and dynamite to bear to rescue the misty past from its rightful owners. Who maintains those ageless death-traps, and keeps them functioning generations after their installation? You do! You went to college for it.

This skill provides damage and resist boosts for Piercing and Toxic damage, and several levels of Trap Sight and Trap Affinity, but the main draw is the crazy activated abilities.

A Rare Political Post

 (Honestly, all my posts here are pretty rare these days, but...) 

I feel like what happened today in the US is dire enough to warrant political discourse everywhere, even an apolitical forum like this.

The Supreme Court just handed down a decision that will likely be then end of Democracy in our lifetimes. The next time an election cycle is won by any presidential candidate of low moral character, will likely be the last election ever. The six conservative justices have effectively said yes to the dangerous nonsensical argument that the US President has the right to order the military to assassinate his rivals. POTUS could order the DOJ to arrest every member of the opposition party, and while it's not guaranteed the DOJ would follow this command, there could not be any consequences to the President for giving the order. This is stupid, dangerous, toxic, and likely terminal to our way of life. If Trump wins, you know he's mean enough to use these new powers.  Honestly, it would be foolish to trust anyone with that much power. Today's decision was precursor to an all-but-inevitable coup within a few election cycles. I fear the only way forward that doesn't result in fascism and villainy would have to involve ratifying a Constitutional Amendment within months. 

Republicans should also be terrified of this ruling: if you think Biden is as bad Fox News claims -- I'm confident he's not -- then you should be quaking in fear at what he might do before he leaves office. This was a monumental disaster for everyone.

Re-Delving Dredmor's Dungeon

 I've been playing a bunch of Dungeons of Dredmor lately, and it inspired me to return to my old mods for the game, and spruce them up. I just posted version 1.3 of Interior Dredmorating to Steam workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=74589366

Compared to the version that was available at the start of the year, this one has 75 more rooms, several new monsters, locked doors and mini-side-quests, 2 new Diggle Gods, a few new items specifically for the late game when the loot starts running thin, etc. In addition to lots of new content, I also fixed bugs and improved a lot of older content from previous versions of Interior Dredmorating and YTTG ("Yes Time To Grind" a mod I'd released on the Gaslamp Games forums back in the day, before the Steam Workshop was a thing). 

It's great to be back in the dungeon. I'm really enjoying modding stuff again for this old favorite game. I have a big list of ideas I want to work into future versions, and I've also been working on a Skill mod for the game.

 

The Blood Nebula and The Devil's Armpit

 Ran my first session of a new Spelljammer campaign tonight.  (5e Spelljammer gets a lot of bad press, and I only agree with some of that. I'll probably save that critique for another post some other time.)

The PCs are Pirates, and/or friends-of-pirates. The PCs are also delightfully weird. 

• Captain Kiera Glitternoodle is a Fairy Bard Pirate. She has a damaged wing (so that her full Flying Speed won't unlock for a few level-ups, because level one PCs with flight gets kinda crazy). Her hated rival is a Bullywug who is the Captain of a ship called The Pennywort. 
• Rrrprr Mrrdrrmnn is a Thri-Kreen Artificer Noble. Everyone calls her Ripper Murderman, because those are the words that the clicking buzzing thri-kreen name sounds closest to. She's a princess, her mother is the great Empress Mrrrdrrdrrdrr, whom Ripper is sort of rebelling against. 
• Dawg Grippe Tumbuckler is a Water Genasi Druid Wild Spacer. A skilled hand aboard spelljammers their whole life. They had a harrowing run-in with the Necromancer/Vampirate who is the Captain of a rival ship known as The Cenotaph.
• Grimsbee is a Firbolg Fighter Sage (Astronomer) who is traveling the spheres because of a prophecy (we're still working out the details of the prophecy, as this character was made about a day before our first session).
• Lia Galanodel is a blue-skinned Moon Elf Warlock Archaeologist. She's equal parts Indiana Jones and Liara T'soni (from Mass Effect). Her Warlock Patron is The Celestial, an Empyrean named Var. 
• Oldarin Blue is a Mind Flayer Wizard Astral Drifter. He had a run-in with Corellon Larethian that changed him forever, and he no longer eats brains. We cobbled together a Mind Flayer PC write up from a few we'd found online. The psionic blast power is being modeled as a modified version of the Sapping Sting Cantrip from the Explorer's Guide to Wildemont. Short range low damage attack spell that knocks the target Prone if they fail their Intelligence Save. Instead of doing extra damage at higher levels it will affect multiple targets (extra targets added at the same progression as Eldritch Blast, but can only do one instance of damage per target) and eventually upgrade to single-turn Stuns. It's possible that it will be broken as sin when we get to Level 11 where Prone turns to Stun, but I'm happy to risk that chance if we end up playing long enough for it to matter. 

The characters are a lot of fun, and the players really got to ham it up in the first session. When the most "normal" character in your campaign is "blue-skinned Indiana Jones", you know the game is going to be memorable.

Their port of call is in The Blood Nebula, a huge cloud of red mist in which are hidden several asteroids and the calcified body of a dead god. Several pirate vessels have signed a Compact declaring the God's Body neutral ground. Pirates are agreed to not murder each other within sight of the God's Body. So it works like Port Royal of Black Sails, or Tortuga of the Pirates of the Carribean. A port where you can fence your stolen goods, take on crew, and have drinks with rival pirates that you'd definitely try to murder if you ran into them on the open sea. Every pirate captain knows a half dozen safe routes through the nebula, and you sneak in and out while trying to avoid nastier rivals in the mist. This will let me handle the first few sessions as sort of stealthy Wrath of Khan / submarine warfare motif, with enemy ships stumbling upon each other at short range. As we level up, I'll probably gradually fold in the Star Wars -ish dogfight system from this video and pdf: 

 

In one part of The Blood Nebula, there's a single giant arm of a dead god that's called The Devil's Armpit. It's a long curved armlike asteroid that bends around a natural bay. There's a current in the nebula that causes derelict ships adrift in the mist to crash on the banks of this arm of land. For several years, a particular pirate crew camped on that arm, and grew fat on the salvage of ships that drifted in. But one day a few years back, a ship crashed on their shores that held some Prince's personal zoo. Now The Devil's Armpit is infested with Cockatrice, Rust Monsters, and other less savory things. Not the sort of place you visit frivolously.

At the start of the campaign, Kiera (not yet a captain) was high in the crow's nest of a ship that she hated, working for a captain and crew she detested, when she spotted a derelict ship in the mists adrift and headed toward the Devil's Armpit. Rather than reporting the sighting, she waited till her ship got to port, then went AWOL. She gathered up a few trusted souls, former co-workers that she didn't hate, and old drinking buddies from the local tavern, and they rowed out on a Jolly Boat to find this derelict ship. 

The derelict was once a Living Ship: it had a Treant for a mast once upon a time, but several decades back some Gith marauders shot the ship full of holes, chopped down the Treant and ripped its roots out of the Spelljamming Helm, and left it all drifting uncontrolled in The Blood. As the PCs explored the ship, they discovered the Treant wasn't actually dead, but was now more of a viney shrubbery growing over the aft castle. (This allows us to use the fun concept of a Living Ship without the combat strength of a CR 9 Treant overshadowing the PCs.) The Treant's name is Fraxinus. Botany nerds will recognize that's the genus of tree that has those "helicopter" seeds. I do my best Treebeard impression when he talks, but we'll see how long anyone has the patience for that pace of conversation.

The ship is badly damaged, and Fraxinus has been starved of light and water across decades drifting in the nebula. So the hope is that if they can sail out for a while, Fraxinus' health and abilities will improve. (Slowly growing into full Treant stats as the PCs level up.)  

Also aboard the ship was a feral, broken, seemingly drunken lizardfolk sailor. He had been marooned here, and was taking shelter aboard this derelict. At first they couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so terribly drunk, with no empty bottles about, but by the end of the first session it was clear: Somewhere down in the bilge is some sort of monster whose magical aura makes you terribly drunk. Oldarin and Grimsbee failed DC12 Constitution checks and became instantly bumbling drunkards. For one hour, they will have the Poisoned Condition, and an extra clause that if they move more than 1/2 pace they fall prone. (The monster as written in the rulebook I stole it from is brokenly good. It requires you to make this save every turn if you're within 20 feet of it. That's nonsense, so I dialed it back by adding a clause of "if you make the save, you're immune to the effects for 12 hours".)

We ended the first session with the party tracking down the critter deep in the bilge, with initiative to be rolled at the top of the second session (in two weeks). If they can kill or chase off the Rum Gremlin, and then get Fraxinus some water and sunlight, they have their very own ship.

The session was a lot of fun. Mostly goofy roleplay shenanigans, with some exploration. They also found part of a map in the captain's quarters, so we've got a hook into a larger adventure. Not bad for a first session.

Dworkin the Barimen, and my Tinfoil Unicorn Hat

 Weird Amber DRPG thing, well, actually a weird Amber novel thing, that I figured out today, and have never seen posted anywhere. 

**SPOILERS for some novels from the 1970s**

**Also: WARNING if you're a "young earth creationist", something I'm going to say below might offend you.**

 I have a theory on why the character of Dworkin in the Amber novels is at one point given the name "Dworkin Barimen", without any explanation.  It's weird that Dworkin has this random last name, given that all the other major characters he's related to don't have last names at all. Nowhere in Zelazny's novels or short stories have I seen anything that explains this, or even points it out, but it's something that has often bounced through my head as being weird. 

But first, other theories/explanations I've seen for this name:

1. House Barimen is sometimes trotted out by fans and GMs as a Great House of the Courts of Chaos. But that's not in the books anywhere. I just did a search on the text of all 10 novels, and "Barimen" appears exactly once, and in that paragraph we are told that Dworkin Barimen was an artist, priest, wizard or psychiatrist that Oberon hired from some Shadow, not Chaos.  That paragraph is obviously intentionally misleading, but when the character eventually shows up in the plot, we're never told by Zelazny there's a House Barimen. Corwin and most of his siblings seem to be pretty ignorant that the Great Houses of Chaos are even a thing.

2. The other obvious explanation that does get thrown around  is that "Barimen" is an Anagram of "In Amber". Roger Zelazny liked wordplay and clever nods, so maybe it's intended as an Easter Egg. If so, I'd say this egg is really more of a Red Herring. I mean, Dworkin's not from or in Amber, so much as Amber is in him. We eventually learn his origin lies in Chaos, not Amber (even if there's no evidence for a Great House by that name). Where this falls short is that it doesn't explain why the name is not used by anyone else in the series. If it means roughly "of Amber", why doesn't Oberon, King of Amber, use it? Why don't most of Corwin's generation act like that's a family name, nor do they know Dworkin's relation to their lineage? It's weird. (Also, just as a sidenote: I suspect concealing a revealing anagram in your name is not the sort of thing that will work out so well when the people you're hiding your mysteries from have lifespans measured in millenia.)

3. There's also apparently a magic artifact in a Philip Jose Farmer series called "the Horn of Shambarimen" but I've never read those Farmer books, so I don't know if it's an intentional reference, or even which came first and which might be referencing the other. 

Speaking of which came first, I was watching a youtube video today that debunked some horrible "young earth creationist" ideas. One of those ideas was for something called a "Baramin".  Coined (by creationists) by blending the Hebrew words for "created" ("bara") and "kind" ("min"), a baramin is a term they use to denote the groupings of creatures that God bid Noah to put in his ark.  As in: the ark didn't need to have 2 lions, and 2 tigers, and 2 cheetahs, and 2 pumas, and 2 leopards, and 2 lynxes, and 2 housecats etc, because obviously there's no way to fit 2 of every species on earth in a boat that's only 300 cubits long. So instead the kind in "2 of every kind" has to mean something other than species, if you're a biblical-literalist who doesn't accept the scientific consensus on evolution, but are still aware that there are many millions of species on earth today and that a cubit is not very big.

The neat little trick of interpretation of the words "2 of each kind" means the ark could instead just have 2 of the ur-example of cats, and somehow, magically* without evolution existing, those two cats were the archetype (now called a "baramin") from whose pairing all the extant species are produced, again somehow magically without evolution*. The video really tore the concept up and pointed out how silly and scientifically useless the Baramin concept was, and how all the scientific data supports speciation by way of evolution over time. I agree. Really not my area of expertise, being just a guy who watched one rather critical video on the topic of baramins, but I'm sure someone will stumble across this post and try to fight me over it in the comments section. Have fun with that.

*: I will grant you that what I'm presenting is almost certainly a straw-man of what actual biblical literalists and creationists believe. I do that because I'm not here to argue politics or religion, I'm here to acknowledge that an obscure term relating to Noah's Ark and religious philosophy is absolutely the sort of thing that Zelazny would love to allude to when writing the Amber books. 

Roger Zelazny loved mythological references. There's a ton of them in the Amber novels. There's a magical king named Oberon. A murderous brother named Caine. A magic tree named Yig and a thoughtful crow named Hugi. 

Those are myth-references are obvious, but sometimes Roger's a good bit subtler. Here's an example: in his ride to the apocalypse, Corwin is visited by a jackal and two birds (one made of blood and screeching like a bird of prey as it approaches, and the other the aforementioned talking crow). These 3 animals following him are a loose but definitely intentional riff on the "beasts of battle" trope from Old Norse and Old English poetry (Beowulf, etc). In such works, soldiers headed to war would be followed by a wolf, an eagle, and a raven: three animals that feed upon the bodies of the dead strewn about a battlefield, thereby foretelling the grim scene these men are headed into. If you see 3 such animals (a canine and two birds) in close succession, that's Ye Olde Narrator warning you that things are about to get real. (Or, at least that's my understanding: I am not nearly as well-read as Zelazny was.)

But despite all that Mythological riffing, there's really no Flood Myth to be found in the Amber books. There's storms that seem apocalyptic, sure, but no flooding, no boat-building, and they don't deluge for prophetically-long times. Which is kind of weird, given how much hay mythologists and conspiracy theorists alike make about the commonality of Flood Myths in nearly every culture. That motif should be Zelazny's bread and butter.

Not only are obscure religious and mythological references scattered all though out the Amber books, but the dialogues of Corwin's hellride to the end of the universe are packed full of Freshman Philosophy topics. The core concept of Amber casting Shadows is a cheeky riff on Plato's cave. 

So the idea that he might have chosen to slide in a subtle Easter Egg nod to a controversial stance on scientific and philosophical issues, which comes with a built-in connection to Noah's Ark, well, let's just say it just seems very Roger to me.

Which is why I think it's possible that Dworkin Barimen might be an intentional nod to the baramin concept in young earth creationism. Zelazny, being well-read and quite thinky, may have stumbled across the term -- it was coined in a creationist book from the 1940s, so the timeline works. If so "Barimen" is not only an anagram of "In Amber", it's also a homophone for a word that refers to creationist concepts. Zelazny did like his word play. 

Dworkin created the universe, and is the ancestor of every character in the books -- except the Unicorn, which according to jewish folklore (and Shel Silverstein) didn't get onto Noah's Ark. (Why didn't the Unicorn get on the Ark? Because it ran off with a fellow Ur-example, the First Man. I started typing that as a joke, but on reflection, that may well be the crazy idea that inspired Roger Z in the first place, for all I know.)

All of which means Dworkin Barimen may well be a title, something akin to "Dworkin the Progenitor" or "Dworkin the Archetype", rather than a family name. In which case, this title only belongs to Dworkin, not his descendants. 

At least, that's the crazy nonsense I'll be going with the next time I start up a new Amber DRPG campaign.

Side note: Wow, I went nearly a year without posting on this blog. 2023 was hella busy, and sometimes kinda awful. More on that some other post, perhaps?